Over at American Future someone has gone through all the New York Times editorials to see what their pre-Bush Iraq policy looked like.
So its not that the NYT didn't want us to invade Iraq, its that they didn't want Bush2 to invade Iraq...
Technorati Tags: Iraq
Note that despite the long description of card game rules, this post is really about Iraq.
During the holidays, my family likes to play this card game called Canasta. If you've ever played Canasta though, this game bears little resemblance to the real game. Supposedly, the variation we play is called Mexican Canasta except the rules have no resemblance to what everyone else calls Mexican Canasta.
So I just call it Wetter Family Canasta, especially since my wife claims that the rules change every time (they don't we just remember a few during play, honest).
Full rules are in the extended entry, but there's a few points you need to know:
The nice thing about playing Canasta over the holidays is that basically its something to do while you all sit around and visit while having coffee and pie. It gives you something to do then between the first feast (the turkey) and the second feast (the desserts).
After playing this game for a couple of years, my wife, who is quite competitive, asked me “How come I keep losing at Canasta?”. I asked her: “Where are you sitting?”
See, long ago I figured out that where you sit at the table determines how well you do. Sitting right after my mom or dad means you'll lose. The worst is right after my Mom, because she loves to pick up the pile, which means you'll be staring at black 3's all night. My dad is the same, but even when he doesn't pick up the pile, he'll sacrifice his own collections in order to discard stuff you won't be able to use.
So don't sit after my mom or my dad. If at all possible in fact, arrange it so my dad sits after my mom. Then my dad will be looking at black 3's all night. In fact, the perfect spot is just before my mom. Then whenever she run's out of black 3's and there's not much in the discard pile, you can feed her a convenient discard.
Also, never let my dad sit across from my mom if there are a lot of people either in case you end up having teams.
So in other words, long before you make the small tactical decisions about which card to discard and which to play, you've already determined how well you can do by the strategic decision about who you've sat next to.
Which brings us to Iraq. I've been saying for awhile now that the decision by the insurgents to use car bombs, IEDs and suicide bombings was a war-losing move. While tactically it seems to be good (most of the troops killed in Iraq are from IEDs), strategically its a disaster. Actions in war need to accomplish something. Ultimately, that's the difference between a terrorist and a soldier. Both may kill civilians, but soldiers do so accidentally in pursuit of a goal.
Terror is not a goal. That's the strategic mistake the insurgents and terrorists ultimately make. Sure, it gets your cause noticed on the news, but only for one day. To get anywhere in war, life or politics, you need to hold territory. A mine field or IED merely denies territory, and generally from both sides. There's a fundamental flaw in their strategy in that they're assuming that our side _needs that territory.
The thing is though, long term, we don't. From the White House document released this morning:
As security conditions improve and as Iraqi Security Forces become increasingly capable of securing their own country, our forces will increasingly move out of the cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate, and conduct fewer patrols and convoy missions.
To some extent, in order for an IED to be effective, we have to cooperate. If we don't drive down the street where the IED is implanted, it can't be effective. Long term, we're going to be spending more and more time isolated on our bases in Iraq, leaving patrols and such to the Iraqi Police. As that happens, it's just like going “around” a mine field. If we fly “over” the places we're driving through now with a helicopter, no IED attack.
So the insurgents are basically sitting right after my mom at the Canasta table. They can play their hearts out, but ultimately, they're going to be looking at black 3's all night.
Come to think of it, fighting the US in Iraq has been a “sit after my mom” strategy for Al Quida in general...
(Wetter Family Canasta rules follow)
Whenever I cancel a reservation, I always get a number I just ignore.
Today, I wrote it in a 3x5 card and filed it under “Travel”.
The reservation I've always printed out, which then sat on my desk until I was ready to go. Next time I think I'll file it in a folder based on the name of the trip. In this case “Xmas Trip”.
Technorati Tags: GTD
The White House has published its Strategy in Iraq. This is the plan they've been working off of since 2003.
If you're a long time reader though, nothing in this document will be news.
Nice to be vindicated though. :-)
The document leaves out Why Iraq? though, which I've covered here.
Here are some interesting tidbits about the Administration's viewpoint. They see 3 sorts of enemies in Iraq:
Rejectionists are the largest group. They are largely Sunni Arabs who have not embraced the shift from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to a democratically governed state. Not all Sunni Arabs fall into this category. But those that do are against a new Iraq in which they are no longer the privileged elite. Most of these rejectionists opposed the new constitution, but many in their ranks are recognizing that opting out of the democratic process has hurt their interests.
Saddamists and former regime loyalists harbor dreams of reestablishing a Ba’athist dictatorship and have played a lead role in fomenting wider sentiment against the Iraqi government and the Coalition.
Terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida make up the smallest enemy group but are the most lethal and pose the most immediate threat because (1) they are responsible for the most dramatic atrocities, which kill the most people and function as a recruiting tool for further terrorism and (2) they espouse the extreme goals of Osama Bin Laden – chaos in Iraq which will allow them to establish a base for toppling Iraq’s neighbors and launching attacks outside the region and against the U.S. homeland.
The administration sees the war in Iraq to function along three tracks:
Political: Isolate, Engage, Build Security: Clear, Hold, Build Economic: Restore, Reform, Build
What I notice is that all 3 tracks have “Build” as a major element. The mistake the White House made in the Iraq war was overestimating how functional Iraq was as a state.
Also, as I predicted but haven't written about much yet:
As security conditions improve and as Iraqi Security Forces become increasingly capable of securing their own country, our forces will increasingly move out of the cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate, and conduct fewer patrols and convoy missions.
Basically that means less Marines, and more airplanes. That is, we'll have an Air Force base or something somewhere in Iraq, the Iraqis will go into a town, we'll bomb the terrorists. That kind of thing. That means less deaths from IEDs. As I've pointed out for a long time, the insurgents switch to IEDs is a losing strategy. In fact, I think its worth another blog post.
For instance the Jim Jones/Jamestown suicide culture? That was bone-ass dumb.
Who comes up with this “all cultures are equal” stuff anyways? Its been obvious since the beginning of human history that some cultures just, well, suck.
Like say, the Icans/Mayans/Aztecs...
Further reading:
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or SucceedWhich is sitting in my “to read” pile.
One of my wife's complaints about me has always been that even though I'm really smart, I never seemed to apply that to getting my shit done.
What could I say? It was true.
But one thing I got from GTD was how to think about it. It's all very well to be a top UI designer, but now I think about all this in terms of reducing friction.
So on that note, I'm off to buy some Fisher Space Pens, because one of my GTD techniques has been to make my own note pads of index cards plus binder clips. I have some in strategic locations in the house, and I carry some with me so I can make notes. But it's annoying to have to carry the pen. Some of the other GTD folks made the point that Fisher Space pens are compact when closed, and can write in any position, etc.
Plus they're not really that expensive.
But the insight I had today is that I'm quite capable of figuring out how to reduce the friction in my life, once I think about it that way.
Technorati Tags: GTD
The cult of Getting Things Done or GTD, that is:
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free ProductivityI'd read First Things First and some of the other time management books before, and while they had some useful insights, they didn't really help me get more organized. This book has done so.
There are several things that make this book different then other books of this ilk.
Its relentlessly practical. The book bluntly states that if there's the slightest bit of friction in your organizational process, you're not going to do it. That's very true. Absentminded as I am, I have problems executing, and I hate fuss. So the book is filled with little tips on how to “lubricate” the little things you do to stay organized. Those tips in most cases were enough for me to actually do what I needed to be doing.
It its based on practical experience. Everything suggested in the book comes out of the author's experience coaching people so most things are time-tested.
It's not dogmatic. If a Palm works for you, great. If it doesn't, don't use it. If an organizer works for you, great. If it doesn't don't use it. The main point of the book is to have one place where you keep track of things. Once you have one, trusted place, then you can free your brain for your actual work.
It's bottom up. David Allen, the author, bluntly states that human beings are just great at prioritizing and setting goals, its being organized about doing it that they have problems with.
The best example of practical advice that I've been giving my friends is that of filing. The book says:
Now normally, I would immediately resist those two items. But the book clearly pointed out reasons why its way is best.
Filing Alphabetically Most people try to implement their filing system like its some sort of project management system. Don't do that, your project management system is for that, your filing system is for filing. If you file alphabetically:
Dump the Hanging Files It's true, having those hanging files adds friction to filing, and its unnecessary. It's much easier to just put the files directly into the file drawer.
Labelmaker My first thought to this was thoughts of Monica from Friends. But David Allen pointed out that having a label maker reduces friction. Somehow, for whatever reason, having to write on a file label makes me less likely to file. Having a label maker gives me nicely marked files, and makes it kind of fun, so I do it and get all the crap off my desk.
Having a clean desk brings me to a central theme of the book: Mind Like Water. The book argues that once you can start capturing the stuff in your life into a trusted system, that frees your mind for the task at hand.
That's interesting, because in my Martial Arts/Qi Gong studies we have this concept of calm/stillness that's related. When doing Qi Gong drills to try to gain stillness by clearing my mind, I've been constantly stuck by how many to-do things I have floating around my head. It's distracting; it's like trying to think with someone screaming “GET SOME MILK AT THE STORE” in your head. Releasing that stuff in Qi Gong was always relaxing, but being able to release the “get the milk” thought because I know I've written it down is even better.
For me, the first thing I tried doing this for was email. I had an inbox with 40,000 messages in it, most of which were just archive. I was spending lots of time reading the same email over and over, marking messages “unread” so I'd read them again, etc. So per the book, I made several mailboxes: @Action, @Archives, @Read, @Reference, @Someday, @WaitingFor. Now when I get an email, I sort it into one of the above categories, or delete it.
My inbox is empty. Its strange, but it hugely reduces my stress to not have 40,000 emails to look at. It reduced the friction in my life, because I look at my emails once mostly and if I need to look at them again, they're in a specific place.
The book makes some other key points.
Most people's “To-Do” lists are actually projects. Don't do that. A to-do item is the next physical, visible action you can do to move a project forward. By writing what the next action is for a project into your to-do list, you physically and mentally relax. It's true. It also focuses you immensely to think about goals as what can I actually do about this item. Even if the next action is brainstorm about XXXX, that's enough so I can let it go when I'm doing something else.
A complete to-do list for a person might have 200 items on it. That's ok, that's just life. The insight David Allen has to make that managable is that to-dos have contexts. For instance, “@errands” is a typical context; you can't accomplish the item until you're running errands. Similarly, you might have context relating to a person “@person”, because you can't accomplish the to-do item until you're with that person. So by annotating your to-do items with the context, you bring your list of actions you can do at any one moment down to 10-20, which is actually manageable.
Of course, I'm bringing some of my own insights to GTD. For one thing, the Taoists have this concept of the “success well”. The idea is that whenever you completely a task successfully, it puts a little bit in the success well. Failure on the other hand, draws out of that well. You're only willing to attempt something you might fail at if the failure is of equivalent size to whatever you have stored in your success well. This generalizes to other emotions too: your happiness well lets you withstand sadness or other stress etc.
So some of this GTD stuff I see as filling various wells. Even if a project itself is daunting, by breaking it down into a series of next actions, the size of the failure is reduced, while my success well is filled.
So I've been doing GTD for a week now, and:
More Links:
43 Folders 43 Folders Getting Started tips
Technorati Tags: GTD
I'm a huge fan of PlanB the morning-after contraceptive. Some of you know this because I ranted about this before.
Instapundit this morning was complaining about the FDA's disapproval of PlanB for non-prescription use. So how come I've never ripped the Bush Administration a new one for not approving it? After all, this could hugely cut down on the number of abortions in this country. It should be win-win?
Because it turns out there's blame enough to go around. What the articles Instapundit linked to don't tell you is that when Barr Pharmaceuticals took over marketing of Plan B from the WCC, they changed the application to allow it to be marketed to girls as young as 15.
Here in Arizona, that's known as shooting yourself in the foot. Of course, its more complex than that.
Here's where Barr shoots themselves in the foot (from the GAO report):
October 9, 2003: At the request of Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a teleconference was held to discuss the upcoming joint public meeting of FDA’s advisory committees. Meeting participants from FDA included review staff within the Offices of Drug Evaluation III and V. According to teleconference minutes, review staff asked Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc., about possible age restrictions for use of Plan B. Minutes also noted that Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc., said that it intended to offer its product to women as young as 15 years of age. Also, Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc., agreed to explore and report back to FDA on behind-the-counter marketing and the implementation of age limitations on the sale of Plan B.
This caused the FDA to worry:
January 23, 2004 ...meeting minutes noted that FDA officials told the sponsor that the Office of the Commissioner and the Acting Director of CDER had raised concerns as to whether there were adequate data to establish that minors (i.e., those under 18 years of age) would use Plan B appropriately in the absence of a learned intermediary. Potential options that were suggested from FDA and CDER management included the possible need to (1) collect additional data, perhaps from another actual use study targeted to minors, or (2) to impose an age restriction on the OTC sale of the product.
Basically, the FDA really, really, wanted to get the message across to teenage girls that this was emergency contraception (only 75% effective).
Barr senses which way the wind blows, and:
March 11, 2004 Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc., submitted an amendment to its sNDA, proposing a dual-marketing strategy, making Plan B OTC for women 16 years of age and older and prescription only for women under 16 years of age.
But its too late:
May 6, 2004 FDA issued a not-approvable letter, denying Plan B OTC marketing status, citing a lack of adequate data regarding safe use among younger adolescents. The letter also stated that FDA was not able to conduct a complete review of the dual-marketing strategy in the amendment to the sNDA because of the absence of the draft product labeling describing how Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc., would comply with both the prescription and OTC labeling requirements in a single package.
So what do I think?
First, the FDA should approve Plan B. But then again, I take weird not-approved-by-the-FDA Chinese Herbs for my health, so what do I know? I think the FDA is a total waste in general; this issue didn't exactly change my mind.
Second, Barr Pharmaceuticals should include a condom in each box labeled “for next time, idiot”.
Third, perhaps it should be behind the counter at the pharmacy, but without age restrictions.
Fourth, I agree with the director that teenage girls are idiots. I'm not sure that's science though, just informed observation. I don't think not having this drug available over the counter would help that problem though...
As for the blame? I blame the idiot who came up with the idea of the FDA in the first place... Exactly why do women need a prescription for birth control pills in the first place?
And we just handed over the largest one so far.
Work as a waiter? Put patriotic messages on your tabs to get bigger tips.
Murdoc also read the tea leaves, and he made a good point on the 92,000 number.
No Marines.
However, I think he's missing that some of the Marines currently in Iraq were already part of OIF-4, so they'll be staying. But he's right it that we shouldn't take that number too seriously folks. Without the complete rotation plan, we won't really know. Besides no plan survives...
I still think:
Hat Tip: Defense Tech who was one of the first people to link to my original piece about troop reductions.
Over at Black Iris a Jordanian website.
From this interview:
RF: How does increased compensation affect soldiers' decisions to re-enlist?
Moffitt: I have tried to build some simple models which assume that soldiers are forward-looking agents. Much of this work was co-authored with Tom Daula. I have found that the bonuses the military has offered to get soldiers to re-enlist do not have a large effect. They simply are not big enough to change most soldiers' decisions. What is more important is the type of training that a soldier can expect to get in the military. Let's say that you join when you are 18 and that you make a career of it, meaning you spend 20 years with the military. That means you get out when you are 38. Sure, you get a nice military retirement package when you leave. But at 38, you are still a relatively young man and you will want to have acquired skills that will allow you to have a career on the outside at a good job. Those type of issues tend to dominate compensation issues, especially when the compensation takes the form of a one-time bonus payment for re-enlistment.
I find this interesting, because one of the things I believe is that the US military has always provided a sort of social safety valve. Because it provides education to its members, while most raw recruits come from the lower strata of our society, it provides a clear path to the middle and upper class. As the ads say, “we'll page for college”, and they do; the average US soldier is better educated then the average American.
So while one day I see us dramatically drawing down our military, we'll have to find something to replace it with. The Peace Corp won't do it, they're kind of snobby; you have to have a college degree to join. Maybe we could have a “disaster” force that would respond to natural disasters all over the world, but that's my own weird twist on Thomas Barnett's SysAdmin force.
Hat tip: Marginal Revolutions
Interview with the Marine Commander in Fallujah says Iraqi police could control it in 6 months.
The Index of Political Freedom ranks the countries in the Middle East by how free they are.
Israel tops the list, followed by...Lebanon. That's pretty cool that the Lebanese have come so far in a year.
From Melvin Laird the Secretary of Defense during Nixon who oversaw our withdrawal from Vietnam. Read it here
According to him, it wasn't Vietnamization that was so bad, it was when Congress 2 years later refused to fund the foreign aid for Vietnam.
Which means...in 2 years be prepared to write your Congressman about how we need to renew aid to Iraq.
Sigh
But read the article, its great to get that sort of perspective.
MSNBC on withdrawing troops from Iraq. Note the 60,000 number? Guess what 170,000-92,000 is?
Hat Tip: Defense Tech which has some other interesting links.
Remember, you heard it here first
Update: Here's another one from CNN, Hat Tip: Jihad Watch
So my readers all know that the DOD announced plans to reduce troops in Iraq in 2006. But nobody else does, which means I keep seeing pieces like this is the news. (Hat Tip to Jon).
It's not like I didn't try to get the word out, I sent several emails to some of the A-list bloggers to point this out. Like the mainstream media and our political leaders, it seems the blogosphere is more interested in screaming at each other then in knowing the truth.
Perhaps its not just the mainstream media that is aspiring to be professional wrestling, the blogs seem to be following the same path.
So now both the media and the blogosphere are surreal for me.
sigh
I sent this in response to an email from someone who reads the Noise and thought I was more right wing, because I see it as my job in the Noise to provide a counterpoint to the left-wingedness of the local arts & entertainment rag:
I'm a small-l libertarian.
That is, I find the right's obsession with turning morals into laws and the left's obsession with political correctness equally annoying. I'm small-l, because its obvious to me that there are certain things the government is good for, and a reasonable amount of government is good. We don't have captialism in this country, we have democratic capitalism, an oxymoron that means “whatever we want it to mean”.
A good example was there was the diatribe in Reason (the libertarian magazine) recently about the Bush Administration refusing to funnel foreign aid money through any NGO that wouldn't sign a pledge against prostitution. “Interfering with their first amendment rights.”
Personally for me, that's dead on. If you want a hotbed of prostitution in a country, including child prostitution, slavery, etc. just go to an area where lots of foreign aid workers and peacekeepers hang out. Its not interfering with anyone's first amendment rights to not give them money to spend in another country...
Now do I think prostitution should be legalized in the US? Maybe. Its a tough call, there's good and bad sides. A large L would say Yes, me I'm just more Jeffersonian.
So definitely small L. The world is too complicated for capital letter people. Be a democrat, not a Democrat, or a republican, not a Republican. Be a christian, not a Christian.
You're definitely right that I trash the left more then the right even on my Blog. That's because I generally find them more annoying. My wife put it best: All snobs are bad, but Granola Snobs are the worst.
That is, I find that right wing extremists are obviously ignorant idiots, while left wing extremists are well-educated idiots. It seems more useful to puncture the balloons of left wing extremists because they're more smug.
I actually have plenty of criticism of the Bush administration's conduct of the war, but I tend not to write about it because the stupid-left-wing-let's-make-it-worse-by-pulling-out-or-make-up-shit-because-we-hate-Bush is so much more common. Probably that's a response to comments, I don't get a lot of “boo-ya, kill the ragheads” comments on my blog, instead I get more of the “soldiers are hillbillies” comments.
Something I think we both agree on though is that the Bush administration is very Wilsonian. However, I see the Bush administration's change in foreign policy direction as a big change for the US and I hope it continues. I (and for that matter the Bush administration) very much acknowledge that in the past the US has supported dictators at the expense of freedom. Even Ronald Reagan did so right?
However, while all previous administrations except perhaps Wilson (who might have been successful if he hadn't had a stroke) have mostly paid lip service to spreading freedom (except for RR in Eastern Europe), Bush2 has stated clear goals and is tracking the State Department in working towards those goals. see here
So are we supporting a dictator in Pakistan? Yes Are we also trying to build up the infrastructure to support democracy in Pakistan? Yes
To me those two questions/answers sum up the period we're living in. If 9/11 taught us anything, it taught us that we need to be a mixture of Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt.
Orin Kerr over at the Volokh Conspiracy weighs in on the new Patriot Act.
About 10+ years ago, I forget the exact date, Congress was looking into regulating professional wrestling. The head of the WWE was testifying, and he said “we're not a sport, we're sports entertainment”. Congress said basically, “Oh”, and decided not to regulate it.
My problem with the Mainstream Media is that they aren't news, they're news entertainment. There's no difference between the MSM and WWE trash talking in my opinion, other then that the WWE is probably more interesting and have better clothes. Though I can't really say, I don't watch much of either.
vs. 
Here's chart of the number of troops we'll have in Iraq over the next few months:
Here it is in “Mainstream Media Fashion”, where I omit the first bar, so it looks like we're going to be dramatically pulling down the number of troops in Iraq:
Even you granola types should like this
I wrote this long piece called Beliefs, which is one of my favorite pieces so far.
My co-worker Matt found this great quote that sums up the problem in two sentences:
Rather than blame the terrorists; rather than admiting they have to take action against them; their fear is transformed to anger and displaced onto President Bush. If everything is his fault, then the reality of what happened does not have to be faced (this also explains the intense psychological denial that these same individuals tend to have about 9/11).
Damn. If I wasn't having so much fun scooping the New York Times, I might have to stop blogging. (Yes, I'm gloating. Wouldn't you?)
So the entire blogosphere missed the biggest story of the week, as did all of the newspapers, and both Senators Kerry and McCain: The Pentagon announced on November 8th that they would be reducing the number of American troops in 2006 down to about 92,000.
I more or less expected the papers to miss this. They've never quite gotten the war on terror, or understood exactly how the “rotation plan” works; the Pentagon was able to slip a troop increase of about 30,000 troops past them this quarter. But two of the most famous Senators spent the week arguing back and forth about what troop levels should be. Much ado about nothing? No, much ado about ignorance! I've always assumed that Senators had access to better (classified) information then me. I guess I was wrong...
Kerry said we should cut troop levels by 30,000 troops in Iraq by the end of the year. Um, Senator, there are currently 170,000 troops in Iraq, up from 140,000 prior to September. The Pentagon quietly raised the number of troops in Iraq for the October and December elections by overlapping the OIF-4 rotations against the OIF-3 rotations. That overlap ends in the first quarter of 2006, so the US was already going to reduce forces by 30,000 troops. This is so typical of Kerry. I think he has CEO disease; he gets a briefing and thinks it is his idea. “Bush should be doing exactly what he..er..is doing”, he'll thunder.
Meanwhile, McCain gave a speech to counter Kerry, saying we needed more troops in Iraq. Well, I agree with that, I just don't think they should be US troops, they should be Iraqi troops. We're training 7-10,000 new troops a month in Iraqi. Those troops are about 3-4 times more effective then our own troops; after all, its their country. So by the end of the year, when we rotate those 30,000 troops home, there will be more then enough Iraqi troops to replace them. By August, we'll have 270,000 Iraqi troops in Iraq, which compares well to the previous regime which had more troops, but they were inadequately trained. Saddam didn't even provide food or uniforms for half of them.
As for how I caught this when the press missed it, remember how I suspected that we were planning on reducing forces in Iraq in 2006? Then there was this announcement by the DOD of the new troop rotations? And then I noticed that the UN mandate has been extended through 2006, but that the Iraqis have the ability to cut it short if they want?
At first, I thought maybe I was getting it wrong, so I talked to a couple of people and they just sort of shrugged. Then I watched a newsreport by the internal DOD news channel saying it and I thought “aha!”. Finally, I asked the DOD directly and they confirmed it:
The story about the 92,000 troop rotation for 2006 seems to be implying that we'll be drawing down our troops in 2006.
This briefing makes it more explicit.
Can I have confirmation that this is true? This seems like pretty big news.
We can confirm that the plan is, in fact, to reduce the size of Coalition Forces in country in 2006. It's big news inasmuch as the Iraqis are increasing the size and strength of their footprint and, by the same token, we're reducing ours.
As we've stated in the past, rotation planning is flexible, conditions-based and operationally focused; it is not based on timetables or political pressures. The coalition is committed to assisting Iraq while Iraq works to achieve political stability and the maintenance of a secure environment.
How was I able to read the tea leaves that the New York Times and the Washington Post missed? Simple. I've always understood the war plan.
The war plan, for good or ill has never been to occupy the country. It's always been the plan for the Iraqis to provide security in their own country. In other words, do the exact opposite of what we did in Vietnam:
In other words, instead of going into Iraq and trying to run the country like we did in Vietnam (Step 1 install a Christian leader in a Buddhist country? What idiot thought up that one?), we've done the minimal amount of work to keep Iraq in a holding pattern until the Iraqis could run it.
It's pretty simple really, and it's actually not a bad plan. I think the US has learned the lessons of Vietnam and Somalia; let people run their own countries. The main mistake we made in this whole war was thinking that it wouldn't take most of 2004 to train the Iraqi Police and Army. It just takes time to do that kind of thing.
Once you understand the war plan, the minute the number of Iraqi Police started to pass the number of US troops, it was obvious we were going to be able to draw our own troops down. With the 210,000 Iraqis, plus the 170,000 US troops, there are 380,000 troops working towards security in Iraq, the most we've ever had. So I was looking for troop reductions, and I found it. By August, with 270,000 Iraqi troops and 92,000 US troops, 3/4 of the troops in Iraq will be Iraqis, and the US may not be needed at all. Hence the provision in the 2006 mandate to end the presence of coalition forces early if need be.
So there you go, spread the word. Be sure to read Defining the Victory Conditions so you can realize that our pulling out troops is a sure sign of success in Iraq, and you can read: Route Irish has Improved if you want to see how much more effective the Iraqis are then our own troops. For one thing, not only do all Iraqis speak the language, but they can recognize someone who doesn't belong the same way a Flagstaff resident can see a Phoenician a mile away. (Phoenician being a tourist from Phoenix.)
Update:
Welcome Instapundit readers. As you can see, I originally noticed this on the 12th of November, so its been a weird week for me listening to the debates about all this. Looks like the media has caught up though. Here's an interesting interview with the Marine commander in Fallujah, he says the Iraqis could take over there in 6 months.
Update #2: Wow, Glenn linked me twice. Mudville Gazette has looked at the same stuff here. Like me, he concludes that troop reductions may be coming but they may not be down to 92,000.
For new readers to my blog if you like what you see, you may be interested in:
Brookings which is all my coverage of the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index reports.
Debunking Iraq Myths where I lay out a moderate position on Iraq.
Friction where I discuss “Why Iraq?”
Bush Lied, People Died, Er, Kinda where I talk about that meme.
Ground Truth are pieces that provide information on how the war in Iraq is going from either soldiers or Iraqis.
Warning, I do consider myself a moderate on the war. I don't think Bush was totally straightforward, I don't think he could be. I do think Iraq was necessary. All my foreign policy pieces are here.
Previously: What if the Tin Foil Hat Brigade is right?
Update: Here's a rebuttal
I like the fact that the rebuttal caught the original post in a lie, they're using Chef's Pride Aluminum foil instead of Reynold's as they state in their article. I also think its pretty funny that they tied the MIT Media lab into the whole mind control conspiracy thing:
Most relevant here, a Media Lab research group called “Society of the Mind” (secret societies have long been involved in mind control) is involved in the DARPA funded CHIP: Comprehensive Human Intelligence Project, which “aims to develop a 'Cognitive Architecture' inspired by the observed structure and dynamics of the human brain/mind system” and is part of a larger DARPA program called Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architecture. DARPA gave Media Lab US$1,032,627 for this black project, about which no information can be found.
Also interesting was this:
Aluminum was originally named “alumium” by Sir Humphry Davy, who later changed it to “aluminum” (perhaps in an attempt to make it more Latinized since alumen is Latin for alum, the aluminum compound that the name is derived from). The British (and allied English speakers) shortly thereafter changed the name once more, this time to “aluminium” so that it would again match the pattern of most other elements (helium, sodium, etc.), while the North Americans eventually decided to keep the second, slightly more traditional name. I predict that North Americans will adopt the more regular “-ium” spelling by the year 2050, prompting the British to start calling it “alumininium”. At that point debate can begin on changing “platinum” to “platinium”
From this page. I love the internet.
Hat Tip: My Co-Worker Matt who really gives it to the Democrats in the piece I just linked to.
In the end, the story of the run-up to the Iraq war is about intelligence, but not in the way most people think. Intelligence is always flawed and imprecise, even more so when you're dealing with a closed, paranoid and authoritarian regime like Hussein's. It's foolish to suggest Bush should have bucked consensus estimates on Iraq WMD built from more than a decade of intel, and it's even worse to suggest he lied for not doing so.
What President Bush did instead was put an end to the decade-long guessing game and place the burden squarely on Saddam Hussein by saying in front of the world: “This is what we think you have. It's now your responsibility to prove us wrong.” In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in the history of America, it was absolutely the right thing to do.
From Real Clear Politics, via Blogs for Bush
On this forum the Sports section has the most posts...
Want a chance to see what the Iraqis think? I found this discussion board. Interesting how much they sound like us, they have some of the same divisions about the war...
Here's an interesting quote:
A note on civilians. I didn’t see one civilian hurt or mistreated while I was with the Marines of the 2/1. For one, there aren’t many there. Huseybah, normally about 30,000 people, is almost abandoned. I made it halfway through the city, and found maybe 10 houses with families in them. Best estimate is that about 5,000 civilians remain.
Secondly, I never saw a Marine shoot first. They never fired a round unless fired upon, which is in keeping with their rules of engagement. Now, when they were fire upon, even if it was just some guy taking potshots, the entire company would open up. If they brought the tanks in, it was all over.
In a different post relating to his article on Fallujah, he gives it to a troll:
Now, as for me being a shameful excuse for a human being — and I’m talking to you, “Susan” — get over yourself. My story was hardly cheerleading and I’m sick and tired of people who think any coverage of the military is somehow being complicit with war crimes. The Marines I met committed no crimes, wanted to get home and realized they were doing an often pointless task, a feeling I tried to convey in my story. If my reporting doesn’t fit your preconceived notions of what’s happening, tough. I’m right and you’re not. Referencing Dahr Jamal, who came over here with an agenda to “document atrocities,” is not journalism — it’s activism. And if that’s what you want, go to another damn blog.
When the New York Times, which hates Arnold, endorses 3 out of 4 of his propositions, and they still get defeated, you have to realize that all the people in California with any brains moved to Arizona about, say, 10 years ago...
Idiots. They should have at least passed the redistricting measure.
For those of you who don't know, Ground Truth is where I post items that directly talk about what is going on Iraq without the filter of the mainstream media. If you really want to know what's going on there, its the best way to find out, IMHO, by going directly to the source. Sometimes the pieces are negative, sometimes they are positive, sometimes they're just coverage by informed people like Bill Roggio
You can read past items here.
Of course, the whole thing was a live version of the West Wing. But what I found interesting was how little they chose to caricature the Republican's views, at least in the part I saw. He wasn't a “compassionate conservative.” And he wasn't a heartless monster. He was about as Jeffersonian as you could imagine. Whoever gets the Republican nomination the next time around ought to hire whoever wrote Alda's lines. It would be even nicer to have a candidate to choose from who actually believed those lines as well.
The funny thing about West Wing is that both the liberals and conservatives on the show are actually reasonable, unlike in real life...
In fact, the liberals on the show often sound like conservatives...“Yeah, it would be nice to do that, but it would be too expensive, and it wouldn't work...”
Interesting piece at the Fourth Rail about how they are using sniper teams on insurgents as they deploy IEDs.
Also very interesting is the comments saying that a year ago, the soldiers weren't allowed to engage insurgents...
I don't know if this was big picture planning (wait until there were more Iraqi troops available), or the US trying to conduct a war with one hand tied behind our back, but I could see how the sniper teams would be very effective.
I wonder if this is the “big picture” reason for using just a few routes now? They're bait?
Even the Washington Post has noticed
This is interesting because I was talking with Fester about this a couple of weeks back, and he was quoting some old articles saying it had gotten really bad. But two months is a long time in Iraq, especially lately.
So last night, my wife and I went to this slide show by Martin Gray. It was very interesting, and annoying at the same time. It was very interesting because Martin Gray has spent most of his life traveling to and taking pictures of the world’s sacred sites.
It was annoying because he talked non-stop, and it was a mixture of interesting information about the pictures and rants about all kinds of things (like he dislikes much of the new age movement, despite being a member of same).
One of the things he ranted about was the proposal to use reclaimed water for snowmaking at the Snow Bowl. According to him, if this went through, then the people of Sedona would end up drinking the people of Flagstaff’s pee. He also likened having the ski area up there in the first place to be like “having a WalMart in the vatican”.
Well, I’ve been to the Vatican. I bought a plastic glow-in-the-dark Jesus from a nun for $.25. Come to think of it, the Chapel in Sedona has a really nice gift shop downstairs. If theres one thing the Catholic Church knows, it’s the correct quote; it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil. So its too late, there already is a WalMart in the Vatican, and its run by nuns.
The argument about Sedonans drinking pee was just funny to me, because I live at the base of the mountain and I have a septic tank, so residents of both Sedona and Flagstaff have been drinking my pee for 7 years now. In fact, since about 10 neighbors live upstream of me, I’ve been drinking my neighbors pee for about that long.
In fact, the people of Sedona already drink the people of Flagstaff’s pee, because what Flagstaff does right now with that reclaimed water is let it flow downstream…to Sedona. All this snowmaking on the peaks thing would do is move the output north about 8 miles. So what would happen is that the people of Flagstaff would start drinking their own pee. Similarly, I guess that means that I would have to be drinking Flagstaff pee, instead of just my neighbors.
Of course, some people think that “recycling” your pee is a good thing.
Of course the real issue is that the mountain is sacred to the Navajo and the Hopi. They have a point; I wouldn’t like it if they went into christian churches and peed on the altar. But it’s kind of too late; my wife and I go hiking on the mountain multiple times a week, and there aren’t any bathrooms on the mountain if you get my drift. Somehow I don’t think that the Navajo hold it until they get home when they go hiking on the mountain either…
So if you live in Sedona, you’re already drinking my pee, and the pee of everyone in Flagstaff. If you don’t like it, well, I guess you’ll have to move upstream. I hear there’s lots of room in Alaska. As the joke goes, you don’t buy beer, you just rent it.
Of course, all of the water in the world was originally part of the ocean, and fish don’t have toilets either…
No matter how you slice it, I see lots of pee drinking in your future.
So the Opinionated Wife and I were discussing the riots in France. A few years ago she had a friend who lived in France for awhile who married a Frenchman and moved back to America. Since the Blogosphere is starting to realize that this riots had little to do with Muslims, and more to do with fundamental problems in the structure of French society, I’ll offer up a point she made.
Underemployment. France enforces that the employer provide a number of benefits to employees after a year of employment. The vaunted shorter work week and month long vacation in the summer for instance. This has produced the unintended consequence that if you’re young and unestablished, your jobs last 10-11 months; after which you need to get a new job. Evedentially, the benefits are so onourus that French companies have instituionalized a cycle of hiring and firing.
So young French people are forced to have multiple jobs so that they can survive when one job lets them go to avoid the governmental restrictions. This makes it very difficult for young people to establish themselves, because in essence they must have two employers at all times for 20-30 hours a week each; then every 5 months they have to look for another job to replace one of those jobs.
Is your work week really shorter if it consists of 2 20-30 hour per week jobs? That sounds like 40-60 hours a week to me.
This is interesting because when I was in Germany a few years ago I was talking to one of the young Germans. If he wanted to work overtime, he had to go to the labor board and get permission each time. The end result was that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Instead, he moonlighted as a bouncer in a local nightclub instead. He bypassed the labor board by being paid in cash under the table.
I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone that France and Germany have dismal economies. The more I here about their countries, the more they remind me of Atlas Shrugged.
My wife’s friend loved France, but moved back to America because despite all their social programs, it was finanically impossible for her to finance her education, and therebe advance herself.
So there was this big article in the local paper about how the median home price in Flagstaff is now $333,000. Dean even commented on it in his column in the Flagstaff Live.
What the hell did the hippies expect? All this “smart growth” stuff is code for “no growth”, and that means that through the inevitable laws of supply and demand, house prices are going to go up. There's only so much land freely available in Flagstaff. Creating “low income housing” developments won't work, if you really want house prices to go down, encourage land swaps between the State and the Feds so that more acreage is opened up to development.
All that Smart Growth and Slow Growth stuff the Friends of Flagstaff Future guys like to talk about just makes it impossible for the little guys to build houses unless they're politically connected.
Sigh. You know, it really bugs me that these big developers are coming to Flagstaff and building all these gated communities. But it's an inevitable result of the stuff the hippies are always whining about. All this smart growth, environmental impact reports, blocking land swaps, etc. leads inevitably to this sort of thing happening. Once you squeeze the little guys out of the market, and you make building new homes more expensive, then you end up with big developers building expensive developments.
Meanwhile, they're selling homes in Bellemont 5 miles from Flagstaff as fast as they can make them. I paid $250K for my house 8 years ago, the guy down the street is asking $869K for his (though he's probably delusional).
But with better coverage...
Bill Roggio is going to Iraq to check things out for himself. Why don't you stop on by and chip in about $25 to help?
These are from the Pentagon's report to Congress, which you can download here
Here's an interesting bit from the end of the report, before I show you all the pretty graphs:
U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraq as their mission is successfully accomplished. As noted in the July report, criteria for withdrawing Coalition Forces from Iraq are conditions-based, not calendar-based. There is not a timeline or milestones that directly tie the drawdown of Coalition forces to increased numbers of capable Iraqi battalions. Drawdown will occur in a phased, gradual manner as Iraqi forces become capable of taking the lead within areas of Iraq and in concert with Iraqi progress in political and economic capabilities.
and
Transfers will be effected on an area-by-area basis and will occur only with the approval of the Iraqi Prime Minister, the U.S. Ambassador, and the Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq.
So we may pull out of 90% of Iraq before we pull out of the last little bit.
So here's the latest chart (all charts “popup”):
So are things getting worse in Iraq or better? That's the question I keep asking myself, and why I keep reviewing the Iraq Index report from the Brookings Institution.
October was always going to be a tough month. There was increased activity by US forces in clearing out Anbar province, and there was going to be increased activity from the insurgents because of the elections.
So let's look at the graph. A huge jump up in IED deaths this month. Most of them were in the last few days of the month, but still quite a big jump. IED deaths have been trending upwards for awhile now, but I see this as a losing strategy for the insurgents. You can't hold territory with mines.
Meanwhile, although all the other numbers were higher than September, many of them are lower than past months. A big chunk of the deaths this month were from car crashes and other non-hostile causes; this happens whenever there is a troop rotation in Iraq. The hostile file number I find especially interesting as typically when the Coalition is very active, this number rises. In both September and October, this number was lower than expected. So I'm thinking that perhaps the operations of August and September were effective enough to drop the deaths from hostile fire to a lower level.
So in context, all these numbers are lower than I expected, except for IED deaths. Woundings, which I use to indicate the operational tempo of the troops are holding steady, so even though deaths are high this month (92) perhaps that's just luck, or the fact that the Baghdad troops have less experience with IEDs than the Anbar province troops.
Now this is interesting. The number of Iraqi military and police killed keeps falling:
Now realize that there are now many more IP then there used to be, which means that being an Iraqi Policeman is getting dramatically less dangerous even faster then that graph indicates. So day-to-day security may be improving dramatically in Iraq. The next graph kind of hints towards that:
According to this graph, things have been dramatically improving for the Iraqis since August.
In polling, Iraqi's are a little more optimistic:
So bottom line, better or worse?
Hard to say. Getting the constitution passed was definitely a milestone. There are now enough IP on duty that coalition forces are starting to take territory and turn it over to the IP, so that's a big milestone. In fact, I expect we'll be leaving in August 2006. They'll be having a bunch of political campaigning leading up to the December 15th elections, and while that stirs up the insurgents, it calms down the population as they get involved in the political process. The Iraqis themselves are more optimistic, even before the constitution passed they said so in polls. Electricity was down slightly this month, but demand is down more as it gets cooler in Iraq.
So better, slightly. Lots more work to do.
Meanwhile I found yet another report to look at, this one from the Pentagon. You can download it from here.
Technorati Tags: Iraq
You know, I think the people who want a deadline for the US to leave Iraq are morons.
It's perfectly clear to me. Just look at this chart.
There you go, Aug 2006. Just in time for the mid-term elections!
In a word, Duh! What other date were you expecting?
What would the US do if it didn't have its political schedule to determine how we fight wars?
A reader took issue with my estimate of the Saddam regime causing 20,000 deaths/month in Iraq, so I thought I'd explain my thinking.
Counting the Butcher's Bill can be complicated.
There's the issue of neglect as well when it comes to totalitarian states. During the Oil-For-Palaces program and prior to that, Saddam made choices that lead to the deaths of many Iraqis, so I count those as well. The way I see it, if 1,000 Iraqis starved that year because Uday bought a Ferrari, then Saddam killed 1,000 people plus the 5 or so that Uday ran over directly with his new toy.
That is, I'm counting the indirect deaths as well. Estimates of total direct and indirect deaths for the Saddam regime were 2.5 million people over the last decade, which is 250K/year, or 20K/month.
So that's where I get my 20,000/month.
I could probably argue it even higher:
There are the deaths from the Iran/Iraq war as well. Note that I said citizens, which is actually more inclusive then the numbers reported by IBC which only reports civilians. I would say that Iraqi soldiers killed during the invasion would go to to the US Butcher's bill, but deaths in the Iran/Iraq war go to Saddam, as would deaths to throw him out of Kuwait.
Of course, you can and should count those indirect deaths caused by the coalition actions (i.e. if damage to a hospital causes someone to die), but then you would have to count actions taken by Iraq in Kuwait (the dead Kuwaitis), not to mention people killed by Saddam's funding of terrorism, the Iranian side of the Iran/Iraq war and so on. And of course where do sanctions fit into all that? Or the US aiding both Iran AND Iraq during the war?
The original sanctions caused the Iraqis hardship, leading to the Oil-For-Food program, which Saddam willfully used to subjugate the populace even more. If the UN imposes sanctions, but Saddam keeps building palaces, who pays the butcher's bill?
Here's an article from the NYT saying 1,000,000 at least
Using only direct costs though:
Going over to Iraq body count, they have 30K on the high end for direct deaths. So out of the last 32 months (since March 2003), that's 937.5 deaths/month, or 11,250/year.
But do insurgent caused deaths count towards the Coalition butcher's bill? I don't think you can make that argument, because then it NEVER makes sense to intervene in a civil war or genocide. That is, if the Sudanese genocide is 5,000 deaths/month, and the UN intervened and cut that down to 1,000 deaths/month, it seems to me like the UN should get credit for a 4,000 death decrease. So counting insurgents kills towards the coalition total doesn't make sense either. According to IBC, only 37% of the first 25K were from US-led forces, 36% were from “post-invasion” criminal violence.
Even so, by all accounts Saddam killed more Iraqis towards the end of his regime then the beginning. If I remember correctly it was like 2-1. So if you take the estimates that Saddam killed only 300,000 Iraqis during his Presidency, that's 12,000 year, but probably more like 24,000 towards the end of his reign.
So the 11,250 doesn't seem so bad now.
On Monday, a letter to the United Nations from Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jafaari requested that the U.S. led coalition be given a mandate for another year in Iraq. The current mandate is scheduled to expire at the end of this year, and extending it through 2006 will require a Security Council resolution some time in the next eight weeks. The Iraqi government is also pushing for a clause that would allow them to terminate the mandate at any point during 2006.
At 10,000 trained Iraqi Police/month, in 8 months we'll have met the original goal of 240,000 Iraqi Police in Iraq. That would be a good time for us to leave...
Then in September.
October:
47%: Right Direction 37%: Wrong Direction 14%: Don't Know
September:
43%: Right Direction 42%: Wrong Direction 14%: Don't Know
Source: Brookings Iraq Index, p 32
More then anything, if there's one thing the White House has woefully mismanaged in this war, its been the propaganda campaign.
Instead of cursing the darkness, here's my attempt to light a candle.
The first thing we need to do is clarify the victory conditions in Iraq. If we don't set the expectations of the press, the press will make unreasonable assumptions. The media at this point don't have any reporters who have every been soldiers (or had any sort of real job for that matter). So its up to us, the bloggers to set reasonable expectations, since the Administration doesn't seem to be able to. So here goes:
Iraq is never going to be as peaceful as say, Flagstaff Arizona. Yet as Americans, we're going to think somehow in the back of our mind that for us to “win”, Iraq will be at peace.
That is unreasonable. For us to win, Iraq need only be as peaceful as say, Compton (famous for its drive-by shootings). That would make it one of the most peaceful of the nations in the Middle East. This is especially true if you consider, as I do, violence done against peaceful citizens to actually count. By that standard, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia are not at “peace”, and repressive regimes like China and North Korea to not be at “peace”. (See Dhimmi Watch if you'd like to see what the status quo in Arab nations is like towards their own citizens. ) So if we want to consider peace, we should consider true peace. If the US topples a regime that is killing 20,000 of its citizens a month; but incites an insurgency that kills 20,000 civilians a year, that's actually progress.
So victory occurs not when Iraq meets the “Flagstaff, Arizona” definition of peacefulness, but when the violence has dropped to the nuisance level. We will never get to zero violence, there is no place in the world with zero violence. Perhaps that seems obvious to you, but the media will and has amplified every single event in Iraq without any perspective.
Recently, some Al Queda types tried to attack the Palestine Hotel. They were thwarted by the Iraqi Police, without any US aid. This was a huge milestone for the Iraqi Police. To the media of course, this was played as a bad thing. The media no longer has any perspective on what war is like.
The world is, and always has been, a dangerous place. We Americans, we happy few in the world have it pretty good. We can't apply American standards to another country, especially a fledgling democracy.
The Iraqis will never be in complete agreement with each other any more then Americans are in complete agreement with each other. If Iraqis are in the Parliament screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, we have won. At that point we will have turned a violent process into a political process. If Al Sadr runs for Parliament, even if he wins, this means victory for the US.
The media will of course play up every minor squabble like its the end of the world. But I'll point out: ; Democrats and Republicans scream at each other all the time. They're not even very nice about it, nor especially peaceful.
Not all of Iraq's problems or issues will be resolved; 30 years later Americans are still arguing about Roe v. Wade. It is not our job to solve or mediate every dispute in Iraq, even fundamental disputes like Shia v. Shite or Kurd vs. Arab. All we merely need do is get the Iraqis to work together on their problems politically.
No doubt we left Vietnam prematurely. But at some point we are going to leave Iraq. That does not mean the insurgents have won. Already, there are more Iraqi police then US soldiers in Iraq. In approximately 8 months, we will have met our original goals for Iraqi security forces. At that point, we may very well transition to almost no military role in Iraq.
We cannot let the media paint the withdrawal of troops as another 'Fall of Saigon' moment. For that matter, if Iraq grants us military bases, that doesn't mean we're still occupying Iraq. Are we still occupying Germany?
It's unrealistic to expect the Iraqis to overwhelmingly like us. We invaded their country. In fact, the amazing thing about the Iraq War is that the Iraqis don't universally hate us. US Presidents never get 100% approval ratings and often have lower numbers then the US does in Iraq. When the US has higher approval ratings then the President, we're winning in Iraq.
Stolen from an article title by Austin Bay, I think the title says it all. In this 24/7 news cycle world (which frankly, seems to have the same 15 minutes repeated 96 times) it seems like the press expects everything to happen instantly. Some things just take time. Anything that involves people, and especially the perceptions of people can only change so fast. Iraq's progress will be measured in years, not months. The fall of Baghdad was the fastest military campaign in history, yet the press called it a quagmire. Actual accomplishments are the true measure of progress, not speed.
Case in point: Electricity in Iraq. Lead time for ordering giant power plants is measured in years. While I would like to have seen more progress on this front in Iraq, the reality is that we've probably been going as fast as we can: when we ordered new plants, the companies that made them had to start buliding them. Megawatt power plants aren't off the shelf items. Similarly, laying sewer or water pipe means digging trenches, and you can only do that so fast.
Anyways, that's it for the moment. Anyone else have any examples where they think the media is unreasonable?
