Some weeks ago I recommended George Freidman's new book The Next 100 Years. That book was so good that I went back a got a copy of his 2004 book America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between America and its Enemies. (details listed in my book list on the sidebar)
In his 2004 book, Friedman discusses at length the roots of the current Islamic militant movement, and the unwitting part that American policies in the 1960-1990 era played in helping them form. He also discusses in detail the deficiencies in our intelligence system that have made it miss most of the big events in that period, from the North Korean invasion of South Korea, through the fall of the Soviet Union to the 9/11 attack. And by the way, he doesn't fault the people, whom he sees as bright and hard-working; he faults the system. He also talks in detail about our involvement in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
This book is well worth reading if you want a better understanding, not only of the tactical games being played by Middle Eastern nations, but about the thinking and assumptions - right and wrong - of Washington policy makers.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
On the inevitability of war
A perennial myth among well-educated, well-off, mostly-liberal Americans is that we can end war if only we work hard enough at it. It certainly would be nice if we could end war as an instrument of policy, but it simply isn’t possible, however much some people would like to believe that it is.
This is one of those areas where the poor have a much better grasp of reality than the well-off. The poor often live in neighborhoods ruled by gangs or drug lords, so they understand the fundamental laws of the jungle that have prevailed in most of the world throughout all of history. The strong take what they will and the weak suffer. The only way not to be exploited by the strong and dangerous is to be stronger and more dangerous yourself, or at least allied with stronger and more dangerous forces. I understand why young men join gangs in tough neighborhoods – they do it out of self-preservation. Alone they are prey – as a member of a gang they have alliances that make them safer.
The well-off can believe in their myths of a peaceful world only because strong police and strong armies maintain a peaceful world around them. Were the police and armies to disappear some night, it wouldn’t be too long before less pleasant people would appear to divest the well-off of all their material wealth and destroy their peaceful world.
The same is true of the world stage. There is never a lack of ruthless, ambitious people willing to use force to get what they want or advance their particular theological or political view. Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, a number of Roman emperors, Napoleon, more than a few of the early and medieval Popes, a succession of English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Persian, and Turkish monarchs, Mohammad and a number of his successors, Hitler, Stalin, Papa Doc Duvalier, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and innumerable petty tyrants and local warlords – the list is endless, and more than a few of these kind of people are alive and in power today around the world. None of these people would have been swayed in the least by “appeals to common humanity”, any more than today’s ruthless drug lords or Islamic militants would respond to such appeals.
Among nations, as among people, the way – the only way – to be safe from attack, exploitation and despoliation by greedy, ambitious neighbors is to be sufficiently strong to deter attack. The Roman writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus summed it up succinctly almost 2000 years ago: "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." (if you want peace, prepare for war).
The world survived the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union primarily because it armed itself sufficiently to make it unattractive for Stalin to attack. If we had not armed ourselves, there is little question that Stalin would have taken as much of Western Europe as he could, just as Hitler tried to do before him.
Hitler did as much damage as he did primarily because European nations, still affected by the terrible losses of World War I, couldn’t bring themselves to arm and face him down early when he invaded the Rhineland in 1936. Since no one opposed him there, he pressed on with an invasion of Poland in 1939, and then of France, and World War II was the result.
America is safe today because of our military power. That is not to say that America has always used its military power wisely. There are times when military action is the appropriate response, and there are times when other measures are more appropriate. Our political system, driven by some of the more unrealistic ideologies and emotions that periodically sweep through the American public, doesn’t always respond pragmatically to events.
Nonetheless, the reason we Americans can sleep soundly in our beds is because we are a mighty nation with a powerful military, so we aren’t living in fear each night. If we lived in Somalia, for example, a weak failed state at the mercy of its neighbors and the local thugs, we certainly wouldn’t sleep as peacefully at night.
This is another example of the problem of the “bubble of illusion” I have written about before. The anti-war people assume that everyone thinks the way they do, since certainly most of the people they know think the same way – we tend to pick our friends among those who agree with us. But in fact, most of the world doesn’t think the way they do, or see the world the way they do, so their fundamental assumption is wrong.
This is one of those areas where the poor have a much better grasp of reality than the well-off. The poor often live in neighborhoods ruled by gangs or drug lords, so they understand the fundamental laws of the jungle that have prevailed in most of the world throughout all of history. The strong take what they will and the weak suffer. The only way not to be exploited by the strong and dangerous is to be stronger and more dangerous yourself, or at least allied with stronger and more dangerous forces. I understand why young men join gangs in tough neighborhoods – they do it out of self-preservation. Alone they are prey – as a member of a gang they have alliances that make them safer.
The well-off can believe in their myths of a peaceful world only because strong police and strong armies maintain a peaceful world around them. Were the police and armies to disappear some night, it wouldn’t be too long before less pleasant people would appear to divest the well-off of all their material wealth and destroy their peaceful world.
The same is true of the world stage. There is never a lack of ruthless, ambitious people willing to use force to get what they want or advance their particular theological or political view. Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, a number of Roman emperors, Napoleon, more than a few of the early and medieval Popes, a succession of English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Persian, and Turkish monarchs, Mohammad and a number of his successors, Hitler, Stalin, Papa Doc Duvalier, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and innumerable petty tyrants and local warlords – the list is endless, and more than a few of these kind of people are alive and in power today around the world. None of these people would have been swayed in the least by “appeals to common humanity”, any more than today’s ruthless drug lords or Islamic militants would respond to such appeals.
Among nations, as among people, the way – the only way – to be safe from attack, exploitation and despoliation by greedy, ambitious neighbors is to be sufficiently strong to deter attack. The Roman writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus summed it up succinctly almost 2000 years ago: "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." (if you want peace, prepare for war).
The world survived the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union primarily because it armed itself sufficiently to make it unattractive for Stalin to attack. If we had not armed ourselves, there is little question that Stalin would have taken as much of Western Europe as he could, just as Hitler tried to do before him.
Hitler did as much damage as he did primarily because European nations, still affected by the terrible losses of World War I, couldn’t bring themselves to arm and face him down early when he invaded the Rhineland in 1936. Since no one opposed him there, he pressed on with an invasion of Poland in 1939, and then of France, and World War II was the result.
America is safe today because of our military power. That is not to say that America has always used its military power wisely. There are times when military action is the appropriate response, and there are times when other measures are more appropriate. Our political system, driven by some of the more unrealistic ideologies and emotions that periodically sweep through the American public, doesn’t always respond pragmatically to events.
Nonetheless, the reason we Americans can sleep soundly in our beds is because we are a mighty nation with a powerful military, so we aren’t living in fear each night. If we lived in Somalia, for example, a weak failed state at the mercy of its neighbors and the local thugs, we certainly wouldn’t sleep as peacefully at night.
This is another example of the problem of the “bubble of illusion” I have written about before. The anti-war people assume that everyone thinks the way they do, since certainly most of the people they know think the same way – we tend to pick our friends among those who agree with us. But in fact, most of the world doesn’t think the way they do, or see the world the way they do, so their fundamental assumption is wrong.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A symptom of the illness
Social Security benefits are tied to the consumer price index. When inflation pushes the consumer price index up, Social Security benefits are automatically increased the next year to adjust for the cost-of-living increase. This year, with the economic problems, the consumer price index has actually gone down, so in effect all of us who are seniors are already getting an increase in our Social Security benefits, even thought the dollar amount of our Social Security benefits will not go up January 1 (but they won’t go down either).
Nonetheless, President Obama has proposed giving all of us another $250 Social Security bonus next year, at a cost of between $13 and $14 billion more added to the skyrocketing Federal deficit, now at about $1.4 trilllion, or about three times larger than the already frightening debt that President Bush’s administration left us with last year.
Nice as the extra money would be, it makes no economic sense. We seniors do not lose buying power by not getting a Social Security raise next year, since the cost-of-living has actually declined slightly. It is, frankly, nothing more than a political sop to try to keep all of us seniors happy while Congress tries to ram through a health care package of dubious value and enormous cost.
So one again this administration is printing money like mad (which is in effect what happens when the government goes into debt) with no plans whatever to control costs or figure out how to pay back what we already own. I wasn’t happy with the Bush administration’s profligate spending, but President Obama’s administration, and especially this Democratically-controlled Congress, have in less than a year made Bush’s fiscal transgressions seem small-time.
I had hoped that the old Republican charge that Democrats were the party of fiscal irresponsibility and of “tax and spend” politics was no longer true. Apparently that charge is still valid.
This fiscal irresponsibility is now becoming a serious problem. It may, in fact, be the nation’s most serious national security issue at the moment, far greater even than the terrorist threats. As I have pointed out before, fiscal mismanagement and assumption of crushing debt preceded, and instigated, the downfall of a number of recent empires, including the British, French and Dutch empires.
Nonetheless, President Obama has proposed giving all of us another $250 Social Security bonus next year, at a cost of between $13 and $14 billion more added to the skyrocketing Federal deficit, now at about $1.4 trilllion, or about three times larger than the already frightening debt that President Bush’s administration left us with last year.
Nice as the extra money would be, it makes no economic sense. We seniors do not lose buying power by not getting a Social Security raise next year, since the cost-of-living has actually declined slightly. It is, frankly, nothing more than a political sop to try to keep all of us seniors happy while Congress tries to ram through a health care package of dubious value and enormous cost.
So one again this administration is printing money like mad (which is in effect what happens when the government goes into debt) with no plans whatever to control costs or figure out how to pay back what we already own. I wasn’t happy with the Bush administration’s profligate spending, but President Obama’s administration, and especially this Democratically-controlled Congress, have in less than a year made Bush’s fiscal transgressions seem small-time.
I had hoped that the old Republican charge that Democrats were the party of fiscal irresponsibility and of “tax and spend” politics was no longer true. Apparently that charge is still valid.
This fiscal irresponsibility is now becoming a serious problem. It may, in fact, be the nation’s most serious national security issue at the moment, far greater even than the terrorist threats. As I have pointed out before, fiscal mismanagement and assumption of crushing debt preceded, and instigated, the downfall of a number of recent empires, including the British, French and Dutch empires.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Recommended: Magic Numbers in Politics
Thomas Sowell is a well-known economist who has always seemed to me level-headed and non-ideological. His piece today, Magic Numbers in Politics, on the RealClearPolitics site seems to me instructive in the context of the current arguments over health care and stimulus packages.
Politicians love numbers, because they are simple and make good sound bites. Those who understand where the numbers come from are less sanguine about the arguments because they understand all the questionable underlying assumptions. Politicians either don't understand this, or (more likely) don't care, so long as the numbers seem to support their policies and their re-elections.
We are assured, for example, that the Senate health bill will "only" cost $829 billion over the next ten years, well below President Obama's $1 trillion cap. In fact, the politicians all know, and we all know, it will end up costing more. The deep Medicare cuts that are included in the calculations probably won't occur, or certainly won't be as deep as assumed. The "savings" imputed from various actions won't save as much as assumed, if they save anything. And so on. If one plays with the equations long enough, and tinkers with the assumption enough, one can generate any prediction one wants.
The claim that the government can provide health care coverage to tens of millions more people, many of them poor and requiring Federal subsidies, and not cost the nation any more money is ludicrous, but politicians expect us to believe it anyway. Expanding coverage may be worth doing even if it does cost us more, but then we ought to be up front about it, instead of playing this fake numbers game.
Politicians love numbers, because they are simple and make good sound bites. Those who understand where the numbers come from are less sanguine about the arguments because they understand all the questionable underlying assumptions. Politicians either don't understand this, or (more likely) don't care, so long as the numbers seem to support their policies and their re-elections.
We are assured, for example, that the Senate health bill will "only" cost $829 billion over the next ten years, well below President Obama's $1 trillion cap. In fact, the politicians all know, and we all know, it will end up costing more. The deep Medicare cuts that are included in the calculations probably won't occur, or certainly won't be as deep as assumed. The "savings" imputed from various actions won't save as much as assumed, if they save anything. And so on. If one plays with the equations long enough, and tinkers with the assumption enough, one can generate any prediction one wants.
The claim that the government can provide health care coverage to tens of millions more people, many of them poor and requiring Federal subsidies, and not cost the nation any more money is ludicrous, but politicians expect us to believe it anyway. Expanding coverage may be worth doing even if it does cost us more, but then we ought to be up front about it, instead of playing this fake numbers game.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
So what has been accomplished thus far….?
It seems a little unfair to judge the accomplishments of President Obama’s administration after only 9 months in office, though that logic apparently didn’t deter the Nobel Prize committee. But since the issue has now been raised, let’s consider it.
There is no question that President Obama is one of the most personable and eloquent presidents we have had in recent decades. And there is no question that he is fighting for noble causes – financial recovery, nuclear disarmament, global warming, health care, closing Guantanamo prison, better relations with our international partners, and some resolution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So what has been accomplished on these fronts thus far?
On the financial front, although the stock market has had a recent partial recovery, there is little beyond speculator hope to support the rise in share prices. Unemployment continues to rise, though that is to be expected since employment recovery generally lags economic recovery by 6-12 months. Credit is still tight, since banks are hording cash for their own safety rather than lending it. Many major banks are still in precarious condition, still carrying billions in “toxic assets” on their books. Despite the Treasury Department’s concern that this recession was exacerbated by having institution “too big to fail”, the Treasury’s own actions have a made a few of the “too big to fail” banks even bigger – especially JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Well Fargo Bank. Since the beginning of 2008 some 84 banks nationwide have failed, and there are predictions of up to 1000 more local bank failures. The Federal bailout certainly helped some of the major Wall Street players to survive, or find shelter in other institutions, but it has done little for local banks without such political connections. And multi-million dollar bonuses are still being paid on Wall Street, even in banks that were “saved” by taxpayer money.
The administration and Congress would like to take credit for the apparent “improvement” in the economy, arguing that the trillion dollar stimulus plan worked. But in fact only some 15% of the stimulus money has been spent thus far, so the recovery thus far isn’t likely to have been driven much by the stimulus money. It might have been, if President Obama had been willing and able to strong-arm Congress into passing a more effective, less pork-laden stimulus package, but he was largely absent in those negotiations. And along with this, the Federal deficit has skyrocketed with no plan in place to throttle the red ink or pay any of it back.
On nuclear disarmament, the goal that apparently most impressed the Nobel Committee, nothing substantial has really happened yet. President Medvedev of Russia has discussed reducing (but certainly not eliminating) its nuclear arsenal. Prime Minister Putin (who is probably the real power in the government) has made no such suggestion. No other nuclear nation has said a word yet about reducing their nuclear arsenals. Certainly the Chinese, Israelis, Indians, Pakistanis and North Koreans have no intention of giving up their nuclear arms. And the Iranians are still hell-bent on becoming a nuclear power. So despite the Nobel prize, nothing really has happened yet on this front beyond the same sound bites that have been spoken by leaders for decades now.
On global warming, little effective has happened yet. The carbon cap-and-trade proposal is mired in Congress, held up by coal-state members of Congress. We are still subsidizing corn-based biofuel, even though it actually takes more petrochemical energy to produce it than we get out of it (but it buys votes in the corn-belt). President Obama chaired an extraordinary one-day session at the UN, but nothing came out of it but vague generalities. Given the difficult Congressional battles to come on the cap-and-trade issue, he may well go to the Copenhagen Climate Meeting in December with nothing tangible from the U.S. to offer.
The health-care debate has dominated Congress for months now, and although the Senate bill now being discussed does eliminate some of the more radical and unworkable ultra-liberal proposals in the three House bills, it still doesn’t attack the core problems in our health care system. And it does add almost a trillion more dollars to the Federal budget over the next decade. Although the CBO has finally been browbeaten into scoring the current bill as essentially revenue-neutral in the long run, this is true only if a number of unlikely assumptions prove to be true – such as that Congress (and physicians) will go along with cutting physician Medicare payments by 20% starting next January and growing to 40% by 2016.
No doubt there will eventually be a health care bill of some sort, and it may even include some useful things, like forbidding insurance companies from refusing or dropping people because of health problems or preexisting conditions or age. Of course the law of unintended consequences is always in action – if insurance companies have to accept everyone, that substantially changes the statistics in their risk pool, and inevitably will require that they raise everyone’s rates. But thus far, nothing really has happened except a lot of talk and debate.
Closing Guantanamo prison, as the administration has now discovered, is easier to promise on the campaign trail than to deliver in actuality. It turns out everyone wants it closed, but no one wants the prisoners in their own back yards. The only action Congress has thus far taken on this issue is to delete all money for moving prisoners to American soil. Not a promising start.
In terms of better relations with our international partners, there is no question that the Asians, the Europeans and the Muslim world like President Obama better than they liked President Bush. But thus far that has not translated into any noticeable tangible gains for American interests. Russia thus far has been no more accommodating on Iran sanctions than before. China thus far has been no more accommodating on pressuring the North Koreans than before. The Muslim world thus far has been no more accommodating on fighting Islamic terrorism than before, or on helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Israel has not stopped building and expanding settlements. Everyone likes us more, but no one has actually done any more than before to help our interests.
The military and security problems in Iraq and Afghanistan remain difficult. The only noticeable improvement in the past year was driven by President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq. To be sure, the problems in both places are largely intractable, rooted deeply in the respective cultures and in centuries of conflict, so it isn’t fair to fault President Obama for not having solved them yet. But neither has he any tangible accomplishments to point to yet.
So on balance I have to say that I think the Nobel Committee was premature in their judgment. Promises are nice, but only accomplishments really change things. President Obama has certainly said the right things, and has said them eloquently. But he hasn’t yet shown that he can take on international opponents, a dysfunctional Congress, or even his own party, and make things happen.
There is no question that President Obama is one of the most personable and eloquent presidents we have had in recent decades. And there is no question that he is fighting for noble causes – financial recovery, nuclear disarmament, global warming, health care, closing Guantanamo prison, better relations with our international partners, and some resolution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So what has been accomplished on these fronts thus far?
On the financial front, although the stock market has had a recent partial recovery, there is little beyond speculator hope to support the rise in share prices. Unemployment continues to rise, though that is to be expected since employment recovery generally lags economic recovery by 6-12 months. Credit is still tight, since banks are hording cash for their own safety rather than lending it. Many major banks are still in precarious condition, still carrying billions in “toxic assets” on their books. Despite the Treasury Department’s concern that this recession was exacerbated by having institution “too big to fail”, the Treasury’s own actions have a made a few of the “too big to fail” banks even bigger – especially JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Well Fargo Bank. Since the beginning of 2008 some 84 banks nationwide have failed, and there are predictions of up to 1000 more local bank failures. The Federal bailout certainly helped some of the major Wall Street players to survive, or find shelter in other institutions, but it has done little for local banks without such political connections. And multi-million dollar bonuses are still being paid on Wall Street, even in banks that were “saved” by taxpayer money.
The administration and Congress would like to take credit for the apparent “improvement” in the economy, arguing that the trillion dollar stimulus plan worked. But in fact only some 15% of the stimulus money has been spent thus far, so the recovery thus far isn’t likely to have been driven much by the stimulus money. It might have been, if President Obama had been willing and able to strong-arm Congress into passing a more effective, less pork-laden stimulus package, but he was largely absent in those negotiations. And along with this, the Federal deficit has skyrocketed with no plan in place to throttle the red ink or pay any of it back.
On nuclear disarmament, the goal that apparently most impressed the Nobel Committee, nothing substantial has really happened yet. President Medvedev of Russia has discussed reducing (but certainly not eliminating) its nuclear arsenal. Prime Minister Putin (who is probably the real power in the government) has made no such suggestion. No other nuclear nation has said a word yet about reducing their nuclear arsenals. Certainly the Chinese, Israelis, Indians, Pakistanis and North Koreans have no intention of giving up their nuclear arms. And the Iranians are still hell-bent on becoming a nuclear power. So despite the Nobel prize, nothing really has happened yet on this front beyond the same sound bites that have been spoken by leaders for decades now.
On global warming, little effective has happened yet. The carbon cap-and-trade proposal is mired in Congress, held up by coal-state members of Congress. We are still subsidizing corn-based biofuel, even though it actually takes more petrochemical energy to produce it than we get out of it (but it buys votes in the corn-belt). President Obama chaired an extraordinary one-day session at the UN, but nothing came out of it but vague generalities. Given the difficult Congressional battles to come on the cap-and-trade issue, he may well go to the Copenhagen Climate Meeting in December with nothing tangible from the U.S. to offer.
The health-care debate has dominated Congress for months now, and although the Senate bill now being discussed does eliminate some of the more radical and unworkable ultra-liberal proposals in the three House bills, it still doesn’t attack the core problems in our health care system. And it does add almost a trillion more dollars to the Federal budget over the next decade. Although the CBO has finally been browbeaten into scoring the current bill as essentially revenue-neutral in the long run, this is true only if a number of unlikely assumptions prove to be true – such as that Congress (and physicians) will go along with cutting physician Medicare payments by 20% starting next January and growing to 40% by 2016.
No doubt there will eventually be a health care bill of some sort, and it may even include some useful things, like forbidding insurance companies from refusing or dropping people because of health problems or preexisting conditions or age. Of course the law of unintended consequences is always in action – if insurance companies have to accept everyone, that substantially changes the statistics in their risk pool, and inevitably will require that they raise everyone’s rates. But thus far, nothing really has happened except a lot of talk and debate.
Closing Guantanamo prison, as the administration has now discovered, is easier to promise on the campaign trail than to deliver in actuality. It turns out everyone wants it closed, but no one wants the prisoners in their own back yards. The only action Congress has thus far taken on this issue is to delete all money for moving prisoners to American soil. Not a promising start.
In terms of better relations with our international partners, there is no question that the Asians, the Europeans and the Muslim world like President Obama better than they liked President Bush. But thus far that has not translated into any noticeable tangible gains for American interests. Russia thus far has been no more accommodating on Iran sanctions than before. China thus far has been no more accommodating on pressuring the North Koreans than before. The Muslim world thus far has been no more accommodating on fighting Islamic terrorism than before, or on helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Israel has not stopped building and expanding settlements. Everyone likes us more, but no one has actually done any more than before to help our interests.
The military and security problems in Iraq and Afghanistan remain difficult. The only noticeable improvement in the past year was driven by President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq. To be sure, the problems in both places are largely intractable, rooted deeply in the respective cultures and in centuries of conflict, so it isn’t fair to fault President Obama for not having solved them yet. But neither has he any tangible accomplishments to point to yet.
So on balance I have to say that I think the Nobel Committee was premature in their judgment. Promises are nice, but only accomplishments really change things. President Obama has certainly said the right things, and has said them eloquently. But he hasn’t yet shown that he can take on international opponents, a dysfunctional Congress, or even his own party, and make things happen.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Recommended: Obama's real Afghanistan options
Along the same lines as the last post, let me recommend Ralph Peters' article today in the New York Post, Obama's real Afghanistan options. Ralph Peters, as I have noted before, is a well-known and well-respected military writer, with a pretty non-partisan approach to things. He lays out President Obama's three options - surge with more troops (General McChrystal's plan), narrow the scope to destroying al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan (vice-President Biden's plan), or waffle with a split-the-difference troop increase that may be the most politically palatable, but doesn't accomplish either objective.
In fact, there is very, very little chance that we can successfully "nation build" a stable democracy in Afghanistan, a territory ruled for thousands of years by tribal leaders and warlords, and in no way culturally prepared for anything like a strong central government - democratic or otherwise. Those who still believe we can make a democratic nation in Afghanistan are, I think, naive in the extreme, whether they are Republicans or Democrats. There is also a vanishingly small chance that we can "buy" an effective Afghan national army or police force with our billions -- effective in the sense that they can take over from our military.
Those realities ought to be central to any decisions the administration makes about Afghanistan. The Bush administration was unable to see or accept those realities, and it looks to me like the Obama administration may be just as naive in this area.
In fact, there is very, very little chance that we can successfully "nation build" a stable democracy in Afghanistan, a territory ruled for thousands of years by tribal leaders and warlords, and in no way culturally prepared for anything like a strong central government - democratic or otherwise. Those who still believe we can make a democratic nation in Afghanistan are, I think, naive in the extreme, whether they are Republicans or Democrats. There is also a vanishingly small chance that we can "buy" an effective Afghan national army or police force with our billions -- effective in the sense that they can take over from our military.
Those realities ought to be central to any decisions the administration makes about Afghanistan. The Bush administration was unable to see or accept those realities, and it looks to me like the Obama administration may be just as naive in this area.
Recommended: Afghanistan could decide this presidency
Amidst all the instant punditry about Afghanistan on the cable channels and in the print media, one of the few voices that seems to me to make sense is Robert Shrum's article Afghanistan could decide this presidency. As I noted many months ago, American voters have very short memories, and by now Afghanistan is no longer Bush's war but Obama's war. So what strategy he picks matters a great deal to his presidency and to the fortunes of the Democratic Party, and as Schrum points out, he doesn't have any good options, only bad options and worse options.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
