"Worth" Movie and FSA Programs

 Saw some publicity for the movie "Worth", a dramatization of Kenneth Feinberg's management of the distribution of the funds for relatives of 9/11 victims. The title relates to the problem of determining "worth": do you assess worth based on economic losses or regard everyone as equal?  

We see the same conflict in public assessments of some FSA farm programs: do you issue payments based on economics: the amount of production, the acreage, the losses of production due to disaster OR do you regard all producers as equal.

Judging by recent stories on agricultural programs, many people believe that farm programs should treat each farmer equally.  But a third criterion is also raised--"deserving" which might include "need" and "reparations." Very few of those who aren't farmers are willing to support programs which compensate for economic losses, which means big farmers get more.

I'll be interested to see the movie.

Logistics of Segregated Buses

 Talking with my cousin about her experience living under Jim Crow laws caused me to think about the logistics, or the daily experience.

Some things were clear and definite: separate schools, separate swimming pools (or days of availability), separate drinking fountains.  Once you knew the rules, complying with them was relatively straightforward.

But some situations were not so clear and fixed.  For example, on the bus, a bus that's heavily used by both blacks and whites. At the beginning whites sit at the front and blacks at the back. But once it gets full, if you're a 10-year white girl boarding the bus you're forcing a black to give up her/his seat, regardless of the age or condition of the black.  If it's full and a black is the next to board, she's forced to stand unless another black yields his seat.

Depending on the rearing and beliefs of the girl, she may accept causing inconvenience to the black as her right and due, or as a violation of treating people as equals. 

Lessons Learned?

 Politico has an article summarizing views of the big shots from 2001 and leaders of the security establishment thereafter o

My own views:

• we should have more confidence in ourselves--in fighting terrorism we indulged in interrogation tactics and an approach, the military commission, to providing justice which revealed our lack of faith in established norms and institutions.
• we should have less confidence in ourselves--in our ability to figure out the unknown, whether Iraq had WMD, whether  we could do nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• we should always remember that we as humans don't do that well in dealing with the new and different, as we've seen more recently in dealing with covid-19.  We tend to react with emotion, with resorting to old patterns, with zeroing in on silos.  We must think anew and act anew.

Malkasian's Afghan War

 I commented earlier on Carter Malkasian's "The American War in Afghanistan". 

I've now finished the book and have some more comments:

• overall he judges our war to have been a failure.
• he notes that GWB had the most freedom to manage the war. Bush focused on Iraq and let Afghanistan slide, particularly on building up the armed forces. Rumsfeld is credited for being prescient as to the problems, but debited for resisting the mission.
• Obama felt he was rolled by the Pentagon at the beginning of his term. Malkasian agrees, suggesting with the benefit of hindsight he should have endorsed a change of goal and a smaller investment of forces. 
• Trump is credited for being able to say "enough".  He's dinged for "the Sword of Twitter (not Damocles)", being erratic in his decision making, and endorsing a one-sided peace agreement.

As for causes of our failure he touches on corruption and poor government, the existence of Pakistan as a safe haven and supporter of the Taliban, multiple missed decisions by all the presidents. etc.  His emphasis though is on the idea that the Taliban most closely represented the "real Afghanistan": Islam, and defiance of foreign influence, meaning that Taliban fighters were more inspired by jihad than the government fighters were by their paychecks.

It seems like a good analysis, though I also take from the book the idea that the government and society were never united, never resolving tribal rivalries, often with problems working with the US. Karzai was able to unite the factions early on, but he and the American forces gradually lost their unity.

I also note support for a pet idea of mine: the problems created by rotating troops and commanders through the country.  These problems diminished over time, as more troops and especially the special forces served multiple tours, and as commanders returned in higher positions.

[update--so far Malkasian's earlier book, "War Comes to Garmser", which is focused on the area in Helmand province where he worked for 2 years, seems better written.]

Individual Rights and Society

This is a good point: 

Evidently we're going to have a debate about vaccine mandates and abortion at the same time--that is, both culture war tribes are simultaneously going to take both positions on the rights to medical privacy and "my body my choice" autonomy

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) September 9, 2021

I support the idea of mandating vaccines, with minimal exemptions, and with permitting abortion before viability (and after in very limited cases).  So how do I reconcile the positions?

Vaccines. People who aren't vaccinated can be infected by the virus, possibly permitting its evolution into variants, and definitely enabling its continued existence. Its existence is a danger to me and others.  Being vaccinated carries a very low risk, so in my view the danger outweighs the risk, which warrants overriding an individual's preference and the vaccine mandate.

Abortion. Every thing equal, I'm in favor of humans. Birth of an infant is, on balance, good for me and the rest of humanity.  It's one more mind and body who can improve life.  But I'm also in favor of individual freedom, of autonomy.  Strong protection of such freedoms is part of my vision of the best society.  So if the prospective mother decides that her interests and sometimes her perception of the interest of the embryo are best served by an abortion, I have to take that seriously.  

And what of the embryo?  We say "life is sacred" but in fact we recognize that's not an absolute, not something which can be applied everywhere. Notably, we don't apply it to members of other species.  (I'm not a vegan.) So I'm comfortable drawing the line at viability.

Almost 3000 Americans Died on 9/11?

 Nope.  As my cousin reminded me today, there were a lot of people in the World Trade Towers who came from other countries. Wikipedia says 372 of them, or over 10 percent of the total. I'm sure a lot of people have fallen into the error of talking about "almost 3000 Americans".  Here's one, which seems to be a DOD site for vets and families. 

I think that sort wrong generalization is something humans do. 

The Afghan Learning Curve

 Carter Malkasian's "The American War in Afghanistan" has gotten some good reviews and a lot of attention, since its publication coincides with the end of the war as far as the US is concerned.   

I'm most of the way through it. It's good, though it gets criticized on Amazon for the writing.  I'm not as critical as the reviewer--Malkasian likes simple subject-verb-object sentences which usually are clear and give at least the aura of objectivity. He overuses them. I'm more bothered by some of his tics: like using "assessed" as a synonym for "judged,..." and by converting nouns to verbs (which these days seems to be considered as good writing by some).

One thing which is striking about the content: the complexity of Afghan society, about which I may write more later.  When you imagine our military in 2002 trying to understand what they're dealing with, you get a sense of the difficulty of their job.

True Facts-I

 Some things are true, among them:

1. In American, and perhaps in all modern societies of reasonable complexity (i.e., possibly above tribes), there will be conmen who will find ways to exploit opportunities.  Their cons can range from affiliating with social movements to fraud (recently collecting unemployment) to crime (WSJ claims people are stealing from big box stores and reselling on the internet) to the Nigerian scam artists and the Rev. Jimmy Jones of Jonestown. A good bureaucrat must anticipate this; a good liberal must design government policies accordingly.

How We Repeat Our Mistakes

 One of the lessons we should take away from our involvement in Afghanistan is that Americans don't react well to unexpected events.  Looking back on 9/11 I think it was, as I remember thinking at the time, a lucky shot.  But we reacted hysterically, especially after the anthrax attacks.  That's not something I said on this blog then, because I wasn't blogging then.  Might I have said something like that had I been blogging--perhaps, but unlikely.  Too much of an outlying opinion.  At some time I would have been comfortable saying that 9/11 was a lucky punch, a combination of circumstances and strategy which worked, but which wasn't likely to be repeatable.

But we overreacted after 9/11.  I think we're overreacting now to the August exit from Afghanistan. It's not the end of the world, it's not major damage to the reputation or influence of the US. 

The Olden Days--Tramps and Newsreels

 Remembering our childhoods with a relative this morning.  Two things I thought of later:

• after the war there was, for a while, discussion of tramps and hobos. That's died out.  I wonder whether the people who would have moved around in the 1920s-40s are similar to the people who now find themselves homeless, at least the males?
• discussions of popular culture move from the radio age to the TV age. It's common, I've done it myself, to note that during the 1950s-80s news came into the home through the 3 main networks, as compared to the diversity today.  What I don't think gets noticed is newsreels:

images on a screen are much more powerful than news on radio, much more novel. 

most of middle class America regularly went to the movies, so newsreels were the medium for people to see images of the world.  I don't think there was much competition in providing newsreels.