The Isreali/Palestinian Cease-Fire: Grasping At Straws?

What are we to make of the recent "cease-fire" between Israel and various Palestinian factions operating in the Gaza strip? Is it, as Amos Oz, an Israeli novelist hopes, "the first flicker of light at the edge of the darkness". Or is it, as the Jerusalem Post suggests, "the military and diplomatic triumph of Hamas". If you take the leaders of the Palestinian groups at their word, the cease-fire is simply a "chance to reload" that changes nothing:

"The ceasefire offers a period of calm for our fighters to recover and prepare for our final goal of evacuating Palestine," said Abu Abir, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, a Hamas-allied terror organization in the Gaza Strip responsible for many of the recent rocket attacks against Israeli communities.
"We will keep fighting (Israel), but for the moment we will postpone certain parts of the military struggle," Abu Abir said.

But, notwithstanding, Olmert sees this as an opportunity of historic proportions:

The past cannot be changed, and the victims of the conflict, from both sides of the border, cannot be returned.

Dictates are futile and mutual accusations are nothing but useless word games. Historic scores cannot be settled and scars cannot be obliterated.

All we can do today is prevent further tragedies and bequeath to the younger generation a bright horizon and hope for a new life. Let us convert animosity and the "honing of our swords" to mutual recognition, respect and direct dialogue.

The cynic in me yells that this is just one more false hope. That, in the end, neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will make the sacrifices and compromises necessary to end the conflict.

But, for all of that, I can't resist hoping that "maybe this time it will be different."

Human Hubris: From the Simply Silly To The Manifestly Absurd

One of the more depressing upshots of the Democratic victory in the Congressional elections is that the new Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is one of the most ardent opponents of disposing nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain Nevada. Here's a quote from Mr. Reid's Web page:

The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is never going to open. Since I was elected to Congress in 1982, I have been fighting against Yucca Mountain because it threatens the health and safety of Nevadans and people across the United States. The science is incomplete, unsound, yet clearly demonstrates that Yucca Mountain is not a safe site for isolating nuclear waste. The tide is turning on Yucca Mountain, and it is time we look at viable alternatives and realistic approaches to long term nuclear waste storage. My highest priority is to ensure the health and safety of Nevadans and I will continue to fight against bringing spent nuclear fuel to Nevada.

I am far from conversant with the pros and cons of Yucca Mountain, but one aspect of the deabte recently caught my attention: whether, in designing the repository, DOE should be required to demonstrate that it will protect people for 10,000 years or for a million or more.

Some background (mostly taken from the opinion of the DC Circuit in the case linked below):

In 1992, following years of fierce debate (and litigation) over what to do with nuclear wastes, Congress stepped in and picked Yucca Mountain as the best (i.e. least worse) option. At the same time, Congress directed EPA to promulgate "public health and safety standards for protection of the public from releases of radioactive materials stored or disposed of in the repository at Yucca Mountain." These standards were to be "based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences."

Ten years later (approximately nine years late), EPA finally got around to adopting these standards. It promulgated three standards, but one of them is sufficient to illustrate the issue:

The DOE must demonstrate,using performance assessment,that there is a reasonable expectation that, for 10,000 years after disposal, [no individual is reasonably likely to receive a specified does of radiation per year].

The State of Nevada (and others) challenged the standards arguing that 10,000 years was too short. The Court of Appeals agreed, holding that EPA needed to establish standards that would require DOE to demonstrate that the "acceptable dose" would not be exceeded for a million years or more. (The decision is 100 pages long, but if you want to read the key part, see pages 20-32. The rest is stuff no one could love and only a lawyer could even tolerate).

This is a patently silly outcome, but before you go off on the evils of "activist" courts, the key to the decision was the statutory requirement that the standards be "based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences." The National Academy of Sciences determined (quite sensibly) that there was "no scientific basis for limiting the time period of the individual-risk standard to 10,000 years or any other value." According to the Academy, radiation exposures were likely to change only "on the time scale of the long term stability of the fundamental geologic regime -- a time scale that is on the order of [a million] years at Yucca Mountain." Thus, NAS concluded that human populations might not experience peak exposures "until tens to hundreds of thousands of years 'or even further into the future.' " As a result, NAS recommended that the exposure evaluation "be conducted for the time when the greatest risk occurs, within the limits imposed by the long-term stability of the geologic environment."

Personally, I find this recommendation to be impenetrable. Are they saying that the period EPA must consider is dictated by "the long-term stability of the geologic environment" and that because Yucca Mountain is so geologically stable, the projection has to go out a million or more years? If the geology were less stable, would the time for consideration be shorter? If that is the point, then we have a case of "no good deed goes unpunished:" the very aspect that makes Yucca Mountain appealing -- it's geologic stability -- would appear to make the period that must be covered in the risk assessment longer. What would seem sensible would to start by making the policy-based, risk management decision on a period of time over which unacceptable exposures must be prevented and then assessing whether the geologic stability of Yucca Mountain (together with other design aspect of the repository) were sufficient to prevent such an exposure from occurring within that time frame.

But the legal niceties of all of this are beside the more fundamental point: We can't reliably say anything about human society even 10,000 years from now, much less 1,000,000 years from now. Even attempting to do a "risk assessment" over thousands (to say nothing of millions) of years is just plain silly.

From Wikipedia, here are some of the major innovations to occur ten thousand years ago, i.e. in 8,000 BC:

Agriculture in Mesopotamia.

Domestication of the pig in China and Turkey.

Domestication of sheep and goats in the Middle East.

Domestication of dogs from wolves in China.

Ancient flint tools from north and central Arabia belong to hunter-gatherer societies.

Clay vessels and modeled human and animal terracotta figurines are produced at Ganj Dareh in western Iran.

Exchange of goods may represent the earliest pseudo-writing technology.

People of Jericho started to mold bricks out of clay, then hardened them in the sun.

Even if the rate of change were constant, which it is not, can you imagine a human society that is as different from today's as today's is from that which existed in 8,000 BC? Now, extrapolate that out 100 times.

Congress, NAS, EPA and the Court all share some of the blame for an outcome that results in EPA mandating an entirely pointless (and manifestly silly) "million year risk assessment". But, I think something important underlies this silliness: despite the evidence of history, human beings simply cannot internalize how little the current state of the world has to tell us about the state of the world even hundreds of years from now, much less tens of thousands or millions of years from now. The risks that concern us today are no more relevant to the risks we will confront even 500 years from now than the risks that concerned 16th Century Europe are relevant in today's world. And, that is only 500 years. It is pointless to even try to imagine what human society will look like in 1,000 years, much less 10,000 or 1,000,000 year from now. For all we know, radioactive waste generated in the 20th Century and stored at Yucca Mountain will be a critical source of energy for people (assuming any exist) even 500 years from now. 10,000 year from now, humans will have either disappeared entirely or colonized the universe. In either event, the fate of nuclear waste deposited at Yucca Mountain will not be relevant.

In terms of the age of the earth, to say nothing of the age of the universe, the whole of human history is not even a blink of an eye. We exist in an incredibly narrow environmental envelope that by itself is almost freakishly improbable. Given the forces at work in the universe, it is improbable to suppose that we will last even another 10,000 years, much less another million. But if we do, one thing can be said with certainty: whatever we are worried about today will seem as quint to our progeny as the worries of the Sumerians seems to us today.

Simple humility, if nothing else, requires us to recognize that fact. Yes, we need to be concerned with the future, but a hundred or so years is probably the limit of meaningful speculation. Anything beyond that is outside the range of our influence and, if we are to assume humanity is to survive at all, we have to trust that they will be able to deal with the issues we leave behind.

Mirages From The Quicksand

I always read Maureen Dowd's column, but it is mostly for laughs. She does have a way with words, but for the last two years she has done little with those talents other than to lob invective bombs at Bush, Rumsfeld and most especially Cheney. Not that they don't deserve it, and not that her rants don't make you smile, but mostly it is cheap humor, and, as with all such humor, it generates, along with a laugh, a twinge of sympathy for the targets and a rueful reconition that the vituperation and ridicule are little more than a sophisticated version of playground name-calling.

Today was a bit different, though. In a column entitled "Lost in the Desert" (subscription required), she writes with what comes close to anguish about the lack of options in Iraq. As she can do so well sometimes, she sums it all up in a single sentence:

It’s hard to remember when America has been so stuck. We can’t win and we can’t leave.

She can't entirely eschew ridicule of Cheney, of course. (Note to Rob re your comment on this earlier post -- I think her predicition about Dick is closer to the truth):

Dick Cheney and his wormy aides, of course, are still babbling about total victory and completing the mission by raising the stakes and knocking off the mullahs in Tehran. His tombstone will probably say, "Here lies Dick Cheney, still winning."

But apart from that, she does a good job of capturing the sense of sadness that I think so many of us share about the mess we are in. For those of you who don't have a "Times Select" subscription, here's an excerpt:

The good news is that the election finished what Katrina started. It dismantled the president’s fake reality about Iraq, causing opinions to come gushing forth from all quarters about where to go from here.

The bad news is that no one, and I mean no one, really knows where to go from here. The White House and the Pentagon are ready to shift to Plan B. But Plan B is their empty term for miraculous salvation. . . .

Kofi Annan, who thought the war was crazy, now says that the United States is “trapped in Iraq” and can’t leave until the Iraqis can create a “secure environment” — even though the Iraqis evince not the slightest interest in a secure environment. (The death squads even assassinated a popular comedian this week.)

The retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, who thought Mr. Bush’s crusade to depose Saddam was foolish and did not want to send in any troops, now thinks we may have to send in more troops so we can eventually get out.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, whose soldiers pulled Saddam out of his spider hole and who is returning to Iraq to take charge of the day-to-day fight, has given up talking about a Jeffersonian democracy and now wishes only for a government in Iraq that’s viewed as legitimate. He has gone from “can do” to “don’t know.” He talked to The Times’s Thom Shanker about his curtailed goals of reducing sectarian violence and restoring civil authority, acknowledging: “Will we attain those? I don’t know.”

At a Senate hearing last week, Gen. John Abizaid sounded like Goldilocks meets Guernica, asserting two propositions about the war that are logically at war with each other. He said we can’t have fewer troops because the Iraqis need us, but we can’t have more because we don’t want the Iraqis to become dependent on us.

He contended that increasing the number of our troops would make the Iraqi government mad, but also asserted that decreasing the number would intensify sectarian violence.

This a poor menu of options.

While I think Maureen is right that no one knows what to do, there remains no shortage of people who talk like they do. Today's column by David Ignatius in the Washington Post is a case in point, and the real impetus to this post:

What will contain the Iraqi civil war, in the end, is that none of the regional powers can tolerate a shattered Iraq -- not Iran, not Syria, not Saudi Arabia, not Jordan, not Turkey. Nor do most Iraqis want a dissolution of their unitary state. The Iraqis will restabilize their nation when the "nationalist forces" -- including ones we don't like, such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Sunni insurgency -- make common cause under a regional mandate.

Only the United States can broker the regional conference that will allow a political transition in Iraq. That's our leverage now -- diplomatic clout, more than military power. If the neighboring powers can help apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding in Iraq, America can begin to step away.

There are so many things I think are wrong with this that I don't know where to start. To begin with, Ignatius largely assumes away the core problem by characterizing forces like the Mahdi Army and the Sunni insurgency as being "nationalist." If that were the case, there wouldn't be much of a problem. But it is not. The warring factions in Iraq are not fighting for a nation, they are fighting for sectarian domination. They are in favor of a "nation" if, but only if, their sect or tribe gets to run it. As such, "common cause" between them is possible only if they are willing and able to become nationalists; i.e to sublimate their sectarian hatreds to the common cause of creating a nation. Does anyone see that as even being remotely likely in anything like the near term?

Then there is the idea that the regional powers -- Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey -- are the ones who can bring the warring factions together. There are (at least) two problems with this assertion. First, for the "regional powers" to play any role at all, they would have at least to agree on a desired end state. But these powers are not really all that much different than the factions warring within Iraq itself. Iran is militantly Shite, Saudi Arabia is militantly Sunni, Jordan and Turkey are largely secular, and the Assad regime is concerned only with preserving its own power. Contrary to Ignatius' assertion, there is an outcome that each of these powers fears more worse than a fragmented Iraq: a united Iraq dominated by one or the other (or, in the case ot Turkey and Jordan, either) of the religious sects currently at war. Getting these countries even to agree on an acceptable outcome does not seems much more likely than getting such agreement between the Mahdi Army and the Sunni insurgency. Ignatius makes the mistake so common to Americans: he takes as his premise that everyone else wants what we do. It just ain't so.

But, even if it were, even if we could hope that the regional powers could come to agreement on an end state to be pursued jointly, what in the world makes Ignatius or anyone else think they could achieve it? What are they going to do that the Americans are not? Is it just that they are Muslims and are therefore presumed to have greater influence over other Muslims? In some cases (e.g. Israel/Palestine), that idea may have some force. But in the case of Iraq, at least, it founders again on the sectarian/tribal nature of the conflict. This is not (at least not primarily) a war between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is a war between Shites and Sunnis. Being Muslim alone is not enough to give the regional powers influence any more than being "Christian" was enough to give the Pope influence over Heny the VIII.

But the part of Ignatius' "solution" that really appears to be preposterous is this: "Only the United States can broker the regional conference that will allow a political transition in Iraq." If there is any power in the world that is thoroughly discredited in the Islamic Middle East it is the US. We can't even get our allies to help us. What sort of delusion is it that allows one to suppse that the US has the ability to forge effective alliances between, say, Iran and Saudi Arabia? This sort of thinking is just more of the neoconservative nonsense -- the sense that America is all powerful -- that got us into Iraq in the first place. Despite 25 years of trying, we have not even been able to broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians, despite the fact that we do have real influence over at least one of the parties to that conflict. How in the world are we to broker a peace between two parties both of which hate us and neither of which is dependent on us? Most of all, how do we persuade a charter member of the "axis of evil" -- a country against whom we are even now contemplating going to war -- to help us in that effort?

Evangelical Atheism

This article from the science section of today's New York Times -- A Free-for-All on Science and Religion -- got me thinking, again, about the role of religion in the world. The article reports on a conference of scientists debating (ostensibly) the relationship between science and religion. But, if the article is at all representative, the conference turned into a debate among non-believers about the merits of what might be called "evangelical atheism." As the author of the article characterized it:

Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told.

So far as the article indicates, there were no believers involved in the debate. Rather, the conflict was between those who, while themselves non-believers, nonetheless had at least a paternalisitic tolerance for the role religion played in some peoples lives ("People need to find meaning and purpose in life. I don’t think we want to take that away from them. ") and those who consider religion to be a positive evil that needs to be confronted and, if possible, stamped out ("The world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief" and "Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization." ).

Perhaps the most strident of the latter group was Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusiuon":

"I am utterly fed up with the respect that we — all of us, including the secular among us — are brainwashed into bestowing on religion," he said. "Children are systematically taught that there is a higher kind of knowledge which comes from faith, which comes from revelation, which comes from scripture, which comes from tradition, and that it is the equal if not the superior of knowledge that comes from real evidence."

What struck me most about the article (and, to the extent the article is a fair representation, the conference) was exactly what apprently struck Dr. Melvin Konner, an anthropologist: how indistingishable people like Dawkins and Sam Harris (author of "The End of Faith," about which I had much to say late last year) are from the very people they most despise:

I think that you [Sam Harris] and Richard [Dawkins] are remarkably apt mirror images of the extremists on the other side, and that you generate more fear and hatred of science."

Just as their counterparts on the other side generate more fear and hatred of religion.

Somehow related to this was a "This American Life" story on NPR this weekend about the Rev Carlton Pearson, a pentecostal preacher from Tulsa, who woke up one day and decided that hell didn't exist and that everyone was going to heaven. He was declared a heretic by his church and most of his congregation deserted him. He had argued (preached) that the Pentecostal God was worse than Hilter. After all, he said, Hitler had killed only 6 million. The Pentecostal God was slated to kill a thousand times more than that, at least. The response of his church and those of his congregants who bothered to engage him was simply this: "Who the heck are you are? We don't like the thought of billions of people consigned to burn in hell either, but we didn't make the rules. That's what the Bible says will happen and that's just the way it is."

This kind of stuff (along with jihadis flying planes into buildings and otherwise seeing glory and martyrdom in suicide bombings) is what gives Harris' and Dawkins' antipathy some appeal. How can people believe such stuff? Indeed, how can otherwise perfectly sensible people believe in God at all?

But for all of my incredulity at such beliefs, I can not take the step Harris and Dawkins take. I cannot bring myself to condemn such belief or to campaign against it. I know too many sensible people (from my wife to C. S. Lewis) who hold such beliefs and for whom those beliefs are a positive influence in theirs lives and in their relations with others. Thus, I tend to see religious belief much as I do divining rods: I think it is silly to suppose that a Y-shaped stick held in both hands is any better at finding water than random digging. But I see no point in telling people who do believe that it is better that they are stupid or ignorant or superstitious or irrational for doing so.

In thinking about all of this, I came to the conclusion that it is not the belief or faith to which I object, it is the proselytizing. I am prepared to let anyone believe whatever he wants, just so long as that belief does not include a compulsion to convert me or to condemn me or my actions becuase they are contrary to those beliefs. I will tolerate his inanity (as I see it) so long as he tolerates my decadence (as he sees it).

Which brings me back to the NYT article that started all of this. I detest evangelicism, and it makes no difference whether the "God" in whose name the evangelicism is perpetrated is the God of Abraham, the God of Revelations, the God of the Koran or the God of scientific rationalism.

An Advertisement For "The Economist"

I have been subscribing to "The Economist" for the last few months, and I would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in good journalism to start reading it as well. It is fairly conservative on economic issues, but for all of that it is by far the best weekly news magazine I know of. It is what Time used to be before it decided to become a cross between People and USA Today.

Idealism Is Dangerous

This article from the Washington Post is fascinating. It documents the collapse of "neo-conservatism," and in doing so provides yet another case study (as if we needed another) of how dangerous idealism is when untempered by realism.

As an aside (only), I have to note Richard Perle's ridiculously self-serving effort to avoid taking part of the blame, which WaPo does a decent enough job of skewering that I can simply quote it without comment:

In an interview last week, Perle said the administration's big mistake was occupying the country rather than creating an interim Iraqi government led by a coalition of exile groups to take over after Hussein was toppled. [Huh? How exactly would you have done that?!] "If I had known that the U.S. was going to essentially establish an occupation, then I'd say, 'Let's not do it,' " and instead find another way to target Hussein, Perle said. "It was a foolish thing to do."

Perle, head of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board at the time of the 2003 invasion, said he still believes the invasion was justified. But he resents being called "the architect of the Iraq war," because "my view was different from the administration's view from the very beginning" about how to conduct it. "I am not critical now of anything about which I was not critical before," he said. "I've said it more publicly."

That is simply laughable, Richard, you spineless weasel. I haven't heard so much exculpatory hair-splitting since Bill Clinton was talking about Monica Lewinski.

It is almost too easy to make fun of Perle. Or Wolfowitz. Or Rumsfeld. Or Feith. Or any of those other "neo-conservatives" who were so convinced that America was on a mission from God (metaphorically in some cases; literally in others). But the quote that really captured my attention is from Ken Adelman, another one of the self-confessed intellectual architects of this war:

"The whole philosophy of using American strength for good in the world, for a foreign policy that is really value-based instead of balanced-power-based, I don't think is disproven by Iraq. But it's certainly discredited."

"Disproven" vs. "discredited." Now THERE's a distinction even a lawyer couldn't love. One cannot "disprove" ideas; one can only "discredit" them. But that is not the real point. It should not be necessary to "disprove" or "discredit" the idea that foreign policy should be driven by "values" rather than self-interest. The idealism that underlies Adelman's neo-conservatism not much different from that which underlay the Utopians or even the hippies. It is, for all its seeming ferocity, almost childlike in its naivete.

International relations is about self-interest and nothing else. If our self-interest aligns with our ideals, so much the better. But if our ideals and our self-interest diverge, only a fool would pursue the ideals.

The Iraq war was sold on the basis of realism and self-interest. In 2003, there was no talk about spreading freedom and democracy. It was all about getting rid of a government that was portrayed (and perhaps even perceived) as posing a clear and present danger to our security. But, as Adelman effectively admits, that was not really the true rationale of the people who orchestrated the selling of the war. Their true motivation was, as Adelman confesses, a "philosophy of using American strength for good in the world, for a foreign policy that is really value-based instead of balanced-power-based." Adelman is right that the fiasco in Iraq thoroughly discredits such an idea, and one can only hope it will stay discredited for another hundred years. But what is amazing to me is that these guys believed it in the first place. How do such men get to positions in which they control the levers of US power?

Who Will Play Ohio State?

Let the arguments begin!

In a great game, OSU beat Michigan by 3 points at home despite giving up 10 points on three trunovers. If you believe the talking heads on the sports shows, everyone agrees that these are the two best teams in the country, so by that standard, Michigan should shjow up as no. 2 in the BCS on Monday, which would essentially assure them a spot in the National Championship game. (They probably will stay at number 2 in the computer polls, since Michigan was rated no. 1 in 4 of the 5 computer rankings last week and nothing about the games today will cuase them to drop to no. 3 there). But my guess is that the "people polls" will probably drop Michigan to at least 4th behind USC & Florida and maybe even to 5th behind Notre Dame despite the fact that Michigan beat Notre Dame handily early in the season.

Oh, and Rutgers lost to Cincinnati, so that nightmare is over.

The Bucs are in, and there are only 4 teams that have any chance of joining them: USC, Florida, Notre Dame, and Arkansas. But, USC plays ND and Arkansas plays Florida. Oh, and Michigan beat ND handily.

So (assuming there are no more significant upsets) ,OSU's opponent will be:

• USC, unless it loses to ND; or
• If USC loses ro ND, then the winner of the Florida-Arkansas game, unless LSU beats Arkansas and Arkansas beats Florida; or
• Michigan

But who knows. The OSU-ND match-up is so attractive (Smith v Qiuinn; ND fan base v Big 10 fan base, etc.) that ND could get the nod over Michigan so long a ND beats USC.

This is fun!

Update (Monday Morning): Well, the BCS came out with Michigan still at no. 2 a hair ahead of of USC. If USC beats Notre Dame next week and UCLA the week after, my guess is that it will edge into second place and play OSU in the National Championship game. But, if Notre Dame beats USC, it's anyone's guess. It will be very hard for the polls to put ND ahead of Michigan given that Michigan thumped them. So, if ND beats USC, it will come down to a choice between Michigan and the winner of the Florida and Arkansas game (assuming Florida beats Flarida State and Arkansas beats LSU). Ironically, Arkansas probably has a better chance than Florida of jumping over Michigan in the polls becuase for it to win out it has to beat two top tean teams.

As a Big Ten fan, my dream scenario is this: ND beats USC, LSU beats Arkansas, Arkansas beats Florida, and Rutgers beats West Virginia. If all of that happens there would be Big Ten teams ranked 1, 2 and 4 at the end of the season becuase Wisconsin would move up to no. 4.

I can't quite believe I am so deep into the details of all of this. I'm getting goofy in my old age.

Stay or Leave: Billy Bob on Iraq

Below is a portion of a long e-mail I got from billy bob about a week and a half ago that I have only today gotten a chance to actually read (It's been a rough ten days work-wise):

Stay or leave?

Clearly things are not that simple. We’re not staying forever and we’re not leaving tomorrow. My greatest frustration here in Iraq has been the continued and ritualistic rants about the spineless ones on the left who don’t want to see this thing through. The problem is, no one has honestly asked us to see this thing though. Americans have faced the bi or tri-monthly declarations that, “history will show that this month marks the turning point and the beginning of the end of the insurgency.” A few hundred deaths and a couple months later things look the same, but after a small victory on one of the infinite fronts of this effort, the declaration of change returns. Thus the choice we’ve been presented with is reduced to ‘trust us, we’ll be right one of these times and things will get better – the details of what’s happening are not important’ or ‘pull out because we don’t know how things are going or when they’ll get better and we aren’t willing to commit the lives of Americans to an effort you’re not willing to honestly assess.’

There is a wealth of counter-insurgency experience in the world and its libraries. Unfortunately for many freedom-fries loving “patriots,” much of that experience comes from the French and their experience in Algeria. Oh well. Time to swallow the pride and start absorbing the wisdom of others. While swallowing that bitter pill, we might as well admit that a lot of smart people were ostracized from the Iraq effort from the outset due to their less-than-rosy forecasts of outcomes that didn’t center on flowers falling from the sky. We need to bring these people together and ask them to give us options. Things will change, of course, but the fragility of every plan is no reason not to have one. We need smart people, who the past few years of history have shown to be insightful, to develop several courses of action with associated markers to track our progress toward an end-state. (I use the term ‘markers’ because I have come to despise ‘measures of effectiveness – MOEs’ which are focal points of the effects based planning we operate under. MOEs are often ends unto themselves and have little connection to the efforts we can influence.)

End state. What a concept. In the Army we can hardly walk to lunch without a predetermined end state, yet this war seems to be conspicuously lacking a goal. Iraq will not be a democracy resembling Ohio in our lifetimes, so let’s set a reasonable goal. It’s clear an insurgency will linger far longer than our American attention spans, but we do have a responsibility to enable a government that can, for the most part, protect the vast majority of Iraqis who want to live, work, and raise their families in peace. There will still be violence and an ugly situation, but it was an ugly situation when we arrived.

So we have some smart people working on plans to reach a reasonable end state with progress markers along the way. Let them do their job, give them more than the 30-60 days Jay Garner was afforded to plan a coalition provisional authority, then pitch their plans to Americans. Present 1, 3, 5, 10, 25, and maybe even 50-year options with associated costs in lives (both American and Iraqi), dollars, and American international credibility. Let us know what Iraq will look like along the way and when we leave. Even after 50 years there will be disillusioned individuals prone to violence, so I don’t buy the argument that timelines enable our enemies. Let America decide what we are willing to commit to.

Those of you who know me may notice this is a pretty substantial departure from my feelings before I deployed – I formerly would have been in the get-out-now camp. But I’ve realized this thing is too important to take the easy way out…whether the easy way out is to actually leave now or to stay indefinitely because we won’t be forced to admit any level of failure. This will not be the last time we face a foreign threat from terrorism, and while this war has taught us much about how not to react, we still need to improve the situation for Iraqis.

I’m fading so I need to wrap this up, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. I realize I’ve conveniently omitted road blocks such as an Iraqi democracy that turns to Iran for protection or elects a fundamentalist leader who, with plurality support, digresses to brutal rule in the name of security, but those are discussions for another day. What do you think? Can America step back, reevaluate our options, swallow a bit of pride, and choose an option based on the future more than the past?

I hope so.

What do I think?

One of the most surprising think about the aftermath of the election is how much it seems to have taken the wind out of the sails of the "leave now" crowd. The drubbing the Republicans took was a catharsis. It gave the electroate a chance to express their anger at the idiots who got us into this mess. And, having done that, they are now able to better focus on the question billy bob asks: "Where do we go from here?" The problem, though, is that no one seems to have a good answer.

How you feel about the "stay or leave" question is a function of whether you think there is any hope that we can reach an "end state" (sorry bb) that is at least tolerable. There is plenty of reason to be pessimistic about that and very little reason to be optomistic. And, when you consider that pursuing the "long shot" will cost hundreds and perhaps thousands of young Americam men and women their lives and limbs (and hundreds of billions of dollars), "staying" seems like betting your life on double zero.

But two things counterbalance that for many of us, including billy bob I gather. First, there is fear of what will happen if we leave. Second, there is a sense of responsibilty. It has become commonplace to refer to this sense of responsibilty as "the Pottery Barn rule," but that is both trite and demeaning. We are not talking about a broken lamp here. We are talking by what could be catastrophe of hstoric magnitude. Inside Iraq, it could well be worse than the Balkans in the late 90's. M aybe even owrse than The Sudan today. Maybe even worse than the Hutus and the Tutsis. But frankly, that is not even the worst part. A failed state in the midst of the Middle East on the border of a soon to be nuclear Iran is a truly scary proposition. And compounding this is the propaganda victory the Islamists would get. It is hard to imagine how bad that could get. When you are the ones who are responsible making all this possible, you can't give up on the effort to avoid it so long as there is the slightest glimmer of hope.

But what to do? The dream of a secular liberal democracy in Iraq was always delusional but is now manifestly dead. The "best" end state we can hope for is stability, and the best we can probably hope for is a new Tito. I'd settle for a new Saddam. But one cannot clearly see how to achieve even that.

One idea I have heard recently is to quit trying to be neutral and unleash the Shias. My first reaction was horror at the thought. But the more I think about it, the harder it becomes to rule out. We are in the midst of s civil war that remains "low-grade" (if at all) only becuase we are there damping it down. I don't think it is possible in a situation like this to make the opposing sides reach a stable accomodation. So, one side or the other is going to end up winning this battle. We can make that happen more quickly and probably less painfully in the long run by taking sides, much like we did in Afghanistan when we aligned with the warlords and much as we have done through much of the last 60 years aligning ourselves with the anti-communists regardless of how repressive they were. And, if you have to pick sides, the Shias have at least three things to recommend them: they are the majority; they are the ones who have been repressed; and they hate Al Queda. If we have to have a theocracy emerge in Iraq, I would much prefer it to me one that has the support of the majority and an antipathy to our main enemy. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Big Ten Rules

The college football game of the year is coming up next weekend: OSU v Michigan. They are without question the two best teams in the nation this year. Neither one has even had a close game. The rest of the top ten keeps losing. Auburn lost. Louisville lost. Cal lost. Texas is getting killed. Florida managed to win by one point at home against a 4-5 S Carolina team, but did so only by blocking two field goals and an extra point. Who's left? Rutgers and Boise State??

Either Michigan or OSU will lose next weekend. But who could argue that there is another team that better desrves to play for the natioanl championship?

Whoever wins next weekend, viva the rematch!

UPDATE (Sunday Morning): Well, Texas did lose. Which means that 4 of the teams ranked 3-7 last week lost and the fifth's (Florida's) win at home against a 4-5 team was so narrow as to hardly count as a win. There is going to be a big shake-up in the rankings tomorrow. Pigskin Bill's predictions:

Given its solid win over a ranked Oregon, and the poor performance of those ahead of it, USC will jump to 3rd. Arkansas, whose only loss was it's opener to USC and who thumped Tennessee will move up to 5. Floridas will drop to 6, and Rutgers, Louisville, West Virginia and LSU will round out the rest of the top ten, with Rutgers higher that Loisuville, which it beat, and Louisville higher than West Virginia, which it beat. The only uncertainty is where in this mix LSU will fall. I tend to think it will bring up the rear, since alone out of these teams it has 2 losses. So, here is my projection for tomorrow's BCS rankings:

1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. USC
4. Notre Dame
5. Arkansas
6. Florida
7. Rutgers
8. Louisville
9. West Virginia
10. LSU

Now, the interesting thing is to try to figure out who will be the other team in the National Championship Game. I think it will come down to 4 teams: USC, Notre Dame, Rutgers and the loser of the OSU-Michigan Game. The other possibility of course is Florida, but it's hard to see how they could end up being ranked ahead of the loser of the OSU-Michigan game after their performenace at home against a 4-5 S Carolina team and with no ranked opponents remaining on their schedule. So, I rule out Florida.

Of the remianing 4 teams, USC has by far the toughest schedule, since it still has to play both Cal and Notre Dame. Thus, if USC wins out, it will probably get the nod. However, if USC loses to either Cal or Notre Dame, they will be out of it. Notre Dame must beat USC to have a chance, but even if it does, it would be hard to pick ND over Michigan, since Michigan beat them. I think Notre Dame needs two things to have a chance: a victory over USC and a victory by Michigan over OSU. Then there is Rutgers. If USC and Notre Dame both lose another game and Rutgers beats West Virginia and remains undefeated, it will be hard to deny Rutgers a shot. But if USC, Notre Dame and Rutgers all lose a game (or if USC and Rutgers lose a game and OSU beats Michigan), I can't see how a rematch between OSU and Michigan can be avoided, especially if the OSU-Michigan game is close.

Nez-Pas?

Ooops: Forgot about Arkansas. If USC and Notre Dame both lose another game, and Rutgers and Arkansas both win out, (with Rutgers beating W. Va. and Arkansas beating LSU), then the choice will between two one-loss Big Ten and SEC Teams (the loser of the OSU Michigan game and Arkansas) and an undefeated Big East Team (Rutgers). That will be a toughie.

Israel

Does anyone besides me think Israel is our single biggest foreign policy problem? Why do we keep supporting these nut cases?

The Dems Won. Why am I not Happy?

It was an intersting week: The Dems win both Houses. The first woman Speaker. Rummy fired. W admits he got "thumped" and hires another one of Daddy's friends. And the talk of bipartisanship is so thick you can cut it.

As to that last, I don't believe it for a moment. If Bush were interested in compromise he wouldn't be pushing Bolton and the domestic survellience bill. And the Dems are (as always) posturing. They can hardly wait to start the hearings. From today's NYT:

After meeting with Mr. Bush at the White House, Senator Harry Reid, the incoming Senate majority leader, said "the first order of business" when Democrats formally take over in January will be to reinvigorate Congressional scrutiny of the executive branch, with a focus on Iraq.

"Let’s find out what’s going on with the war in Iraq, the different large federal agencies that we have," said Mr. Reid, Democrat of Nevada. "There simply has been no oversight in recent years."

. . .

In Los Angeles, Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is to lead the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, said in a speech that war profiteering could also be a likely subject for his committee.

Mr. Reid is also interested in completing the long-delayed second phase of an Intelligence Committee review into prewar intelligence and the administration’s handling of it, Mr. Manley said.

I agree with Rob's comment on this post that such public witch hunts are entirely counterproductive. But these people are genetically incapable of resisting the temptaion to try to score political points. One of the worst consequences of this election is that we will see lots of Henry Waxman on our TV screens for the next two years. It is going (I fear) to be a reprise of the last two years of the Clinton administration.

Speaker Nancy? Who knows, I guess. Maybe she will grow into the job. But her public pronouncements since becoming minority leader have struck me as nothing short of inane, distinguished only by partisan venom and buzzwords cahined together to make invective. More generally, I have absolutely no confidence in the Democrats. What kind of a party is it whose last nominee is as inept as John Kerry, whose current front runner is Hilary Cinton, and whose most attractive candidate (by a long shot) has been a Senator for two years and has never had a job in which he had to make decisions. Moreover, on social issues at least, the effect of the election was to make both parties more intolerant, with Republicans like Lincoln Chafee losing and Democrats like Brad Ellsworth winning. On a lot of issues, many of the new Democrats willl be voting with the Republicans.

On the Iraq "issue": The Dems campaigned for "change," but have no more of an idea as to what to do than Bush does. Moreover, the very idea that an institution as fractious as Congress could come up with a coherent policy for Iraq is simply nonsense. When it comes right down to it, the Dems are no more inclined to simply leave than are the Republicans. They too realize that if they get blamed for the mess that will almost certainly follow from withdrawal, they will end up getting clobbered in 2008. So, the policy changes, if any, will all be at the margins. The essential fact will remain: we will stay until the spinmeisters believe they can "declare victory."

This mess is so much like Viet Nam. It's just the parties that are reversed. In Viet Nam, the Dems got us in it and it cost them the Presidency in 1968. Yet, it took Nixon 5 more years to get us out, and even then the leaving was an unmitigated embarassment. Now its the Republicans that got us in, and I suspect that it will cost them the Presidency in 2008. Yet, I also suspect that the next President (Hillary, Osama, who?)will still be trying (probably unsuccessfully) to bring the conflcit to an "honorable" end when he/she runs for re-election four years later.

In the end, we will leave as ignominiously as the Russians left Afghanistan -- and will similar results.

This election was a referendum on the war. The war lost, much as it did in 1968. But telling a current administrattion that they are fuck ups doesn't really solve anything. As somebody once said, wars are much easier to get into than get out of.

Sigh.

Election Night Musings

I just got on line and they (CNN) projected that Lincoln Chafee lost. Why does that not make me happy? Of all the Republican Senators with whom I felt simpatico, Lincoln Chafee was the first. And before that, Joe Liberman apparently won. The one Democrat I would most have loved to see lose.

Sigh. For those of us who see this election as a referendum on George Bush, it is going to be a "be careful what you wish for" year. I voted Democratic across the board this year, the only time I have ever done that, for either party, in my lifetime. I think I will get my wish -- non-Republican control of Congress. Yet, before the next two years are over, my guess is that I will be kicking myself.

What strikes me most about these elections is how socially conservative and fiscally progressive the Congress is becoming. That is not me. Indeed, I am the opposite. I am socially progressive and fiscally conservative. Where oh where is MY party?

Responses to a couple comments:

What do I think of Kerry's "joke"? I think it is a testamenet to how pathetic the Democrats have become. Taken by itself, it was just silly. But then you realize that this is the guy the Democrats nominated for President. And then you think that his main opponent was Howard Dean. And you wonder what ever happened to the party of FDR, LBJ and JFK? The Democrats are a joke. But for the Iraq debacle, they would be a splinter party. And the only ones who could win would be the anti-abortion,anti-gay rights, anti-free trade, pro-taxes luddites like Sherrod Brown.

What do I think of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker? First off, I'm not at all sure she will win given the nature of the "new Democrats." But assuming she does, I think it will be a debacle. Has the woman ever been anything other than shrill? If the D's win tonight we are in for a two-year period of "investigation paralysis" that will make the last two years of the Clinton administration seem idyllic.

I can't remember when I have been more depressed for the future of my country.

Update (12:30 am ET): Well, it looks like Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker (shudder) and Dick Cheney will be the deciding vots in a 50-50 Senate (doule shudder). I can't think of much worse other than where we are today. But, I am going to bed, and we will see how things work out.