Obsidian Wings

Happy Halloween!

One year old you are, as cute in a Yoda costume you will not look.

 
He was actually kind of smitten by the little bumble bee to his left (not that you can tell by his expression).  
And she with him. This is after he laid a wet one on her. Looks like she wants some more of that sugar. Working his Jedi charm. 

it's about that time....

by russell

All this talk of war and elites is making me weary to my very bones. To say nothing of wondering what the Congress is going to look like on Wednesday morning. 

Can you relate?

I spent most of this week rooting around in the contorted bowels of a weird old legacy classic ASP app trying to roll a simple tabular UI page.  ASP and COM and Javascript prototypes and hairy weird old ADO recordset craziness, and all too clever by half.  Seriously, can I haz Ruby?  Pls??

Are you feeling me?

I don't know what time it is where you are, but here in my little coastal enclave it's about half past 5.

I'm calling it.  It's Cold Duck Time.

Can I get an amen?

Hey y'all, let's hear whatever it is that says "It's the weekend!" at your house. 

You like a little George Jones?  Maybe some death metal?  Old school hip hop?  Bootleg board mix from that '72 Grateful Dead show in Berlin? 

It's all good.  Lemme hear your wild thing.  IMVHO it's time for an ObWi party.

Peace Through Strength?: The Problem with Fighting Your Way to the Negotiating Table

by Eric Martin

In March of 2009, when the Obama administration was conducting a strategic review to determine the way forward in Afghanistan, the primary tension was between engaging in a long term, multi-decade COIN campaign, or beginning the disengagement and reconciliation process - which would, itself, take several years to play out.

Ultimately, Obama opted for an amalgamation of the two: increasing troop levels again (on top of an earlier increase), giving General Stanley McChrystal free reign to implement COIN tactics, but also setting an aspirational timeline for the commencement of withdrawal, and emphasizing the fact that the mission was not open-ended.

One read of the Obama administration's approach was that the surge of troops, and uptick in operations, was meant to shift momentum, and pressure the Taliban to seek reconciliation on terms more favorable to the coalition and Afghan government - to tilt the battlefield in our favor so that the Taliban were not negotiating from a position of strength (or refusing to negotiate altogether).

Although preferable to engaging in an extended COIN campaign, there have been numerous problems with this hybrid approach (more on those below), and the early results are not encouraging.  Anand Gopal reports:



The US’ initial strategy was to talk and shoot—step up raids and targeted killings against insurgent commanders, while pressuring (or enticing) them to quit the fight. While officials spoke often about reconciliation, their terms—abandon the armed opposition and recognize the Afghan government and constitution—were those of surrender, the type a victor imposes on the vanquished. Talks with senior leaders (except when discussing a possible surrender) were strictly ruled out, and as recently as this summer the US was placing insurgent leaders known to have communicated with the Kabul government on terror black lists. Under the US plan, a more broad-based reconciliation process, involving the Taleban as a whole, as well as other sectors of society, would have to wait until the US military could recapture momentum on the battlefield.

But ten months into the new US approach to Afghanistan, shifting momentum has not come. Instead, 2010 is the bloodiest year on record for this war, with insurgent-initiated attacks through the first half of this year up by 60 per cent compared to last year, according to one tally; the Taleban have been able to replace commanders as quickly as they are killed; the reach of the insurgency and the area under their control is at its height; and showcase offensives meant to mark progress, like Marja, have failed.

One of the problems with this strategy is the fact that an increase in military activity (kinetic operations) can create more enemies in the long run through the inevitable killing of innocent civilians and non-combatants.  As Matt Waldman explains in a thoughtful report based on interviews with Taliban/insurgent leaders:

Interviews suggest that the longer the conflict has gone on, the greater the significance and prevalence of this motivation [retaliation against coalition forces for military aggression]. One southern commander explained how an attack by foreign forces incited him to fight:

I am a landowner and was working on the land. I was not a Talib. But some years ago American special forces came and entered my home without my permission at night and killed my two sons, my father, and two uncles without any reason. Another time they did the same thing in another village in my district. When I saw their acts and knew they came only to kill us, not to help, I started fighting against them. They forced me to fight them and now I will continue to fight them so long as they are in Afghanistan.14

Another commander argued that “if international forces keep bombing and killing civilians not only the Taliban but also all the rest of the nation will fight them.”

In addition to swelling the ranks of insurgents through imprecise military action, intensifying the conflict serves to breed mistrust between the various factions that will, eventually, be expected to cease fighting, disarm and broach a peace agreement.  Waldman again:

The honor of the Sore Winners

by Doctor Science

Tom Junod posted at Esquire about the Tea Party's sense of injury: The Sore Winners: Will America's Super Minority Sink Us All?

This is what you hear again and again from the Sore Winners, whether you hear it from the professional Sore Winners or the Sore Winners who happen to be your friends: the conviction that no amount of financial success, political domination, religious hegemony or cultural currency is sufficient to take away the sting of being looked down upon.

...

It is one of the biggest dividing lines between liberals and conservatives: sensitivity. Liberals are supposed to be the sensitive ones, but even the liberals who worked themselves into a froth over George W. Bush never really cared very much about what he thought of them.

Annie Laurie posted about it at Balloon Juice, and in the discussion there El Cid perceptively commented:

This sense of the more privileged continually being aggrieved by the less privileged and less powerful, all expressed indirectly in terms of honor and community values and work ethics and so forth—this is the Lost Cause grievance mythology writ large across the entire nation from the Southern Strategy to the TeaTard screamers.

Since the earliest times honor was inseparable from hierarchy and entitlement, defense of family blood and community needs. All these exigencies required the rejection of the lowly, the alien, and the shamed… Honor and Violence in the Old South, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, 1983

The reference to Wyatt-Brown reminded me of his Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South, which talks about how the South was -- compared to the Yankee North -- more of what Ruth Benedict called a "shame culture" than a "guilt culture". One feature of a "shame culture" is that you actually *care* about what other people think, because honor -- being a worthy person -- is a matter of reputation, of public opinion.

I wonder if the Sore Winners Junod is talking about are unable to relax into their success because they are, on some level, in a shame culture: where wealth and power really don't mean anything if you're looked down upon. I wonder if this may also explain some of what Charles Murray babbles about in the Washington Post. He says that the Tea Party resents "the elites" -- but curiously, "elite" doesn't seem to mean "the wealthy", or "the people who actually run the country". He claims, basically, that pointy-headed bicostal intellectuals are "the elite", or maybe the "New Elite" -- while resolutely looking away from the nature of the upper class, its hegemony and perpetuation.

I had been thinking that Tea Party (and libertarian, and conservative, and Republican) resentment was directed toward the uppity: people who have the effrontery to think they're special (intelligent, cultured, etc.) even though they're not rich. But I'm now wondering if it's also the resentment people embedded in a shame (or honor) culture feel toward the merely guilt-ridden, who are *outside* the rules of honor: how dare they go around *not caring*!

This is America

by Jacob Davies

The President of the United States of America:

Free Trade Fairy Dust Shockingly Fails to Manifest Liberal Democracy in China

The biggest challenge for the US and perhaps the rest of the world in the early 21st century is going to be dealing with the rise of China:

Administration officials speak of an alarming loss of trust and confidence between China and the United States over the past two years, forcing them to scale back hopes of working with the Chinese on major challenges like climate change, nuclear nonproliferation and a new global economic order.

The latest source of tension is over reports that China is withholding shipments of rare-earth minerals, which the United States uses to make advanced equipment like guided missiles. Administration officials, clearly worried, said they did not know whether Beijing’s motivation was strategic or economic.

"This administration came in with one dominant idea: make China a global partner in facing global challenges," said David Shambaugh, director of the China policy program at George Washington University. "China failed to step up and play that role. Now, they realize they’re dealing with an increasingly narrow-minded, self-interested, truculent, hyper-nationalist, and powerful country."

Now Shambaugh says "narrow-minded, self-interested, truculent and hyper-nationalist" as if these are unusual characteristics of nations. Actually, of course, those are pretty close to universal characteristics of nations, and what is unusual is the peaceful trade and coexistence that has been in effect between Western European nations, the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Australia for the past 60 years, which is the result of a complex mutual security arrangement that took a lot of work to build and costs a lot to maintain. No such arrangement exists with China and as such no expectation of friendliness or anything other than self-interested nationalism should have been made.

Yet here we are now, in a world where the US just engaged in 20 years of technology transfer and wholesale movement of industrial capital to China in the vague hope that democracy and friendliness would follow, long after the value of China as a strategic counterweight to Russia was exhausted, and long after expectations of liberalization should have been dashed. Technologies have been transferred to China that would have been - in many cases were - protected by intense secrecy during the Cold War. More mundanely, by moving a lot of industrial production to China we have provided funding and training for an expansion of industrial output that would have been difficult to achieve alone.

The cart has been put before the horse; without liberalization, it is very much not in the interests of the US or the rest of the world to engage in technology & capital transfers to China. The Bush administration turned a blind eye to it because it suited their commercial sponsors, and the same is true to a lesser extent with the Clinton & Obama administrations. But with things like the rare earth embargo, it's becoming harder to ignore that China is both powerful and likely to act in its own interest, and that the US has failed to pay attention to the ways in which it has augmented that power.

talkin john henry blues

by russell

Not the baseball / megabucks John Henry, whose boat is always tied up at Long Wharf in Boston.  The steel-driving-man John Henry.  Beat the steam drill, once, and then he died.  Henry's story is the ultimate American myth of the laborer vs the machine.

Or, if you like, the laborer vs the inexorably more productive capital asset.

We're Number One! (of Many)

by Eric Martin

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Iran has been providing cash to certain high ranking Karzai administration officials.  This should be a rather unsurprising revelation and, if anything, a welcomed one: Afghanistan and Iran share a common border, and Iran has legitimate interests in Afghanistan (considering Iran's proximity, it would be hard to argue that our interests somehow dwarf theirs, relatively speaking).  In fact, the Taliban were/are quite hostile to Iran and the indigenous Shiite minority - so much so that Iran has been, at times, significantly cooperative with US efforts in Afghanistan.

In the present instance, Iran stands accused of funneling money to the Karzai government.  Not exactly working at cross purposes considering our ongoing support for Karzai.  Nevertheless, the State Department released a statement that shows such a stark lack of self-awareness that it borders on comedy:

The U.S. said Iran shouldn’t interfere with Afghanistan’s internal affairs following a report that an Iranian official gave an aide of President Hamid Karzai a bag filled with packets of euro bills.

“We understand that Iran and Afghanistan are neighbors and will have a relationship,” Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement “But Iran should not interfere with the internal affairs of the Afghan government.” [emphasis added]

No, apparently, only the US should "interfere with the internal affairs of the Afghan government."  By, say, putting certain Afghan officials on the CIA payroll.  But that's not interference, that's liberation.

At least Crowley acknowledged their status as neighbors, and that this might necessitate "a relationship."  On the other hand, America is, apparently, neighbors of the world, and its relationships are always, well, special.  Exceptional if you will.

For what it's worth, Hamid Karzai seems to grasp the contours of the situation, without the American-centric lenses:

At a news conference with the president of Tajikistan, Karzai told reporters that he had ordered Daudzai to receive the money, but that Iran was just one of several nations that poured money into Afghan coffers.

"This is a relationship between neighbors and it will go on and we will continue to ask for cash help from Iran," Karzai said.

Karzai said the money was used to "help the presidential office" and said they have been "transparent" payments that he had discussed with then-President George W. Bush.

"It is not hidden," Karzai said. "We are grateful for the Iranians' help in this regard. The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices." [emphasis added]

The same, but different.

Don't Fear The Reaper

by Gary Farber

We must talk about the the War Logs of Wikileaks.

The amount of data is staggering.  Key stories abound. 

Let us start with death.

The Guardian's breakdowns include a breakdown of lethal casualties of the Iraq war.  (The New York Times approach is here; we'll get to that.)

America caused this.  It's a map of every Iraqi war-related death documented by the Coalition.

Hooray for freedom.

Uh, Oh, You May Be Wearing Muslim Garb!

by Gary Farber

What it looks like:  I, for one, won't soon forget King Abudullah's Muslim garb:

 

But, seriously, view the many rest.  Former ObWier Lindsay Beyerstein wrote on Facebook:

The phrase "Muslim garb" drives me crazy. A) It's meaningless. B) It's like the speaker's trying to recast Muslims as D&D characters.

Also, a graphic example of why the serial, Oxford, comma is typically a necessity.

Again, stolen from the Weasel King.  Via Vanessa Schnatmeier on Facebook.

Weekend open thread, everyone!  Bring up your news, your pet peeves, your tales of joy, or woe, personal, or simply of interest!  It's your thread, and feed it, and watch it grow!