Iraqi Court Overturns Ban on Hundreds of Candidates – NYTimes.com

Iraq once again stepped back from a political crisis of its own making when an appeals court on Wednesday temporarily overruled a controversial step to disqualify hundreds of candidates in next month’s election for having ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

See this is a weird one.  On one hand, we definitely don’t want to see people simply struck from the ballot because it means that their supporters have little recourse other than violence to affect the political process.  On the other hand, it is problematic to see former Baathist able to garner significant political support.  The best case is these guys are allowed to compete and are repudiated.

But regardless, remind me of why it is in the U.S. interest to be so involved that regardless of the outcome, we’ll bear part of the blame?  It annoys me that I have to care about this because we have 100k troops in Iraq still, and as a result whatever happens there matters. If we were just out this of issue would be just another bit of minutiae to be pondered and debated by regionalists.

In $3.8 Trillion Budget, Obama Pivots to Trim Future Deficits – NYTimes.com

President Obama sent Congress on Monday a proposed budget of $3.8 trillion for the fiscal year 2011, saying that his plan would produce a decade-long reduction in the deficit from $1.6 trillion this year, a shortfall swollen by $100 billion in additional tax cuts and public works spending that he is seeking right away.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t sign on to this.  We’re engaged in just ruinous policies.  We need to raise taxes AND cut spending.  I’ll give you a list of cuts:

(1) End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan immediately.  Savings $200 billion.  Whatever the dubious benefits of the continuing the conflicts at this point, we just can’t afford them.

(2) Bring the base defense budget down to no more than $350 billion.  Savings $200 billion.  We’ll lose some major capabilities as a result.  We’ll no longer be able to contest the Strait of Taiwan, in particular.  Too bad.  We can’t afford to do that either.

(3) Means-test Social Security and cut benefits by 30%.  Effective immediately.  Yeah, it sucks.  If you squandered all your earnings, you get a freebie.  If you saved enough to live on in retirement, you get screwed.  Too bad.  But at least with the 30% cut in benefits, this becomes a safety net program.  Savings, roughly $350 billion.

(4) Cap federal spending on medicare and medicaid at no more than 5% of GDP.  Savings, $300 billion.  We’ll need to ration Medicare and Medicaid.  If you want uncovered services, pay out of pocket.

(5) End the war on drugs.  Legalize and tax it.  End the war on prostitution.  Legalize and tax it.  End all farm subsidies.  We can’t afford the cost.   Savings, $75 billion.

(6) Obama’s “cuts” — keep them.  $25 billion.

All of this, btw, gets us to a $500 billion deficit!  All of it.  Think about that.

Anyway, we can fix that easily.  Let the Bush tax cuts lapse.  All of them.  We can’t afford them.  We also can’t afford to fix the alternate minimum tax issue.  We can’t afford Obama’s tax cuts either.  Too bad.

There you go, balanced budget.

Michael V. Hayden – Obama admnistration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism – washingtonpost.com

Intelligence officers need to know that someone has their back. After the Justice memos were released in April, CIA officers began to ask whether the people doing things that were currently authorized would be dragged through this kind of public knothole in five years. No one could guarantee that they would not.

See, no one needs to “have your back” if you obey the law.  It is when you choose a life of crime that you need this sort of cover.  It is the code of the mafioso.

No surprise from Hayden.  He was a key player in Bush’s illegal domestic wiretapping scheme.  He got promoted as a result — to head the CIA.  He should have been subject to court martial instead.

Of course, the Washington Post continues to make its op-ed page a friendly zone for war criminals… I guess that is so taken for granted that there is no need to comment on it.

House Testimony: The Paradoxes of Al Qaeda: Think Tank : The New Yorker

More broadly, with or without success in the pursuit of Al Qaeda’s leadership, the group’s self-isolation should provide a fundamental framework for U.S. counterterrorism policy, particularly in the communications sphere. That policy should be constructed to patiently reinforce Al Qaeda’s political isolation. (The hunt for Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri, by Predator drone and otherwise, may have a countervailing effect in the short run, but the effort to finally destroy Al Qaeda’s central leadership is nonetheless essential.) The most effective U.S. approach will be to call attention to Al Qaeda’s depredations and weaknesses, through proxies as much as possible, while taking no action itself that might reconnect Al Qaeda to its former political, financial and recruiting support. Fortunately, in strategic communications, Al Qaeda’s own actions speak most effectively for themselves—the ghoulish spectacle of a young Nigerian “taught” to commit suicide by detonating explosives hidden in his underwear was hardly the image of noble war that Al Qaeda would require to recover its lost standing. American communications matter less, but as with Al Qaeda, actions always provide the clearest and most effective signals, particularly in a media era characterized by nearly infinite numbers of channels. Closing Guantanamo, repudiating torture, reaffirming American constitutional values, engaging constructively with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, affirming the sanctity of civilian life in military conflict, are all examples of specific acts by the Obama Administration—attempted or completed—that by themselves can contribute to a successful strategic communications policy aimed at Al Qaeda’s continued political isolation.

The entire testimony is well worth reading. But these policy recommendations are, I believe, spot on. 

The main challenge for the United States is to allow AQ to destroy itself, even in the face of provocation.  Our impetus — driven the the policy confluence of neo-conservatives and neo-liberals — to try to actively “fix” everything is perhaps our greatest on-going danger.  There are times when less is more, and we are now in a situation where restraint is going to serve American interests better than a crusade to reshape politics around the globe.

Of course, if there is a successful spectacular terrorist attack on U.S. soil, we are almost certain to overreact and as a consequence undermine our own strategic interests.  Unfortunately, it is probably beyond the capacity of any American politician to prepare the American public sufficiently to allow for a nuanced response to an attack, so we are in a perilous position where AQ can only prosper if we help them, but where we are also likely to be incapable to not doing so if attacked.

Britain, Japan to help reintegrate Taliban foot soldiers – washingtonpost.com

Britain and Japan have agreed to head an international fund, expected to total up to $500 million over the next five years, as part of a broad plan to help lure Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with the promise of jobs, protection against retaliation, and the removal of their names from lists of U.S. and NATO targets.
….
Reintegration is a key component of the Afghanistan strategy President Obama outlined last fall. U.S. officials have said that they believe that up to 80 percent of Taliban foot soldiers are fighting for money and because of local grievances rather than in support of an ideology. Earlier reintegration efforts have failed, officials have said, because of poor planning, inadequate security and insufficient financial support.

I have a great deal of respect for David Kilcullen, and his book, The Accidental Guerilla is a must-read for those interested in the issue of insurgency and counter-insurgency.  But that said, we are likely making a fundamental mistake if we believe that these non-ideological “foot soldiers” are the center of gravity of the insurgency.

First, even if you shear off these “Taliban-for-hires,” you are still going to be left with a core of ideologically motivated or otherwise committed insurgents.  They are a disproportionate part of the challenge.

Second, unless you plan to put every man of fighting age on the payroll, there is little evidence that you will eliminate their ability to recruit.  There is also a moral hazard problem here, also.  If we pay off former-insurgents at a higher level of pay than is available through normal economic activity, you create an incentive to punch your ticket as an insurgent in order to get into a DDR program.

Third, what is the long-term here?  You out-compete the Taliban financially for the loyalty of apolitical fighters.  Then what?  The reality is that this creates a durable political economy that supports violence and warfare.  There is going to be an entire class of people whose well-being depends on continued payments, and who have the ability to extort more money simply by turning back to violence.  This is the institutionalization of an extortion scheme.

All of this is a way for us to avoid the real issue, which is the necessity of reconciling mid- and senior-level insurgent leaders.  If the issue was just about the foot soldiers, you could kill your way to victory.  But we can’t kill them nor buy them off ultimately for precisely the same reason — they aren’t the real problem.

U.S. Envoy’s Cables Show Deep Concerns on Afghan Strategy – NYTimes.com

The ambassador, who left the military last April to become Mr. Obama’s emissary, also complained about an inadequate civilian counterpart organization to the NATO military command in Afghanistan. Nearly three months later, he is still expressing concerns about too few civilian experts in Afghanistan.

He also noted worries that the success of Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan policy hinged on Pakistani forces’ eliminating militants’ havens in the mountainous region near the Afghan border.

“Pakistan will remain the single greatest source of Afghan instability so long as the border sanctuaries remain,” he wrote. “Until this sanctuary problem is fully addressed, the gains from sending additional forces may be fleeting.”

Hopefully Gen. McChrystal and the pro-COIN advocates will be proved right. But if they aren’t, we won’t be able to say that no one was proposing a strong alternative assessment. Ambassador Eikenberry’s concerns — never well addressed by the pro-COIN camp — may well turn out to have been chillingly prescient. The dramatic escalation of the conflict may yet achieve positive results, but it is disturbing how much success rests on developments wholly out of our control — such as the success of good governance initiatives, anti-corruption, economic development, and most significantly the ability/desire of the Pakistanis to control their territory.

In audio message, bin Laden says he endorsed Dec. 25 airline bomb plot – washingtonpost.com

Osama bin Laden endorsed the failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner Christmas Day and threatened new attacks against the United States in an audio message released Sunday that appeared aimed at asserting that he maintains some direct command over al-Qaeda-inspired offshoots.

U.S. officials and several researchers who track terrorist groups, however, said there is no indication that bin Laden or any of his top lieutenants had anything to do with or even knew in advance of the plot by a Yemen-based group that is one of several largely independent al-Qaeda franchises.

There is a major debate right now in the terrorism/counter-terrorism field.  One side believes that al Qaeda is essentially resurgent.  They believe that AQ has adjusted its strategy recently, has been coordinating attacks more extensively with the Quetta Shura Taliban and other Afghan insurgents.  They also believe that the recent spate of attacks linked to Yemen, including the Fort Hood shootings and the Christmas (attempted) bombing were AQ inspired.

On the other hand, many analysts believe that AQ is increasingly irrelevant.  Some of them believe that the main challenge is now among self-radicalized lone wolves, with little connection to AQ-central.

The reality is that we simply do not know.  The profile of the analysts is high on both sides.  The evidence in support of either position is circumstantial and inadequate.

Ultimately, from a policy perspective, the debate may be irrelevant.  American counter-terrorism policy needs to a remain a defense-in-depth, and one of the largest risks is being overly reactive to the point of overemphasizing one challenge over others.  Yemen is certainly a significant problem, but focusing too much on threat emanating from there is likely to be counter-productive, given that terrorist threats can rapidly shift and materialize elsewhere.

A New Search for Consensus on Health Care Bill – NYTimes.com

The House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, said Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Obama were ignoring the message of the Massachusetts election. “They are still scheming and scrambling to find a way to pass their government takeover of health care,” Mr. Boehner said. And he warned, “If they jam it through, I think they are going to face a firestorm from the American public.”

“Government takeover of healthcare.” That is the talking point, even though, you know, there is no “government takeover” in the current bill.  There is not even a public option alive at this point.  In fact, the Senate bill that seemed promising and is now dead was all about pushing everyone into private sector plans, and having the government essentially subsidize new customers for the private sector.

But yeah, by all means, it makes sense to reach out to a thoughtful moderate like John Boehner, and certainly I agree that if you can’t get him to sign on, it is a sure sign that the Democratic party has been captured by leftist radicals.  Sigh.