Center for a New American Security

That's all I have to say right now.

Update: I vote Susan Finkelstein for Alumna of the Year.

What is wrong with the Angels? You should not lose the ALCS because of your inability to throw and catch...

Tom Emanski Commercial. from Amir on Vimeo.

Update: While I'm blogging about sports, can I just mention what a ridiculous year former Lady Vol Candace Parker has had? One NCAA basketball championship, one NCAA player of the year award, one Olympics gold medal, the #1 WNBA draft pick, the WNBA Rookie of the Year (her line on her debut: 34 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists), and the WNBA MVP. That is simply Phelpsian. In fact, if anyone really cared about women's athletics, she would rival Michael Phelps for Sports(wo)man of the Year.

On Saturday, the Philadelphia Phanatic took on "Parker" of the Fresno Grizzlies in an Olympic contest of mascot events.

Now, a Major League mascot of the caliber of the Phillie Phanatic taking on a minor league marvel is kind of like stacking your Olympic gymnastics team with underage girls in order to win the gold--or Russia fighting Georgia...but it does represent the opportunity for Philadelphia to finally win, well, something...

Anyway, the outcome of the match was apparently unimportant as while Kip could find much from Fresno as they waited with baited breath the arrival of the Michael Phelps of mascotry, Kip could find nothing relating the results of the outcome (or at least some video of the performance).

PS I haven't forgotten Mitch Williams, destroyer of dreams

For those of you who come here for your baseball (read: Red Sox) news...

Boston Globe (trade countdown clock + news)

Sons of Sam Horn (Sox rumint)

ESPN deadline blog (Manny + non-Sox news)

Yankees Fan, Sox Fan (quality commentary / rants)

Latest this morning was a denial from the Marlins' front office that a Sox-Pirates-Fish deal had been worked out. (Also, apparently, Sox co-owner John Henry is most opposed trading Manny, arguing that his bat outweighs his MBM antics.)

It's rare that Charlie's myriad interests come together (you can only link fashion commentary to professional military education so often).

But this is one of those times. One of Charlie's favorite sports columnists, Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star, has been asked to teach students at Ft. Leavenworth about Moneyball.*

Baseball, KC, and the wonders of strategic assessment all tied up with a nice little bow.

(And yeah, you read it here first. Obvi.)

*Charlie may be making an error in assuming that Joe is heading over to CGSC. Whatever his destination, if any AM readers manage to hear his Moneyball talk, be sure to let us know in the comments.

At the end of the third inning we declared victory and said the game's over. It ain't over. It isn't going to be over in future wars. If we're talking about the future, we need to talk about not how you win the peace as a separate part of the war, but you've got to look at this thing from start to finish. It's not a phased conflict; there isn't a fighting part and then another part. It is nine innings. And at the end of the game, somebody's going to declare victory. And whatever blood is poured onto the battlefield could be wasted if we don't follow it up with understanding what victory is. -- Gen. (Ret.) Anthony Zinni, USMC

A few weekends ago, Abu Muqawama sat in the stands at Lord's getting rained on, waiting for England to play New Zealand in the first test of the Kiwi's tour. They never did. There were, like, eight overs played before the umpires called it. Abu Muqawama limped home to the less fashionable neighborhoods of London, water-logged and grumpy.

It's a funny game, test cricket. What kind of game can go on for five days and not produce a winner? That's what ended up happening in the rain-shortened first test, in fact. A draw. In baseball, we play until we produce a winner -- even if that means going into extra innings and making Wade Boggs pitch. (Or Aaron Boone bat. Shudder.)

That having been said, Abu Muqawama got to thinking about Gen. Zinni's nine-inning analogy and Iraq. On the one hand, it's a pretty good sports analogy to explain why stability operations are important. Once you declare an end to "major combat operations," the enemy may or may not go home. On the other hand, the end games in counterinsurgency campaigns rarely end with the equivalent of a walk-off home run. Or a clear victor.

How will Iraq end? Probably not with a clear-cut victor. It will probably end a draw. The U.S.-led coalition of the willing posted a huge first-innings score of 568 and followed it up by arrogantly fielding exclusively fast-bowlers and allowing the enemy to post a 367 in their first innings. (We must have thought we were the Windies c. 1982.) We then collapsed for a 97 in the second innings and are now desperately trying to hang on for the win in the enemy's second innings. He might win. So might we. But at least we've got some spin bowlers on the field now. (And while Abu Muqawama isn't trying to give Kilcullen a disproportionate amount of the credit, he does kinda look and talk like Shane Warne, doesn't he?)

Abu Muqawama is guessing it's going to end a draw. And while we'll be disappointed we haven't won, we can take some solace in the fact that our arrogance and second-innings collapse didn't sink us.

"It's when the actual meaning is the complete opposite from the literal meaning."*

Example: The firewall at Quantico blocks AEI's website. Ha! Charlie's pretty sure that means something entirely different to her than it does to the geniuses at NMCI.

Contra-example: The Devil Rays are leading the AL East. That's not ironic, it just sucks. (Also, the Marlins lead the NL East...you may want to consider heeding TX's sage words of advice.) Ugh.

*Thank you, Ethan Hawk.

For those who've ever wondered why Charlie thinks all serious military analysts and COIN enthusiasts should read Moneyball, I present to you the world according to Bill James (baseball guru and Jayhawks fan):

"All research," he says, "begins with ignorance. The ability to focus on what it is that you do not know is critical to doing research. I'm absolutely convinced that none of us understands the world.

"I'm not a person that the world irritates, to quote Bill Buckley, but you turn on the radio and in any debate, you've got people who are convinced they know. Liberals, conservatives, Christians, Muslims, people who think Terry Francona is a genius, those that think he's an idiot. They're all convinced they've got this figured out.

"None of them has it figured out. We do not understand the world; the world is billions of times more complicated than our minds.

"You can make a useful contribution to a discussion if you can figure out specifically what it is you don't understand and try to work on it. If you try to start from the other end - 'I've got the world figured out and I'm going to explain it to everybody' - maybe there are a lot of people who succeed in doing that, but it doesn't work for me."

Moneyball: it's easier than Kuhn.

Now back to my regularly scheduled dissertating...