Master of the Game

 Reading Martin Indyk's "Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger: the Art of Middle East Diplomacy.  Just got through the Yom Yippur War, the one where the US went to Defcon 3 while Nixon was melting down with the Saturday Night massacre. The one where Brezhnev was apparently addicted to drugs and drink.  

A year or two ago I read a new book on the coming of WWI tracing the network of misunderstandings and wrong assumptions which led to the war. That's what came to mind as I read--the Soviets, the Egyptians, the Israelis, the Syrians--all were flawed players in the game. 

I doubt there's much chance of improving the rationality of our leaders--they're human after all. 

(After finishing the book, which covers Kissinger's successful negotiations to calm the area, and take advantage of opportunities to stablize the situation, laying the groundwork for Carter's Camp David establishment of peace between Israel and Egypt.)

I came away with an appreciation of Kissinger's abilities and even more appreciation of Indyk's approach: he's clear on the aims and tactics of the various players and their misjudgments.  Anwar Sadat comes off well as a statesman, amazingly for someone who was pro-Hitler during WWII.  The other leaders seem capable--no villains, just quirky people.

Those Stupid Middle East Autocrats

<tongueincheek> I can't understand why rulers in the Middle East can't understand the thinking of our Presidents, which seems to me to be entirely logical and eminently comprehensible to anyone. First Saddam Hussein thought he could bluff his regional enemies by pretending to have chemical weapons without affecting Pres. Bush's thinking.  Now Assad thinks he can intimidate his rebellious subject by using chemical weapons without affect Pres. Trumps thinking [sic]. </tongueincheek>

Seriously, it's always good to remember that other people don't understand you as well as you do, which assumes you understand yourself, which can be an erroneous assumption.

A Doctrine, A Doctrine, Where Is the Doctrine?

Much of the commentariat is asking Obama to declare a "doctrine": a rule which describes when he will use military force and when he won't.  I suspect if he were a Republican in the same circumstances I too would be calling for the President to enunciate some rules.  As he's not, thank goodness, I'm more in favor of the "Pragmatic Rule": if it works, do it; if you can get away with it, do it; if you fail, the decision was wrong.

It's hard for any politician to declare the "pragmatic rule", but they follow it more closely than they do the "Golden Rule".  While most Americans would like us to be idealists, to be the city on the hill, I think even more vote based on the "Pragmatic Rule".  We'll see, both whether Obama's Libyan/Middle East policy works and whether voters reward or punich on that basis.

Rummy: Bush Was a Bad Bureaucrat

That's what I get from this Politico piece, based on a Wall Street Journal interview, arguing Donald Rumsfeld critiques Bush and his administration for being bad bureaucrats. 

Another Party Heard from on Iraq

I recommend Thomas Ricks blog, The Best Defense.  He used to be the WPost defense correspondent and seems to have good sources in the military, particularly from lower levels than you see in the mainstream media.  My recommendation is odd, because I've always boasted of being a natural-born civilian, something reaffirmed by my involuntary service in LBJ's Army. 

That is preamble 1.  Preamble 2 is the observation I put up a short post recognizing no combat fatalities in Iraq in December and giving GWBush credit. 

But, as Mao supposedly said about the French Revolution, it's too early to tell about the overall policy.  Ricks has a post passing on a prediction by someone that Iraq will disappear in the next 5 years, which almost sounds like the policy our current Vice President was pushing back in 2007.  We will see, or maybe our descendants will see.

The Hurt Locker

Saw the movie today. I recommend it.

The Swallows Return, First Tourist to Iraq

The NYTimes yesterday reported the first Western tourist returning to Iraq. The Iraqis seemed to agree that reviving tourism was premature, but if tourists can go to Antarctica, Mount Everest, and space, they surely will brave the perils of Iraq.

Iraq Needed Bureaucrats

There was a C-Span broadcast yesterday of a hearing by an Iraq/Afghanistan contracting commission with the IG, Mr. Bowen and staff., tied to the book: "Hard Lessons". One of the interesting questions, perhaps from the former comptroller of the Pentagon, was about "absorptive capacity", whether Iraq had the bureaucratic infrastructure to absorb the $18 billion, or $25 billion, or whatever amounts were targeted for the country. Bowen said: "no", maybe $5 billion. Point--you need bureaucrats, you need a banking system (which Iraq didn't have, so they hauled cash around), in order to spend money.

The Iraq Index Today

Here's the May 29 version from Brookings. It's interesting--lots of the tables haven't been updated recently. I suspect it's because people have lost interest in the subject. (The people at Brookings just assembled data from various governments and organizations, they didn't do research themselves.)

The headline news is, of course, the 19 U.S. deaths in May are a low for the war since the first year. And there's been several optimistic articles and op-eds in the past few weeks, even though most of them don't get the attention of the past. I don't think that's liberal bias particularly--it's mostly the idea that conflict and bad news is lots more newsworthy than good news. It is true, though, that we liberals have a hard time fitting the news into our overall narrative so it's often easy to ignore.

Personally, I've a bureaucratic narrative--there's a learning curve, it's taken us 4-5 years to learn, but we're at last much improved over what we were at first. (You can see this in Vietnam, the last few years under Abrams were much more effective than the first years under Westmoreland.)

A couple factoids, without links: NYTimes had an article on the US prisons in Iraq--we're holding over 20,000 prisoners, of which about 1 percent are foreign. It's possible we killed most of the people who were willing to come to Iraq and die, or people just got tired after so many years, but it doesn't fit with a war against international terrorism. Attacks against oil infrastructure are way down this year--good news for the Iraqi economy and for our gas prices.

Northern Ireland and Northern Iraq

In the last few days, Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of the Unionists in Northern Ireland, agreed to join Sein Fein in a government. I remember in the 1960's thinking that Paisley's continued existence was a proof for atheism. It shows that time changes many things, including some zealots. (Some of my ancestors seem to have tried to balance between the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland--see Marjorie Robie's book. But even taking this development at face value, it's another step in a long long process, bridging divisions that go back hundreds of years. It seems as if the Northern Ireland peace process now has enough momentum not to be derailed by spectacular violence, like the Omagh bombing (killed 29).

But we know that the peace process in the Middle East (Palestine/Israel) has repeatedly been derailed by violence (intifadas, the killings of militants, the killing of Rabin, etc.). And we can see that even in Tall Afar, which was held up as a model by President Bush, spectacular violence leads to more violence. With this in mind, even if the "surge" succeeds in subduing violence in and around Baghdad, my guess is the result will be closer to the Palestine/Israel situation than Northern Ireland. In other words, the best Bush and we can hope for is "simmering" violence in Iraq, as opposed to "boiling".

The "Surge" and New Orleans

New Orleans was damaged by the storm surge, but its post-Katrina fate says something about the possible fate of Baghdad after the Bush/Petraeus surge. Today's NYTimes has an article on murder in the city. One aspect is the distrust shown the police by the residents of the areas most affected by the violence. The police can't effectively solve murders and gang violence because they can't get information from the citizens, the justice system can't convict and jail offenders because the police don't build good cases for them, and the citizens can't trust the police or justice system because the violent are amongst them, laughing at "90-day murders" (i.e, a killing that you spent 90 days in jail for).

Assume the surge in Baghdad has an effect. It's possible. Malcolm Gladwell has familiarized us with the concept of "tipping point". Presumably there's some level of force that is sufficient to restore order in the city. (I remember the military--National Guardsmen? or regulars?-- on the streets of DC after the 1968 riots.) Gen. Casey thinks 2 brigades of US troops plus the Iraqi forces could do the job, Sen. McCain were thinking 50,000 more US plus Iraqis were needed, someone else might say 100,000. No one knows.

But assume Petraeus and Bush are right and 5 brigades shut down the bombings and the sectarian killings. Suppose for the sake of argument that no one dies in Baghdad from any sort of violence for a month. (I know, that's ridiculous, but so?) Then what? Do you slowly reduce the number of troops until you reach a point of low, but acceptable, violence? What is that point? How much violence have the Israelis been willing to live with? How about the residents of the United Kingdom? Or Spain?

I know the Bush/Petraeus strategy is for economic development to happen, but that doesn't cure things fast.

Can we really do better in Baghdad than in New Orleans?

Iraq as a Land of Free Enterprise

"Imperial Life in the Emerald Palace", about which I blogged here, notes several instances where Bremer's people wanted to reform Iraq into a free market economy. Remember that when you read this George Buddy quote of a Guardian article on Iraq, the reporter interviewing a Sunni insurgent who says:

"'I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad.'

Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood."

Nice to know we're making progress.

Imperial Life and Harvard Business

Just finished reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (spelled the name without looking, though I did doublecheck--guess I'm not senile quite yet). Interesting, depressing, in line with Tom Ricks Fiasco, Woodward's State of Denial, etc. A couple of comments from a bureaucratic standpoint:

• one of the things an established bureaucracy does is reproduce itself. In other words, it develops patterns of recruitment and training for its employees. The American effort in Iraq, whether Garner's effort or the Coalition Provisional Authority, wasn't a developed bureaucracy. As a result, the recruitment seems to have been haphazard and the training nonexistent. I'm sort of reminded of an old cartoon, perhaps from Disney, where the lead character, an inventor, puts together a super-duper vacuum cleaner, turns it on, and the suction pulls in everything that isn't firmly nailed down. Iraq seems to have had the same effect: pulling in a bunch of young aspiring types, some older people nearing the end of their working life with expertise that might relate to CPA's needs, and a few people in the middle of their careers. It was a natural reaction to the situation: no planning, reliance on who knows who (which leads to political connections being importance), etc.
• a number of bureaucracies ended up in Iraq: CPA, State, DOD, contractors. What's striking is management's failure to ensure the bureaucracies were permeable. It would have been a much smaller book if he didn't have the anecdotes about bureacratic conflicts within the US occupation.

The picture of the insularity of the Green Zone (the "Emerald City") reminded me of Long Binh in Vietnam.

Finally, it seems to me that Harvard should revoke and disown a certain MBA.

AMT, Turbotax, and Enablers and Iraq's Banking System

Ann Althouse posts on the Alternative Minimum Tax, responding to a suggestion by Kaus that the hassle of doing two calculations is a reason for opposition to it. She and Glenn Reynolds point out that Turbotax software eliminates the problem. So should conservative oppose Turbotax?

It's a good question, but first let me address the AMT. I like the damn thing, liked it back when it was instituted amidst much publicity about fat cats (we had a few back then (i.e., 1969)) and still like it. Problem is, it wasn't indexed when imposed initially. These days it tends to hit the upper middle class in high tax states like Wisconsin. Someone with a $500K house might get hit with a $12.5K tax bill, then be subject to AMT. While I don't have much sympathy for someone in that position, I'd agree they shouldn't get hit by AMT.

Now for the question: is Turbotax a weapon of the evil, tax-sucking vampires known as liberals? Obviously no. It would be like saying that the lack of a banking system in Iraq, which undermines the Iraqi Army, is a weapon of the Iraqi opposition. Bureaucratic systems and software systems are morally and politically neutral, even though they may accidentally help or hurt the good. After all, Turbotax makes our tax system more efficient, permitting lower rates than would otherwise be necessary.

Tit for Tat in Palestine

Over the years some supporters of Israel pointed to the schoolbooks Palestinian children are given. The books don't show Israel on their maps of the Mid-East, they show nothing or "Palestine". These supporters have scored points in the debate. Obviously the PLO and Arafat did not accept the existence of Israel as a state if they couldn't change the map.

It's always been my assumption, being the young and naive person that I am, that Israel's schoolbooks showed Palestine. Wrong. Israel always called the PLO a terrorist organization with which they could not negotiate so they got themselves into a map trap of their own. Today's Washington Post has an article showing that a minister in the government is trying to change the policy, but meeting resistance:

Israel's policy of not marking the West Bank began soon after it captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 war. Most school maps now evoke Jewish history by labeling the territory by the Biblical terms "Judea and Samaria."

In defending her order in interviews with Israeli reporters Tuesday, Tamir [the minister] noted the difficulty in pressuring Arab countries to mark Israel on maps when the Jewish state does not designate the West Bank as a separate entity on its own maps. She told Israel's Army Radio that "if we don't show these borders, we will turn out very confused children."