Still a week later and louder echo chamber, I still haven't come to a firm thought on Af/Pak. But I figured I'd try to lay things out publically as best I understood them, in the hope someone might correct my misunderstandings. Bear with the oversimplifications, I'm brain dumping impressions. This post is just trying to set the stage for all the relevant actors. I anticipate part 2 to be 2000-2008, and part 3 to be 2009 and "where do we go from here?".
So, back in the 80s, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. We didn't like that, so we gave the mujaheddin missiles, weapons, and money. The Pakistanis like this idea, insist on making the ISI the middleman, steal quite a bit of the money, tech, and weaponry being channeled through their country, and cultivate serious back-channels with everyone. Pakistan figures Afghanistan is a great chance to (a) endear itself to the US, as Soviet patronage was lacking, and in marked contrast to Indian "third way neutrality", (b) cultivate a power vacuum as a strategic buffer zone, hedging against countries like Iran, and (c) train fighters for fighters against the Indians. Then the Soviets beat feet, we decided they were on to something, and followed form. As far as I know, the Afghani didn't expect us to help pick up the pieces (or mines), and we left on fairly unhostile terms with those whom we had been interacting. Nevertheless, Afghanistan had nothing that resembled a strong central government, even if it was recognized internationally. It also has nothing that resembles infrastructure, an education system, or a potential for an economy. Subsistence life and vast tracts of open space were about all the country had to offer.
Around 1993, Mullah Omar figures this is an awesome time to unleash the Prophet upon the country, solicits a bunch of extremely unhappy young men, tells them women suck, technology is worse, and unkempt facial hair is the new black. Afghanistan envies the Dark Ages for its wise learnings, religious toleration, and enlightened attitudes towards things like exposed ankles. Around the same time the Sopranos reaches mainstream American acclaim, the residents of Kabul gather in stadiums to watch public disfigurement and execution doxied up as sharia justice. Pakistan is one of only three countries to grant diplomatic recognition to the Taliban, and deepens it's ties. Kashmir ignites, and nuclear war suddenly seems possible.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden wanders adrift after the Soviets left Afghanistan. He spends a few years wandering around, but as he grows both more radical and more vocal about continued US presence in Saudi Arabia post-Gulf War, he's blacklisted in the kingdom, and is forced to relocate to Sudan (1992). America becomes his fixation, the chief obstacle in reestablishing a pan-Islamic caliphate. By 1993, he's reorganized sufficiently to provide training to Somali militias in their use of rocket-propelled grenades and the development of alterations to the RPGs that drastically altered the tactics used by Aidid's militias. 18 Rangers and Delta operators died. Bin Laden cites Somalia as his proof that America was a paper tiger. Bombings in Khobar Towers, Kenya, Nairobi, and the USS Cole follow in the years after. Al Qaeda relocates to Afghanistan after diplomatic pressure on Khartoum, where it strikes up a symbiotic, if nervous relationship with the Taliban. The Taliban provides cover, territory, and men, and AQ provides training and enhanced prestige.
The United States begin to cultivate a counterterrorism strategy and capability. As recently as 1980, American counterterrorist deficiencies had come to a public, tragic, and embarrassing head at Desert One. By the mid-1990s, Clinton became concerned enough to create a terrorism czar to oversee interagency intelligence and coordination. Even so, the post was more of an analyst/manger position, and US policy never coalesced. It took the above bombings to convince the State Department to harden buildings overseas, and 9/11 was enabled by pilots being trained to cooperate and land the plane ASAP. Retaliation for the bombings ended up putting eggs on the face of the Clinton administration, as the "chemical weapons" plant in Sudan proved to be a factory for anti-malarials, and using million dollar Tomahawks to blow away some empty canvas tents. We say "proportional retaliation", bin Laden says "further proof the US lacks guts, plus, they missed me, so they're incompetent too".
Lastly, to bring the millennium to a close, the US has engaged in a series of failed/failing nation building exercises and now thoroughly loves air power as the panacea to cure all national security ills (also, commandos are sexy). Technology is ascendant in prognosticating the future battlespace. Air power won in 1991, and it "won" in 1999 in Kosovo (never mind the KLA or a potential invasion). Somalia was a mistake in the first place, and Rwanda not worth the bones of even one Pomeranian grenadier. But "never again" was Clinton's vow, and damned if Bush wasn't going to repudiate everything Clinton. As far as the campaigns were concerned: nation building was out, a hyper-streamlined military was in, terrorism unimportant, and national security strategy mirrored New Orleans at Mardi Gras: laissez les bon temps roulez.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Thoughts on Af/Pak
As glad I am to see serious ink spilt on American purpose in Af/Pak, I'm both a little torn on my own position and a little surprised at the ambivalence expressed. Had you asked me even two months ago to characterize opinion on the US policy towards Afghanistan, I would have said both the commentariat and the vox populi were glad and supportive that attention, priorities, and resources had been shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan. For the right, it meant they didn't have to talk about Iraq any more and could start hopping on pop over health care. For the left, it was a vindication that we were finally paying attention to the "right war". So, I've been rather confused where all this sudden ambivalence and hesitation has come from.
To be sure, the Administration hasn't done itself any favors by being so mute in describing its goals. They let the news stories guide the discussion, so I suppose I shouldn't be so shocked when the narrative of any length out of Af/Pak have been drone strikes kill people good, and Joes are dying. Without any effort, the antiwar effort has their message constructed for them, the moderates are able to grasp at that godawful placebo of a straw that is the strategic air power fallacy, and the right can say "we gotta make those sacrifices worth it" (paraphrase). Leave it to people to connect the dots on their own and don't be surprised when they're doodling all over the map because you couldn't tell them there was a dragon underneath all that.
I'm still digesting the cacophony, but my general thoughts are: (1) we broke it, so we bought it; (2) drone strikes alone are an awful idea; (2.5) supporting drone strikes alone is either an inadequate read of history or just simple grasping at straws (see fallacies 3 and 7); (3) counterterrorism alone as a policy will only breed new terrorists, even if they are based in Pakistan instead of Afghanistan, and even as a managed chronic illness, that just begs for another black swan; (4) screw Al Qaeda, they're a legitimate threat, but not our "mortal enemy" (even we are theirs); (5) we need to massively increase our funding of development assistance; (5.5) and they need to be something more intelligent than: "here's a soccer ball, vote American"; (6) we can't support a corrupt government and hope to win; and (7) when you have the Taliban spraying acid in girl's faces just for trying to go to school, saying "reduce our troop footprint, but throw more money at education and agriculture" is going to us look ineffectual when we can't deliver (or complicitly corrupt), impotent when we can't defend it or the aid workers, feckless as a general rule and will only get Afghans killed (Kristoff and the NGOs, I'm looking at you).
To be sure, the Administration hasn't done itself any favors by being so mute in describing its goals. They let the news stories guide the discussion, so I suppose I shouldn't be so shocked when the narrative of any length out of Af/Pak have been drone strikes kill people good, and Joes are dying. Without any effort, the antiwar effort has their message constructed for them, the moderates are able to grasp at that godawful placebo of a straw that is the strategic air power fallacy, and the right can say "we gotta make those sacrifices worth it" (paraphrase). Leave it to people to connect the dots on their own and don't be surprised when they're doodling all over the map because you couldn't tell them there was a dragon underneath all that.
I'm still digesting the cacophony, but my general thoughts are: (1) we broke it, so we bought it; (2) drone strikes alone are an awful idea; (2.5) supporting drone strikes alone is either an inadequate read of history or just simple grasping at straws (see fallacies 3 and 7); (3) counterterrorism alone as a policy will only breed new terrorists, even if they are based in Pakistan instead of Afghanistan, and even as a managed chronic illness, that just begs for another black swan; (4) screw Al Qaeda, they're a legitimate threat, but not our "mortal enemy" (even we are theirs); (5) we need to massively increase our funding of development assistance; (5.5) and they need to be something more intelligent than: "here's a soccer ball, vote American"; (6) we can't support a corrupt government and hope to win; and (7) when you have the Taliban spraying acid in girl's faces just for trying to go to school, saying "reduce our troop footprint, but throw more money at education and agriculture" is going to us look ineffectual when we can't deliver (or complicitly corrupt), impotent when we can't defend it or the aid workers, feckless as a general rule and will only get Afghans killed (Kristoff and the NGOs, I'm looking at you).
Monday, August 24, 2009
This is my soap box. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The increasing calls for significant reevaluation of America's Af/Pak policy has revealed some odd actors. The trope between "wars of necessity" and "wars of choice" has shown up recently in a number of critiques of American involvement in Afghanistan, arguing that American involvement is now a function of inertia rather than wise policy. Oddly, the most vocal voices of such critiques seem to be the same people who were saying a few years back that we should be in Afghanistan instead of Iraq, citing (a) that was where the terrorists were actually based that attacked us, and (b) "we broke it, we bought it".
Yet now, as Iraq appears to be winding down (or, at least, our attention directed elsewhere), and our gaze turns to Afghanistan, these critics aren't changing their argument, even as they get what they asked for. Specific policy critiques of prior Afghanistan policy often cited Afghanistan's far larger land mass, higher overall population, and lower population density all as reasons why the troops we had in Iraq were needed in Afghanistan. In the interim between then (say, 2004 or 2007) and now, Afghanistan didn't change much, as near as I can tell. It's only been in the last 9 months or so, that Afghanistan has gotten appreciably more dangerous. Furthermore, all indicators are that the shifts in strategy, be it in the Pentagon, the White House, or by the theater commander, are all direct reactions to a war that has ground on for years without resolution. The changes in force allocations, political capitol, and strategy are all in line with what a lot of critics of Bush-era policy sought. Yet they remain critics.
Now, the easy, pithy reply is to say that their role is that of critic first, scion of national policy second. The left finds its comfort zone in opposition, a desirable quality when in genuine opposition, less desirable when your party is in power. Critical theory, political marginalization, and I suspect a decent dose of contrarianism combine to make criticism feel more natural than support or involvement, and criticism is best done outside the government, from think-tanks, academia, and public organization. Of course, the left is far from along in having a long roster of prominent individuals more comfortable outside looking in, but I gig the left explicitly here because it is my general impression that the criticism and impatience towards Obama's policies is most coming from the left, from the very people whose commentary years ago is being realized.
Which brings up the question of dissent. Dissent is of unquestionable utility, and without dissent, changes like Petraeus or the Surge would not have been possible. Groups like MoveOn.org and Code Pink, have never been less than absolutely upfront about their opposition to any and all war, regardless of reason. Regardless of your agreement with their position, their opposition to Afghanistan creates no cognitive dissonance. But for the rest of the party, and for the moderates who clamored for a refocus on Afghanistan during the dark years on grounds anywhere from moral imperatives, strategic necessity or simple retributive justice, such opposition is troubling. It suggests either that these critics still haven't adjusted to being power and are still more comfortable on their soap box than in active support, or that these critics are closeted Code Pink, which is fairly disingenuous, and a hindrance to further debate on the merits of policy if one can't be sure who they represent.
And, at this stage, full-throated debate is needed. Some things are starting to change, but demanding a coherent articulation of the Administration's goals and objectives is eminently reasonable. AM's notation that career public servants are asking the same question as politicians should rightly serve as a warning bell that even the people charged with implementing the policy aren't sure how or why they are performing their jobs. Acting the loyal opposition because your habit is first to criticize, then solve, undercuts whatever effort goes forth because the criticism won't stop once the ship changes direction. But acting the opposition because you sense a void could be filled with your questions gives voice to the questions others didn't know they wanted to ask, and provides direction, guidance, and metrics to progress. Know your motives.
Yet now, as Iraq appears to be winding down (or, at least, our attention directed elsewhere), and our gaze turns to Afghanistan, these critics aren't changing their argument, even as they get what they asked for. Specific policy critiques of prior Afghanistan policy often cited Afghanistan's far larger land mass, higher overall population, and lower population density all as reasons why the troops we had in Iraq were needed in Afghanistan. In the interim between then (say, 2004 or 2007) and now, Afghanistan didn't change much, as near as I can tell. It's only been in the last 9 months or so, that Afghanistan has gotten appreciably more dangerous. Furthermore, all indicators are that the shifts in strategy, be it in the Pentagon, the White House, or by the theater commander, are all direct reactions to a war that has ground on for years without resolution. The changes in force allocations, political capitol, and strategy are all in line with what a lot of critics of Bush-era policy sought. Yet they remain critics.
Now, the easy, pithy reply is to say that their role is that of critic first, scion of national policy second. The left finds its comfort zone in opposition, a desirable quality when in genuine opposition, less desirable when your party is in power. Critical theory, political marginalization, and I suspect a decent dose of contrarianism combine to make criticism feel more natural than support or involvement, and criticism is best done outside the government, from think-tanks, academia, and public organization. Of course, the left is far from along in having a long roster of prominent individuals more comfortable outside looking in, but I gig the left explicitly here because it is my general impression that the criticism and impatience towards Obama's policies is most coming from the left, from the very people whose commentary years ago is being realized.
Which brings up the question of dissent. Dissent is of unquestionable utility, and without dissent, changes like Petraeus or the Surge would not have been possible. Groups like MoveOn.org and Code Pink, have never been less than absolutely upfront about their opposition to any and all war, regardless of reason. Regardless of your agreement with their position, their opposition to Afghanistan creates no cognitive dissonance. But for the rest of the party, and for the moderates who clamored for a refocus on Afghanistan during the dark years on grounds anywhere from moral imperatives, strategic necessity or simple retributive justice, such opposition is troubling. It suggests either that these critics still haven't adjusted to being power and are still more comfortable on their soap box than in active support, or that these critics are closeted Code Pink, which is fairly disingenuous, and a hindrance to further debate on the merits of policy if one can't be sure who they represent.
And, at this stage, full-throated debate is needed. Some things are starting to change, but demanding a coherent articulation of the Administration's goals and objectives is eminently reasonable. AM's notation that career public servants are asking the same question as politicians should rightly serve as a warning bell that even the people charged with implementing the policy aren't sure how or why they are performing their jobs. Acting the loyal opposition because your habit is first to criticize, then solve, undercuts whatever effort goes forth because the criticism won't stop once the ship changes direction. But acting the opposition because you sense a void could be filled with your questions gives voice to the questions others didn't know they wanted to ask, and provides direction, guidance, and metrics to progress. Know your motives.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Resist the consilience
One of my favorite blogs this past year, Abu Muqawama, has recently started a series of guest posts debating the question "what are the strategic goals of the United States in Afghanistan"? An eminently worthy topic, and one that I agree has gotten short shrift. Yet this has been a blog that has conscientiously limited itself to tactical and operational questions, and has started to receive fire for allegedly dodging bigger issues. In answering tactical and opertational questions, he has done so sufficiently well to garner both employment, public citation, and professional consultation. So, can he limit himself to answering the question of how counterinsurgency can (should?) be waged without answering the question of whether it should. Specifically, without answering whether we should be in Iraq or Afghanistan while saying how we should be fighting?
Similarly, a movie I saw recently, The Hurt Locker, has received loving critical acclaim (deservedly so), yet it's most commonly cited fault is not with it's story telling, it's narration, characters, direction, or editing. It isn't poor plot or shabby writing. It is that it doesn't say anything "larger" about the war in Iraq. It isn't a movie about Iraq, played out by representative characters operating in a hostile, alientating environment, subject to forces outside their control. It isn't a metaphor for the war, or a microcosm thereof. It is a movie about characters, people at their elemental. To be fair, these criticisms haven't been been particularly prolific or vehement, so my issue is more with the need to say anything at all than with it's volume.
In both cases, contributions could be made by both to the greater dialogue, to add their voices to the tintinabulation of the vox populi. But by constraining their scope, they maintain both a purity and a humility not found in grander works. I have no idea what their motivations were for such restraint, but in an era where everyone feels qualified to offer opinions on almost any subject by merit of having an opinion, I find it refreshing. And when they do finally make comments or allusions, they are all the more salient for their silence.
Similarly, a movie I saw recently, The Hurt Locker, has received loving critical acclaim (deservedly so), yet it's most commonly cited fault is not with it's story telling, it's narration, characters, direction, or editing. It isn't poor plot or shabby writing. It is that it doesn't say anything "larger" about the war in Iraq. It isn't a movie about Iraq, played out by representative characters operating in a hostile, alientating environment, subject to forces outside their control. It isn't a metaphor for the war, or a microcosm thereof. It is a movie about characters, people at their elemental. To be fair, these criticisms haven't been been particularly prolific or vehement, so my issue is more with the need to say anything at all than with it's volume.
In both cases, contributions could be made by both to the greater dialogue, to add their voices to the tintinabulation of the vox populi. But by constraining their scope, they maintain both a purity and a humility not found in grander works. I have no idea what their motivations were for such restraint, but in an era where everyone feels qualified to offer opinions on almost any subject by merit of having an opinion, I find it refreshing. And when they do finally make comments or allusions, they are all the more salient for their silence.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Chomsky as Museum Designer
The Smithsonian American History Museum certainly provokes thought. Not quite so much about American history as about how to design and organize a musuem, and what constitutes history. I had never seen American History before, having managed to hit almost everything else around the mall but that and Native American (which, appropos, I've been universally advised to avoid because it is horribly designed and basically sucks). I'm still not wholly certain what it was I had expected, but I definitely left feeling as though I'd just walked through a production of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, as told by the Federal Government and Ye Old Powers That Be.
I only had the chance to see three exhibits, and the method of presentation was radically different for each. Americans at War was the most traditional, in that it had exhibits about the various wars, campaign histories, etc., but still, almost all testimonials (that I noticed at least) were told by a minority or a woman. Science in American Life, however, managed to convey the impression that only minorities had ever engaged in scientific exploration, and most of what we've created will either kill us or ruin all life. Lastly, the galleria for the American Flag flying over Fort Sumpter was a full display devoted to a single artifact, yet uses it as a microcosm for discussing the Pledge, the iterations of the flag, and the lives of the designers and sewers; in short, a conversation piece.
Now, to put this upfront, my disagreement isn't with the inclusion of stories so often ignored in the past. I've been to my fair share of museums stressing the hegemonic narrative. China was riddled with nothing but, and half the fun of Chinese museums was the often absurd lengths the museums would go to hide or whitewash facts known to anyone who has even just purused modern Chinese history. And more than a few of the inventors/inventions in Science in America I'd never heard of and found fascinating. Instead, my issue has more to do with the exclusion of certain things. How is an exhibit about American inventions complete without Edison (although I'd love to see the same exhibit talk about Tesla), or Ford, or Eli Whitney (even if his cotton gin did reinforce slavery in the South, that too is a big deal)?
So as I said, Americans at War was the most traditional, at least in terms of how it was organized and presented. There were maps and interactive little displays, object centerpieces and things like sections of the Berlin Wall; all the standard relics one might expect in a museum. But what got me thinking was that through all these times, the majority of the participants, and the majority of the viewers were not minorities (yeah... that's not tautological). Stories like the Buffalo Soldiers deserve to be told, and their model for later racial integration worth highlighting at length. But I'd imagine a little Timmy from the Bronx is more likely to be going to see what his grandfather was doing in Normandy than what his grandfather's neighbor from Harlem was doing.
And that's where my confusion begins to set in. If all Timmy hears about is his grandfather, how has his worldview expanded? What has he learned or been exposed to that's helped him grow? Envisioning a more nuanced perspective for Timmy upon hearing about black soldiers storming the beaches too isn't very hard to do. But by emphasizing the racial aspect of these black soldiers, Timmy starts moving away from the story of his grandfather. So an exhibit that speaks to the broad strokes of history, while using stories more likely to go unheard by the wider audience makes some sense. It raises awareness, increases exposure, and adds shading to old pictures. But is the mission of a museum to transmit the narrative, or just to hold the relics of a bygone era?
Which brings us to The Flag. It struck me as rather odd to have an entire exhibit devouted to a single artifact, at least one that didn't rock the foundations of the world. Serving as inspiration for the National Anthem is certainly pretty cool, but we're not too likely to hear about the model for the Mona Lisa when what's interesting is the painting itself. Even so, the exhibit used the flag as a conversation starter, a chance to discuss the people involved in it's crafting, design, and preservation. It turned an artifact into a mind web, using what would normally be a single artifact with a solitary plaque explaining it's history as an opportunity contextualize an era and a symbol. Still, that's not a model you can use that often. I mean, the armor worn by King Richard the Lionhearted might be pretty kickass, but what about the coins used by Thomas Jefferson to buy the Louisiana Purchase? Or was it a check? 'Cause I can't imagine too many people standing around to look at a check, but you might get some people in with a chest 'o loot.
Ultimately, I'm still unresolved on a methodology for organizing the museum. The old model of museums (and history) that told only the stories of the powerful and the majority seems to becoming an exhibit over in Natural History, next to the dodos. But the new model seems similarly distorted, too. Even if Edison was still a hack who stole his ideas from Tesla, omitting one or the other leaves the story incomplete, and Ford deserves his place in any pantheon. A model that just houses relics isn't terribly appealing ("oh yay... yet another suit of armor... shiny"), but not everything is worthy of being a conversation piece. I like the ecclectism in the designs (and I don't think that was their intent), but I don't like swapping one slanted narrative for another. At least I knew how to parse the old one, and it made for some awesome parody fodder.
I only had the chance to see three exhibits, and the method of presentation was radically different for each. Americans at War was the most traditional, in that it had exhibits about the various wars, campaign histories, etc., but still, almost all testimonials (that I noticed at least) were told by a minority or a woman. Science in American Life, however, managed to convey the impression that only minorities had ever engaged in scientific exploration, and most of what we've created will either kill us or ruin all life. Lastly, the galleria for the American Flag flying over Fort Sumpter was a full display devoted to a single artifact, yet uses it as a microcosm for discussing the Pledge, the iterations of the flag, and the lives of the designers and sewers; in short, a conversation piece.
Now, to put this upfront, my disagreement isn't with the inclusion of stories so often ignored in the past. I've been to my fair share of museums stressing the hegemonic narrative. China was riddled with nothing but, and half the fun of Chinese museums was the often absurd lengths the museums would go to hide or whitewash facts known to anyone who has even just purused modern Chinese history. And more than a few of the inventors/inventions in Science in America I'd never heard of and found fascinating. Instead, my issue has more to do with the exclusion of certain things. How is an exhibit about American inventions complete without Edison (although I'd love to see the same exhibit talk about Tesla), or Ford, or Eli Whitney (even if his cotton gin did reinforce slavery in the South, that too is a big deal)?
So as I said, Americans at War was the most traditional, at least in terms of how it was organized and presented. There were maps and interactive little displays, object centerpieces and things like sections of the Berlin Wall; all the standard relics one might expect in a museum. But what got me thinking was that through all these times, the majority of the participants, and the majority of the viewers were not minorities (yeah... that's not tautological). Stories like the Buffalo Soldiers deserve to be told, and their model for later racial integration worth highlighting at length. But I'd imagine a little Timmy from the Bronx is more likely to be going to see what his grandfather was doing in Normandy than what his grandfather's neighbor from Harlem was doing.
And that's where my confusion begins to set in. If all Timmy hears about is his grandfather, how has his worldview expanded? What has he learned or been exposed to that's helped him grow? Envisioning a more nuanced perspective for Timmy upon hearing about black soldiers storming the beaches too isn't very hard to do. But by emphasizing the racial aspect of these black soldiers, Timmy starts moving away from the story of his grandfather. So an exhibit that speaks to the broad strokes of history, while using stories more likely to go unheard by the wider audience makes some sense. It raises awareness, increases exposure, and adds shading to old pictures. But is the mission of a museum to transmit the narrative, or just to hold the relics of a bygone era?
Which brings us to The Flag. It struck me as rather odd to have an entire exhibit devouted to a single artifact, at least one that didn't rock the foundations of the world. Serving as inspiration for the National Anthem is certainly pretty cool, but we're not too likely to hear about the model for the Mona Lisa when what's interesting is the painting itself. Even so, the exhibit used the flag as a conversation starter, a chance to discuss the people involved in it's crafting, design, and preservation. It turned an artifact into a mind web, using what would normally be a single artifact with a solitary plaque explaining it's history as an opportunity contextualize an era and a symbol. Still, that's not a model you can use that often. I mean, the armor worn by King Richard the Lionhearted might be pretty kickass, but what about the coins used by Thomas Jefferson to buy the Louisiana Purchase? Or was it a check? 'Cause I can't imagine too many people standing around to look at a check, but you might get some people in with a chest 'o loot.
Ultimately, I'm still unresolved on a methodology for organizing the museum. The old model of museums (and history) that told only the stories of the powerful and the majority seems to becoming an exhibit over in Natural History, next to the dodos. But the new model seems similarly distorted, too. Even if Edison was still a hack who stole his ideas from Tesla, omitting one or the other leaves the story incomplete, and Ford deserves his place in any pantheon. A model that just houses relics isn't terribly appealing ("oh yay... yet another suit of armor... shiny"), but not everything is worthy of being a conversation piece. I like the ecclectism in the designs (and I don't think that was their intent), but I don't like swapping one slanted narrative for another. At least I knew how to parse the old one, and it made for some awesome parody fodder.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Iraq defines our generation?
So, there has been a fascinating series of articles on Tom Rick's FP blog about the relative merits of the service academies versus other commissioning sources. The brouhaha all started with an op-ed he wrote for the WaPo about closing the academies: they were too cost-inefficient, they produced officers with liabilities not seen in other commissioning sources like excessive drinking, social awkwardness, and pronouced cycnicism of the Army, and their education is given by faculty and instructors who lacked the credentialing found in any other similar four-year institution. There have been some awesome debates on all points, ranging from the relative merits of having a company commander who served in Iraq relating his experiences to the literature of the known world yet who lacks a graduate degree to points arguing that the USMA (US Military Academy, West Point) produces an immersion environment incomparable at any other institution. I have my own thoughts on these that I hope to weigh in on at some point, but one particular thought keeps leaping out at me that I felt I could comment on without more extensive reflection.
Notably, it has been frequently mentioned through the posts, comments, and posted emails that Iraq defines our generation. One comment gave the example of GEN Petraus speaking at Harvard the day before he testified to Congress, and the auditorium overflowing because "Students are genuinely interested in the military here, perhaps because it's beginning to define an entire generation." I make no claims to a broader understanding of my generations zietgiest than my own experiences, but I still cannot fathom how this comment makes sense. I don't understand how people who do not live, work, or know hardly anyone from the region can claim that this issue "defines a generation".
I felt this same way at CU, every time yet another faux protest would start or the quad would get covered with little flags. Now, to be sure, there were more than a few students at CU who were Arab, or had traveled extensively through the Middle East, who had somehow internalized this dilemma from the far side of the world. Maybe they were drawn in simply because of who they were, their heritage left them no choice. Maybe they were drawn in because they felt the pull, and so they traveled and worked and educated themselves. But I felt such people were in a definite minority, among the general population, among their classmates, and among their activist peers. Too much of how Iraq "defined our generation" ended up looking like cheap rebellion and generalized anger at the powers-that-be.
Broader still, such activists were, and are, among the minority of the American population. Activists at CU were those loud angry people who kept stepping in people's way as they tried to get to class. Now I have my own issues with the blase disinterest of my classmates, but my point is that regardless of the issue, most students didn't care about Iraq, or Afghanistan, or people dying really anywhere. They wanted their job, and their car, and their party on Saturday to go well. Iraq may have happened concurrently with all that, and people might have been talking really loudly at the same time, but that hardly "defines" a generation.
So, I just end up really confused when I hear talk about how Iraq is the quintessential issue for my generation. Most people I know don't follow it, don't care about what happens, and probably couldn't find Iraq on a map. Those that do know, that do follow current events, have more often than not chosen other courses for their lives. Those who chose foreign policy will no doubt have to deal with Iraq in some professional and intercultural capacity, but doing international development in Africa is not exactly in the same arena, or working as a FSO in Europe approving visas. Maybe I have a profound misunderstanding of what that statement meant. (I more or less have the same idea this is how things went during Vietnam, but then there was at least a draft, far more people knew people serving, there were more uniforms in Vietnam, and it got caught up in the public discourse over nuclear weapons, so that's a lot more understandable. I still think it's mostly counter-culture for the sake of sticking it to the pigs, but I can understand that a bit more.)
Please, someone give me some perspective on how Iraq defines our generation, 'cause to me right now it mostly just sounds like some angsty 20-something-year-olds found a newspaper, got riled up, and then did nothing substantive to enhance, solve, or otherwise impact what was going on while their peers didn't even bother finding the paper.
Notably, it has been frequently mentioned through the posts, comments, and posted emails that Iraq defines our generation. One comment gave the example of GEN Petraus speaking at Harvard the day before he testified to Congress, and the auditorium overflowing because "Students are genuinely interested in the military here, perhaps because it's beginning to define an entire generation." I make no claims to a broader understanding of my generations zietgiest than my own experiences, but I still cannot fathom how this comment makes sense. I don't understand how people who do not live, work, or know hardly anyone from the region can claim that this issue "defines a generation".
I felt this same way at CU, every time yet another faux protest would start or the quad would get covered with little flags. Now, to be sure, there were more than a few students at CU who were Arab, or had traveled extensively through the Middle East, who had somehow internalized this dilemma from the far side of the world. Maybe they were drawn in simply because of who they were, their heritage left them no choice. Maybe they were drawn in because they felt the pull, and so they traveled and worked and educated themselves. But I felt such people were in a definite minority, among the general population, among their classmates, and among their activist peers. Too much of how Iraq "defined our generation" ended up looking like cheap rebellion and generalized anger at the powers-that-be.
Broader still, such activists were, and are, among the minority of the American population. Activists at CU were those loud angry people who kept stepping in people's way as they tried to get to class. Now I have my own issues with the blase disinterest of my classmates, but my point is that regardless of the issue, most students didn't care about Iraq, or Afghanistan, or people dying really anywhere. They wanted their job, and their car, and their party on Saturday to go well. Iraq may have happened concurrently with all that, and people might have been talking really loudly at the same time, but that hardly "defines" a generation.
So, I just end up really confused when I hear talk about how Iraq is the quintessential issue for my generation. Most people I know don't follow it, don't care about what happens, and probably couldn't find Iraq on a map. Those that do know, that do follow current events, have more often than not chosen other courses for their lives. Those who chose foreign policy will no doubt have to deal with Iraq in some professional and intercultural capacity, but doing international development in Africa is not exactly in the same arena, or working as a FSO in Europe approving visas. Maybe I have a profound misunderstanding of what that statement meant. (I more or less have the same idea this is how things went during Vietnam, but then there was at least a draft, far more people knew people serving, there were more uniforms in Vietnam, and it got caught up in the public discourse over nuclear weapons, so that's a lot more understandable. I still think it's mostly counter-culture for the sake of sticking it to the pigs, but I can understand that a bit more.)
Please, someone give me some perspective on how Iraq defines our generation, 'cause to me right now it mostly just sounds like some angsty 20-something-year-olds found a newspaper, got riled up, and then did nothing substantive to enhance, solve, or otherwise impact what was going on while their peers didn't even bother finding the paper.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Inhale, hold, exhale
So, I've smoked my first (and second, and third) cigarette. I've toyed with the idea for quite some time now, and finally got hammered enough to stop arguing inside my head. And in all honesty, eh. Not really sure where the histrionics come from, on either side of it.
I didn't throw up, or cough any more uncontrollably than my allergies to North Carolina already make me cough. I got some kind buzz off it, but since I was already pretty thrashed, that could also be ascribed to the double shot of tequila I had taken right before I tried the cigarette.
But what did stick out, and what had made me think of taking it up in the first place, was the social aspects of it. Originally my plan had been to just have one cigarette, to try it. But then we're out at the bar, and my friend, the one who had offered me my first cigarette, asks to bum a cig from this group of girls sitting at the table. Asking for the cig was our way in, and got us talking to them, so when she offered some to the rest of us, it was an easy decision to use that as an excuse to talk to her.
For me, the appeal of smoking has never been it looks cool, or all the cool people do it. It's been first my incessant need to do something with my hands and/or my mouth, which is why all my pens get chewed on, I always have gum on me somewhere, and I do stupid pen tricks. I'm not looking for something to calm me, but rather just something to do with myself. The other appeal, and the one brought out here, has always been it's use as social lubricant. I first really noticed this in China, where absolutely everyone smokes. There, not smoking is regarded strangely. There are certainly more than a few people who don't smoke, but the social norm is to light up after dinner, or while waiting at a bus stop, or when hanging out with friends. A lot of people I tried to explain the American logics about health ended up looking at me strangely, either because they felt I was trying to be their parent, or because those narratives were simply foreign to their norms about smoking. The stigma attached to smoking is very very American, at least in my experience.
Since returning from China, I've more than once come across references to the simple utility of always having smokes. Just as accepting chai with tribal leaders is now the accepted Army way, so too can the ground be broken by just offering smokes around the table, or to translators or interlocuters. I remember reading a semi-fictional story about a Mossad agent. During his training phase, one of his trainers told him he absolutely needed to take up smoking, and to always carry smokes and a lighter on him. Whenever he needed to meet someone, all he had to do was ask them for a light. It didn't even matter if they had one; it broke the ice and put that person in play. But in case they did, you had to know how to smoke and how to handle yourself with a cigarette. The flipside of this was hearing about how different nationalities smoked; apparently Americans had a distinctive way of lighting, holding, and smoking cigarettes.
Anyways, as for the immediate health risks, the activities I'm already doing are doing some pretty sexy damages to my body. I'll be very curious how well my knees work 25 years from now. And jumping out of planes always carries certain risks. As for the cardio impacts, some of our fastest runners here smoke packs a day, anecdotes to be sure, but my point being that we have so much of a short-term focus, the godawful smell is the biggest discouragement right now, and like so many other vices, that's an acquired taste. So whether or not there will be a fourth or fifth to follow remains to be seen. But I've jacked my life up in so many other ways, this would hardly be exceptional at this point.
I didn't throw up, or cough any more uncontrollably than my allergies to North Carolina already make me cough. I got some kind buzz off it, but since I was already pretty thrashed, that could also be ascribed to the double shot of tequila I had taken right before I tried the cigarette.
But what did stick out, and what had made me think of taking it up in the first place, was the social aspects of it. Originally my plan had been to just have one cigarette, to try it. But then we're out at the bar, and my friend, the one who had offered me my first cigarette, asks to bum a cig from this group of girls sitting at the table. Asking for the cig was our way in, and got us talking to them, so when she offered some to the rest of us, it was an easy decision to use that as an excuse to talk to her.
For me, the appeal of smoking has never been it looks cool, or all the cool people do it. It's been first my incessant need to do something with my hands and/or my mouth, which is why all my pens get chewed on, I always have gum on me somewhere, and I do stupid pen tricks. I'm not looking for something to calm me, but rather just something to do with myself. The other appeal, and the one brought out here, has always been it's use as social lubricant. I first really noticed this in China, where absolutely everyone smokes. There, not smoking is regarded strangely. There are certainly more than a few people who don't smoke, but the social norm is to light up after dinner, or while waiting at a bus stop, or when hanging out with friends. A lot of people I tried to explain the American logics about health ended up looking at me strangely, either because they felt I was trying to be their parent, or because those narratives were simply foreign to their norms about smoking. The stigma attached to smoking is very very American, at least in my experience.
Since returning from China, I've more than once come across references to the simple utility of always having smokes. Just as accepting chai with tribal leaders is now the accepted Army way, so too can the ground be broken by just offering smokes around the table, or to translators or interlocuters. I remember reading a semi-fictional story about a Mossad agent. During his training phase, one of his trainers told him he absolutely needed to take up smoking, and to always carry smokes and a lighter on him. Whenever he needed to meet someone, all he had to do was ask them for a light. It didn't even matter if they had one; it broke the ice and put that person in play. But in case they did, you had to know how to smoke and how to handle yourself with a cigarette. The flipside of this was hearing about how different nationalities smoked; apparently Americans had a distinctive way of lighting, holding, and smoking cigarettes.
Anyways, as for the immediate health risks, the activities I'm already doing are doing some pretty sexy damages to my body. I'll be very curious how well my knees work 25 years from now. And jumping out of planes always carries certain risks. As for the cardio impacts, some of our fastest runners here smoke packs a day, anecdotes to be sure, but my point being that we have so much of a short-term focus, the godawful smell is the biggest discouragement right now, and like so many other vices, that's an acquired taste. So whether or not there will be a fourth or fifth to follow remains to be seen. But I've jacked my life up in so many other ways, this would hardly be exceptional at this point.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Let cooler heads prevail
Once again, I'm surfing the news at ridiculously late hours of the night (and who says I have no life?). Perchance, I came across this blog post from the USNews website, calling for, of all things, calmed tempers. He isn't making any terribly controversial claims, nor finding much fault in the principles that lead to the Teabagging parties or Governor Perry trying to restart the Civil War. Instead, he is making the simple human appeal that hystrionics might be cathartic, that they might be soothing, and they might feel like a chance to air serious greivances, yet there are those out there, with the capability to enact tragedy who are inspiried, encouraged, and sustained by such hyper-passionate rhetoric.
For the first time in a while, I read the post and I could see the author behind it. I saw a real human being, maybe with a drink in his hand, sitting in a dimmed study late at night, gently thumbing a piece of rubble. Sitting there and thinking, wandering back to a blackened, charred street in Oklamhoma City, and seeing in his mind's eye the daycare across the street. Thinking about the all-too-human tragedies produced by people with too little common sense to seperate the rhetorical flourishes from legitimate calls to action, and sufficiently empowered to realize that divide.
Then again, maybe that scene exists only in my mind's eye, who knows. Anyways, to hear a call for soothed tempers, to hear reminders of those who cannot seperate the symbolic from the real, to hear someone make an appeal to our better natures helps to reaffirm my faith that there are still reasonable people out there in politics, at least for the rest of the day.
For the first time in a while, I read the post and I could see the author behind it. I saw a real human being, maybe with a drink in his hand, sitting in a dimmed study late at night, gently thumbing a piece of rubble. Sitting there and thinking, wandering back to a blackened, charred street in Oklamhoma City, and seeing in his mind's eye the daycare across the street. Thinking about the all-too-human tragedies produced by people with too little common sense to seperate the rhetorical flourishes from legitimate calls to action, and sufficiently empowered to realize that divide.
Then again, maybe that scene exists only in my mind's eye, who knows. Anyways, to hear a call for soothed tempers, to hear reminders of those who cannot seperate the symbolic from the real, to hear someone make an appeal to our better natures helps to reaffirm my faith that there are still reasonable people out there in politics, at least for the rest of the day.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Irritating News Articles
An age old technique for someone inbetween decent blog posts is to simply surf the web until something either irks you or makes you cheer, both behaviors best done in public fora (forums?). So when I came across the breaking commentariat of Obama's torture memos, it doesn't take long for articles to cross my radar. One, in particular, for no other reason than it's sloppy reasoning and rhetorical emptiness. On face value, the claim that torture demands rigorous inquiry is more than fair. Both policy makers and interrogators themselves need to know if what they're doing is producing actionable intelligence or just inflicting inhumane pain on someone. Thus far, one's opinions on the issue seems to come straight down party lines, which doesn't dilute the truth value of the respective claims, but it does make it a little hard for wise or just policy making when the advocacy is so tainted.
So, my problem with this particular article isn't it's particular claims, or it's constructions. I agree Obama seems more inclined to pardon Nixon than put the country through a special prosecution, and I agree the above study ought to be done. But the article itself could easily be a case study in Argumentative Logic 101 for circular reasoning, implied conclusions or hidden claims. He isn't arguing that we need to be making wiser policy, and that to do so we need to know if torture works or not. He stipulates that torture doesn't work, so what we need is a study that says torture doesn't work so that Mitt Romney won't resurrect the practice. It's because of articles like this that make it so hard for reasonable public discourse to exist. It perpetuates the echo chamber.
Even when reasonable people agree with things like "Congress should appoint someone to discover if all those renditions and secret prisons produced anything useful and if those methods produced the advertised result", they're forced into the position of defending the broader claim that they're really out witch hunting for Republican blood. It changes the issue from an issue of public relevance into yet another issue of partisan hackery.
The irony of the Democratic majorities and Presidency is both their admirable willingness to buck a party line, and their hair-tearing inability to coalesece around the important issues of the day (for more explanation). The Republicans, for all their faults, are willing to embrace a party orthodoxy, create and reify the narrative to generate and sustain public support, and refuse to hew far from the bone (whether all that qualifies as responsible statesmanship, or representation is a whole 'nother issue). But Democrats are endearingly idiosyncratic. Which leaves them prone to getting hung up on issues of personal principle at the expense of public policy, and sufficiently divided that all the Republicans have to do to act like an opposition party is just sit back and snipe. The Republicans are in the midst of an existential crisis, yet the Democrats are so busy running around in circles the GOP isn't really in any hurry to create a counter-narrative.
So what that leaves us with is the progressive commitariat. They raise issues of policy, of justice, of fairness, of all the loud idiosyncracies that make policy makers so frustrating. But they do so from such hackneyed positions of partisanship their concerns can be written off as just that. The article isn't about the issue of torture, it's about the Democratic issue of getting back at Republicans. And when the article gets written with such obvious argumentative fallacies, it's counterproductive because it circumscribes the available rhetorical space, and associates further comments on the issue as more Democratic witch hunts.
So, my problem with this particular article isn't it's particular claims, or it's constructions. I agree Obama seems more inclined to pardon Nixon than put the country through a special prosecution, and I agree the above study ought to be done. But the article itself could easily be a case study in Argumentative Logic 101 for circular reasoning, implied conclusions or hidden claims. He isn't arguing that we need to be making wiser policy, and that to do so we need to know if torture works or not. He stipulates that torture doesn't work, so what we need is a study that says torture doesn't work so that Mitt Romney won't resurrect the practice. It's because of articles like this that make it so hard for reasonable public discourse to exist. It perpetuates the echo chamber.
Even when reasonable people agree with things like "Congress should appoint someone to discover if all those renditions and secret prisons produced anything useful and if those methods produced the advertised result", they're forced into the position of defending the broader claim that they're really out witch hunting for Republican blood. It changes the issue from an issue of public relevance into yet another issue of partisan hackery.
The irony of the Democratic majorities and Presidency is both their admirable willingness to buck a party line, and their hair-tearing inability to coalesece around the important issues of the day (for more explanation). The Republicans, for all their faults, are willing to embrace a party orthodoxy, create and reify the narrative to generate and sustain public support, and refuse to hew far from the bone (whether all that qualifies as responsible statesmanship, or representation is a whole 'nother issue). But Democrats are endearingly idiosyncratic. Which leaves them prone to getting hung up on issues of personal principle at the expense of public policy, and sufficiently divided that all the Republicans have to do to act like an opposition party is just sit back and snipe. The Republicans are in the midst of an existential crisis, yet the Democrats are so busy running around in circles the GOP isn't really in any hurry to create a counter-narrative.
So what that leaves us with is the progressive commitariat. They raise issues of policy, of justice, of fairness, of all the loud idiosyncracies that make policy makers so frustrating. But they do so from such hackneyed positions of partisanship their concerns can be written off as just that. The article isn't about the issue of torture, it's about the Democratic issue of getting back at Republicans. And when the article gets written with such obvious argumentative fallacies, it's counterproductive because it circumscribes the available rhetorical space, and associates further comments on the issue as more Democratic witch hunts.
Monday, April 6, 2009
On Swearing or Why Ethos Matters
Soldiers swear. Stunning, I know, but we do. Also, there's gambling going on, if you want to be shocked about that too. But apparently, some look upon swearing as "a bad thing" so we, especially we in wannabe Special Forces, try to moderate our speech in more cultured company, read: everyone else. So while we might prefer to pepper our speech with the appropriate inappropriatities, we don't really care or notice if someone doesn't swear.
But what does flag on our radar is when someone, in this case a sports psychologist by training briefing us on "mental performance of elite athletes", starts throwing around words like "heck" or "freaking". Those are words pretty much restricted to (a) children trying out their provocative little sea legs for the first time and (b) old church ladies. And now, apparently, (c) guy who wants to act like he relates to his audience, but can't quite bring himself to do it properly. He may actually be someone who uses "darn" is his everyday conversation, or he might be restraining himself for religious reasons. He might have any host of legitimate reasons for using those words as he does. But to us, it ended up sounding like he was a poseur.
So as his brief continues, he starts talking about various phases of our training as examples of the hardships we'll go through, as examples for applying what he's talking about. His models seemed coherent and useful, insofar as I know anything about sports psychology or psych theories for elite performers (read: nothing). He seemed to be making attempts to relate to his audience, to incorporate examples from our training into his presentation, all perfectly acceptable rhetorical strategies. But as the presentation progressed, it became more obvious that he didn't actually know much at all about our training or mission. He threw around acronyms and their extensions in a haphazard fashion characteristic of someone who doesn't speak in those terms all that often, i.e. someone unfamiliar with the Army, and someone specifically unfamiliar with what we did.
This doesn’t disqualify his statements or the utility of their application. But we couldn't take him seriously. He talked himself out of his own presentation. The metamessage undermined his text, and because of that, we couldn't grant him leniency for a civilian contractor who couldn't really be expected to understand in detail what we do. But if you're doing to step up, swinging lingo that's clearly foreign and acting like you're part of a club without paying the membership dues, don't be surprised if people stop paying attention.
But what does flag on our radar is when someone, in this case a sports psychologist by training briefing us on "mental performance of elite athletes", starts throwing around words like "heck" or "freaking". Those are words pretty much restricted to (a) children trying out their provocative little sea legs for the first time and (b) old church ladies. And now, apparently, (c) guy who wants to act like he relates to his audience, but can't quite bring himself to do it properly. He may actually be someone who uses "darn" is his everyday conversation, or he might be restraining himself for religious reasons. He might have any host of legitimate reasons for using those words as he does. But to us, it ended up sounding like he was a poseur.
So as his brief continues, he starts talking about various phases of our training as examples of the hardships we'll go through, as examples for applying what he's talking about. His models seemed coherent and useful, insofar as I know anything about sports psychology or psych theories for elite performers (read: nothing). He seemed to be making attempts to relate to his audience, to incorporate examples from our training into his presentation, all perfectly acceptable rhetorical strategies. But as the presentation progressed, it became more obvious that he didn't actually know much at all about our training or mission. He threw around acronyms and their extensions in a haphazard fashion characteristic of someone who doesn't speak in those terms all that often, i.e. someone unfamiliar with the Army, and someone specifically unfamiliar with what we did.
This doesn’t disqualify his statements or the utility of their application. But we couldn't take him seriously. He talked himself out of his own presentation. The metamessage undermined his text, and because of that, we couldn't grant him leniency for a civilian contractor who couldn't really be expected to understand in detail what we do. But if you're doing to step up, swinging lingo that's clearly foreign and acting like you're part of a club without paying the membership dues, don't be surprised if people stop paying attention.
Friday, March 27, 2009
"Dereliction of Duty" review
So, turns out military libraries don't do late fines. Which is great if the book is six months overdue. Which was plenty of time to finally sit down and read "Dereliction of Duty". Long story short, I was kinda disappointed.
I'm not really sure where I got the idea, but I had in my mind that the book was a searing indictment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). (Then) COL McMaster (now brigadier general) certainly has no problems taking the individual service chiefs to task for their complicity in America's deepening involvement in Vietnam. He finds them politically naive, jealous of their service prerogatives and ontologies, and personally deficient in providing professional advice to the President. Let somehow it's the lack of a dramatic buildup, or the repetition of faults, but in the end, the conclusions and meditations felt... self-evident. To make the conclusions feel that natural is a testament to the quality of the scholarship, but I still feel let down.
One, I expected more policy analysis, more critique of the JCS as an institution than his approach of savaging the JCS as individuals. I suppose this is as much due to my own schemata as everything, but I tend to look at these things as institutions, and ignore the people. "Derelictions" certainly exposed the obvious fallacy in approaching analysis in this fashion, and emphasized that no institution, no role, can transcend the people filling these positions. And considering how nascent the JCS was as an institution during the descent into Vietnam, expecting standardized roles, rituals, or habits that followed from the station rather than the people would be an overly simplistic analytical lens.
Yet for that very reason, I wish McMaster had done more to tease out the problems stemming from the individuals and the problems stemming from flawed organizational designs or murky mandates, the same flaws that led to the reorganizations in the 1980s. McMaster notes within the first few chapters that the JCS were required by law to serve as the principle military advisors to the President, but at this stage in the development of the JCS, the law serves more as general guidelines than concretized habit. By this I mean that thus far the JCS had been the primary advisors to Eisenhower, and I can't imagine the architect of Operation Overlord really needed military advice in the way that Kennedy or LBJ would need advice. JFK and LBJ needed an education in the military, in strategy, to interface with the JCS, they needed wise old men to provide wisdom and strategic options and reviews. They needed to be contrarian, difficult, and mentors. Yet the history of the JCS had thus far been the relationship of junior and senior commanders, cut of the same cloth, a history that hadn't really prepared the group for JFK and LBJ.
To boot, both men were intensely political, and the JCS did not know how to deal with that. Time and again, the JCS were outmaneveured in DC, and the only way they could think of developing the ageless DC coin of the realm, access, was to turn sycophantic. Taylor actively worked to subvert the capacity of the JCS to provide professional advice, and the politically niave JCS lacked the wherewithal to perform their duties. Expecting political sophistication sufficient to rival experienced, lifelong political operatives might be asking a bit much, and the civilian leadership deserves plenty of flaggelation for prizing loyalty and yes-men at the expense of competent advice or genuine professional. Still, acting solely as the professional soldier alone would no longer be sufficient. Presidents and Congressmen ignorant of military matters, and more concerned with reelections, would require a military leadership capable of taking them into hand. We would require warriors to be statesmen, even while still in uniform, all so they could execute their professional military duties.
Second, and similarly, McMaster saves his most repeated criticism of the JCS for their inability to rise about "service parochialism". Given how often the JCS would quarrel over elements of basic strategy, and how often such debates would delay consensus at time-sensitive periods, such castigation is certainly appropriate. But it also deserves some mitigation as well. There existed fundamental disagreements over what should be the US grand strategy, let alone more operational aspects like how to wage a little war, debates that would continue long after these officers left the service. These debates and questions were still uncharted territory, and there were no confident models to predict Soviet or Chinese behavior, models that later scholars could use to create coherent national strategies. The radical changes from "massive retaliation" to "flexible response" reflect the sheers differences in outlook, and to expect the JCS to suddenly produce consensus is unreasonable. They were participants in the debate, and they had their own role to play in answering these questions.
Their service parochialism wasn't just that of a jealous lord guarding his fiefdom (although there was certainly plenty of this), but their attempts to answer elemental questions about force, and the military. The Air Force was a service barely 20 years old, with an infantile doctrine, riven between SAC and TAC. The Army and the Navy couldn't provide a common narrative about who should own nuclear weapons, let alone whether the Army was even necessary even more in a nuclear era. Eisenhower's Massive Retaliation was predicated upon the material inability of the Free World to match Soviet military power, thus why even bother to maintain an Army as anything other than a speedbump long enough to launch? Their service parochialism wasn't just men fighting over their share of the budget or the ear of the President, but existential questions about their service.
McMaster acknowledges this need to determine the underlying variables in the strategic calculus by noting the failure of the JCS to challenge the strategic principles of graduated escalation. But his implication appears to be they should have said something along the lines of "this is a crazy doctrine and won't work", when it appears the best they could say and remain intellectually honest was "we no longer know what works and what doesn't, so we can't bless off on your doctrine". Given the unknown nature of strategy and the revolution in military affairs, their challenges should have been in the form of skepticism, yet McMaster seems to be saying they should have opposed the strategies proposed by the Presidents and it isn't clear that the coherency was there. Only with retrospect are we able to look back and say graduated response was a flawed operational concept.
Third, McMaster doesn't do much to address the inabilities of the JCS to overcome the resistance of their superiors. Despite the existential differences between the chiefs, they would still often come to consensus opinions. They might be circumscribed opinions or recommendations restricted to operational concerns that avoided strategic or existential questions, but they still represented the voice of the JCS. And they were constantly at odds with the expressed political preferences of the President. JFK solved the problem of people giving him advice he didn't like by simply appointing a new intermediary who would happily sign off on his policies. Taylor had no problem performing radical aboutfaces on some of his issues, issues that had caused him to resign from his prior position as Army Chief of Staff and to write books critical of the relationship between the military and their civilian leadership when it became personally expedient to rubberstamp JFK. McNamara, Bundy and Rusk all sought to contain the military exigencies within a framework palatable to LBJ, even when all advice from professional officers was to the contrary.
The JCS might not have provided the best, soundest advice to the President as often as they should have, but they did still attempt to consciously perform their duty, and ran into frequency obstructions for their civilian superiors in the DoD and DoS. In a situation involving lower ranking officers, it could be possible to perform an end run around the obstruction by appealing to higher. But here, there was no higher, no end runs, no additional levels of rank one could jump to when a superior inhibits one's duty. Again, their political naiveté would prove a hindrance in the performance of their duties, but the obstruction of McNamara and ilk cannot be overlooked as a contributing factor.
In sum, I think McMaster provides a wonderful insight into a critical two year period while we descended into madness. The depth of the sources, the frequency and repetition of the same errors only highlight the dysfunction of most parties concerned. But there were still differences, mitigations, and questions I wish McMaster had done more to address. I would have liked to see additional inquiry into the JCS as an evolving entity in a critical period between being more than the people involved, yet unable to transcend them. I would have liked to see more nuance about the service parochialism as more than just fighting over portions of the pie, as fights about the basic nature of American strategy and military policy, questions with existential implications. And I would have liked to see more meditation on the obligations incumbant to an officer when activity obstructed by superiors in the performance of their duty, especially at the flag level. Similarly, I would have liked to hear thoughts on the duties and respects owed a civilian superior at this level when they actively prevent the discharge of one's legal duties. When should a military officer shut up, recognize that his superior has decided, and see about the execution of his orders and when should an officer go public or carry the fight to new venues? As a work of historical research, "Dereliction" exposes plenty of material for thought, but I wish it had gone further and addressed implications of that research.
I'm not really sure where I got the idea, but I had in my mind that the book was a searing indictment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). (Then) COL McMaster (now brigadier general) certainly has no problems taking the individual service chiefs to task for their complicity in America's deepening involvement in Vietnam. He finds them politically naive, jealous of their service prerogatives and ontologies, and personally deficient in providing professional advice to the President. Let somehow it's the lack of a dramatic buildup, or the repetition of faults, but in the end, the conclusions and meditations felt... self-evident. To make the conclusions feel that natural is a testament to the quality of the scholarship, but I still feel let down.
One, I expected more policy analysis, more critique of the JCS as an institution than his approach of savaging the JCS as individuals. I suppose this is as much due to my own schemata as everything, but I tend to look at these things as institutions, and ignore the people. "Derelictions" certainly exposed the obvious fallacy in approaching analysis in this fashion, and emphasized that no institution, no role, can transcend the people filling these positions. And considering how nascent the JCS was as an institution during the descent into Vietnam, expecting standardized roles, rituals, or habits that followed from the station rather than the people would be an overly simplistic analytical lens.
Yet for that very reason, I wish McMaster had done more to tease out the problems stemming from the individuals and the problems stemming from flawed organizational designs or murky mandates, the same flaws that led to the reorganizations in the 1980s. McMaster notes within the first few chapters that the JCS were required by law to serve as the principle military advisors to the President, but at this stage in the development of the JCS, the law serves more as general guidelines than concretized habit. By this I mean that thus far the JCS had been the primary advisors to Eisenhower, and I can't imagine the architect of Operation Overlord really needed military advice in the way that Kennedy or LBJ would need advice. JFK and LBJ needed an education in the military, in strategy, to interface with the JCS, they needed wise old men to provide wisdom and strategic options and reviews. They needed to be contrarian, difficult, and mentors. Yet the history of the JCS had thus far been the relationship of junior and senior commanders, cut of the same cloth, a history that hadn't really prepared the group for JFK and LBJ.
To boot, both men were intensely political, and the JCS did not know how to deal with that. Time and again, the JCS were outmaneveured in DC, and the only way they could think of developing the ageless DC coin of the realm, access, was to turn sycophantic. Taylor actively worked to subvert the capacity of the JCS to provide professional advice, and the politically niave JCS lacked the wherewithal to perform their duties. Expecting political sophistication sufficient to rival experienced, lifelong political operatives might be asking a bit much, and the civilian leadership deserves plenty of flaggelation for prizing loyalty and yes-men at the expense of competent advice or genuine professional. Still, acting solely as the professional soldier alone would no longer be sufficient. Presidents and Congressmen ignorant of military matters, and more concerned with reelections, would require a military leadership capable of taking them into hand. We would require warriors to be statesmen, even while still in uniform, all so they could execute their professional military duties.
Second, and similarly, McMaster saves his most repeated criticism of the JCS for their inability to rise about "service parochialism". Given how often the JCS would quarrel over elements of basic strategy, and how often such debates would delay consensus at time-sensitive periods, such castigation is certainly appropriate. But it also deserves some mitigation as well. There existed fundamental disagreements over what should be the US grand strategy, let alone more operational aspects like how to wage a little war, debates that would continue long after these officers left the service. These debates and questions were still uncharted territory, and there were no confident models to predict Soviet or Chinese behavior, models that later scholars could use to create coherent national strategies. The radical changes from "massive retaliation" to "flexible response" reflect the sheers differences in outlook, and to expect the JCS to suddenly produce consensus is unreasonable. They were participants in the debate, and they had their own role to play in answering these questions.
Their service parochialism wasn't just that of a jealous lord guarding his fiefdom (although there was certainly plenty of this), but their attempts to answer elemental questions about force, and the military. The Air Force was a service barely 20 years old, with an infantile doctrine, riven between SAC and TAC. The Army and the Navy couldn't provide a common narrative about who should own nuclear weapons, let alone whether the Army was even necessary even more in a nuclear era. Eisenhower's Massive Retaliation was predicated upon the material inability of the Free World to match Soviet military power, thus why even bother to maintain an Army as anything other than a speedbump long enough to launch? Their service parochialism wasn't just men fighting over their share of the budget or the ear of the President, but existential questions about their service.
McMaster acknowledges this need to determine the underlying variables in the strategic calculus by noting the failure of the JCS to challenge the strategic principles of graduated escalation. But his implication appears to be they should have said something along the lines of "this is a crazy doctrine and won't work", when it appears the best they could say and remain intellectually honest was "we no longer know what works and what doesn't, so we can't bless off on your doctrine". Given the unknown nature of strategy and the revolution in military affairs, their challenges should have been in the form of skepticism, yet McMaster seems to be saying they should have opposed the strategies proposed by the Presidents and it isn't clear that the coherency was there. Only with retrospect are we able to look back and say graduated response was a flawed operational concept.
Third, McMaster doesn't do much to address the inabilities of the JCS to overcome the resistance of their superiors. Despite the existential differences between the chiefs, they would still often come to consensus opinions. They might be circumscribed opinions or recommendations restricted to operational concerns that avoided strategic or existential questions, but they still represented the voice of the JCS. And they were constantly at odds with the expressed political preferences of the President. JFK solved the problem of people giving him advice he didn't like by simply appointing a new intermediary who would happily sign off on his policies. Taylor had no problem performing radical aboutfaces on some of his issues, issues that had caused him to resign from his prior position as Army Chief of Staff and to write books critical of the relationship between the military and their civilian leadership when it became personally expedient to rubberstamp JFK. McNamara, Bundy and Rusk all sought to contain the military exigencies within a framework palatable to LBJ, even when all advice from professional officers was to the contrary.
The JCS might not have provided the best, soundest advice to the President as often as they should have, but they did still attempt to consciously perform their duty, and ran into frequency obstructions for their civilian superiors in the DoD and DoS. In a situation involving lower ranking officers, it could be possible to perform an end run around the obstruction by appealing to higher. But here, there was no higher, no end runs, no additional levels of rank one could jump to when a superior inhibits one's duty. Again, their political naiveté would prove a hindrance in the performance of their duties, but the obstruction of McNamara and ilk cannot be overlooked as a contributing factor.
In sum, I think McMaster provides a wonderful insight into a critical two year period while we descended into madness. The depth of the sources, the frequency and repetition of the same errors only highlight the dysfunction of most parties concerned. But there were still differences, mitigations, and questions I wish McMaster had done more to address. I would have liked to see additional inquiry into the JCS as an evolving entity in a critical period between being more than the people involved, yet unable to transcend them. I would have liked to see more nuance about the service parochialism as more than just fighting over portions of the pie, as fights about the basic nature of American strategy and military policy, questions with existential implications. And I would have liked to see more meditation on the obligations incumbant to an officer when activity obstructed by superiors in the performance of their duty, especially at the flag level. Similarly, I would have liked to hear thoughts on the duties and respects owed a civilian superior at this level when they actively prevent the discharge of one's legal duties. When should a military officer shut up, recognize that his superior has decided, and see about the execution of his orders and when should an officer go public or carry the fight to new venues? As a work of historical research, "Dereliction" exposes plenty of material for thought, but I wish it had gone further and addressed implications of that research.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
It starts at the bottom
So I chanced across Abu Maqawama, a fantastic blog devoted to COIN. One of the articles, from around the inauguration, was on the Israeli overestimation on the willingness of a population (read: citizens of Gaza) to chastise or discipline those "responsible" for their suffering. This has been a fairly persistent trend in Israeli military actions, yet it consistently fails. The basic paradigm of strategic bombing is to inflict enough suffering on a population that they revolt against their masters for bringing them to this, yet from the Blitz to Kosovo, strategic bombing has ended up shoring up support for governments. When the agent responsible was a non-state actor, say, FARC in Columbia or Hizbullah in Lebanon, they've adopted by providing reconstruction services, education or simple solidarity against the people causing the immediate harm.
The thing is, that really isn't all the different from how we act in the barracks. Since the beginning of basic, it's always been an "us against them" mentality against the drill sergeants, the cadre, the anyone-in-our-chain-of-command. They may be people to be respected, learned from, obeyed, but ultimately, they're in a whole 'nother group. They're Other. But inevitably, someone in our group would screw up, maybe they'd develop a pattern of it, and for that, we would be punished. Time and time again, we would be told it was the fault of the delinquint. We were supposed to ostrasize them, blame them, demand their compliance with the laws of the universe. Except we never blamed them; we blamed our TACs. We forget why we were being punished and remember who made us run around the barracks at 3AM. Group punishment doesn't make us cold shoulder fellow soldiers, and it hasn't made the Palestinians evict Hamas.
The thing is, that really isn't all the different from how we act in the barracks. Since the beginning of basic, it's always been an "us against them" mentality against the drill sergeants, the cadre, the anyone-in-our-chain-of-command. They may be people to be respected, learned from, obeyed, but ultimately, they're in a whole 'nother group. They're Other. But inevitably, someone in our group would screw up, maybe they'd develop a pattern of it, and for that, we would be punished. Time and time again, we would be told it was the fault of the delinquint. We were supposed to ostrasize them, blame them, demand their compliance with the laws of the universe. Except we never blamed them; we blamed our TACs. We forget why we were being punished and remember who made us run around the barracks at 3AM. Group punishment doesn't make us cold shoulder fellow soldiers, and it hasn't made the Palestinians evict Hamas.
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