Mad Social Scientist

Fassihi's letter is worth reading in entirity.

From: [Wall Street Journal reporter] Farnaz Fassihi
Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.

It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are thing?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad."

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost."

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"

I think the battle for Iraq has been lost. I suspect we have left it worse than we found it. If we can find a new leader to rule through a moderate level of violence, so be it. I am usually one of the first to oppose backing strongmen, but we have undermined the basis for democracy (never strong) and raised the potential for civil war to such a pitch that there is no longer an alternative.

We now owe the world and Iraq a massive debt for our recklessness. I hope that someday we can repay it. But for the foreseeable future, I can well understand if the world would simply like us to butt out of its affairs.

Bush launched the greatest foreign policy debacle since Vietnam, and more people in the elite are starting to admit it. But will the national mood shift against Bush? I think it might, especially if posts like this start to become conventional wisdom. Here's a quote from a private letter from WSJ reporter Farnaz Fassihi:

It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

But read the whole post from TPM. To try to categorize the Bush approach to Iraq, I have to reach for Pangloss and even Brezhnev.

From the BBC

Officials said at least 34 children were among 41 or more people killed when bombs were detonated near a water treatment plant as US troops passed by.

At least 130 others were injured, many among crowds gathered for the opening ceremony at the plant who had gone up to collect sweets from the soldiers.

It was the most number of children to die in one incident since the war, on a day that saw fatal attacks across Iraq.

The casualties include:


Two Iraqi policemen and a US soldier killed in the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad by a car bomb that also left dozens injured

A US soldier killed by a rocket fired at a US base near Baghdad

A senior policeman shot dead in the northern city of Mosul

Also in the north, the Kirkuk mayor's chief bodyguard shot dead

Four people killed in a car bombing in Talafar that also injured about 16 others

At least four children among six or seven people killed in Falluja after US forces allegedly fired on their car

At least three civilians killed in a US air strike on Falluja overnight.

Our approach is not working. It's time for something new.

It turns out Bush is doing a great job fooling his supporters, by talking one game on foreign policy, while doing another:

As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush’s positions, though to a smaller extent than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry’s positions correctly. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.”

Majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (84%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the International Criminal Court (66%), the treaty banning land mines (72%), and the Kyoto Treaty on global warming (51%). They were divided between those who knew that Bush favors building a new missile defense system now (44%) and those who incorrectly believe he wishes to do more research until its capabilities are proven (41%). However, majorities were correct that Bush favors increased defense spending (57%) and wants the US, not the UN, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (70%).

Kerry supporters were much more accurate in assessing their candidate’s positions on all these issues. Majorities knew that Kerry favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (90%); the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (77%); the International Criminal Court (59%); the land mines treaty (79%); and the Kyoto Treaty on climate change (74%). They also knew that he favors continuing research on missile defense without deploying a system now (68%), and wants the UN, not the US, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (80%). A plurality of 43% was correct that Kerry favors keeping defense spending the same, with 35% assuming he wants to cut it and 18% to expand it.

from Mt. St. Helens.

An alternative to drinking your way through the debates: Bingo!

Jacob Hacker has an interesting take on inequality in America: it's not (primarily) the level of income disparity, but the variance in income over time that makes Americans feel insecure.

Voters say the economy isn't getting better because, as far as they're concerned, it's not. And perhaps the best explanation for this perception is that Americans are facing rising economic insecurity even as basic economic statistics improve.
...
As Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren and her daughter, Amelia Tyagi, have documented, middle-class families confront rising difficulties meeting basic expenses--such as housing and tuition--and they are going deeper and deeper into debt as a result. They are also working longer: According to Karen Kornbluh of the New America Foundation, the typical family spends 22 more hours per week at work than it did in 1969.

Yet, the income squeeze that families face is not exactly the same as insecurity. Insecurity is something larger--the risk of large drops in living standards caused by loss of income or catastrophic expense. And, my research suggests, insecurity is something that more and more Americans, even the relatively well off, are confronting.
...
This great risk shift has gone surprisingly underreported. Though we've heard about economic hardship, most of the stories concern static measures--poverty, inequality, wages, joblessness. That's in large part because no standard economic statistic tries to assess the stability of family income. We know with great precision how many Americans are rich and poor at any moment and how large the gap is between the bottom and the top. But we know next to nothing about the extent to which their economic status changes over time or what causes these shifts.

In response, I have spent the last couple of years trying to assemble new figures on changes in family income, aided by Professor Nigar Nargis of the University of Dhaka. Our research has centered on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics--a nearly 40-year project that tracks the same families from year to year and, hence, provides unique insights into how and why incomes change over time.

What has become clear from this research is that family incomes rise and fall a lot--far more than one would suspect just looking at income distribution figures. As a result, a surprisingly big chunk of U.S. income inequality--perhaps as much as half--is due to transitory shifts of family income, rather than permanent differences across families.

When I started out, I expected to see a rise in the instability of family income. But nothing prepared me for the sheer magnitude of the increase. At its peak in the mid-'90s, income instability was almost five times as great as it was in the early '70s, and, although it dropped somewhat during the late '90s (my data end in 1999), it has never fallen below twice its starting level. By comparison, permanent income differences across families have risen by a more modest, if still troubling, 50 percent over the same period.

The full explanation for this dramatic rise in instability is still unclear, but two causes loom large. The first, and most obvious, is changes in the nature of work. In today's postindustrial economy, less skilled workers are much more vulnerable than when unionized, manufacturing labor was more of the norm. (Not surprisingly, instability is greater for families headed by less educated workers, though it has actually risen more quickly in the last decade for workers who went to college.) Workplace benefits, such as health insurance and pensions, have been on the chopping block. And corporate America increasingly relies on part-time, contingent, and contract workers--all of whom enjoy precious little security.

The second overarching cause of increased insecurity is a shift we often take for granted: the movement of women from home to work. As mothers have entered the labor force in increasing numbers, families have gained a second income, which most desperately need. But they've also had to take on new expenses and face the increased job insecurity of having two family members in the workforce.

Read on

The massive, avoidable failure of the Bush admin in Iraq should now be the conventional wisdom. The burden of proof has been met; straight news articles can and should take it is as the received wisdom. We're past the "two sides to the issue" point; if someone wants to argue that Iraq is actually all rose petals, they should be treated with skepticism until they can produce some evidence or argument to support their fanciful reassurances.

If someone today argued the Vietnam war was a good idea, or successful, or waged well, any straight news article reporting that opinion would feel obliged to point out that everyone is quite sure Vietnam was a costly, murderous, wasteful, tragic fiasco it would have been better to avoid.*

We've reached that point in Iraq. Here's a sampling of today's news:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 25 - Seven Iraqi men applying for jobs with the Iraqi National Guard were ambushed and killed in western Baghdad on Saturday morning, while the United States military said four marines and a soldier had been killed over 24 hours.

The military also said it conducted two airstrikes early and late on Saturday in the volatile city of Falluja to kill militants holding meetings. The military said the targets were members of the network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant.

The Americans did not give any casualty estimates, but doctors in the emergency room of the main Falluja hospital said 9 people were killed in the first strike and 16 wounded, all of them civilians. They said the first strike took place in a residential area of eastern Falluja and one woman and a child were among the dead.

...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 26 — The American military said today that it had arrested a senior commander of the nascent Iraqi National Guard, raising concerns about the loyalty and reliability of the new security forces just months before general elections are scheduled to be held across the country.

The Iraqi commander, Brig. Gen. Talib Abid Ghayib al-Lahibi, based in the restive Diyala province, was arrested last Thursday for "having associations with known insurgents," the military said in a written statement.

...

And this from the leader of Pakistan:

ZAHN: Is the world a safer place because of the war in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: No. It's more dangerous. It's not safer, certainly not.

ZAHN: How so?

MUSHARRAF: Well, because it has aroused actions of the Muslims more. It's aroused certain sentiments of the Muslim world, and then the responses, the latest phenomena of explosives, more frequent for bombs and suicide bombings. This phenomenon is extremely dangerous.

As Matthew Yglesias puts it:

Why Do They Hate Us?

Possibly because we keep killing them. Via Laura Rozen comes an eye-opening Knight-Ridder story on civilian casualties:

Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.
According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

Apparently one man's counterinsurgency is another man's dead brother. And guess which side that man's going to fight for? As a hint, let me suggest it's not the side that killed his brother.

Instead, we have cowards like the folks at CBS, who have decided it would be
inappropriate to point out that the war has failed to meet any of its rationales, lest that affect voters opinion of the president. Readers surely know that CBS made a fool of itself recently by broadcasting obviously fake memos regarding the president's National Guard "service". Clearly, CBS has decided the best way to restore its journalistic integrity is to follow the model of Pravda.

*Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth", this means you

Bush: Kerry Wrongly Questions Allawi

Democracy means keeping your mouth shut and agreeing with dear leader.

"The CIA laid out several scenarios and said life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better, and they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like." George W. Bush, New York City, Sept. 21, 2004

If you're as frustrated as I am, read these two primal screams: Herbert and Krugman. Also, TPM had a bunch of worthwhile posts. Finally, my friend Rob has a typically eloquent statement of despair

Bonus quote:

"Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn't because the violence was too great," Rumsfeld said, hours after the leaders of the United States and Iraq met in Washington.

"Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet," he said.

I have no doubt the same philosophy applies to the US.

Charles Manski has an interesting paper arguing that prediction markets like Iowa don't produce aggregate probabilities of events covered by options, but instead another, much less useful quantity, the midpoint of a potentially large interval containing the mean subjective probability of the event in question. A nice discussion can be found on CT.

If Richard Clarke were the Democratic nominee, how big a lead would he have? My guess is fifteen points.

"Black Gay Republicans Break with Log Cabin Republicans, Endorse Bush"

A year ago today, Richard Perle said:

"A year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."

I wonder if he really is surprised.

This post rounds up things I've read in the last week. I'm not advancing a complicated argument; just pointing out what is increasingly obvious: the Iraq war is turning into a non-negotiable disaster. Freedom is not on the march, peace is not around the corner, and the troops are not coming home any time soon.

Internally, the military is admitting that things are falling apart, with civil war a strong possibility. It is difficult to see how any of the moves Bush and Allawi are making will help.

US casualties are going through the roof. One friend hears that if it weren't for modern body armor, we'd be facing Vietnam level death tolls.

Casualties may be spiking because we're losing control of the country. Even Baghdad is no longer secure in any sense. When our troops leave base, they get bombed and shot at.

Our current tactic for dealing with this is attacking "rebel cities" like Falluja and Najaf. When we start defining whole cities as the enemy, we have lost the battle for the people of Iraq, and thus the whole war. We can't build democracy by force: all we do is turn the people against us, and into the hands of anyone who will fight us.

Once more, for the record, there were no WMD. This fact is leading Bush to ever more laughable justifications. And the Bush administration continues to try to confuse Saddam with Osama---again, going to laughable lengths. But the truth is that we have gotten nothing out of this war. Thousands have died for a pack of lies.

We're locked in a death struggle with people in places like Falluja, Najaf, and Sadr City that did nothing to harm us until we invaded their country. (The atrocities we committed in Abu Ghraib? At least we're not as bad as our enemies, says Rumsfield. With an attitude like that, we're never going to turn an occupation into cooperation, and we'll be lucky to avoid civil war).

Saddam is gone, but every few days I read about another Iraqi child, husband, or wife who has lost a family due to the violence we have unleashed. I think it is now clear that what we have made Iraq a worse place to live. An impressive accomplishment, considering the competition.

The war is a failure, and it is going to get worse. It's time to hold those responsible to account.

Some very smart, politically engaged economists have started a web magazine. Let's hope it develops into something interesting.

Three years ago, the Bush administration picked up a man named Yaser Hamzi in Afghanistan, and accused him of helping the Taliban. They shipped him to Guantanamo, then learned he was an American citizen, and moved him to a navy brig, where they held him incommunicado as an "enemy combatant". Hamzi was not allowed to talk to an attorney, and would likely have been left to rot, except that a public defender sued to restore Hamzi's rights to a trial and counsel, and recently won an 9-1 SC decision. It turns out that the government had little or no evidence against Hamzi, can't connect him to terrorism (or even the Taliban, for that matter). But instead of releasing him, they have continued to keep him in solitary confinement, and have offered him a devil's bargain: he can be released into Saudi custody (and who knows what they will do to him), but only if he relinquishes his American citizenship.

I am stupified by an administration with so little regard for national security that it essentially gives up the chase for Osama bin Laden while it trumps up people like Hamzi as dangerous terrrorist and high value captives, when it turns out they know nothing, and may have done nothing illegal. (Ashcroft is still batting .000 in the terror trial game; these guys can't even run a show trial).

I am horrified that any American government would seek to strip citizenship from someone as an alternative to trying them for crimes. Hamzi appears to think the US will keep him locked up forever, no matter what the SC says, and he's taking the deal. It is just another step in the path the Bush administration has laid out, leading away from freedom protected by law, and to God knows what abuses of civil rights.

Al Qaeda hates us, but I don't think they care one way or the other whether we are "free". Bush and Ashcroft, on the other hand, clearly hate our freedom.

Feel free to take this quick quiz of political knowledge:

Who favors allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market?

Who urges Congress to extend the federal law banningassault weapons?

John Kerry says that he would eliminate the Bush tax cuts on those making how much money: Over 50 thousand a year, Over 100 thousand a year, Over 200 thousand a year, over 500,000 a year?

Who is a former prosecutor?

Who favors making the recenttax cuts permanent?

Who wants to make it easier for labor unions to organize?


The Annenberg Public Policy Center recently conducted a survey which found that people who watched the Daily Show with Jon Stewart performed better on this quiz than viewers of Leno or Letterman. This blog has the write-up. Not a surprise, really; the Daily Show's humor is intelligent, and assumes you know a bit about current affairs; it probably turns off uninformed or misinformed people. Of course, it's also, sadly, the best news show on television.

Correct answers:
B / K / 200k / K / B / K

I hope you are reading Joshua Michael Marshall's posts very carefully. This one pretty much explains how Kerry can be losing despite a seemingly huge advantage on the key issue of the day.

I pointed out earlier this week how similar the Bush and Putin approaches to fighting terror are: identify policies by their "toughness", and pursue ever-tougher policies regardless of their success (because failure only implies insufficient "toughness").

More recent events suggest another strong similarity: both Bush and Putin are basing their appeals for public support on the claim that only nations "united" behind the leader can prevail against terrorists. Why this is so is never spelled out, but it provides a convenient pretext for centralizing power, limiting dissent, and calling your opponents traitors simply for opposing you. Bush tries to make his person a syndoche for the American "heartland", just as Putin does for Mother Russia.

Finally, both men have built their public careers around fighting "terrorism", and neither has let catastrophic failure stop them.

Sigh.

An excellent post by TPM, laying waste to the idea that killing "terrorists" in Iraq somehow protects the US mainland from attack by other terrorists. Worth it for this quote alone:

As a TPM reader put it to me both hilariously and brilliantly more than a year ago, this 'fly paper' thesis is like saying we're going to build one super dirty hospital where we can fight the germs on our own terms.

As a social scientist, I often simplify complex concepts into simple, one-dimensional scales (collapsing modern political ideology into a scale of "conservatism", for example). I then try to formulate and test hypotheses using these concepts.

Political leaders, non-state actors, and ordinary citizens do much the same thing when they try to understand political phenomena. And, like social scientists, they can make a dog's breakfast of the exercise.

For example, you could take a complex choice, like the range of strategies a state could use to confront a terrorist threat, and summarize it with a hopelessly over-simplified scale called "toughness". Toughness appears to mean, roughly, how hard and how violently you "fight back" against the terrorists, their allies, and silent helpers. Low "toughness" is taken to mean "weakness", and so, ipso facto, the toughness scale is also a "goodness scale" (at least to those who assume weakness is bad for security). So we compound the sin of ignoring the diverse (good and bad) ways to respond to terrorism by importing the unfalsifiable assumption that tougher policies are better.

Where does this way of thinking lead us? We try "tough" policies against terrorists (or harboring states, or states that look at us cross-eyed). If that fails to stop the terrorists, we recall that sufficiently tough policies "must work" (just as policies that are not tough enough "must fail"), so we decide our policy must not have been tough "enough". Then we try something more forceful. Often this leads to a spiral of violence. Some of my readers will think of Russia-Chechnya, others of the US-Iraq, still others perhaps Israel-Palestine. In the main, I think all are good examples of this cognitive simplification and its hazards.

Chechnya is the example that motivated my thinking. The WaPo had this to say:

The day after the Beslan standoff culminated in a bloody battle that left hundreds of hostages dead, Putin went on the air to address the nation. For a moment, he seemed to acknowledge that his policy had failed. But then he concluded he simply had not been tough enough.

"We need to admit that we did not fully understand the complexity and the dangers of the processes at work in our own country and in the world," he said. "In any case, we proved unable to react adequately. We showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten."

The remainder of the article is an excellent review of how Putin reached his conclusion that "weakness" would fail in Chechnya: not through failed negotiation, but through failed application of overwhelming force.

I'm willing to entertain the hypothesis that "tougher policies against terrorism are more effective", but currently, I think the evidence is pretty strong that this is not in fact true. But many people seem unwilling to admit this possibility, or perhaps even blind to it. And political leaders are quite ready to exploit the blind spot. (Remember the reflexive need of politicians to appear "tough" on crime, because who wants to look "weak"? Same thing---the best policy may not be the "toughest", but once voters are cued to evaluate policies by toughness, the question of which policy is really best disappears).

With respect to terrorism, I don't intend to reherse the argument that "toughness" doesn't work (you've heard it before: striking back aids terrorist recruitment, harms and thus enrages innocents, undermines normal life and hence makes terrorism seem the only option, etc.) I'm tired of hearing such arguments referred to as apologies for terrorism. They aren't of course; they are propositions that are either true or not, and nothing more.

Instead, I worry that everyone is worse off when we use the stupidly confining concept of "toughness" to stand for the whole range of strategies a state could use to combat terrorism. To take the American example (though similar advice applies to Russia), we should be working to isolate terrorists in their own societies, by cultivating ties with moderate leaders, showing real concern for the well-being of the publics from which terrorists recruit, and offering real aid for development. We should be as worried about our image as a callous, paranoid, violent empire as we are worried about our ability to project military might.

Joseph Nye tried to get us out of the weak-tough false dichotomy by talking about soft power. It's time to recognize that soft power---stemming from diplomatic ties, the ability to call on friends, cooperation in development and problem solving around the world, and possession of moral high ground and cultural good standing---can make our hard power exercises more productive. If we had these things in Iraq, fewer American soldiers and innocent Iraqis would be dead. But instead, we squander soft power with reckless overuse of military power, and that serves no one's interests.

To return briefly to Chechnya, I would most like to see Russia and Chechnya as independent societies, at peace with each other and respectful of each others' security and autonomy. But if that's not on the table, I'd rather see Russia achieve hegemony over Checnya through a combination of political manipulation and a modicum of force, than to see Russia bomb Chechnya into the stone age only to reap terrorist reprisals. If we cannot have a liberal international system, let us at least have Machiavellian powers that keep the peace, rather than feeble military giants who strike out and kill thousands, and incite only chaos.

But they only get better one by one. Check out the Shrill blog to watch it happen.

An excellent post by Daniel Davies can be found on Crooked Timber. The post is fairly technical, and refers rather obliquely to the Black-Scholes model for pricing options, but even if you're only passingly familiar with economics, it's an interesting read. Basically, the prices in the Iowa Winner-Take-All and Vote Share markets are hard to reconcile, and the prices within the WTA market even offer a (small) free lunch, strongly suggesting these markets are inefficient. As Davies points out, this undermines the analogy to large financial markets that IEM wants us to buy into; instead, we could think of the IEM as a particular (but not necessarily optimal) way to aggregate opinions.

Not that this is the fault of the IEM people---if market participants could put up real amounts of money, the IEM would likely function much better. But the powers that be have nixed that option.

As usual, the Daily Show's satire is worth a month of op-eds. Click on "George W. Bush's Words" after following this link.

Bush and co claim that by waging war in Iraq, the US has protected America from terrorism. I, and many others, never considered Iraq a terrorist threat. Indeed, it wasn't much of a threat period. But we have occupied it, and spurred an insurgency against our troops. Bush says this has all be worth it, that we are safer as a result. I see 1001 reasons to disagree with that conclusion.

Today, the military acknoledged what we all knew: many parts of Iraq are no longer under US control at all. But check out the graph at the right-hand side of the page. Attacks on our forces in Iraq spiked last month to over 2500, at least 80 every day, and more than we saw even in the uprising in April. (I wonder, if this is only attacks on US forces, how many attacks on Iraqi government forces have there been?)

Now the Germans may have their own Lehtileikkeleet.

It's high time we in America did something to close the Lehtileikkeleet gap. And so I propose diverting all funding from ballistic missile defense to build an arsenal of Lehtileikkeleets, and to begin research on Lehtileikkeleet defense.

Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19.

Looks like the pirates have won a packet of followers, me maties. In the same spirit, maybe we need a Create Your Own Social Movement Day.

Behold, the mighty Lehtileikkeleet.

See the comments section for an explanation. Though you may decide instead that the Finns' plans to cut the world in half have made astonishing progress.

A short history of Russia's conflict with Chechnya is here. I'm no expert on this area, and haven't always followed it as closely as I could. That said, it has always seemed everyone (except perhaps Putin) would be better off if the Russians and Chechens could agree on a divorce. The hundreds of innocents killed in Beslan join thousands of Chechen civilians and Russian soldiers in dying for the sake of a union that hasn't really existed in ten years, and that never really worked.

Arnold says he "saw tanks in the streets" in Austria, and saw Communism first hand. Turns out that couldn't have happened. Now will he get the same intense treatment Al Gore got in 2000, and John Kerry this year, or will his creative retelling of his history get the aw-shucks pass given to George W. Bush.

I'll give you one guess.

Update: A reader with much more knowledge of Austria points out that it is possible Arnold travelled to the Soviet sector and there saw some tanks, so I will reserve judgment on this issue. (This reader also argues that the whole issue is rather unimportant, in the same way that all the Gore gotchas were unimportant, and that's a fair point as well.) So far, further details have not been forthcoming from the Schwarzenegger camp.

I linked to Andrew Sullivan's furious summary of Zell Miller's speech earlier. Here is his reaction to Bush's speech. I often disagree with Andrew Sullivan, and am sometimes upset by what I've seen in his blog, but I have to say it is nice to see a right-wing opinion leader really come clean with their view of Bush and the direction he has chosen (and we know a lot of people are seriously disappointed with Bush). Sullivan says he's sick of Bush's borrow-and-spend policies and his gay-bashing. But what makes me most happy is that Sullivan asserts his own (small "c") conservatism at the same time: the message is, "I'm a fiscal conservative who believes in protecting personal freedom; Bush supports neither goal, and so I can't support him as a candidate, even though I like the guy".

This is the sort of intellectual honesty so sorely missing from our national discourse, and it's missing mostly (though not entirely) on the right hand side. I think what burns up "left-wing intellectuals" the most about Bush is not that we disagree with his policies (though we do, intensely), but that we despise how he has devalued truth and honesty in public discourse. It's as if the Bush people believe democracy can remain healthy even when everyone lies; that there is some magic that will preserve our system against any abuse they heap on it. But when you can get away with lying about what has happened, what you will do, what you have done, what your opponent has said and done, etc., democracy has lost a lot. We need a president who would be embarassed to abuse his power for personal preservation or gain, not one who perpetually tests the edge of what he can get away with.

I also like Sullivan's comparison of Bush and Bismarck, but that's another story.

Daniel Gross points out that Bush's "ownership society" is more likely to turn into a "debt society".

I didn't watch or listen to the RNC last night, since I don't have that kind of tolerance for frustration, anger, and base insults. But I did read some of it today, esp bits by Zell Miller. I was as appalled as erstwhile Republican Andrew Sullivan, Joshua Micah Marshall, Joe Klein, William Saletan and hopefully every other sane democrat in America.

The message of the RNC, made abundantly clear last night, is that John Kerry is a threat to national security, a wuss, a liar, an enemy sympathizer, a "Frenchie", maybe even a traitor. This message is supported with bald lies drawn from intentional misreadings of Kerry's record (voting against an amendment to fund a particular weapon system does not imply treason or weakness on defense), the conflation of Kerry with anything said by anyone on the left (Kerry does not equal Michael Moore, or Noam Chomsky, or whoever), and a lot of dangerously nationalistic warmongering.

The central lie under the RNC agenda is that are either for every war, and ever act in every war, that the American government participates in, or you are against every war, against the troops, against national security. This is so stupid that surely most Republican leaders know it is lie; even they can see that not every situation demands war, not every war helps national security, not every presidential decision is correct, that blind loyalty to a president is neither good nor required of American citizens. They sure felt that way about Bosnia, about Clinton, and even today, Bush shies away from confrontation with North Korea or Iran, two bigger nuclear problems than Iraq ever was.

To choose a small example, Zell Miller complained that Kerry voting against funding for the B-1 bomber. But it is widely known that the B-1 is a boondoggle, a poor performer, and a deathtrap for pilots. It's a bad investment if you care about the effectiveness of our armed forces, it's bad if you "support the troops", it's bad if you can tell the difference between chanting pro-America, pro-war slogans, and actually choosing the policies that best advance American interests and security. Now Miller appears a bit unhinged, so maybe he doesn't fully understand all this.* But lots of people in the Republican party surely, surely do. Which makes them not better, but worse people, for they are trying to bury any discussion of what is good for the country in a load of hate speech, fearmongering, McCarthyist smears of their opponents, and good old-fashioned mindless nationalism. That's not a mix that works well in democracies, and people from all of the political spectrum should comdemn it, as Andrew Sullivan had the guts to do. We don't need fascism in this country. We need instead the wisdom of a Roosevelt, who in a far more dangerous era told us that we should let go of fear, even as he led us through recession and world war.

If we had a leader so truly strong as FDR today, the Republicans would probably brand him a girlie man, a gutless internationalist, a pansy who won't recognize the great threat of terror and quake obediently when the leader says to be afraid.

And if we had a party as mindnumbingly reactionary as today's Republicans in the 1930s and 1940s, I doubt we would even recognize our country today.


*Update: TPM links to this interview with Miller, in which CNN reporters call him on many items from his speech, pointing out that Bush and others in the admin have referred to the "occupation" of Iraq (a rather factual description), and that Cheney and others opposed the same weapon systems Kerry did, on solid national defense grounds (that the weapons were a poor use of limited military resources). But Zell appears unable to comprehend that he's set a double standard---when Democrats do these things, they are traitors, but when Republicans do them... well, he doesn't want to talk about that. At least the convention is representative of the level of intelligence in the modern Republican party.