Why did it take so long to install General Petraeus?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s another article about the success of the the so-called “surge.” In it, Jeff Emanual writes that the results—which so far have exceeded expectations—are attributable not only to the increase in numbers that the word “surge” signifies, but to a basic change of strategy that involves engaging the Iraqi people in a consistent way rather than withdrawing into secure bases and relying primarily on unstable Iraqi forces to do the job:

A sustained presence within the cities and rural areas that each unit is tasked with securing, involving spending the maximum amount of time possible out amongst the people who live and work there, is a major element of counterinsurgency strategy. It not only allows the unit responsible for an area to be present and able to respond at a moment’s notice to any event or emergency, but also allows the members of that unit to become more familiar with the district (and the people, including who should and should not be there) that they are responsible for policing.

Such a policy also allows the civilians in the area to become familiar with and begin to begin to trust their military protectors. Building this bond of trust between military personnel and civilians in each area should lead at some point to cooperation, both in the form of providing information (the first step) and (later) in the form of the organization of an armed resistance working with the Coalition and against the insurgents and terrorists in the region. This is a very long, tortuous process, and it literally depends on the clichéd ”˜winning of the hearts and minds’ of the people. This is done not only by providing security and quality of life improvements in an area, but also by convincing the citizenry that such a sustained presence (and the security that it is capable of providing) will be a long-term reality.

This is the essence of the General Petraeus approach. Whether or not it ultimately succeeds long term in the extremely difficult task of rebuilding Iraqi society into a functioning democracy, there is no question it has made the necessary initial inroads towards that goal. Continue reading →

Perceptions about Iraq: why so impervious to change?

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Yon describes the extreme disconnect he sees between the facts in Iraq and perceptions about it. Never the twain shall meet; at least not yet, although he’s doing his bit to change that.

Why has the corrective news of progress had so much difficulty penetrating American consciousness? The summary version of the answer is, “A mind is a difficult thing to change.” The longer version, of course, is much more complex.

Yon touches on one factor, which is that press coverage of violence is almost always far better than coverage of good news, a variant of the old “if it bleeds, it ledes” maxim. In this case, of course, there’s extra motivation for the failure to emphasize progress in Iraq—which is that, for most of the press, it would be the equivalent of saying “I was wrong,” something most human beings are exceedingly reluctant to do. And journalists are certainly all too human. Continue reading →

Let’s hear it from everybody who’s tired of the 2008 election: so how about it, baseball fans?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know about you, but I’m bone tired of the 2008 election already.

I can’t remember ever feeling this level of fatigue so early in a campaign before. Maybe in previous years I didn’t follow politics so closely, although by the 2004 election I certainly did. Maybe in previous years the elections didn’t begin quite so early. Maybe in previous years the candidates were more inspiring.

Or maybe not. At any rate, there’s something about this year that makes me want to put down the entire topic and only take it up again after a year has passed. That would seem about right; discuss it a couple of weeks before the election. After all, how relevant can what is said today—a year early—possibly be? Continue reading →

Pakistan: which conspiracy theory do you prefer?

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s no dearth of conspiracy theories to explain the audacious attack on Bhutto’s convoy, and Bhutto herself has hinted that the government may have been involved.

Has she just been watching too many Oliver Stone movies? No. The sad fact is that there are so many possibile suspects that the culprits may never be known, although the complexity of the mode of attack has al Qaeda written all over it. But it’s also possible that copycats are involved.

One fact that seems relatively new in the field of political assassinations is that the perpetrators of this one didn’t care how many Pakistani citizens they killed in reaching their target. Usually assassinations are—well, more targeted towards the political figure him/herself and perhaps his/her bodyguards and family, and there’s some sort of effort made not to blast away huge crowds. Lee Harvey Oswald seems extremely restrained compared to this Pakistani crew.

Insider assassinations are not all that unusual in thrid world countries, as I’ve written in this post that focuses on the facts behind Indira Gandhi’s killing, and the ways in which India clamped down on the forces responsible. It’s a sobering tale.

The judgment of history takes time

The New Neo Posted on by

Those who are so certain they know how history will judge George Bush—or any other president, for that matter—show their ignorance of history itself.

It’s not just that contemporary perceptions of a leader are often quite different from their evaluations when seen from the perspective of time and subsequent events, although that’s part of it. Churchill’s warnings in the 1930s about the Nazi menace were widely seen as preposterous, and he himself was thought to be a washed-up has-been. Later developments turned him into a wise man, a Cassandra who saw only too clearly truths to which others had closed their eyes.

Another change that occurs over the passage of years is the uncovering of new information about the past itself. The availability of journals and private papers previously unknown sometimes reveals what may have been hidden previously. Continue reading →

Bhutto’s back

The New Neo Posted on by

After eight years of exile, Benazir Bhutto has returned to Pakistan in a deal brokered with President Musharraf.

She’s talking the democracy talk as she walks the comeback walk:

“Restoration of democracy is the only guarantee to the people’s progress and prosperity,’ she added before departing in a slow-moving convoy from the airport to the centre of the metropolis along roads lined with thousands of supporters and onlookers.

Bhutto has written a piece extolling democracy, appearing as an op-ed in today’s Boston Globe. In its high-minded rhetoric, she declares her determination to achieve none other than:

…the reconciliation of the values of Islam and the West, and a prescription for a moderate and modern Islam that marginalizes religious extremists, returns the military from politics to their barracks, treats all citizens and especially women with full and equal rights, selects its leaders by free and fair elections, and provides for transparent, democratic governance that addresses the social and economic needs of the people as its highest priority.

It’s a plan that sounds as good as Benazir looks—and that’s pretty good, since Benazir is undoubtedly the best-looking female head of state ever:

bhutto_benazir.jpg Continue reading →

The family that eats together…

The New Neo Posted on by

…eats more nutritious meals together.

So saith the NY Times. Research indicates that families who eat a regular meal together—be they troubled or un, and their ubiquitous TVs on or off—are eating better, as well.

No one knows quite why, although researchers have tried to control for the obvious possibility that families who eat together are different in additional ways from those who don’t. It would be instructive to see what would happen if one could take families who don’t ordinarily eat together and assign half of them to do so, and then measure the differences between the two groups. Of course, in that instance there might be some subtle differences between families who comply with the order and those who don’t, and this could affect the findings.

That’s the way social science research tends to be: sketchy. I know; it’s a field in which I’ve worked.

But what interests me most about this particular article is the topic of the family meal itself, and its devolution over time. When I was growing up, the evening meal was nearly sacred in almost every family I knew. It happened at a certain appointed hour, and one violated the call to table at one’s peril.

In my family, when my father came home from work at 6 PM, dinner was placed on the table, and woe to the child who hadn’t come in from playing outside, or who was unfindable. The food itself was plain but tasty and well-balanced, and we were expected to at least sample a bit of everything. And if we didn’t like what was served that night, tough. It was understood we wouldn’t starve if most of a single meal was skipped.

I had trouble with, of all things, steak. The vegetarian option so many girls take nowadays wasn’t common back then, so it really didn’t occur to me to stop eating it even if such a thing had been allowed, which it wasn’t.

But worst of all was a dish one almost never sees nowadays, and mercifully so: tongue. Continue reading →

The Kurds, the Americans, and the Jews

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Totten writes about a group of Iraqis who not only welcomed the US invasion (they refuse to use the “i”-word, though; they consider the event to have been strictly a liberation), but love America and Americans to this day: the Kurds.

The Kurdish region of Iraq has long been different. It is a stumbling block to those who consider the Iraqi war to have been an unmitigated disaster. Totten’s piece makes it clear that the Kurds are very happy that their long suffering has ended—for now:

“I ask Americans not to leave us,” Colonel Ameen said to me at the Ministry of Peshmerga. “From 1920 until now, we have been frustrated and disappointed by their pledges and promises. Eight times we have been disappointed. I ask the American people, do not make it nine.” Continue reading →

Let’s give Turkey a feel-good tongue-lashing: it’s bound to prevent further genocide

The New Neo Posted on by

This Congress has one of the lowest approval ratings in modern memory. Perhaps that’s because it has accomplished so very little.

Then again, perhaps that lack of success is a good thing, seeing the caliber of many of the bills and resolutions it has tried to pass.

Congressional resolutions are often odd ducks, mostly nonbinding and essentially irrelevant, a collection of affirmations or condemnations of this and that, passed to get members on record as being as pro or con whatever the issue might be.

On the surface, the proposed Congressional resolution passed already by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and condemning the Turks for the Armenian massacre of about ninety years ago, occupies the moral high ground. But the resolution’s sponsors and spokespeople—who seem to be primarily Democrats, although I can’t be sure since I can’t get a head count of just how much Republican support it has—are acting in reckless disregard of its possible consequences.

Or maybe they know full well what they are doing, and this is only the latest ploy in their campaign to stick it to Bush while undermining the Iraq war effort, as Jed Babbin asserts here. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has been attempted by the House under Pelosi’s dubious leadership. Continue reading →

What Sanchez really said

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s NY Times prominently highlights a speech by retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, ex-Commander of US forces in Iraq, in which he is deeply critical of the conduct of the Iraq War.

The Times summarizes Sanchez’s speech in its lede front-page paragraph as:

…call[ing] the Bush administration’s handling of the war “incompetent” and sa[ying] the result was “a nightmare with no end in sight.”

The article goes on to explain that Sanchez has a self-defensive dog in this race:

[Sanchez’s] own role as commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal leaves him vulnerable to criticism that he is shifting the blame from himself to the administration that ultimately replaced him and declined to nominate him for a fourth star, forcing his retirement…

General Sanchez has been criticized by some current and retired officers for failing to recognize the growing insurgency in Iraq during his year in command and for failing to put together a plan to unify the disparate military effort, a task that was finally carried out when his successor, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., took over in mid-2004.

In earlier years, I would have read the NY Times piece, digested it, come to a conclusion about the events described therein, and gone about my business. But, due to the wonders of the internet—and my own awakened knowledge that media reports of speechs are among the most susceptible to distortion of all MSM activities—I thought it might interesting to look up the text of the speech itself and see what Sanchez actually said. Continue reading →

More on the death of innocents, and the press

The New Neo Posted on by

This fairly straightforward article in the NY Times headlined “U.S. investigates civilian toll in airstrike, but holds insurgents responsible” describes a recent raid in Iraq that killed nineteen of the enemy who were the targets but also inadvertently led to the deaths of nine children and six women.

I say the story is relatively straightforward because it neither sensationalizes the deaths of the innocent victims nor demonizes those who killed them. Of course, it initially refers to the targets as “insurgents” and only later reveals they were members of al Qaeda, but that’s very small potatoes compared to some of the twistings and distortions of which the press seems almost infinitely capable.

The Times quotes the succinct explanation offered for the killings by Rear Adm. Greg Smith:

“The enemy has a vote here,” Admiral Smith said, “and when he chooses to surround himself with civilians and then fire upon U.S. forces, our forces have no choice but to return a commensurate amount of fire. Which is what they did last evening.”

No doubt some Times readers will see this as a weak excuse, manufactured by a bloody-minded military either intent on harming civilians, or acting in reckless disregard for their safety. Of course, such critics never quite explain what the armed forces in such situations are supposed to do instead, other than effectively commit suicide by refusing to fire back if there’s any chance of killing innocent civilians—which would be the case in virtually all conflicts against Islamist totalitarian terrorists.

The story reminded me once again that, as I put it in this post, it is an ironic fact and a harsh demonstration of the law of unintended consequences that those who most decry such killings are also an inadvertent cause of them:

It’s an almost inescapable but horrifying conclusion that if US and Israeli and other fighting forces were less intent on protecting children, fewer children would be purposely sent into harm’s way by the fanatics of the Moslem world. And, likewise, if the western MSM were not so intent on publicizing their deaths and criticizing those who kill them more than than they criticize the people who send those children out to be killed, the propaganda value in the West of the whole operation would be nil, and there probably would be less reason for the adults to put them in harm’s way. This represents a conundrum of major proportions.

What’s our own MSM to do? Even if they were well aware of their own dubious role in the matter, would the solution be to not cover such incidents? That doesn’t seem right, either. But in covering them, an effort should be made to prominently include the full context in which they occur. The Times seems to have done that here. If it continues to do so in the future, perhaps such events will lose some of their propaganda value to the enemy, who might therefore be less inclined to set up such situations in the first place.

One can hope, anyway.