So gang, it has been a little while since I’ve blogged.  I must admit that it wasn’t an intentional break, at least at first.  But, now that I’m returning to it I’m glad that I took a little time off.  Sometimes, it’s necessary to stop with all the output and allow some time for input, inspiration, and ultimately rest.

Here are a few of the things I’ve been reading and watching lately that have caught my attention.

Afghanistan

1)  “The 72-Hour Expert” by P.J. O’Rourke

The intro is classic O’Rourke and sets the tone for what proves to be a heck of an article on the tragedy of Afghanistan, the kind of tragedy that you have to sometimes laugh at lest you break down and weep.

If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter.  Either that or you’re President Obama.  I called my wife. She said, no, she certainly is not vacationing at government expense in some jet-set hot spot with scads of her BFFs.  Looks like I’m not President Obama.  But I am a reporter, fresh from Kabul.  What do you want to know about Afghanistan, past, present, or future?  Ask me anything.

On traditionalism,

Traditionalism being one of the things that makes Afghanistan so hard for Americans to understand.  We Americans have so many traditions.  For instance our political traditions date back to the 12th-century English Parliament if not to the Roman Senate.  Afghans, on the other hand, have had the representative democracy kind of politics for only six years.  Afghanistan’s political traditions are just beginning to develop.  A Pashtun tribal leader told me that a “problem among Afghan politicians is that they do not tell the truth.”  It’s a political system so new that that needed to be said out loud.

The Pashtun tribal leader was one of a number of people that Amin arranged for me to interview.  Tribalism is another thing that makes Afghanistan hard to understand.  We Americans are probably too tribal to grasp the subtlety of Afghan tribal concepts.

The Pashtun tribal leader was joined by a Turkmen tribal leader who has a Ph.D. in sociology.  I asked the Turkmen tribal leader about the socioeconomic, class, and status aspects of Afghan tribalism.

“No tribe is resented for wealth,” he said. So, right off the bat, Afghans show greater tribal sophistication than Americans. There is no Wall Street Tribe upon which the Afghan government can blame everything.

The reality of why hearts and minds may be a big illusion,

We’re outsiders in Afghanistan, and this is Occam’s razor for explaining the Taliban.  Imagine if America were a country beset with all sorts of intractable difficulties.  Or don’t imagine it—America is a country beset with all sorts of intractable difficulties.  Our government is out of control, wantonly interfering in every aspect of our private lives and heedlessly squandering our national treasure at a time when Americans are suffering grave economic woes.  Meanwhile vicious tribal conflicts are being fought for control of America’s culture and way of life.  (I’ve been watching Fox News.)

What if some friendly, well-meaning, but very foreign power, with incomprehensible lingo and outrageous clothes, were to arrive on our shores to set things right?  What if it were Highland Scots?  There they go marching around wearing skirts and purses and ugly plaids, playing their hideous bagpipe music, handing out haggis to our kiddies and offending our sensibilities with a lack of BVDs under their kilts.  Maybe they do cut taxes, lower the federal deficit, eliminate the Department of Health and Human Services, and the EPA, give people jobs at their tartan factories and launch a manhunt for Harry Reid and the UC Berkeley faculty.  We still wouldn’t like them.

College Education

2) English Professor’s William Deresiewicz (author of two of my favorite articles on education and leadership) and Mark Edmundson discuss academia and the pressure for college professors to be cool in order to receive better student critiques which are increasingly important for faculty tenure and whether or not this trend is positive for education…among other things. Full Bloggingheads discussion here.

Thinking

3)  “We Are All Talk Radio Hosts” by Jonah Lehrer

Something that has grown in fascination to me over the past few years is how biases influence our thinking.  This article looks at how “overthinking” things can often lead us to poorer decisions as it allows time for the introduction of confirmation bias.

Reasoning is generally seen as a mean to improve knowledge and make better decisions. Much evidence, however, shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests rethinking the function of reasoning. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given human exceptional dependence on communication and vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology or reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing but also when they are reasoning proactively with the perspective of having to defend their opinions.

How about you?  What has been on your radar?  I look forward to slowly getting back into the grind of writing – hopefully more in the style of the “Why We Need to Read Fiction” post.

Popularity: 1% [?]

First, the books:

1) “Freedom” by Daniel Suarez

An awesome follow-up to Suarez’s first novel, “Daemon,” a high-tech thriller that turned the heads of national security experts, technologists and futurists alike.  The sequel focuses on the role of resilient communities in building a different future for those who detest the decreasing self-sufficiency (therefore freedom) of the common citizen and community.

Both “Daemon” and “Freedom” plus Robb’s “Brave New War” and Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” provide a great blue print for those wanting to see the near-future of conflict for power and resources and operational space.  (h/t @TimothyThompson)

2) “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter

Two chapters into the book that ZenPundit says is the “academic to mainstream crossover book of 2010.”  More to come…

3) “The Irony of American History” by Reinhold Niebuhr

I’ve heard Andrew Bacevich sing the praises of Niebuhr for long enough now that I had to consume some of his writing for myself.  Thus far I have been blown away by his C.S. Lewis-like style and depth.

Writing during the postwar years, Niebuhr, the scholar, theologian and prophet honed in on “…the persistent sin of American Exceptionalism; the indecipherability of history; the false allure of simple solutions; and, finally, the imperative of appreciating the limits of power.”

4) “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell

Have heard about this book for a while, shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize and other awards, excited to read a contemporary novelist who has been compared to David Foster Wallace.

5) “For the Win” by Cory Doctrow

Lots of hype from TwitterNation, will crack open once I finish the above.

And posts and articles…

1) “The Sun in the Sky: The Relationship Between Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan Insurgents” by Matt Waldman

2) “Who is Ayn Rand?” by Charles Murray (h/t Isegoria)

3) “West Point Faculty Member Worries it is Failing to Prepare Tomorrow’s Officers” by Maj. Fernando Lujan, U.S. Army

4) The Cheap Vegetable Gardener (h/t Shloky)

5) “The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking” by J.R. Johnstone, PhD and P.D. Finch, Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Studies (h/t Isegoria)

6) David MacKay’s Without The Hot Air (h/t Carl Rigney)

Oh yeah…and about those $1 trillion of minerals underneath the mine-laden dirt of Afghanistan, I’ll put money on China getting way more contracts than the U.S.  Why?  They care more about business than changing governments.  The only question they’ll have for Karzai regarding his corrupt brother in the South is, “yuan or dollars?”

Popularity: 2% [?]

Former British Army officer, diplomat, academic and author of “The Places In Between,” Rory Stewart discussing Afghanistan this past fall on Bill Moyer.

It’s a bit dated in that he’s discussing the then upcoming decision by President Obama on whether or not to send more troops to Afghanistan, but the bulk of his discussion is timely and full of a clarity and wisdom rarely found in the talking points of generals and politicians.

He argues for a lowering of expectations in what we can actually accomplish and a cooling of the “all or nothing” and “losing is not an option” rhetoric so often heard among national leadership.

(h/t to Collin O’Bryant for alerting me to Stewart)

For more of Rory Stewart’s writing on Afghanistan see here and here.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Even people who know nil about counterinsurgency are quick to speak of the illusive quest to “win the hearts and minds.” It has a beautiful simplicity to it…just show the locals how great we are and they’ll turn their backs on the enemy, game over. As usual though, reality has to spoil the party with its complexities and all.

It’s not that “winning the hearts and minds” of the locals is a poor goal, but we must manage our expectations of what it’s actually going to look like.

Warm embraces of gratitude with Afghan elders around a campfire of burning poppy plants with Lee Greenwood’s faint voice somewhere in the background is probably just not in the cards. We are foreign invaders no matter how you sugar-coat it.

If we’re to operate effectively on the moral level of war (arguably the most important in 4GW) we must have a realistic view of how we are seen by others. We may think our good intentions are quite obvious how dare anyone question them, but the Pashtun father who sees his toddler vaporized by an errant drone-fired missile probably has a decent rationale for challenging this notion.

Mr. Aaron J. Henninger is a lecturer on the topics of Public Affairs and Strategic Communication at the United States Air Force’s Air War College. He wrote the following mind grenade in the fantastic op-ed below. The full article can be found here.

Certain organizations have either a stigma or a perception that precludes them from carrying out specific tasks or actions. I charge that a fielded military force cannot successfully or with any degree of longevity, carry out military occupation and enact a successful public relations campaign. The messages go beyond being mixed and the long-term visuals are far too compelling than any press release or photo-op.

What if 9/11 conspirators were to have walked through NY during and after the attacks to attempt community relations? As horrific and absurd as this might sound, that is how we are perceived in some corners of the world, in the aftermath of airstrikes and destruction, attempting to persuade or engender good will.

Our efforts lack any and all sensitivity to the historical underpinnings of the West’s relationship with the Middle East. One photo-op cannot undo a thousand years grievance or mistrust. As a government we must understand and accept this reality.

What we would term as “good images”, are often times generated more for self-flagellation of the US population at large than the indigenous, effected population.

Messages of, ‘We are your friend, we are here to help you’ set against a backdrop of Humvees and .50 cal machine guns is disingenuous at best.

Check out more of Mr. Henninger’s outstanding work at his blog, on the DEFENSE.

For another post-9/11 mind grenade, see an earlier post on David Foster Wallace here.

Popularity: 2% [?]

On Afghanistan, waterboarding and COIN:

1) A fascinating paragraph from Robert Kaplan’s latest article on Afghanistan in The Atlantic (h/t Andrew Sullivan):

The very prospect of some success by July 2011 increases the likelihood that U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan in substantial numbers for years. In effect, the proficiency of the American military causes it to be overextended. British Major General Richard Barrons, a veteran of the Balkans and Iraq now serving in Afghanistan, told me he learned during the most depressing days in Baghdad that “the long view is the primary weapon against fate.” If you are willing to stay, you can turn any situation around for the good. But that is an imperial mind-set, with its assumption of a near-permanent presence, which today’s Washington cannot abide, even as its own strategy drives toward that outcome.

2)  On Waterboarding: here and here (caution: disturbing)

3) Getting Close to the Afghans:

Our distance from the population, and the enemy’s proximity, encourage the people to alert the insurgents when our troops approach. They encourage the people to keep quiet about IEDs, which are now powerful enough to kill passengers in our best armored vehicles. Force protection measures thus result in less protection for our troops.

The risk aversion among American commanders has many sources. Fear of casualties and doubts about our purpose in Afghanistan cause segments of American society to pillory units that sustain large casualties, and to ignore units that cling to large bases and accomplish little. Talk of troop withdrawal dates discourages leaders from taking short-term risks for long-term gain.

Part of the blame lies within the military, which has often promoted risk-avoiders ahead of risk-takers, and has undervalued other attributes of vital importance in counterinsurgency such as creativity, sociability and empathy. The extent to which American units collaborate with Afghan security forces and obtain assistance from the population depends primarily on these attributes, and it varies widely.

On millenials, the economy and the coming anarchy (light reading, I know, sorry Linda):

1) The Dropout Economy a.k.a. when Millenials get tired of paying for the broken system created by the baby boomers and decide to opt-out. (h/t Shlok Vaidya)

Look at the projections of fiscal doom emanating from the federal government, and consider the possibility that things could prove both worse and better. Worse because the jobless recovery we all expect could be severe enough to starve the New Deal social programs on which we base our life plans. Better because the millennial generation could prove to be more resilient and creative than its predecessors, abandoning old, familiar and broken institutions in favor of new, strange and flourishing ones.

Imagine a future in which millions of families live off the grid, powering their homes and vehicles with dirt-cheap portable fuel cells. As industrial agriculture sputters under the strain of the spiraling costs of water, gasoline and fertilizer, networks of farmers using sophisticated techniques that combine cutting-edge green technologies with ancient Mayan know-how build an alternative food-distribution system. Faced with the burden of financing the decades-long retirement of aging boomers, many of the young embrace a new underground economy, a largely untaxed archipelago of communes, co-ops, and kibbutzim that passively resist the power of the granny state while building their own little utopias.

2) Britain ‘four meals away from anarchy’ (h/t John Robb)

…at least there’s always music, check out this sweet visualization - Rock ‘N Roll Metro Map

Popularity: 2% [?]

Here’s an excellent photo essay showing the human costs of war (h/t The Strategist)

AND…

Here’s how much Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us according to a few different sources:

The Congressional Research Service estimates the total cost of both wars to be just over $1trillion.

CostofWar.com estimates Iraq at over $700billion and Afghanistan at $255billion for a total of just under $1trillion dollars.

To give you better perspective that’s $1,000,000,000,000.00

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes say the official costs are actually quite deceiving and estimate that the total costs of Iraq alone are closer to $3trillion dollars. He talks about it here at Big Think.

Popularity: 2% [?]

From Foreign Policy’s Reality Check,

Last month, an official told the Daily Telegraph that their country “has the greatest concentration of active al Qaeda supporters [in the West],” posing a threat to Britain and “the rest of the world.” The same article cited a fresh and ominous finding from the director of MI5. He estimated his service was aware of some 2,000 “radicalized Muslims” who might be involved in terrorist plots. That figure, of course, doesn’t include the population of plotters who have escaped MI5 scrutiny, like Abdulmutallab. As if to underline the threat, on Jan. 12, the British government banned two of the country’s most notorious Islamist organizations, Islam4UK and Al Muhajiroun, under a 2000 anti-terrorism law.

This goes back to my previous argument on why “preventing Al-Qaeda safe havens in Afghanistan” is a myopic strategy considering the nature of the opponent.  Al-Qaeda is a GLOBAL terrorist organization with members scattered all over the world. I question the notion that keeping them out of one country or two (Yemen) will significantly hamper their operations.

We rarely hear our leaders discussing ways to bolster our relations with Muslims living in Western nations, yet this may be a far greater use of our time and money if we consider the above statements.  I suspect the reason it doesn’t get as much chatter on the airwaves is because it goes against the existing paradigms we have concerning warfare.  Simply put, few people in the American National Security apparatus feel confident operating in this “soft power” territory.

In “The Accidental Guerrilla” David Kilcullen asks the questions that come when reevaluating about these paradigms,

How, for example, do we wage war on nonstate actors who hide in states with which we are at peace, even within our own society?  How do we work with allies whose territory provides safe haven for non-state opponents?  How do we defeat enemies who exploit the tools of globalization and open societies, without destroying the very things we seek to protect?

Christian Caryl of the Foreign Policy article shows the real-life issues that arise as we attempt to answer these questions,

In the 1990s, policymakers desperate to address the concerns of the nation’s Muslims decided to foster the creation of Islamic umbrella groups. They also unwittingly fostered radical ones. For instance, Abdulmutallab invited extremists to speak to his college student group — but doesn’t seem to have done anything in London in contravention of British law. And he is not the only vivid illustration of how the institutions of democracy can dangerously blend with the institutions of jihadism.

Forays into the fight against radicalization in Western countries is a muddy affair at best, but its something that we’d better start figuring out soon. After all, I doubt the people of London would take to kindly to a strategy that involved firing missiles on their city from unmanned drones.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich, a West Point Graduate who went on to earn a PhD from Princeton and later taught as a professor at West Point and Johns Hopkins before joining the faculty at Boston University, is the author of one of the best books I’ve read in several years, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. A conservative historian, Bacevich expresses his “dismay at the direction of the U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.” Mainly, the excessive use of military force as an instrument to remake the world in the way we see fit.

The interview is a bit dated (Aug 2008) so forgive the election year discussions…and the obnoxious commercial break in the middle of the interview, but the main thrust of his message remains important, maybe even more so on the eve of 30,000 additional troops making their way to Afghanistan, the “Graveyard of Empires.”

I welcome your comments on what may prove to be some more controversial talking points.  Enjoy the interview and sound off below!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Many have now heard the news of the first U.S. government official resigning his position in protest of our continued presence in Afghanistan.  I was alerted to this development by a fellow officer and blogger, Matt Bader, and was immediately intrigued by the background of this State Department employee.

The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung reported on Tuesday,

“When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.  A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.”

Hoh is 36 years old.  This is significant to me because it places him in a generation, close to mine, who isn’t so heavily influenced by the Cold War-era mindset of strategy and warfare.

There has been some controversy relating to his actual role in the State Department, with DeYoung calling him a Foreign Service Officer and others calling this incorrect, stating he was a “3161″ employee brought on for a temporary cycle.  Regardless, after reading his full letter of resignation out loud to my wife this morning over coffee I felt it was worth sharing with my intelligent and discerning cadre of readers.

What strikes me is not the symbolism of such a resignation, but rather the content of his letter.  He lays out a battering ram of an argument as to why continued expenditure of blood and treasure in Afghanistan is not worth the sacrifice.  Remember, this is a seasoned Marine talking, not someone who is necessarily opposed to waging war.  Hoh says, “I’m not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love.”

The following are some segments from his chilling, but important letter (emphasis mine).  Read the full letter here:

“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan.  I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end. To put simply: I fail to see the value or worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.”

Regarding the Pashtun population,

“The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies.  The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in the Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified.  In both RC South and East, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.”

On why the safe-haven argument is weak (something I have written about here),

“I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan.  If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence of regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc…More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries.”

Or the idea that we should be there to help a failing state,

“Finally, if our concern is for a failed state crippled by corruption and poverty and under assault from criminal and drug lords, then if we bear our military and financial contributions to Afghanistan, we must reevaluate and increase our commitment to and involvement in Mexico.”

Even if the war seems worth it, we can’t afford it,

“‘We are spending ourselves into oblivion,’ a very talented and intelligent commander, one of America’s best, briefs every visitor, staff delegation and senior officer.  We are mortgaging our Nation’s economy on a war, which, even with increased commitment, will remain a draw for years to come.  Success and victory, whatever that may be, will be realized not in years, after billions more spent, but in decades and generations.  The United States does not enjoy a national treasury for such success and victory.”

This analysis of our presence in Afghanistan is not the type that will get you promoted, but it presents a formidable argument that few will be able to dismiss.  To be fair, there are many other intelligent voices who are advocating increased presence, resources and time in Afghanistan.  Some of my favorites include: Steve Coll and Andrew Exum (who posted a blistering critique of the Washington Post article mentioned above).

Popularity: 3% [?]

In case you were wondering if China has any interest in what goes on in Afghanistan, here you go:

1) They share a border via the Wakhan Corridor

2) They want access to Afghanistan’s copper reserves and bid $3.5 billion to get it.

3) They built the Gwadar Port in Pakistan (opened in 2007) with hopes of one day connecting the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline

Robert Kaplan lays it out,

In Afghanistan, American and Chinese interests converge. By exploiting Afghanistan’s metal and mineral reserves, China can provide thousands of Afghans with jobs, thus generating tax revenues to help stabilize a tottering Kabul government. Just as America has a vision of a modestly stable Afghanistan that will no longer be a haven for extremists, China has a vision of Afghanistan as a secure conduit for roads and energy pipelines that will bring natural resources from the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. So if America defeats Al Qaeda and the irreconcilable elements of the Taliban, China’s geopolitical position will be enhanced.

Popularity: 2% [?]