Abu Muqawama: Post
Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS. Abu Muqawama retains the right to delete comments that include words that incite violence; are predatory, hateful, or intended to intimidate or harass; or degrade people on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. In summary, don't be a jerk.
From the Dept. of Silly Things Written About My Employer
Look, my employer does not take institutional positions, but if you are going to ascribe them to us, please do your homework:
1. U.S. News: "Patrick Cronin, a senior director at the Center for a New American Security, an elite perch for the kind of liberal interventionists who rallied the nation to war in Libya..."
First off, RTFM: does it look to you like we are brimming with enthusiasm for military intervention in Libya over here at 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue NW? And have you ever read anything Patrick Cronin (Bush Administration appointee, by the way, hardly a liberal interventionist) has ever written?
2. Salon: "Some who supported the Iraq war dissent from the Obama's administration maneuvers into Libya. The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum, Time's Joe Klein, the young group of bloggers known as the "Juicebox Mafia," and the counterinsurgency fetishists at the Center for a New American Security have all been skeptical or outright hostile to American participation in Libya. Whether because of concerns of imperial overstretch, fears of another long-term occupation, or simple post-Iraq humility, these one-time liberal hawks have traded in their wings."
Dude, if you want to flatter me by blaming me for the president's decision to commit more resources to war in Afghanistan, fine. And the title "counterinsurgency fetishist" is frankly awesome and needs to go on all my business cards. But I don't even know where to start with what else was written. Should I mention that our CEO was a platoon commander in the U.S. Marine Corps when the nation went to war in Iraq and that our president was a battalion operations officer in the U.S. Army? Should I mention that I was a Ranger platoon leader at the time? If by supporting the Iraq War you mean actually fighting then okay. How about I just point out that CNAS was founded four years after the Iraq War began? What the heck, Kerry, did you guys lose all your fact-checkers over there at Salon?
Let me conclude by saying, once again, that CNAS takes no institutional positions on anything except keeping cold beer in our fridge.
Cold beer in the fridge! At
Cold beer in the fridge! At work! How come this outfit didn't exist when I was drawing a paycheck.
Favorite post so far!
Favorite post so far! So......... what type of beer is in the fridge?
I started reading your blog many months ago after I read your CEO's book "One Bullet Away". The criticism you receive of being too this or too that reminds me of some of the reviews of "One Bullet Away". I guess no matter what you write, you just can't win. In the end, I loved Mr. Fick's book and I love your blog.
I find out in a week if I get into Marine Corps OCS. Please keep the posts coming so I have something to look forward to on the weekends! Thank you!
Andrew, grow a bit of a
Andrew, grow a bit of a thicker skin, eh.
At some point you should be able to acknowledge that your think tank is not the ideal of Ranke (German 19th century historian) and thus a perfection of neutral, objectivity with no ideological/political bias. This is not to suggest that there are not fine experts at your Tank, but you should be able to at least acknowledge that your think tank in terms of temperament, focus, and tack is different from say the Cato Institute, no?
Now I admit that the quotes you cite are sensationalist and provocative to say the least, but you could at least also accept the fact that your Tank is not the gleam of Ranke's eye.
Of course this is your blog and your battlespace to defend yourself and your employer as you see fit; but there is some elements of truth to these sensationalist descriptions of CNAS. And if nothing else it is an interesting contradiction, worth writing about by folks, on the shift that many of you and your borthers and sisters at CNAS have taken with regard to Libya.
I mean shoot a few years ago CNAS President Nagl claimed in a published work that in the future the American government and specifically the Army would be able to go about into the world and "change entire societies." So what has changed, for example, with him? Shouldn’t LIbya be the perfect spot for the next American experiment at societal transformation at the barrel of a gun? I
It is contradictions like these that these writers who you pummel seem to be drawn to.
gian
CNAS takes no institutional
CNAS takes no institutional positions.
What the heck does that mean? Individuals at CNAS write papers that they hope become policy don't they. Everyone takes a position whether direct or implied. Just taking up space is a "position". Not busting your chops, just do not understand the point of the discussion. CNAS is a think tank. Does CNAS always expect to be neutral? Is this legal beagle BS to keep the funding rolling from your sponsors and the beer in the fridge (BTW, those corporate sponsors got rid of alcohol in their US operations a long time ago. Has to do with liability of having it on campus. Having alcohol on your breath after lunch is good for an instant trip to HR ! It is zero tolerance in the real world US fortune five hundred work place. )
From #1 does it look to you like we are brimming with enthusiasm for military intervention in Libya
I was critical of your Libya policy paper. The surge in Afghanistan is still debatable about its effectiveness. The surge was a natural action to take to try to make something out of the cost-to-date of the Afghanistan war. Specifically on the Libya paper, you took the Administration's lack of apparent strategy and vocalized what everyone was observing in the Administration's activities then suggested a damage control plan. Neither the surge in Afghanistan or the Libya paper gave the Administration a direct path out of the wars or the foreign aid spending that will come. The total cost of Afghanistan, Libya, and the Arab Spring is not known.
Andrew, you support COIN there is NO question about that. I still agree that COIN in Afghanistan is correct. Problem is Afghanistan should not have happened. COIN is just a social program where USAID goes in and builds infrastructure and the US military plays police force. I think that is why the liberal hawks like war so much, war as a foreign social program. That is why the cost is so high on these wars. It is more than dollar cost, we just witnessed the "Killing Team" which is a hidden cost of staying too long. The Koran burning is lingering public opinion at home. Personally, I think the Administration should not have taken action in Libya. The right action is to walk away, period. Killing in the ME seems to be a national past time, Gadhafi going total on his people is just another day in jahadist paradise. The "I told you so" are starting to happen. Civilians are being killed by coalition forces. NATO is struggling with how to separate the good guys from the bad. Even though US forces are backing down, US is part of it, we just had a friendly fire accident killing Rebels. The President got the CIA involved and arms will be sold to the Libyans, the cost and scope will be hidden from the American people. No one on the face of this earth can determine how LIMITED Libya, or the Arab Spring will be. It is a bald face lie to the American public to say anything else. I only want the US involved at a distance. Yet I am going to pay dearly for it because this Administration is only interested in it's own ideology.
Writing a paper to minimize the impact of Libya is the same as agreeing with the Administration's position in Libya. To disagree would to be to suggest the Administration walk away from the UN action. Shades of gray in between is more of the Administration's double speak. If the whole of America did the Obama way and completely ignored his Administration, maybe he and the rest of the Democrats would get the hint that their days of control on Congress and the Presidents office are over come 2012.
PS.....I would not put "counterinsurgency fetishist" on your business card. Frankly after the US exit from Afghanistan, there will not be too much use for COIN experts here in the US. Other than writing books on what we did wrong in Afghanistan, like in Vietnam, there really will not be a future. Guess there will be need to justify $2-3 Billion/ yr over twenty years foreign aid expense each and every year. I have already told my Congressman to bail out and he and his district agrees.
Americans need to give priority to America.
At some point you should be
At some point you should be able to acknowledge that your think tank is not the ideal of Ranke (German 19th century historian) and thus a perfection of neutral, objectivity with no ideological/political bias.- gian p. gentile
Where is such a place? If Washington think tanks are not the ideal, then neither is academia, and neither is the private sector outside of Washington (although DC seems especially terrible in its intellectual rent-seeking). No one who has spent any time at all in the more serious environs of academia can fail to note how human nature intrudes so rudely....
Why are certain people promoted, and why are certain ideas promoted, and why are certain papers published? I sometimes think academics complain (I'm not talking about any person in particular - on this blog or in the comments section) about the private sector and Wall Street because they worry that Wall Street has the morals of an academic!
Grad students and adjuncts are essentially "slave" labor, bureaucrats are often unthinking automatons greedy for private sector cash for their pet projects, professors are very often unable to take criticism and their egos wrapped up in whichever theory or position they hold, and finally, private donors just want to see a building with their name on it.
Again, not talking about Mr. Exum or COL. Gentile or anyone in particular....
I digress. Procrastinating, as usual.
But, in fact, I agree with the points that gian gentile makes. CNAS is not CATO and is not Heritage. It's okay to admit that, Mr. Exum :)
I finally figured out what draws me to this blog. The world of ideas - however they are generated - interests me. How and why our institutions think what they supposedly think interests me too.
If I hadn't been a pathologist I would have liked to have been a psychiatrist, I think. I am trying to diagnose the world of Washington think tanks!
How did we get here? :)
No wonder one of my favorite novels, ever,Lucky Jim, that classic satire about the academic life, academics, and their foibles.
You should read it, Abu M, if you haven't read it already.
Yet there is not one single
Yet there is not one single academic in the entire United States of America who will present credentials, and who is sufficiently knowledeable about Pakistan to give intelligent advice about how Washington should deal with Rawalpindi or its civilian counterpart. Not one.
If you believed me, you might be shocked at the dearth of reliable advisors on Pakistan. I've asked my readers several times to study Nils Gilman's Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America. The history details how a small group of American academics who found favor in official Washington sowed havoc on a horrific scale because they understood nothing about peoples in parts of the world they were trying to modernize. Nothing. They understood nothing.
These lunatics were replaced by economists such as Jeffrey Sachs, who understood even less than nothing about peoples in parts of the world that Washington felt could be helped by Thatcherite Economic Shock Therapy. And thus, the economists gave capitalism such a bad name that several countries that had been traumatized by the therapy took a sharp turn to the Left.
These lunatics were replaced in Washington by COINistas -- a group of military advisors who somehow found in the Malay and Vietnam counterinsurgencies guidance for how the U.S. should proceed in Afghanistan, and who knew nothing about the Pakistanis.
And here we are today.
http://pundita.blogspot.com/2010/10/pundita-explains-reality-to-rachel.html
I only know the blogger Pundita through her blog and I think she uses strong language to be funny, to make people sit up and take notice, and to pay attention, so please don't be upset about the "lunatics." It's just blogging and idea-generating.
Take care, Abu M. Your blog is just fine.
I messed up the tags on the
I messed up the tags on the above. To "redo" Pundita's excerpt:
Yet there is not one single academic in the entire United States of America who will present credentials, and who is sufficiently knowledeable about Pakistan to give intelligent advice about how Washington should deal with Rawalpindi or its civilian counterpart. Not one.
If you believed me, you might be shocked at the dearth of reliable advisors on Pakistan. I've asked my readers several times to study Nils Gilman's Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America. The history details how a small group of American academics who found favor in official Washington sowed havoc on a horrific scale because they understood nothing about peoples in parts of the world they were trying to modernize. Nothing. They understood nothing.
These lunatics were replaced by economists such as Jeffrey Sachs, who understood even less than nothing about peoples in parts of the world that Washington felt could be helped by Thatcherite Economic Shock Therapy. And thus, the economists gave capitalism such a bad name that several countries that had been traumatized by the therapy took a sharp turn to the Left.
These lunatics were replaced in Washington by COINistas -- a group of military advisors who somehow found in the Malay and Vietnam counterinsurgencies guidance for how the U.S. should proceed in Afghanistan, and who knew nothing about the Pakistanis.
And here we are today.
There is an amusing exchange in the comments at the AfPak channel blog regarding one paper and its recommendations. The tone is too harsh and the expert doesn't deserve such a tone directed at her, but it is an amusing addition to the above points....
Basically, DC experts almost always support more money thrown at a problem even if their own data and study shows it to be a problem. At least when it comes to South Asia. Curious.
See if you all can figure out which one.
I messed up the tags for the
I messed up the tags for the quote again! I give up. Done with phones and computers for the day.
Arrgh.
Madhu: With respect to the
Madhu:
With respect to the following, you might be digressing, but it's a pretty thought-provoking and interesting digression. Thanks for writing it (hopefully that doesn't come across as patronizing - it's not meant to be.
Best
ADTS
jesus...we need a toolshed
jesus...we need a toolshed for all these axes that need grinding...the man was making a small point
"This attack is
"This attack is different."
"Foreigners have been killed in Afghanistan before, and today’s attack was not the first fatal attack on UN staff. But it was different than previous fatal attacks. Very different....Foreigners committed to assisting in the rebuilding of Afghanistan have long accepted the possibility that they might die at the hands of warring parties, but this degree of violence from ordinary citizens is not something most of us factored into our decision to work here. This is not the beginning of the end for the international community in Afghanistan. This is the end. Terry Jones and others will continue to pull anti-Islam stunts and opportunistic extremists here will use those actions to incite attacks against foreigners. Unless we, the internationals, want our guards to fire on unarmed protesters from now on, the day has come for us to leave Afghanistan."
http://www.undispatch.com/this-attack-is-different
=====================
Bye. Can you leave NYC now too?
Ouch. It's all coming
Ouch. It's all coming unglued, isn't it? When did US foreign policy become a joke?
I actually think Americans would be just fine with a comic foreign policy. I feel, however, that they would prefer a lighthearted and upbeat comic foreign policy - more "The Mouse that Roared," less "Mad Max 3.0" with real munitions. At a minimum our diplomats could persuade all combatants not to cease fire, but just to switch to blanks. If IEDs, for instance, were replaced with M-80s and a dye pack, our Afghan operation would remain a joke. It wouldn't be a sick joke, though. I definitely do not feel the voting public is prepared for this level of black humor.
As for the question, John Adams had an answer:
"I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity, as you do, and would not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice, Frenzy, Brutality, Daemons, Bonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the Burning Brand from the Bottomless... Pit, or anything but the Age of Reason. I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs or the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can be no severer satyr [satire] on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine."
Ie, Tom Paine: the Kenneth Roth of his era. (Or to be fair - half Kenneth Roth, half Mark Ames, half B-H Levy.) Call it then: the Age of Pain. US foreign policy was always a sick joke - it's just never been quite this obvious. If we imagine Tom Paine at a Predator joystick, I feel, we have a pretty fair picture of the entire enterprise...
Dude, maneuvering yourself so
Dude, maneuvering yourself so you might have to bomb both sides in an opaque tribal war. If that's not smart power, I don't know what is.
"Dude, maneuvering yourself
"Dude, maneuvering yourself so you might have to bomb both sides in an opaque tribal war. If that's not smart power, I don't know what is."
Sadly I think the WH and DoS and the rest of the Humanitarian Imperialists probably believe exactly that.
OMG! I didn't know you were a
OMG! I didn't know you were a "counterinsurgency fetishist"! (Shouldn't that be in caps?) Are you married?
wait, where's Samantha Power
wait, where's Samantha Power for the real massacre ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/ivory-coast/8423651/Ivor...
"OMG! It's all coming
"OMG! It's all coming unglued." ... is so much other than what I desire to find on the web page that greets me in the morning! So, please, spare us. What, you haven't kept up?
One doesn't know, of course, where events go from here, but: "I was blind and did not see" ain't any part of the easily foreseen future. Every indictment of someone in the armed services of the United States that lays out evidence of abuse of the power held in my name indicts me. I am not guilt free, even if their ideology is so different than mine as to be abhorrent.
They hold power in my name, and they do not stand alone when brought up for charge.
On the other hand, Manning - well, now, he's The Man.
Relativity is fun, almost to
Relativity is fun, almost to the point where one does not register the variance between tens and thousands and millions of deaths, except, of course, when one is discerning differences in just such terms of quantification. 1400 hundred deaths in a matter of months in Palestine, circa 12/08-2/09; 1000's dead at almost any time where totals are noted in the nations of Africa, circa 2000-2011.
But for some reason, "the past as prologue" crowd determined that Libya required armed intervention by NATO in March, 2011.
How interesting! I wonder why?
It's relative to Eni, Total,
It's relative to Eni, Total, BP, CNPC (the winner!) and scores of other business interests. That and the fact that the Brits trained his security services (MQ), and that it's easy meat, and 86% of Libyan oil goes to Europa.
Meanwhile the LIFG/AQ types only hate us half as much as they used to...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870371250457623704243221240...
One of many money lines: I was misquoted...
Meanwhile, can someone please
Meanwhile, can someone please have a quiet and violent word with Rev Terry Jones? If for no other reason, for the sake of the four gurkhas he got killed... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/02/pastor-terry-jones-burning-k...
Oh and here in the netherlands, Geert Wilders is prancing about calling the Prophet a pedophile and massmurderer. hearts and minds, anyone?
Humanitarian Imperialists???
Humanitarian Imperialists??? New spin on cultural Imperialism? I like it.
"The White Man's Burden" a poem by English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in McClure's in 1899. Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States understood the phrase "white man's burden" as a characterization fort imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise. Amazing how this still exists and has evolved today, no?
Does America have a moral duty and obligation to help "the poor" "better" themselves whether the poor want the help or not? I don't think so. We need to get out of the business of trying to save everyone. Right now in the Ivory Coast we are about to sent troops and money to help. But it's a lost cause. Let's fix our own problems before we get involved in the Ivory Coast.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain
Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humor
(Ah slowly) to the light:
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden-
Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
No institutional positions? A
No institutional positions? A bit rich since CNAS was among the main supporters of the adoption of PC-COIN.
Now that it's clear you were wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan it's time to change your tune. You're against more involvement in Libya. It's nice you're against siding with AQ but your institutional position has cost the US billions and thousands of casualties and has managed to increase support for Islamists despite the odious nature of their ideology.
Terry Jones and Geert Wilders
Terry Jones and Geert Wilders have taken a side, theirs. However ugly it may be it pales in comparison to the other sides ugly. And frankly the other side doesn't have a moral leg to stand on. In fact it's high farce for them to claim discrimination victim-hood of any kind - religious, racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary, intolerance...
It may not be the best approach, but since everyone's answer from center right to far left to above is to deny or cry bigot - oblivious to the above (or deliberately acting in bad faith) then you will end up pushing the moderate center that can acknowledge the problem to the fringes. That's why Terry Jones was and will probably be emulated, and the right is winning elections in Europe, and we are holding hearings in Congress to finally speak the Hate we previously dared not name. As the attacks will continue and possibly accelerate then the strategy of Stonewalling reality will push the politics farther from the center and to the fringes.
The Game is Up.
so the only satisfactory
so the only satisfactory reasons to go to war are revenge and resources?
@D, "so the only satisfactory
@D,
"so the only satisfactory reasons to go to war are revenge and resources." Well that will work fine, but not the only reason. Destroying the enemy so they (and hopefully others) think very hard before they do it again also work. We seem to have settled for an acceptable level of terrorism and doing what we are allowed (not our best) to prevent or mitigate further attacks.
The Bottom Line is the National Interest. Which is not normally defined as going to war - sorta - for purely Humanitarian reasons. The closest we can get to National Interest is doing it to keep Europe in NATO. Meh.
Meanwhile on a lighter note, Doctrine Man pays tribute to Exum's Middle Eastern Dating site.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=200033936696432&set=a.169913026375190.35223.110598432306650&theater
Shorter Fnord: "Hey guys,
Shorter Fnord: "Hey guys, let's change the subject to some yokels I feel more comfortable criticizing. And never mind the actual killers." *nudge nudge*
I use to read Salon during
I use to read Salon during the early Iraq War days, and took for grated its veracity. I slowly learned, the site did not know what it was talking about, and gravitated here to get a very good perspective on foreign affairs. Thanks for the great work.
@ ADTS: No, your insights are
@ ADTS: No, your insights are always good and I enjoy reading your comments.
I'm mainly curious as to why bad ideas continue as the status quo thinking even as evidence mounts against it. Happens in all administrations. Too many cooks in that DC kitchen, I suppose. Too much money and too much at stake, I think, for people to change the basic way of doing things. It seems to me the basic way is to ensure the viability of your own particular DC-related organization, governmental or private sector.
"We'll get it right this time, as long as you give us the adequate funds...." That sort of thing.
@ Visitor "jesus...we need a toolshed for all these axes that need grinding...the man was making a small point."
Ouch. Well, the truth hurts, doesn't it? But we should be worried about the ideas running that town. That's why things happen: money is spent, wars are declared....or not. It seems to me to be a pretty important axe to grind.
But I disagree that Abu M is making a small point. I think it's a pretty big one.
However ugly it may be it
Oh, I disagree. I don't think there is anything uglier than having Zionists settlers call for political assassination from the synagogues and churches of the US. Hatred isn't made somehow better when it's American born and bred.
Hate works in War. It just
Hate works in War. It just does. That's what sustains warriors with a tiny fraction of our resources against us.
It's what gives America's main enemy now the Imperialistic Will to dominate all mankind - their main aim.
BTW have you looked at how ugly the other side gets, especially with their own?
Perhaps the putative Zionist calls for political assassination (which is often at least as justifiable as war, and less costly) are uglier because you've chosen a side or sympathy other than them.
Perhaps having one's leaders,
Perhaps having one's leaders, educators, scientists and artists murdered, generation after generation really isn't as bad as it seems. After all, if one's people are that easy to kill, well, I guess they don't deserve to live - because real people are strong and vigilant and always win, even if they have to kill off every one else first. Or some thing like that.
Hate works for some purposes, but not all. Lots of other things work even better.
"Hate works in War. It just
"Hate works in War. It just does. That's what sustains warriors with a tiny fraction of our resources against us."
Hate is not just a nice to have, it is a gotta have. If you don't hate the enemy, then you will lose, no matter what other advantages you have. After all, the enemy is trying to use force to break your will, and if you don't hate him, then your will is weak and it won't take much to break it.
Frothy hatred is a must have
Frothy hatred is a must have at the ground pounder level but I'd rather have cool analytics in my command structure. I have been studying Bill Colby pretty extensively lately and would recommend it to fellow "COIN Fetishists". Colby's commentaries on Chien dich Phung Hoang--sadly some of the best are still classified--examine the use of hatred in such operations.
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