They don't want us there.
We don't want to be there, as a majority.
They don't understand us well.
We don't understand them well enough. Our popular analysis uses stereotypes that are false. Our intelligence analysis is likely to be simplistic also.
It's none of our business how they choose to conduct their future.
We've already accomplished our mission.
Remaining there causes more and more resentment in various ways, making us less secure over time.
We can remain secure without being there.
We can conduct missions there later if needed after we remove combat troops.
We should have left after finding bin Laden. Even in a phased withdrawal, there are far better options -- click here for much better plans we could follow, which I laid out 17 months ago. That 2nd plan is sharply superior to Obama's in its long-term likely results.
I label the current plan "Obama's" because he now finally owns this war as it is, and has the responsibility to change the direction it is going.
Under our current plan, we will need extreme luck not to produce very bad outcomes 5 and 10 years from now.
Here is a nuanced, in-depth set of analysis, including how to really fight militants successfully.
Our current plans are harmful to ourselves and others.
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
March 15, 2012
October 20, 2011
America!
Inspiring sight this weekend. We were going to a festival and traveled along a commercial boulevard in a big suburb, on a nice sunny and windy day, when a truly novel sight met my eyes in that landscape.
To get this scene, imagine an archetypal suburb shopping road, all chain stores, restaurants, gas stations, totally consumers jockeying along wishing there were less people doing the same thing at the same time, packed, slow roads (judging from this road, there isn't much recession going on).
Suddenly alongside the road at a major intersection I saw a large, sparkling, 4' x 6' American flag whipping straight in the wind, like a vision. So new, so clean, so red and blue and white. At first, such a sight made me expect some same-old-same-old protest.
3 people stood there, and as we passed slowly from the intersection in heavy traffic I saw the man holding the flag pole smiling like it was a new world.
His sign read:
To get this scene, imagine an archetypal suburb shopping road, all chain stores, restaurants, gas stations, totally consumers jockeying along wishing there were less people doing the same thing at the same time, packed, slow roads (judging from this road, there isn't much recession going on).
Suddenly alongside the road at a major intersection I saw a large, sparkling, 4' x 6' American flag whipping straight in the wind, like a vision. So new, so clean, so red and blue and white. At first, such a sight made me expect some same-old-same-old protest.
3 people stood there, and as we passed slowly from the intersection in heavy traffic I saw the man holding the flag pole smiling like it was a new world.
His sign read:
War is stupid.
-- Gen. Eisenhower
Cars were honking in support -- this in a suburb of a large city, the classic Republican stronghold.
The 3 protesters waved, smiling at the cars and people, in a clear mutual love fest kind of atmosphere.
Do representatives realize how well most of the American people understand this war is pointless, useless? I've a feeling anti-war feeling is well above 50%.
There is hope for our nation.
...
"War settles nothing."
May 27, 2011
Congress Almost Enacts The Will Of The People On Afghanistan
The U.S. House of Representatives came tantalizingly close to enacting the will of the majority of Americans yesterday. AP:
Finally, Congress is beginning to move towards a piece of common sense we once took for granted before we became such an interventionist nation. The Washington Post:
It seems Congress has a fair number of representatives with an ability to see this reality: we can't mold Afghanistan. We've accomplished as much as we can our rationale for being there. We don't need to be there to defend ourselves -- militant beliefs are only defeated by time and new ideas, only these, and there are much better ways to defend ourselves and defeat terrorism. Looking at the bigger picture, our security depends not only on making smarter choices, but more...fundamental changes.
Finally, Congress is beginning to move towards a piece of common sense we once took for granted before we became such an interventionist nation. The Washington Post:
May 2, 2011
Now is a Good Time To Get Out Of Afghanistan
I've published two posts in quick succession here, which I rarely do, and readers will find a post I think is of unusual interest just previous to this post.
...
Nothing would be so convincing, now that we have eliminated our public enemy #1, and fulfilled our public reason for coming to Afghanistan, than to follow through on our initial public rationale for the war, and exit.
Talking about exiting would do far more for our fight against Al Qaeda than most any military action, especially now. It would greatly increase our credibility by showing integrity in our policy, and move us away from the colors of only a power-hungry empire.
Al Qaeda is not a physical organization, or a set of people. It is a set of ideas. Even though bin Laden is symbolic, as its leader in spirit, those ideas that are al Qaeda will continue until better ideas defeat them.
You cannot win a war of ideals and ideas with physical force.
This is a war between ideas, and will be won only by superior ideas.
This is our best chance to change course towards a cleaner exit.
Instead of Empire, we could have the rhetoric of an Ideal nation, which is a far better thing to be, and to receive the consequences of from true believers. Empires are justly fought against. Ideal nations are much harder to fight against. Those who fight against Ideal nations are more criminal than idealistic. It is a crucial distinction to the long-term consequences of this war.
Which would you rather be -- admired or feared and hated?
We needn't abandon every piece our current plans. We need to change much of our plans and especially we need to talk a different talk. We should begin some very visible changes in actions and diplomatic rhetoric. Now.
...
Nothing would be so convincing, now that we have eliminated our public enemy #1, and fulfilled our public reason for coming to Afghanistan, than to follow through on our initial public rationale for the war, and exit.
Talking about exiting would do far more for our fight against Al Qaeda than most any military action, especially now. It would greatly increase our credibility by showing integrity in our policy, and move us away from the colors of only a power-hungry empire.
Al Qaeda is not a physical organization, or a set of people. It is a set of ideas. Even though bin Laden is symbolic, as its leader in spirit, those ideas that are al Qaeda will continue until better ideas defeat them.
You cannot win a war of ideals and ideas with physical force.
This is a war between ideas, and will be won only by superior ideas.
This is our best chance to change course towards a cleaner exit.
Instead of Empire, we could have the rhetoric of an Ideal nation, which is a far better thing to be, and to receive the consequences of from true believers. Empires are justly fought against. Ideal nations are much harder to fight against. Those who fight against Ideal nations are more criminal than idealistic. It is a crucial distinction to the long-term consequences of this war.
Which would you rather be -- admired or feared and hated?
We needn't abandon every piece our current plans. We need to change much of our plans and especially we need to talk a different talk. We should begin some very visible changes in actions and diplomatic rhetoric. Now.
February 11, 2010
America, Empire And Soul
Let me start off the new decade by asking a question that goes to the root of what is America.
How many in Washington realize that being the world's sole military hyperpower is not compatible with the ideals this nation was founded upon?
Don't mistake me for a pacifist.
I supported Reagan's defense build up well before 1981 and until it became clear Gorbachev was bringing sincere change in 1986. Even more aggressively, I advocated indicting and overthrowing Saddam (Iraq) in 2000 after I pieced together that Saddam had diverted food in order to starve large numbers of Shiite children during a late 1990s Iraqi drought under cover of blaming UN sanctions. (But I pointed out in 2003 we should not try to mould Iraq, but simply should put responsibility for Iraq right back into Iraqi hands (clerics), and remain only as helpers to popular (religious) Iraqi leaders, in contrast to our slow and uncertain effort to first create a Western democracy in Iraq to our own conception.)
So my views on military power originate not from the point of view of a pacifist (Though I do respect this point of view, as taught by the Christ, no less. We are seeing how overwhelming power and the morals of America cannot impose right nor aid peace except when peoples choose peace by their own choice, in their own time.)
Instead, I've had much of my life a pragmatic and aggressive view: we need to take steps to make the world a safer place for freedom and liberty, in terms of actual outcomes.
I supported a large and aggressive military since we had large and powerful enemies.
But this is no longer true.
We face no major enemies.
Look, and you will see no massed armies of millions arrayed aggressively against us and our allies. (North Korea is deterred with only moderate forces. Meeting current deterrence needs while maintaining an excellent military does not require anywhere near our current level of expenditure.)
We spend so much more than needed on defense because it is the ultimate form of earmark: every year representatives hope to send ever more money to defense contractors in their Congressional districts.
Americans have no idea how much defense spending we actually need.
$100 billion, $200 billion, $500 billion -- these numbers seem identical to average Americans.
Really, how many people have a clue whether $200 billion or $400 billion is the right amount of spending?
Americans are easily fooled by comparisons to defense spending levels as a percent of GDP of the last 40 and 50 years...
as if we were still in a cold war with a massive, armed enemy like the Warsaw Pact.
Fooled.
Typical voters are left to blindly hope that most of the money isn't wasted. And they know perfectly well a great deal is.
...
It's like many Americans are living in the past -- stuck in 1983 like flies in amber -- unaware that the world has profoundly, fundamentally changed.
...
The real enemy of America now is a set of ideas which cannot be defeated with guns, nor by killing or arresting momentary leaders. These ideas will be defeated only by better ideas.
In the meanwhile, deterring Iran and North Korea while fighting in Afghanistan and maintaining most of our base strength could all be accomplished with about half the level of defense spending we now have.
...
Few commentators even seem to comprehend that there might be any downside to spending $680 billion a year right now to maintain such a large gap of superiority over any other nation's military forces.
Few grasp that raw power in and for itself might not be a virtue, but a corrupting influence that could eat at the soul of America.
We were warned long ago of this danger by the Supreme Allied Commander and subsequent Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was no shrinking violet. He commanded and won WWII, led the new NATO, and finished the Korean War.
But this strong military man warned us explicitly that our great military spending would threaten the very fabric and soul of America itself.
In short, I don't find popular commentators in newspapers and in the media that understand enough of the principles that are the essence of America.
We, as a culture, have even gradually half-accepted using disproportionate force to respond to attacks.
In the last 30 years, we have begun to take military action with less and less justification. Hitting innocent bystanders is inevitable when we try to defeat an ideology (Al Qaeda) with physical weapons. But even those who refuse to see Al Qaeda as true believers, as if they were only a power-hungry gang instead, should then ask if it would make sense for the U.S. in the 1920s to have fought Al Capone and his thugs with a troop surge against Chicago neighborhoods "harboring" Capone?
Now, even the theoretical possibility of a future threat (Iraq, 2003) is used to rationalize broad and sometimes imprecise attack.
Enemies are blown up into massive shadows. A ragtag band of fanatics have been greatly empowered into an equal stature with our nation by our words and action. Criminals that have committed serious mass murder have been elevated up to the stage of playing on the same field as our nation itself. Made equally important. As if we cannot accept their true smallness, as if we need a great enemy.
This is not how we should want to be.
Lacking wisdom in its mainstream national dialogue, America rolls blindly downhill towards a loss of something of far greater value than the temporary gains of military power -- we risk losing the very essence of America itself.
Mark my words, spending about 5% of our GDP, a massive $680bn, on military expenditures while our major economic competitors like China spend less than 2% means that we *cannot* grow our economic strength the way other nations can that have more resources available for investment in their future.
It's not simply that $680bn in a single year is about 4 or 5 times as expensive as the contemplated annual cost of providing health care (even after full subsidies are in effect in 2017) to uninsured Americans under the proposed health care reform for instance.
Realistically, we could spend half as much on defense and still maintain military superiority, and...pay fully for health care reform...and subsidize college tuition costs for all American students. All of this from the current level of defense spending alone.
But the economic cost is higher yet: Pragmatically, maintaining this disadvantage of spending 3% of GDP more on defense than our competitors year after year instead of spending this part of our limited resources on science, technology and education means that US economic power will fade.
Fade.
Education, science, technology -- the future.
Can we expect a secure future without investing adequately in the future?
The current defense spending of the U.S. threatens our security.
...
But even this pragmatic reality of loss of economic and military might is not the center of what I want to communicate here.
No one else in the center is saying it, and it needs desperately to be said:
Being a "superpower" is not American.
We were not born as a nation only to gradually transform ourselves into an empire.
....
I write this as someone who avidly supported Reagan in 1975 years before I would be old enough to vote, who told my college roommates excitedly in 1984 about the possibility that Gorbachev might bring change (he later came to power in 1985 and began real change) and then became excited by the rising Boris Yeltsin in 1985 (years before he gained power and continued moving Russia towards liberalization). I felt great joy at the historic fall of the Wall and of the Iron Curtain.
But...while I supported all this military might in 1979, and in 1984, it was for a reason....not for the sake of power.
We did not need a large military because we were America. We needed it because the Warsaw Pact was massed with tanks and huge armies in the field.
We actually had a significant opponent in those days. Armies with many hundreds of thousands of capable, well-armed troops arrayed in invasion-ready stance specifically against our West European allies.
Those days are long gone.
In the last decade, we have begun to lose ourselves, lose the sense of America, even in this elementary way of what America is about -- what America stands for.
Empires begin in response to having been attacked, whether on a personal level or as a nation, and having a determination to avenge that attack or be on top in a rule-of-the-jungle world.
Those who want power want that power in order to feel safe.
For so many decades, most of our lives, America has been a superpower only because the outcome of World War II made us a superpower and the subsequent necessity of deterring the Soviet Union forced us to remain one.
Most of us have grown up knowing nothing else.
But, people, this necessity has passed. There is no massive enemy facing us in the world today.
Our worst genuine enemies are merely bands of angry, fundamentalist wingnuts, numbering in the thousands. They require a strong response, but not a war.
Let me tell you why.
They will number only in the thousands unless we continue to fight them in other peoples' homelands long enough to give them new allies and thus unite real armies someday against us... Unless we prolong this mistake of provoking new enemies, we appear unlikely to have any large enemy who wants to fight us.
Al Qaeda is based in ideas and ideals. It cannot be defeated with guns or by killing its troops or leaders. Its ideas and ideology will only be defeated by superior ideas and ideals. It is a 'war' of ideals, of belief. We lose if and when our own best ideals are not lived up to. It's precisely that simple. We will win or lose on the basis of our self-conduct.
America became a superpower by necessity in World War II.
We remained a superpower by necessity in response to Stalin, then Khrushchev and finally Brezhnev.
This became so normal for us that we do not know what it would be like to spend a lower portion of our nation's treasure on defense like other advanced nations. Americans today do not know what it would be like to have a proportional military -- proportional to the absolute size of our likely foes. Instead, we know what it is like to be a dominant superpower.
But the world today does not need a dominant power any more than a typical city needs a strong man (a dictator).
A typical city, with criminals and gangs, needs a law-abiding police force.
The world needs stable alliances and organized international efforts at peacekeeping.
The world needs the American character our nation was born with, not this newly-aggressive superpower of late.
If Obama makes one fundamental error, it is to underestimate the American people. We elected him on the promise of real change. We do not want to see him cowed by the military-industrial complex.
Truly, what is ideal is pragmatic.
What is most pragmatic and smart is to follow ideals.
American influence depends on our values and character.
America cannot afford $680 billion a year on "defense" financially or morally.
Eisenhower warned us -- this military power would change our character unless we somehow found a way to remain who we are.
It is time for most of the soldiers to come home, right now.
It is time for America to become America again.
How many in Washington realize that being the world's sole military hyperpower is not compatible with the ideals this nation was founded upon?
Don't mistake me for a pacifist.
I supported Reagan's defense build up well before 1981 and until it became clear Gorbachev was bringing sincere change in 1986. Even more aggressively, I advocated indicting and overthrowing Saddam (Iraq) in 2000 after I pieced together that Saddam had diverted food in order to starve large numbers of Shiite children during a late 1990s Iraqi drought under cover of blaming UN sanctions. (But I pointed out in 2003 we should not try to mould Iraq, but simply should put responsibility for Iraq right back into Iraqi hands (clerics), and remain only as helpers to popular (religious) Iraqi leaders, in contrast to our slow and uncertain effort to first create a Western democracy in Iraq to our own conception.)
So my views on military power originate not from the point of view of a pacifist (Though I do respect this point of view, as taught by the Christ, no less. We are seeing how overwhelming power and the morals of America cannot impose right nor aid peace except when peoples choose peace by their own choice, in their own time.)
Instead, I've had much of my life a pragmatic and aggressive view: we need to take steps to make the world a safer place for freedom and liberty, in terms of actual outcomes.
I supported a large and aggressive military since we had large and powerful enemies.
But this is no longer true.
We face no major enemies.
Look, and you will see no massed armies of millions arrayed aggressively against us and our allies. (North Korea is deterred with only moderate forces. Meeting current deterrence needs while maintaining an excellent military does not require anywhere near our current level of expenditure.)
We spend so much more than needed on defense because it is the ultimate form of earmark: every year representatives hope to send ever more money to defense contractors in their Congressional districts.
Americans have no idea how much defense spending we actually need.
$100 billion, $200 billion, $500 billion -- these numbers seem identical to average Americans.
Really, how many people have a clue whether $200 billion or $400 billion is the right amount of spending?
Americans are easily fooled by comparisons to defense spending levels as a percent of GDP of the last 40 and 50 years...
as if we were still in a cold war with a massive, armed enemy like the Warsaw Pact.
Fooled.
Typical voters are left to blindly hope that most of the money isn't wasted. And they know perfectly well a great deal is.
...
It's like many Americans are living in the past -- stuck in 1983 like flies in amber -- unaware that the world has profoundly, fundamentally changed.
...
The real enemy of America now is a set of ideas which cannot be defeated with guns, nor by killing or arresting momentary leaders. These ideas will be defeated only by better ideas.
In the meanwhile, deterring Iran and North Korea while fighting in Afghanistan and maintaining most of our base strength could all be accomplished with about half the level of defense spending we now have.
...
Few commentators even seem to comprehend that there might be any downside to spending $680 billion a year right now to maintain such a large gap of superiority over any other nation's military forces.
Few grasp that raw power in and for itself might not be a virtue, but a corrupting influence that could eat at the soul of America.
We were warned long ago of this danger by the Supreme Allied Commander and subsequent Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was no shrinking violet. He commanded and won WWII, led the new NATO, and finished the Korean War.
But this strong military man warned us explicitly that our great military spending would threaten the very fabric and soul of America itself.
In short, I don't find popular commentators in newspapers and in the media that understand enough of the principles that are the essence of America.
We, as a culture, have even gradually half-accepted using disproportionate force to respond to attacks.
In the last 30 years, we have begun to take military action with less and less justification. Hitting innocent bystanders is inevitable when we try to defeat an ideology (Al Qaeda) with physical weapons. But even those who refuse to see Al Qaeda as true believers, as if they were only a power-hungry gang instead, should then ask if it would make sense for the U.S. in the 1920s to have fought Al Capone and his thugs with a troop surge against Chicago neighborhoods "harboring" Capone?
Now, even the theoretical possibility of a future threat (Iraq, 2003) is used to rationalize broad and sometimes imprecise attack.
Enemies are blown up into massive shadows. A ragtag band of fanatics have been greatly empowered into an equal stature with our nation by our words and action. Criminals that have committed serious mass murder have been elevated up to the stage of playing on the same field as our nation itself. Made equally important. As if we cannot accept their true smallness, as if we need a great enemy.
This is not how we should want to be.
Lacking wisdom in its mainstream national dialogue, America rolls blindly downhill towards a loss of something of far greater value than the temporary gains of military power -- we risk losing the very essence of America itself.
Mark my words, spending about 5% of our GDP, a massive $680bn, on military expenditures while our major economic competitors like China spend less than 2% means that we *cannot* grow our economic strength the way other nations can that have more resources available for investment in their future.
It's not simply that $680bn in a single year is about 4 or 5 times as expensive as the contemplated annual cost of providing health care (even after full subsidies are in effect in 2017) to uninsured Americans under the proposed health care reform for instance.
Realistically, we could spend half as much on defense and still maintain military superiority, and...pay fully for health care reform...and subsidize college tuition costs for all American students. All of this from the current level of defense spending alone.
But the economic cost is higher yet: Pragmatically, maintaining this disadvantage of spending 3% of GDP more on defense than our competitors year after year instead of spending this part of our limited resources on science, technology and education means that US economic power will fade.
Fade.
Education, science, technology -- the future.
Can we expect a secure future without investing adequately in the future?
The current defense spending of the U.S. threatens our security.
...
But even this pragmatic reality of loss of economic and military might is not the center of what I want to communicate here.
No one else in the center is saying it, and it needs desperately to be said:
Being a "superpower" is not American.
We were not born as a nation only to gradually transform ourselves into an empire.
....
I write this as someone who avidly supported Reagan in 1975 years before I would be old enough to vote, who told my college roommates excitedly in 1984 about the possibility that Gorbachev might bring change (he later came to power in 1985 and began real change) and then became excited by the rising Boris Yeltsin in 1985 (years before he gained power and continued moving Russia towards liberalization). I felt great joy at the historic fall of the Wall and of the Iron Curtain.
But...while I supported all this military might in 1979, and in 1984, it was for a reason....not for the sake of power.
We did not need a large military because we were America. We needed it because the Warsaw Pact was massed with tanks and huge armies in the field.
We actually had a significant opponent in those days. Armies with many hundreds of thousands of capable, well-armed troops arrayed in invasion-ready stance specifically against our West European allies.
Those days are long gone.
In the last decade, we have begun to lose ourselves, lose the sense of America, even in this elementary way of what America is about -- what America stands for.
Empires begin in response to having been attacked, whether on a personal level or as a nation, and having a determination to avenge that attack or be on top in a rule-of-the-jungle world.
Those who want power want that power in order to feel safe.
For so many decades, most of our lives, America has been a superpower only because the outcome of World War II made us a superpower and the subsequent necessity of deterring the Soviet Union forced us to remain one.
Most of us have grown up knowing nothing else.
But, people, this necessity has passed. There is no massive enemy facing us in the world today.
Our worst genuine enemies are merely bands of angry, fundamentalist wingnuts, numbering in the thousands. They require a strong response, but not a war.
Let me tell you why.
They will number only in the thousands unless we continue to fight them in other peoples' homelands long enough to give them new allies and thus unite real armies someday against us... Unless we prolong this mistake of provoking new enemies, we appear unlikely to have any large enemy who wants to fight us.
Al Qaeda is based in ideas and ideals. It cannot be defeated with guns or by killing its troops or leaders. Its ideas and ideology will only be defeated by superior ideas and ideals. It is a 'war' of ideals, of belief. We lose if and when our own best ideals are not lived up to. It's precisely that simple. We will win or lose on the basis of our self-conduct.
America became a superpower by necessity in World War II.
We remained a superpower by necessity in response to Stalin, then Khrushchev and finally Brezhnev.
This became so normal for us that we do not know what it would be like to spend a lower portion of our nation's treasure on defense like other advanced nations. Americans today do not know what it would be like to have a proportional military -- proportional to the absolute size of our likely foes. Instead, we know what it is like to be a dominant superpower.
But the world today does not need a dominant power any more than a typical city needs a strong man (a dictator).
A typical city, with criminals and gangs, needs a law-abiding police force.
The world needs stable alliances and organized international efforts at peacekeeping.
The world needs the American character our nation was born with, not this newly-aggressive superpower of late.
If Obama makes one fundamental error, it is to underestimate the American people. We elected him on the promise of real change. We do not want to see him cowed by the military-industrial complex.
Truly, what is ideal is pragmatic.
What is most pragmatic and smart is to follow ideals.
American influence depends on our values and character.
America cannot afford $680 billion a year on "defense" financially or morally.
Eisenhower warned us -- this military power would change our character unless we somehow found a way to remain who we are.
It is time for most of the soldiers to come home, right now.
It is time for America to become America again.
January 26, 2010
Obama, the Pragmatic, and the Ideal
Lately, a significant portion of the fate of our nation is hanging on the seeming necessity of choosing between the pragmatic and the ideal.
We are in two wars on the other side of the world because many Americans presume the pragmatic and the ideal are often at odds.
Obama struck a deal with the pharmaceutical industry at the outset of health care reform on the expectation that pragmatically, it might be politically impossible to pass health care reform if the drug lobby opposed reform.
This deal making though has helped damn the current health care reform bills in the eyes of many independent voters.
Those who might be skeptical of Republican rhetoric against the reform legislation nevertheless could find no way around the fact that backroom deals had been struck at the expense of the American taxpayer.
In 2003, Congress passed Medicare Part D, and did not use the potential advantage of a huge insurance agent (Medicare itself) to negotiate prices with drug makers!
I expect somewhere between 60-90% of Americans would choose the label "corrupt" over alternatives like "beneficial" to describe this aspect of the 2003 legislation -- an apparent giveaway to for-profit drug makers.
What if you had to individually negotiate, as a household, with a toll road operator, for your toll road rates? The toll road operator could consider your address and decide just how much it might be able to wring out of you based on what it guesses is your individual likelihood to be willing to pay more.
When government appears to simply create an extra margin of profit for some corporations when it could easily have solicited bids instead (as it does for many other goods and services), it is entirely reasonable for citizens to view that provision as an instance of corruption.
What label might Americans who view the lack of drug price negotiation in Medicare Part D as corrupt now apply to the 2009 Obama deal with drug makers at the outset of this new reform?
Pragmatism, by its very nature as a word, implies deciding what to do on the basis of the expected practical outcomes of options. But for many people "pragmatism" also implies that simply following principles, ideals, might often be unworkable in terms of outcome.
Was the likelihood of passage of health care reform increased by making a backroom, apparently corrupt deal with drug makers?
Might I suggest a portion of Massachusetts independent voters may have reached the conclusion this was a corrupt deal?
Consider further -- does invading an entire region of parochial tribes to fight a group of wing nut terrorists, at times fighting tribal people that fight us only because we have invaded their territory, make terrorism more likely or less?
In contrast, if we followed a strategy of based on the ideal of peacemaking, while continuing to be on-guard, and simply issued warrants for the arrests of "criminals", what effect would that have over time on the number and passion of terrorists?
If you think peacemaking and labeling known terrorists as "criminals" would lead to a lower number of recruits to their ranks, your pragmatic instincts are quite correct.
Because Al Qaeda is not essentially a group of individuals.
It is a set of ideas.
Obama has made an important and subtle mistake, a disconcerting failure of wisdom.
He has accepted the fallacy of the pragmatic versus the ideal.
...
Life experience gradually teaches us that violating ideals in pursuit of goals is impractical over time.
We cannot win a war of ideas -- the fight against Al Qaeda -- by fighting and killing people who are not trying to conduct a war against us (tribal people in eastern Afghanistan who are not members of Al Qaeda). Such a practice in fact validates the ideology of Al Qaeda and recruits new fanatics to its cause.
No, to fight Al Qaeda and win, we need to use ideals -- ideals that are superior to the ideology of Al Qaeda.
You win a war of ideas by using and practicing better ideas -- ideals -- not by forfeiting your moral standing by fighting bystanders trying to defend their homeland territory against your presence.
To defeat Al Qaeda, we need to use words and ideal actions.
This is an instance of a very deep principle that age and experience gradually will suggest -- the ideal is the most pragmatic option. It is the option that will have the best outcome in time.
The pragmatic and the ideal are one and the same.
We are in two wars on the other side of the world because many Americans presume the pragmatic and the ideal are often at odds.
Obama struck a deal with the pharmaceutical industry at the outset of health care reform on the expectation that pragmatically, it might be politically impossible to pass health care reform if the drug lobby opposed reform.
This deal making though has helped damn the current health care reform bills in the eyes of many independent voters.
Those who might be skeptical of Republican rhetoric against the reform legislation nevertheless could find no way around the fact that backroom deals had been struck at the expense of the American taxpayer.
In 2003, Congress passed Medicare Part D, and did not use the potential advantage of a huge insurance agent (Medicare itself) to negotiate prices with drug makers!
I expect somewhere between 60-90% of Americans would choose the label "corrupt" over alternatives like "beneficial" to describe this aspect of the 2003 legislation -- an apparent giveaway to for-profit drug makers.
What if you had to individually negotiate, as a household, with a toll road operator, for your toll road rates? The toll road operator could consider your address and decide just how much it might be able to wring out of you based on what it guesses is your individual likelihood to be willing to pay more.
When government appears to simply create an extra margin of profit for some corporations when it could easily have solicited bids instead (as it does for many other goods and services), it is entirely reasonable for citizens to view that provision as an instance of corruption.
What label might Americans who view the lack of drug price negotiation in Medicare Part D as corrupt now apply to the 2009 Obama deal with drug makers at the outset of this new reform?
Pragmatism, by its very nature as a word, implies deciding what to do on the basis of the expected practical outcomes of options. But for many people "pragmatism" also implies that simply following principles, ideals, might often be unworkable in terms of outcome.
Was the likelihood of passage of health care reform increased by making a backroom, apparently corrupt deal with drug makers?
Might I suggest a portion of Massachusetts independent voters may have reached the conclusion this was a corrupt deal?
Consider further -- does invading an entire region of parochial tribes to fight a group of wing nut terrorists, at times fighting tribal people that fight us only because we have invaded their territory, make terrorism more likely or less?
In contrast, if we followed a strategy of based on the ideal of peacemaking, while continuing to be on-guard, and simply issued warrants for the arrests of "criminals", what effect would that have over time on the number and passion of terrorists?
If you think peacemaking and labeling known terrorists as "criminals" would lead to a lower number of recruits to their ranks, your pragmatic instincts are quite correct.
Because Al Qaeda is not essentially a group of individuals.
It is a set of ideas.
Obama has made an important and subtle mistake, a disconcerting failure of wisdom.
He has accepted the fallacy of the pragmatic versus the ideal.
...
Life experience gradually teaches us that violating ideals in pursuit of goals is impractical over time.
We cannot win a war of ideas -- the fight against Al Qaeda -- by fighting and killing people who are not trying to conduct a war against us (tribal people in eastern Afghanistan who are not members of Al Qaeda). Such a practice in fact validates the ideology of Al Qaeda and recruits new fanatics to its cause.
No, to fight Al Qaeda and win, we need to use ideals -- ideals that are superior to the ideology of Al Qaeda.
You win a war of ideas by using and practicing better ideas -- ideals -- not by forfeiting your moral standing by fighting bystanders trying to defend their homeland territory against your presence.
To defeat Al Qaeda, we need to use words and ideal actions.
This is an instance of a very deep principle that age and experience gradually will suggest -- the ideal is the most pragmatic option. It is the option that will have the best outcome in time.
The pragmatic and the ideal are one and the same.
October 26, 2009
Is Obama in a Bubble?
Perhaps.
While Obama was known before his inauguration to have the habit of taking in many sources of information and ideas, it is likely the amount of information and briefing materials available to him daily is stupefying.
So his challenge now is to see the forest in spite of being pushed up against trees every day.
Every form of briefing and information has its presumptions, its bias. The most profound bias is which information is thought to be important enough to present.
For instance, what is most important in Afghanistan is not among these:
a) troop positioning
b) Pakistan's offensive
c) road building
d) military strategies against the Taliban; or even...
e) disrupting Al-Qaeda
Instead, what is most important in Afghanistan might not be in any briefing materials dumped on the President each day.
Instead, the most important factors are likely among these:
f) number of television satellite dishes
g) freedom of the local press
h) distribution of popular local and regional writers of all kinds by various means across Afghanistan (poetry and novels and religious views being of equal significance in the evolution of thought)
i) state of progress with lowering India's tariffs on Afghan trade goods
j) state of progress with lowering Turkey's tariffs on Afghan trade goods
k) respect for local village preferences (if they don't want us there, then leave that area)
Similarly, for financial reform, Obama certainly hears the world view and ideas which dominate the Federal Reserve, no doubt articulated quite well by Timothy Geithner, such as ideas and theories about how to sustain or increase lending. The TARP Bailouts were about sustaining lending. But other forces are at work, and not every one of them might be brought up for examination in the White House.
Does his information intake include the current average household credit card balance and current average credit card interest rate? Does he have an analysis such as this one of how the recent increase in money diverted from local economies by higher card interest rates affects the general U.S. economy?
Or does he have only the competent, convincing presentation of certain points of view, perhaps with two or three angles or alternatives -- alternatives which themselves are only variations on certain presumptions common to a particular world view?
In other words, is Obama in a bubble?
I think it is too soon to say.
Afghanistan will be one of the tests of how well he is able to step back and include broader vision in his decisions. Will Obama be able to bring insights to bear in these complex, real-world situations in spite of powerful interests that are accustomed to continuing along their current paths?
----------
Update: My wife sent this article that shows way Obama is clearly not in a bubble on Afghanistan.
While Obama was known before his inauguration to have the habit of taking in many sources of information and ideas, it is likely the amount of information and briefing materials available to him daily is stupefying.
So his challenge now is to see the forest in spite of being pushed up against trees every day.
Every form of briefing and information has its presumptions, its bias. The most profound bias is which information is thought to be important enough to present.
For instance, what is most important in Afghanistan is not among these:
a) troop positioning
b) Pakistan's offensive
c) road building
d) military strategies against the Taliban; or even...
e) disrupting Al-Qaeda
Instead, what is most important in Afghanistan might not be in any briefing materials dumped on the President each day.
Instead, the most important factors are likely among these:
f) number of television satellite dishes
g) freedom of the local press
h) distribution of popular local and regional writers of all kinds by various means across Afghanistan (poetry and novels and religious views being of equal significance in the evolution of thought)
i) state of progress with lowering India's tariffs on Afghan trade goods
j) state of progress with lowering Turkey's tariffs on Afghan trade goods
k) respect for local village preferences (if they don't want us there, then leave that area)
Similarly, for financial reform, Obama certainly hears the world view and ideas which dominate the Federal Reserve, no doubt articulated quite well by Timothy Geithner, such as ideas and theories about how to sustain or increase lending. The TARP Bailouts were about sustaining lending. But other forces are at work, and not every one of them might be brought up for examination in the White House.
Does his information intake include the current average household credit card balance and current average credit card interest rate? Does he have an analysis such as this one of how the recent increase in money diverted from local economies by higher card interest rates affects the general U.S. economy?
Or does he have only the competent, convincing presentation of certain points of view, perhaps with two or three angles or alternatives -- alternatives which themselves are only variations on certain presumptions common to a particular world view?
In other words, is Obama in a bubble?
I think it is too soon to say.
Afghanistan will be one of the tests of how well he is able to step back and include broader vision in his decisions. Will Obama be able to bring insights to bear in these complex, real-world situations in spite of powerful interests that are accustomed to continuing along their current paths?
----------
Update: My wife sent this article that shows way Obama is clearly not in a bubble on Afghanistan.
October 19, 2009
Afghanistan (updated)
Suppose 20 years from now France had a large Islamic population, and in a very divided three-way election the Islamic faction managed to elect a powerful parliamentary block and that a coalition government was formed including the Islamic party. Imagine that you are fervent French Catholic.
Now, stretching our imaginations farther, imagine the Islamic-friendly French government invited some Muslim troops from Saudi Arabia to be stationed in France to help "protect the rights of women to wear veils and burkas" or some such, and eventually there were Muslim troops stationed in Lourdes for instance. Suppose that Lourdes has taken on more religious significance to French Catholics. Suppose you often have to see these Muslim troops along your way as you go on your annual religious pilgrimages to special Catholic sites such as the Grotto of Massabielle.
Suppose you had been demanding for years to the French government and also to the Saudi government that these foreign Muslim troops be removed from Lourdes, and from France.
Suppose some half-crazed Christian radical group from southern Cyprus sets off bombs in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to protest against Muslim troops near holy Christian sites in both France and northern Cyprus. (Yes, I know that such an act of terrorism isn't Christian.)
Now suppose you yourself don't believe in such acts of terrorism, but you watch in horror as the response to the bombings is that additional Muslim troops arrive from Saudi Arabia to "protect" French Muslims.
Suppose Saudi Arabia also launches a war against Cyprus to rid the nation of "terrorists." Along the way, many non-combatant Christians civilians are also killed.
Ok, yes, this scenario is far-fetched and fantastic, but our current situation with American troops in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan seems a little surprising historically, given the original heritage of the United States.
The real point is how would you feel, as a fervent Catholic, about the Saudi "war on terror" against Cypriot "Christian terrorists" -- would you feel sympathetic to the Saudi invasion of Cyprus, or outraged?
If the Saudi troops were powerfully armed, and "won" every battle in Cyprus, driving the Christian "militants" off the island in boats, would your feelings of outrage fade in time?
Or would you actually become more outraged?
The point here is that the United States cannot "win" hearts and minds in much of Afghanistan or in the neighboring region by fighting.
We cannot defeat a religious belief system with force of arms or by killing people.
Instead, the outcome of fighting for territory against a religious belief system is that we engender more and more hatred.
Analysts advising on the Afghan war generally cannot see the forest for the trees.
The real outcome of the "war on terror" is that more militants are inspired for the future. Worse, militants will be inspired in more than one country.
We cannot defeat ideas with guns.
But...we could defeat some ideas with a combination of better ideas and virtues.
It may even be that the better ideas and virtues that will eventually defeat the intolerance and power-abuse of the Taliban's ideology will come mostly from Afghans. We don't necessarily know how Afghans should live. It is up to them to decide this for themselves.
....
So what should the United States do in Afghanistan?
Let me offer two alternatives that would greatly improve our longer-term outcome in the battle of hearts and minds.
------------------------
First strategy:
We should specifically advertise in a thorough and lengthy way that we have the over arching goal of capturing Osama bin Laden as a "criminal" for "killing children, Christians and Muslims in 2001."
In each village we should specifically ask the village elders or council whether or not they wish our troops to be on their lands. We should then draw up a map showing what areas would like to be non-Taliban. Some families might wish to relocate.
We should then seek peace with the Taliban itself, and demand it give up bin Laden, and respect the rights of Afghan villages to decide their own alignments. We should expect and entreat the Taliban to co-exist and live in peace with its neighbors, even though many of them do not want to.
We would then begin to enforce that peaceful co-existence (but read note below on this!) by allowing the Taliban to return to areas that strongly prefer the Taliban, and protecting the areas that do not want the Taliban.
We tell the Taliban exactly that they may be in any part of Afghanistan that democratically wants them to be there, and that we require they respect their neighbors' rights of self-determination. Even though many current Taliban do not. We could also arm local Afghan village self-defense forces.
In other words, we treat the Taliban with respect, and wait for them to gain maturity and tolerance, even if it takes a long time.
The war would become assertive, power-backed peacekeeping.
When I mention peacekeeping, I do not propose a foolish strategy such as checkpoints and bases, so that our troops become easy targets.
Not at all.
Instead, the American bases could be well back (2-10 miles usually) from this new, fluid border region. Instead of checkpoints, the Americans are a reactionary force, that watch the border in a variety of ways (drones, allies, interviews, occasional overflights), so that we know what is going on. Our troops can as needed conduct operations to counter any use of force by the Taliban. So, day-to-day, non-Taliban Afghans and Taliban can mingle, and the Taliban can try to convert people, and perhaps gradually take over some villages and towns. But the people would know that not far away the American guns are ready to back up their freedom of choice. If some towns become Taliban, that means both the towns and the Taliban are evolving, and the longer-run outcome isn't predictable.
The key is that the Taliban would be forced to operate through peaceful means. That's a world of difference.
If your ideology is attractive after years of time through peaceful means, then it is something the people want. An ideology that can succeed by peaceful means is a very different ideology than one that requires force to maintain.
We should begin treating everyone in that region with more respect, and allow them to choose and be responsible for their own fate.
------------------------
Second strategy:
An alternative strategy for the long-term battle for hearts and minds is to withdraw from all Muslim lands around the world and let them be entirely responsible for their own fates, in every way.
We are now sufficiently able to gain progressively more independence from middle-eastern oil, and general oil imports. We could rapidly convert much of America's trucks and automobiles to natural gas, supplies of which are set to rapidly increase around the world due to new shale extraction technologies.
We would let the Taliban retake Afghanistan (if they are so strong), and show the world its style of governance, but this time under the inevitable spotlight of the media of an aware world.
Let them show their colors and let everyone see just how good the Taliban can be, or how bad.
This war is ultimately a war of ideas and ideals. We can only win it by using integrity and ideals, fully.
We can say we are satisfied we have fought the murderers of 9/11 and now will "go home in peace." Going in peace is explicitly in the Koran, and Muslims are required to allow an enemy to retreat in peace.
We can defend ourselves here, at home, on our own land. We would need to refocus a large part of our "defense" expenditures (Department of Defense) to actually be defensive, such as by effectively monitoring the cargoes of all incoming ships, and generally increasing our ability to detect and intercept any attack. I think at least 1/2 of our entire defense expenditures should be refocused in this way. This would be many times larger an effort than our current Department of Homeland Security.
-----------
This second strategy is more viable than many would think, and would take plenty of planning and teaching. We should be preparing technologies and strategies to do this scenario even if we don't implement it immediately, as we may need to use this strategy in time by virtue of cost.
I think the first strategy could be implemented immediately.
-----------
Update 10/27: U.S. official resigns over Afghan war: Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting
We cannot win this war by fighting.
Consider this from the NYTimes reporter who spent so much time close up with Taliban:
These are not beliefs that fighting will change. These beliefs will begin to change when the stress of fighting disappears (and if not too many relatives have been killed), people move freely, and have a chance to learn more about how things really are compared to their beliefs.
Now, stretching our imaginations farther, imagine the Islamic-friendly French government invited some Muslim troops from Saudi Arabia to be stationed in France to help "protect the rights of women to wear veils and burkas" or some such, and eventually there were Muslim troops stationed in Lourdes for instance. Suppose that Lourdes has taken on more religious significance to French Catholics. Suppose you often have to see these Muslim troops along your way as you go on your annual religious pilgrimages to special Catholic sites such as the Grotto of Massabielle.
Suppose you had been demanding for years to the French government and also to the Saudi government that these foreign Muslim troops be removed from Lourdes, and from France.
Suppose some half-crazed Christian radical group from southern Cyprus sets off bombs in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to protest against Muslim troops near holy Christian sites in both France and northern Cyprus. (Yes, I know that such an act of terrorism isn't Christian.)
Now suppose you yourself don't believe in such acts of terrorism, but you watch in horror as the response to the bombings is that additional Muslim troops arrive from Saudi Arabia to "protect" French Muslims.
Suppose Saudi Arabia also launches a war against Cyprus to rid the nation of "terrorists." Along the way, many non-combatant Christians civilians are also killed.
Ok, yes, this scenario is far-fetched and fantastic, but our current situation with American troops in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan seems a little surprising historically, given the original heritage of the United States.
The real point is how would you feel, as a fervent Catholic, about the Saudi "war on terror" against Cypriot "Christian terrorists" -- would you feel sympathetic to the Saudi invasion of Cyprus, or outraged?
If the Saudi troops were powerfully armed, and "won" every battle in Cyprus, driving the Christian "militants" off the island in boats, would your feelings of outrage fade in time?
Or would you actually become more outraged?
The point here is that the United States cannot "win" hearts and minds in much of Afghanistan or in the neighboring region by fighting.
We cannot defeat a religious belief system with force of arms or by killing people.
Instead, the outcome of fighting for territory against a religious belief system is that we engender more and more hatred.
Analysts advising on the Afghan war generally cannot see the forest for the trees.
The real outcome of the "war on terror" is that more militants are inspired for the future. Worse, militants will be inspired in more than one country.
We cannot defeat ideas with guns.
But...we could defeat some ideas with a combination of better ideas and virtues.
It may even be that the better ideas and virtues that will eventually defeat the intolerance and power-abuse of the Taliban's ideology will come mostly from Afghans. We don't necessarily know how Afghans should live. It is up to them to decide this for themselves.
....
So what should the United States do in Afghanistan?
Let me offer two alternatives that would greatly improve our longer-term outcome in the battle of hearts and minds.
------------------------
First strategy:
We should specifically advertise in a thorough and lengthy way that we have the over arching goal of capturing Osama bin Laden as a "criminal" for "killing children, Christians and Muslims in 2001."
In each village we should specifically ask the village elders or council whether or not they wish our troops to be on their lands. We should then draw up a map showing what areas would like to be non-Taliban. Some families might wish to relocate.
We should then seek peace with the Taliban itself, and demand it give up bin Laden, and respect the rights of Afghan villages to decide their own alignments. We should expect and entreat the Taliban to co-exist and live in peace with its neighbors, even though many of them do not want to.
We would then begin to enforce that peaceful co-existence (but read note below on this!) by allowing the Taliban to return to areas that strongly prefer the Taliban, and protecting the areas that do not want the Taliban.
We tell the Taliban exactly that they may be in any part of Afghanistan that democratically wants them to be there, and that we require they respect their neighbors' rights of self-determination. Even though many current Taliban do not. We could also arm local Afghan village self-defense forces.
In other words, we treat the Taliban with respect, and wait for them to gain maturity and tolerance, even if it takes a long time.
The war would become assertive, power-backed peacekeeping.
When I mention peacekeeping, I do not propose a foolish strategy such as checkpoints and bases, so that our troops become easy targets.
Not at all.
Instead, the American bases could be well back (2-10 miles usually) from this new, fluid border region. Instead of checkpoints, the Americans are a reactionary force, that watch the border in a variety of ways (drones, allies, interviews, occasional overflights), so that we know what is going on. Our troops can as needed conduct operations to counter any use of force by the Taliban. So, day-to-day, non-Taliban Afghans and Taliban can mingle, and the Taliban can try to convert people, and perhaps gradually take over some villages and towns. But the people would know that not far away the American guns are ready to back up their freedom of choice. If some towns become Taliban, that means both the towns and the Taliban are evolving, and the longer-run outcome isn't predictable.
The key is that the Taliban would be forced to operate through peaceful means. That's a world of difference.
If your ideology is attractive after years of time through peaceful means, then it is something the people want. An ideology that can succeed by peaceful means is a very different ideology than one that requires force to maintain.
We should begin treating everyone in that region with more respect, and allow them to choose and be responsible for their own fate.
------------------------
Second strategy:
An alternative strategy for the long-term battle for hearts and minds is to withdraw from all Muslim lands around the world and let them be entirely responsible for their own fates, in every way.
We are now sufficiently able to gain progressively more independence from middle-eastern oil, and general oil imports. We could rapidly convert much of America's trucks and automobiles to natural gas, supplies of which are set to rapidly increase around the world due to new shale extraction technologies.
We would let the Taliban retake Afghanistan (if they are so strong), and show the world its style of governance, but this time under the inevitable spotlight of the media of an aware world.
Let them show their colors and let everyone see just how good the Taliban can be, or how bad.
This war is ultimately a war of ideas and ideals. We can only win it by using integrity and ideals, fully.
We can say we are satisfied we have fought the murderers of 9/11 and now will "go home in peace." Going in peace is explicitly in the Koran, and Muslims are required to allow an enemy to retreat in peace.
We can defend ourselves here, at home, on our own land. We would need to refocus a large part of our "defense" expenditures (Department of Defense) to actually be defensive, such as by effectively monitoring the cargoes of all incoming ships, and generally increasing our ability to detect and intercept any attack. I think at least 1/2 of our entire defense expenditures should be refocused in this way. This would be many times larger an effort than our current Department of Homeland Security.
-----------
This second strategy is more viable than many would think, and would take plenty of planning and teaching. We should be preparing technologies and strategies to do this scenario even if we don't implement it immediately, as we may need to use this strategy in time by virtue of cost.
I think the first strategy could be implemented immediately.
-----------
Update 10/27: U.S. official resigns over Afghan war: Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting
"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys."
But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there -- a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected..."At one point," Hoh said, "I employed up to 5,000 Iraqis" handing out tens of millions of dollars in cash to construct roads and mosques. His program was one of the few later praised as a success by the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction....
Frank Ruggiero, the Kandahar-based regional head of the U.S. PRTs in the south, considered Hoh "very capable" and appointed him the senior official among the three U.S. civilians in the province. "I always thought very highly of Matt," he said in a telephone interview. ...
With "multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups," he wrote, the insurgency "is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and Nato presence in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified."
We cannot win this war by fighting.
Consider this from the NYTimes reporter who spent so much time close up with Taliban:
One evening, Abu Tayyeb declared that the Taliban treated women better than Americans did. He said women in the United States were forced to wear revealing clothes and define themselves solely as sex objects. The Taliban protected women’s honor by not allowing them to appear in public with their faces unveiled.
My captors saw me — and seemingly all Westerners — as morally corrupt and fixated on pursuing the pleasures of this world. Americans invaded Afghanistan to enrich themselves, they argued, not to help Afghans.They ignored the fact that the United States helped build hundreds of miles of paved roads in Afghanistan and more than a thousand schools and health clinics. My captors denied widespread news reports that the Taliban burned down scores of newly built schools to prevent girls from getting an education.
I argued that the United States was not the menacing, predatory caricature that they believed.
I also tried to counter their belief that all Americans were astonishingly rich.
Nothing I said, though, seemed to change their minds.
These are not beliefs that fighting will change. These beliefs will begin to change when the stress of fighting disappears (and if not too many relatives have been killed), people move freely, and have a chance to learn more about how things really are compared to their beliefs.
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