Obsidian Wings

'Eff off

by von

I stumbled across this post while perusing Jezebel.*  Apparently, it's the second in a series from Alison Samuels explaining why Angelina Jolie is guilty of something -- racism? stupidity? poor fashion sense? -- based on the look her daughter's hair.  I missed the first post, but here's the gist:  Jolie's daughter is from Ethiopia.  Jolie lets her daughter's hair grow naturally.  Consequently, Jolie's daugher's hair looks like hair that you see in Ethiopia (and among some members of the Ethiopian immigrant community, I note).  Which, apparently, is a big deal or something.

Look, I don't know anything about hair or fashion.  Believe me on this.  I definitely don't know anything about African-American hair styles.  And I ain't wading into the debate over how decades of racism have affected African-American hair styles except to say:  Yes, they did.  I will venture that Alison Samuels' column makes zero sense to me. And that the responses by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jezebel, and Postbourgie seem very sensible.  But what do I know?  Nothing. Maybe Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jezebel, and Postbourgie are idiots on this subject, and I'm a fool for thinking otherwise. 

I do know one thing, however, that seems related.  You can criticize every parent for how he or she raises his or her kids.  Every parent screws up.  Every parent fails in someone's eyes at least some of the time.  It just goes with the territory.  If the parent and kid are of difference races, I guarantee that some of the criticism is going to be racial.  Again, it just goes with the territory.  It seems that people can't help themselves.

Alison Samuels may indeed be charting some unique racial issue, but her work also fits inside the colorblind category of poking your nose where it doesn't belong.  Outside cases of legitimate child abuse, the appropriate response to such criticism is:  F_ck off.  If your only problem with Angelina Jolie is that you don't like her kid's hair, give her a frakin' medal.  Because she's your damn parent of the year.

Finally, this is the last post that I ever want to write about Angelina Jolie.  Or, for that matter, Brangelina, or TomKat, or whomever.  It's friggin' stupid crap penning an "open letter" to any of them complaining about their kids' hair.  Just stop it.

Now, everyone, 'eff off.** 

UPDATE:  I think I know what set me off about Samuels' piece(s).  It's that no one -- including Samuels -- has any idea what the backstory to these pictures is.  Maybe Jolie and her daughter talk about hair all the time. Maybe the daughter likes her hair this way.  Maybe Jolie really, really wants to style her daughter's hair to Samuels' liking, but her daughter is fighting her every step of the way and Jolie is picking her battles.  I don't know; no one knows outside of the Jolie family.  I do know, however, that if you see my kid running around wearing pajama pants and a cape, it is not necessarily the outfit that I picked out for him.  But if it is, why do you care?

*Yes, I sometimes read Jezebel.  Screw you.

**It's possible that I'm feeling a little surly today.

Semi-Permanent Vacation

by publius

I've been going back and forth on this for some time.  But I've decided it's time to take a break from blogging for a while, maybe longer.  

I'm not quitting for good -- I consider it more like taking "senior status."  I'll continue to post now and then (Sebastian-style), but not that frequently.  I'll also probably keep tweeting from the ObWi account.  But it's going to be a change.

There are many reasons why I'm taking a break, but the main one is simply that I lack the time right now to write posts at the quality that I want to write them (which includes doing research).  I also have a few longer-term writing projects in mind, and maybe even an additional site that's devoted strictly to telecom stuff that's more related to my academic work.  I also expect to be traveling a decent amount over the next couple of months. 

When you combine all that, it's just hard to keep on top of everything at the level that good blogging requires.  Plus, it would be nice to have nothing to do some nights, rather than feel a vague anxiety if I haven't looked at Google Reader or read the NYT that day. 

Anyway, I'll be around, so this is not a final farewell post or anything.  We'll save all that for another day.  But hopefully everyone knows how much this site, its audience, and its writers mean to me -- and what an honor it is to be here with you all. I've learned so much from everyone.

Given my work and travel schedule over the next couple of months, I doubt I'll be around much in the near future.  But I'll be around -- I'm not sure I'm capable of severing ties with blogging completely.  Who would tell Von when he's wrong? 

But seriously, thanks to everyone who visits everyday, and has taken the time to read my rants these past few years (both here and at Legal Fiction).  It's hard to put the gratitude in words, but it means more than you know.  Thanks all.

In The Hot Seat

by publius

The League of Ordinary Gentleman is a good blog -- one you should be reading.  However, one of the writers there, Mark Thompson, has recently shown some questionable judgment by deciding to interview me about admin law and FCC stuff.  But you should overlook that.

Seriously, the interview is here if you're interested.  And I thank Mark for the gracious offer and thoughtful questions.

Irreconcilable Differences?

by Eric Martin

One justification for continuing (and possibly escalating) our military/non-military commitment in Afghanistan centers around the potential for al-Qaeda to establish safe havens in that country from which to coordinate attacks on US targets.  This al-Qaeda-based rationale rests on several assumptions that include, but perhaps are not limited to:

1. If we withdraw or significantly reduce our military presence, the Taliban will retake Afghanistan (presumably that means the Taliban will exert more control than the permanent presence it currently maintains in more than 80% of that nation's territory).

2. If the Taliban retakes Afghanistan, they will invite al-Qaeda back in that country, allowing al-Qaeda a free range of motion akin to what existed pre-9/11 (this, despite the fact that the Taliban currently controls vast swaths of Afghan territory and most US military and intelligence leaders - including Petraeus and McChrystal - maintain that there is no serious al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan at this time).

3. A safe haven in Afghanistan is necessary for al-Qaeda to coordinate attacks against the United States (the current safe haven in Pakistan is, according to this reasoning, significantly less ideal, and the myriad small scale safe havens and potential new safe havens in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere are also substantially inferior to the potential and coveted Afghan safe haven).

4. Despite the vastly increased focus - and allocation of resources - dedicated to counterterrorism efforts on the part of the US law enforcement community, intelligence community, political leadership and military establishment, a safe haven in Afghanistan would significantly increase al-Qaeda's ability to carry off successful attacks on US interests (the current safe haven in Pakistan, according to this reasoning, does not similarly increase al-Qaeda's efficacy, and the myriad small scale safe havens and potential new safe havens in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere would also not augment efficacy in the same manner as the potential and coveted Afghan safe haven).

5. Even if items 1-4 are correct, the United States could not successfully disrupt Afghan safe havens from afar using air power and other targeted military strikes (with much looser rules of engagement governing air strikes, more focus and a higher priority placed on anti-terrorist operations, our posture with respect to air strikes varies greatly from the days leading up to 9/11, and such strikes have been used to great success in places like Somalia and Yemen where we maintain very light to non-existent boots-on-the-ground presence).

Without addressing items 1-5 in their entirety, there are some recent developments that call into question the likelihood of item #2 - that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaeda back and provide them with free range of motion in terms of operations, should the Taliban exert greater control over Afghan territory.  Via Marc Lynch, Vahid Brown of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has been picking up chatter on key jihadi websites regarding a growing rift between the Taliban and al-Qaeda: 

Mullah Omar’s Afghan Taliban and al-Qa’ida’s senior leaders have been issuing some very mixed messages of late, and the online jihadi community is in an uproar, with some calling these developments “the beginning of the end of relations” between the two movements.  Beginning with a statement from Mullah Omar in September, the Afghan Taliban’s Quetta-based leadership has been emphasizing the “nationalist” character of their movement, and has sent several communications to Afghanistan’s neighbors expressing an intent to establish positive international relations. 

In what are increasingly being viewed by the forums as direct rejoinders to these sentiments, recent messages from al-Qa’ida have pointedly rejected the “national” model of revolutionary Islamism and reiterated calls for jihad against Afghanistan’s neighbors, especially Pakistan and China. However interpreted, these conflicting signals raise serious questions about the notion of an al-Qa’ida-Taliban merger. [...]

[O]ne thing is clear: the recent shift in the Quetta Shura’s strategic communications is not to al-Qa’ida’s liking, and it is raising serious concerns among the broader Salafi jihadi movement about the religio-political legitimacy of the Afghan Taliban’s leadership.

Like Marc Lynch, I would caution against interpreting these online trends as a definitive indicator of an underlying schism, but this rhetoric is not to be dismissed either.  According to Lynch:

...Brown's post reminds me of the online furor over the Islamic State of Iraq which foreshadowed the dramatic split in the Iraqi insurgency in which key insurgency factions flipped to the U.S. side and formed the backbone of the Awakenings/ Sons of Iraq.  Back then, in the fall of 2006 through early 2007 we saw growing discord on the forums between al-Qaeda in Iraq's umbrella group the Islamic State of Iraq and key insurgency factions.  Some of the discord focused on local complaints (ISI attacks on moderate imams), but a lot focused on this tension between the nationalist goals of the Iraqi insurgency factions (which mainly wanted to drive American forces out of Iraq) and the universalist goals of AQI (which mainly wanted to use Iraq as the base for global jihad). 

Those tensions on the forums proved to be a crucial leading indicator of real splits on the ground which energized the "Awakenings" movement.

The prospect for such a rift developing would not be outlandish either, considering the fundamental differences in outlook and orientation of the two parties involved.  While there is some religious and ideological affinity, Afghans (including Taliban) have tended to bristle at the tendency of the foreign al-Qaeda contingent to disregard the concerns, and authority, of the locals.  The Taliban's overriding goal is to take power in Afghanistan, and maintain that power.  al-Qaeda, on the other hand, is more interested in an international religious struggle - with its primary adversary, in the near term, being the United States. 

Recall, al-Qaeda's past strikes on the US are responsible for the Taliban losing power and suffering much hardship in the process.  The provocation of the United States, and the aftermath, angered many Taliban, and their experience facing the onslaught of the US military left an impression, to say the least.  In portions of this intriguing piece by Sami Yousafzai (which collected first hand reports by Taliban fighters), some of that animosity comes through quite clearly:

HAQQANI: Two days before the September 11 attacks on America, we were all celebrating the death of [Northern Alliance commanderAhmed Shah] Masood, [who was assassinated by Qaeda agents posing as television reporters]. His forces were already on the verge of defeat, so his death all but assured us of total victory in Afghanistan. But the September 11 attacks turned our cheer into deep concern. We gave those camels [a derogatory Afghan term for Arabs] free run of our country, and they brought us face to face with disaster. We knew the Americans would attack us in revenge.

Realizing the danger, I immediately sent my wife and children to Pakistan. The entire government started to fall apart. I never thought the Taliban would collapse so quickly and cruelly under U.S. bombs.

AKHUNDZADA: When the bombing started, I was commanding some 400 fighters on the front lines near Mazar-e Sharif. The bombs cut down our men like a reaper harvesting wheat. Bodies were dismembered. Dazed fighters were bleeding from the ears and nose from the bombs' concussions. We couldn't bury the dead. Our reinforcements died in their trenches. [...]

YOUNAS: ...The Islamic Emirate's collapse was like a nightmare.

I watched as wounded, disabled, and defeated Taliban fighters straggled into Wana and the surrounding villages, along with Arabs, Chechens, and Uzbeks. Every morning as I went to school I could see them wandering around town, almost like homeless beggars. Little by little, the tribal people started helping them, giving them food. Some people even took them into their houses; at first these once proud jihadis survived, thanks to the people's charity.

The Arabs were disappointed the Taliban hadn't stood and fought. They told me they had wanted to fight to the death. They were clearly not as distressed as the Afghans. That was understandable. The Arabs felt they had lost a battle. But the Afghans were much more devastated—they had lost their country.  [...]

HAQQANI: I admit Taliban commanders are being captured and killed, but that hasn't stopped us, and it won't. Our jihad is more solid and deep than individual commanders and fighters—and we are not dependent on foreigners, on the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence agency], or Al Qaeda. Personally I think all this talk about Al Qaeda being strong is U.S. propaganda. As far as I know, Al Qaeda is weak, and they are few in numbers. Now that we control large amounts of territory, we should have a strict code of conduct for any foreigners working with us. We can no longer allow these camels to roam freely without bridles and control.

Again, this is not to say that the Taliban would expel al-Qaeda en masseshould it consolidate its position in Afghanistan.  But it is a definite possibility considering the goals of each party, and the stakes should the Taliban continue to allow al-Qaeda to provoke retaliation from the US from Afghan soil.

And We've Agreed to Bring You Up, Whatever the Cost

by Eric Martin

Lucky for me and the missus, he seems intent on perfecting his "looks" which should pave the way for a lucrative career in male modeling.  The best part: this isn't even his Magnum:

Contracts and All That, Guns! Guns!

by Eric Martin

Quotable 'conservative dissident' Daniel Larison on the GOP's bizarre obsession with the decision by the Obama administration to scale back the prior administration's missile defense policies in Eastern Europe:

Cheney’s recent speech at the Center for Security Policy is much what you would expect from him, but that is not what interests me here. What I find interesting is how obsessed Republicans have become in making the missile defense decision into a central part of their foreign policy indictment of Obama. Pence, Romney, Santorum and Pawlenty have all taken a whack at it, leading members of the conservative movement have denounced the move, and it has been one of the favorites in many columnists’ repertoires. You have never seen so many people suddenly discover the necessity of consulting with allies. Of course, these allies are not counseling Washington against rash, foolish actions, but they are instead helping Washington to antagonize another major power and encouraging our government in its own worst instincts. Naturally, the latter appeals to people who cheered on one blunder after another for the last eight years.

So far, the missile defense decision is one of the very few major substantive foreign policy acts Obama has made, and it was clearly the right one as far as relations with Russia, European security and American spending were concerned. Using this as the cudgel with which to batter Obama’s “foreign policy drift” is a sign of how far removed the GOP has become from common sense in this area. Were it limited to Cheney, one could write it off as sour grapes from a failed, old man, but it isn’t. It’s as if the Democrats had fixated on the nuclear deal with India (one of the few genuinely constructive moves the last administration made in regulating proliferation and shoring up relations with India), and then began mouthing Islamabad’s talking points on why this was a disastrous course of action. Had they done so, they would have made it clear that there was absolutely nothing the administration attempted that they would not subject to pathetic, reflexive opposition. As it happens, while there were critics of the deal, it never became a significant part of the list of Bush’s foreign policy errors, much less a leading, central element of the attacks against him.

There is no sense of proportion in Cheney’s remarks on this decision. He refers to an irrelevant interceptor system designed to counter a threat that doesn’t exist in the same breath as the Soviet invasion of Poland, which was ruinous for Poland and one of the great crimes of the last century.Aside from a coincidence in timing, there was and is no connection between the two things and it is pure demagoguery even to mention them together. Cheney speaks of the Czechs and Poles “walking the plank,” which implies execution and destruction, and nothing could be farther from the truth. Washington’s guarantees to central and eastern European NATO allies are as meaningful as they ever were, and this decision does not make the Czech Republic and Poland even slightly more vulnerable to Russia than they were before. As proponents of the missile defense system kept saying ad nauseam, the system posed no real threat to Russia, and they would have us believe that it was not even aimed at antagonizing the Russians. Now that this system will never come into existence, we are supposed to think that Obama has handed over two allied nations to Russia on a plate, when all that it does is return things to the status quo of 2005-06. What is so infuriating about the criticism of the missile defense decision is that it is the criticism actually creates the doubts about Washington’s willingness to fulfill American obligations that the critics are trying to lay at the administration’s door.

Cheney’s speech is useful as an example of how government activists always operate. They propose a scheme that is costly, unnecessary and probably dangerous to the common good, their successors attempt to scale back or modify the wasteful baggage with which they have been saddled, and then allies and members of the previous administration wail about the “abandonment” of this group and the “betrayal” of that one to defend the scheme they concocted, when no one was benefiting from the scheme in the first place and never would have benefited. Indeed, more often than not the scheme will hurt those it is supposed to aid, its costs will be far higher than originally projected, and it will create a number of negative consequences for which the schemers are unprepared and never considered. Where Republicans are concerned, this activism tends to be limited to military schemes and foreign policy boondoggles, but it applies just as well in other areas of policy. The constant ratchet effect this has ensures that no new scheme or proposed spending can ever be eliminated without tremendous effort and expenditure of political capital, and the end result is to make the state larger, more activist and an entity with its own set of interests increasingly divorced from the people it governs.

Looking at some larger questions, I find the missile defense quarrel to be a good example for thinking about the place of dissident conservatives in contemporary debates. Defending Europe from an Iranian threat that doesn’t exist and wouldn’t be directed at them if it did with a system that probably wouldn’t work is the sort of thing that one would think American conservatives would find laughably unnecessary. It is the purest sort of irrelevant government activity that does nothing for the United States, wastes the public’s money, and inflames other nations against us. The system’s relative, albeit still quite limited, popularity in the countries in question feeds off of Old World antagonisms that most Americans neither understand nor care to learn about. For most mainstream conservatives, none of this matters. The decision is “weak” and it is “appeasement,” therefore they oppose it.

Larison is, of course, correct about the fiscally wasteful (massively), unnecessary and even counterproductive aspects of the boondoggle that is "missile defense."  He's also right about a Republican Party leadership that has increasingly become subservient to defense industry interests - never meeting a weapons system or armed conflict it didn't like.  This reminds me of a question DougJ posed on the curious, yet persevering, popularity of neoconservatism in GOP/mainstream circles:

The thing I always wonder is: how did the neocons amass so much influence? Everything they attempt fails and, when you consider how unpersuasive their arguments are, this failure isn’t surprising. How did it come to pass that a naive-sounding theory with no supporting body of empirical evidence became so influential?

Larison nibbles at the edges of providing an answer to that query, but Matt Duss nails it when discussing the latest neoconservative incarnation to rise, phoenix like, out of the ashes of the last neocon vehicle:

The Foreign Policy Initiative lists Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and Dan Senor on its board of directors, so no prizes for guessing what they’re about (more power, less appeasement, stronger wills).  Kagan and Kristol need no introduction, they’re the Tick and Arthur of disastrously counterproductive military adventurism. Given the staggering costs in American blood, treasure, security, and reputation incurred by their boundless enthusiasm for blowing stuff up, you might think they’d have had the decency to retreat to a Tibetan monastery by now, but sadly no. The way it works in Washington is, if you’re willing to argue for more defense spending, you’ll always find someone willing to fund your think tank. [emphasis added throughout]

Or fund your campaign.

The Af-Pak Unpack

by Eric Martin

The New York Times, to its credit, attempts to dispel some of the stubborn misinformation concerning the interchangeability (or lack thereof) of the Afghan Taliban faction and Pakistani Taliban faction.  Contrary to popular and pervasive fictions, these two groups are quite distinct in terms of strategy and objectives.

As it devises a New Afghanistan policy, the Obama administration confronts a complex geopolitical puzzle: two embattled governments, in Afghanistan and Pakistan; numerous militias aligned with overlapping Islamist factions; and hidden in the factions’ midst, the foe that brought the United States to the region eight years ago, Al Qaeda.

But at the core of the tangle are the two Taliban movements, Afghan and Pakistani. They share an ideology and a dominant Pashtun ethnicity, but they have such different histories, structures and goals that the common name may be more misleading than illuminating, some regional specialists say.

“The fact that they have the same name causes all kinds of confusion,” said Gilles Dorronsoro, a French scholar of South Asia currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

This week, Mr. Dorronsoro said, as the Pakistani Army began a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban, many Americans thought incorrectly that the assault was against the Afghan Taliban, the force that is causing Washington to consider sending more troops to Afghanistan. [...]

Alex Strick van Linschoten, a Dutch researcher who lives in Kandahar, in the heart of the Afghan Taliban’s power base, said that while leaders of the two Taliban groups might say that they share common interests, the two movements are quite separate.

“To be honest, the Taliban commanders and groups on the ground in Afghanistan couldn’t care less what’s happening to their Pakistani brothers across the border,” said Mr. Strick van Linschoten, who has interviewed many current and former members of the Afghan Taliban. [...]

Mr. Dorronsoro...said the Afghan Taliban were a “genuine national movement” incorporating not only a broad network of fighters, but also a shadow government-in-waiting in many provinces.

By comparison, he said, the Pakistani Taliban were a far looser coalition, united mainly by their enmity toward the Pakistani government. They emerged formally only in 2007 as a separate force led by Baitullah Mehsud under the name Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Students’ Movement of Pakistan.

Illuminating the divergence, fissures have begun to develop between the two as a result of their conflicting agendas:

In fact, the recent attacks of the Pakistani Taliban against Pakistan’s government, military and police, in anticipation of the army’s current campaign into the Pakistani Taliban’s base in South Waziristan, may have strained relations with the Afghan Taliban, said Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer who tracks Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations.

The Afghan Taliban have always had a close relationship with Pakistani intelligence agencies, Mr. Barrett said recently. “They don’t like the way that the Pakistan Taliban has been fighting the Pakistan government and causing a whole load of problems there,” he said.

The Afghan Taliban, whose group is by far the older of the two forces, have been led by Mullah Muhammad Omar since he founded the movement in 1994. They seek to regain the power they held over most of Afghanistan before being ousted by the American invasion of 2001.

In an interview this week, speaking on the condition of anonymity, an Afghan Taliban commander expressed sympathy for the Pakistani Taliban, but said, “There will not be any support from us.” He said the Afghan Taliban “don’t have any interest in fighting against other countries.”

“Our aim was, and is, to get the occupation forces out and not to get into a fight with a Muslim army,” the commander added.

It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore the fundamental differences between the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban factions, and the significance each holds for Pakistan.  In this, we can inform our understanding by observing the policies of the Pakistanis - who are able to grasp, and take advantage of, these distinctions. 

For Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban are a useful proxy, and a means of creating regional balance with India.  The Pakistani branch is a nuisance in that Pakistani factions have begun to clash with Pakistani state forces in recent years, with such clashes in reaction, at least in part, to armed incursions in their territory by US and Pakistani military.  Thus, key elements of the Pakistani state continue to support the Afghan Taliban, while the Pakistani factions are targeted (but even then, only half-heartedly) by that same state. 

Because the Afghan Taliban is animated by a desire to regain control of Afghanistan, because it has little interest in conquering Pakistani territory (and, more importantly, it lacks the ability) and because it recognizes that its survival is dependent on support from the Pakistani government, the Afghan Taliban does not and will not turn on its benefactor in order to take up the cause of the Pakistani militants.  If anything, tensions have grown between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliba.

Establishing a baseline understanding of the make-up and motivations of the various militant factions is essential to devising a plausible strategy for stabilizing the region.  However, while necessary, such knowledge is not exactly sufficient.  The ability of any occupier to successfully manipulate such a complex and overlapping matrix of tribes, regional powers and other factions is dubious at best. For the United States, situated half a world away, and at a severe disadvantage in terms of regional understanding and perception amongst the local population, the odds are even longer.  From the same Times piece:

For the United States, regional experts say, the long-term challenge is to devise policies that peel away as many militants as possible from both Taliban forces, isolating Al Qaeda and other hard-liners and strengthening the Pakistani and Afghan governments. But for a non-Muslim superpower, widely resented in the region, that is a tall order. [emphasis added]

“At the moment the ground isn’t very well prepared for splitting the militant groups,” said Stephen Biddle, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who spent a month last summer in Afghanistan. “The security trends are running in their favor.”

While Biddle is right about the difficulties that the United States faces even if leaders on the ground and in Washington develop a deeper understanding of the web of militants, it was Biddle himself who recently penned a piece arguing for prolonging the occupation based on, what seems, a fundamental misreading of the motivating principles of those same groups.  Said Biddle:

If the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state, their ability to use the state’s resources to destabilize the secular government in Pakistan would increase the risk of state collapse there. Analysts have made much of the threat that Pakistani Taliban base camps pose to the stability of the government in Kabul, but the danger works both ways: Instability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the secular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaeda nuclear-armed sanctuary there.

To which I responded:

But Biddle overstates the quality of the threat posed by Afghan Talibs in terms of destabilizing the Pakistani state.  The [Afghan] Taliban have long been on the receiving end of Pakistani government largess.  They have been cultivated as a proxy and ally useful in terms of creating a strategic redoubt in case of conflict with India, and in further establishing an anti-Indian front in the region.  In fact, much of their tenacity and success in Afghanistan today (and previously) is attributable to the ongoing support of their Pakistani patrons. 

That is the nature of the Afghan Taliban: a local phenomenon benefiting from the generosity of foreign benefactors.  As such, the Afghan Taliban enjoys limited reach and power - especially if it were to actually turn on those same foreign benefactors.  Along those lines, what exactly are the Afghan "state's resources" that are supposed to threaten Pakistan (whose military and security forces are far more numerous, vastly better equipped, well trained, etc)?  The Afghan state (and various militant factions) have limited economic and military resources - and much of what they have comes from...Pakistan.

This tail is just not capable of wagging the dog, and the Pakistani government knows it.  That is why that government continues to support those same Afghan Taliban factions that we are, according to Biddle, supposed to be protecting Pakistan from.  Maybe they know something we don't?

Maybe indeed.

David Martin, Disgrace to the Legal Profession

by publius

Via Ta-Nehisi, I saw this amazing Anderson Cooper interview of Todd Willingham's defense attorney, David Martin.  It's enough to make you literally nauseous.  Remember that Martin's zealous defense consisted of getting the babysitter to testify:

The defense had tried to find a fire expert to counter Vasquez and Fogg’s testimony, but the one they contacted concurred with the prosecution. Ultimately, the defense presented only one witness to the jury: the Willinghams’ babysitter, who said she could not believe that Willingham could have killed his children.

In the CNN interview below, he explains that he thought Willingham was guilty because Martin himself had done a backyard science experiment and poured lighter fluid on a piece of carpet and burned it.  To noted forensic expert Martin, it looked the same as the carpet in the Willingham case. 

And so even though he has no expertise in any of this stuff, he's now on TV bashing the report of real scientists (the ones he ignored), and claiming Willingham is clearly guilty.  And remember, he was Willingham's own attorney.

He's so defensive and obnoxious about it that it's pretty clear he's protesting too much.  I'd probably feel that way too if my malpractice had caused an innocent person to die.  And hey, at least he stayed awake during trial.

Anyway, here you go people -- this is the face of criminal defense in Texas.  Remember this guy next time you hear Justice Scalia and pals talk about how competent our underfunded state court criminal justice systems are.  Remember that an entire jurisprudence of deference to state criminal courts is constructed on the foundation of David Martin.

Also, everyone should read this entire post from Burnt Orange Report, which rounds up various disgusted reactions from Texas attorneys.  It also suggests that Martin may be violating his continuing ethical and professional obligations to Willingham.

OSHA: Nevada is a Good Place to be a Bad Boss

By Lindsay Beyerstein

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) last week issued a scathing indictment of Nevada's OSHA program. Nevada has a well-deserved reputation for being a dangerous place to work. Last year, a spate of construction deaths on the Las Vegas Strip prompted a congressional hearing. The Las Vegas Sun won this year's public service Pulitzer for exposing the carnage. Nevada inspectors told federal investigators that their superiors pressured them not to write up employers for willful violations of safety laws. Willful violations are the most serious category of infraction. Federal investigators found that NOSHA only issued one willful violation in the course of 23 fatality probes--even though at least one of the employers (Boyd Gaming Corp.) had previously been cited for the same hazards on other sites in the state, which legally should have made Boyd a willful violator by definition.

The House Education Labor and Pensions Committee is holding a hearing on the report on Thursday. I hope the committee asks some tough questions about why these problems exist. The failures are so grave and systematic that I have to wonder whether corruption is afoot. Many of the worst offenders are powerful casino interests, a contingency known to donate lavishly to both Democrats and Republicans.

Fred Hiatt's Strange Argument

by publius

You'll be shocked to learn that Fred Hiatt opposes the public option.  You'll be further shocked that his argument doesn't make much sense.

Hiatt's main concern is cost control.  He thinks (maybe correctly) that Congress is punting on controlling costs.  Instead, Hiatt wants Congress (1) to impose taxes on employer-provided health care benefits; and (2) to cede their power over Medicare reimbursement rates, etc.  (For the record, the Baucus bill includes the latter -- along with many other promising cost-reducing measures).

Nothing crazy so far.  But Hiatt goes off the rails when he tries to blame these cost problems on the public option itself.  The logic, as I understand it, is that adopting the public option prevents Congress from taking "real" steps on cost controls.

I'm sorry, but this is just gratuitous swiping.  For one, the public option would lower costs, particularly if it were expanded.  Second, precisely zero of Hiatt's cost concerns would be addressed by removing the public option.  All of the problems he cites will exist even if the public option gets scrapped tomorrow. 

Now, maybe that's a reason to criticize Congress, but it's no reason to criticize the public option.  These are just analytically distinct points. Congress is dragging its feet on cost-cutting because cost-cutting is politically treacherous.  The public option has nothing to do with it. 

The real story here is that Hiatt just really dislikes liberals.  His argument, frankly, seems more motivated by animus than by policy concerns (note the swipe against unions).

Of course, DougJ at Balloon Juice says all this more succinctly than I could:

To summarize here’s shorter Hiatt/Samuelson: the public option may not fully address increases in health care costs, so we shouldn’t have one.

That pretty much sums it up.