RSSJan-Jul 2004 Archives
July 26, 2004
Mortgage securities
Following on a convo last week, can anyone point me to data on who is holding US mortage securities?
Posted by The Lounsbury at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 23, 2004
A further near final note: on labor rigidities.
Just reading "La VieEco" wherein there is an article complaining about the lack of employment growth despite a relatively good macro-economic performance (see http://www.lavieeco.com/Economie/Lacroissancesemaintientsansquilyaitcreationdemplois ).
I was moderately annoyed to see the fixation with the rural sector and its archaic organization. Perfectly correct, of course, but in some ways not at all. Among the more severe issues here is the extreme rigidity of the labor laws - as well as the moves towards the 35 hour week which are simply madness. Copied and pasted from the French code, things are poorly adapted to local conditions (rather typical actually for the region, and one reason I am so contemptious of those addled brained fools ranting on about 'fair trade' for they would impose this sort of nonsense on the developing world).
These labor laws are a real serious break. Even in my position, we're hesistating in re adding staff (although it is badly needed) insofar as there is an issue that once hired it's bloody impossible to fire without paying massive fees and the like (relative to total employment cost). Now of course currently employed labor loves this for it looks like a good deal for them. In fact, of course, it is not. It pushes much of the economy into the black or grey informal sectors, meaning little to no protection, but also meaning that the corporates themselves exist in a grey zone that tends to inhibit access to finance and the like (multiple books, etc. of course tax and other law are more influential here). It also pushes down growth, insofar as it is difficult for a start up to deal with these rigidities, and tends to raise the investment bar rather higher than the local economy can genuinely support.
However, the labor code is sacred since it "protects" the workers, and the upcoming anti-globo (Alternate Globalization movement as they were called in the press) are going to whinge on and on like morons about "imperialist" interests (such as myself I imagine) pushing for liberalization and "hurting" local workers.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Iukos
A brief thought: what the bloody hell is Putin thinking?
He's squashing the boss, but now clearing siezing assets through forced sale? Not good for FDI. I should think one has to think long and hard about putting money into Russian assets.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 08:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
On Dezinformatsia and al-Qaeda
I remain astonished (although upon reflection this simply means that my cynicism is not yet thorough enough) by the fact that articles like this still need to appear:
Analysis: The Hussein Question
'Operational Relationship' With Al Qaeda Discounted
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7336-2004Jul22.html
What kind of bleeding idiot still believes in a Sadaam-al-Qaeda link, I do not know.
Well, I do, it's a rhetorical statement.
I remain contemptuous of the Iranian issue being pimped around, and highly sceptical of the claims - at least the more lurid ones.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 08:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Pantom
Quick note, left a note on the economics
Posted by The Lounsbury at 08:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Halliburton
I know this may make me unpopular with the people who often read here, but I have to say it is my sensation that Halliburton is not getting a fair rap.
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7115-2004Jul22.html
While I do not doubt, given the situation, that abuses occured, as cited, I rather feel that Halliburton is getting a political hammering and in truth, in the context of the fucked up mess that is and was Iraq, and the fucked up mess that is and was USG logistics/policy and administration, I do not blame them one iota. Indeed accounts suggest they may be losing money on this debacle (although one should take accounts with a grain of salt as well given the US DOD's fucked up payment schedules).
Of course, I do not blame the Democrats for going after this. It's a good political issue, and if positions were reversed, Republicans would do the same. Pity, but that's politics - easily saleable imagery.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 08:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wolf: On Prostitution
An example of why I like him so much, catch the FT today for his column on prostitution.
My favorite paragraph:
To see the absurdity of how prostitution is currently handled, imagine that, under the influence of animal-rights campaigners, the eating of meat were to become illegal. A black market would spring up. The quality of the meat supplied would pose a danger to health. Criminals would soon add meat to their range of illegal wares. In time, 'meat-dealers' might be viewed with as much opprobrium as pimps or drug-dealers are today.
Meat dealers.....
Posted by The Lounsbury at 08:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
al-Arabiyah and Moore
Al-Arabiyah had an interesting piece on the Michael Moore film, series of interviews of Arabs (including Jordanians, I recognized the theater, my favorite one) exiting the film. Interesting reactions. I rather dislike Moore I confess ahead of time, in fact I rather have no small contempt for him, however leaving this aside, the reactions were interesting. The viewers exiting commented several times that they felt that American people on seeing the film would understand (variously the sins/errors/lies) of the government, and (to quote one) “especially in America” this would not (be tolerated/stand/similar sentiments).
Interesting. Of course, the selection (by the background it was clear) was on upper end theaters, meaning there was a skew in the potential audience – the Amman theater (really an excellent one, Century – if you’re ever in Amman and bored, this is the place. Lined walls so no cell phone disturbances! And an ‘adult’ audience that does not whistle or otherwise bleat on if there are ‘adult’ scenes. Very tedious).
Posted by The Lounsbury at 07:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 20, 2004
Global Economic Issues
I wanted to draw attention to two important commentaries in The Financial Times (I believe today's print edition). One, The asset economy is a house of cards by Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley chief economist, and the companion by my favorite man, Martin Wolf, entitled "Strong world growth masks medium-term risks both draw attention to important imbalances and indeed bubbles in the asset economy, and in international exchange in the case of Wolf.
In particular, I would note that both feel the asset prices, housing notably, are well out of line with sustainable valuations, and in the case of Wolf and in re dollar, its level must come down.
As for me, I see some real serious risks for me to hold dollar assets, given my exposure to Eurozone and indeed most of my consumption is euro tied.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 06:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In other matters: the 35 hour week
Leaving aside our fellow with the challenges in literacy and logic, I am pleased to note that the tide is turning against the 35 hour week. Perhaps we shall see more labor market rigities chipped away in the near future (although the Bosch vote is perhaps being overread here).
I remain puzzled then that the government here adopted the 35 hour week for the summer for (and I quote) "climactic reasons."
I suppose the relevant minister is looking to achieve new lows in productivity.
Oh yes, why the importance of the French event? Because it's a benchmark around here.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 12:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 19, 2004
A Comment on A Comment on Air Strikes
I thought I should respond to this highly peculiar comment in main text, insofar as it, well, puzzles me. And amuses me in the way a fairly poor clown does.
Now the odd fellow who left this first tells me:
Intelligence is not an exact science, thank you so very much for the news flash!
I suppose excellent, then that I need not argue that using hammers where needles are preferred due to imprecision, I presume. Although from the comments that follow it appears that I do.
This next section is just, well, bizarrely nonsensical:
Lets back up a bit, had the previous administration not cut the budget so drastically or put policies in place to incapacitate the intelligence agencies or acted on previous intelligence or made it a priority to build a God like military 100% efficient then perhaps we would never have gotten where we are.
Primo: I do not give one fucking dime of care about idiotic partisan blather about what X or Y American Administration did in regards to theater and global intelligence spending. It (a) has fuck all to do with battlefield tactics, (b) fuck all to do with the lack of American capacity in regards to the Arab region. An empty and idiotic bit of moronic posturing. I further note that the reduction in Cold War structured military and intelligence budgets are not signs of failing to grapple with terrorism, indeed they are indicative of at least some redeployment (it would appear insufficient) of assets, assets that remain largely inappropriate to the job to my best understanding. Neither the Bush I nor the Clinton Administrations strike me as particularly to fault regarding failing to grapple with al-Qaeda per se, so I leave aside the partisan idiocy.
Secundo: the second clause is just… well impossible to parse. God like militaries have nothing to do with this, appropriate tactics and strategies do. Of course, better intel would be laudable, but given that is difficult to change, appropriate tactics given poor data is highly advised.
For the irredeemably dim, that means not using airpower against urban targets which may (or given the record to date) or may not contain insurgent targets. It is, again for the irredeemably dim, to be clear, a losing proposition.
Finally, let me reemphasize, for the irredeemably dim, the entire point of my commentary was the recognition of flaws, that is when one has fairly decent reason to believe one’s intelligence is shit (and given the utter failure to date to deal in an appropriate manner with the insurgency, the constant mischaracterization, which seemed largely based on wishful thinking – I mean the entire dead-ender rubbish – as well as similar failures in Afghanistan), tactics should reflect that.
Hind sight is 20/20, isn't that wonderful.
Again, nonsensical and rather a non-sequitor. The comment is what not to do at present, given as noted supra, a reasonable conclusion given the extent data. That is, learning lessons from past errors.
This is so one sided that it really doesn't even deserve to taken seriously.
I presume that this sentence is in regards to my commentary, although given a lack of a clear antecedent perhaps the confused commentator realized that his own commentary is fairly bizarrely nonsensical.
Regardless, insofar as my commentary is my own fucking point of view, I feel no need to balance it against the ignorant maundering bleating of people who think Iraq is going well or other such nonsense.
Where is the side of the story that points out the advantages of these tactic, there have to be some or they wouldn't be doing it this way?
In your imagination, I presume. The advantage is of course ‘force protection.’ But then that’s already been addressed, penny wise, pound foolish in my considered opinion. Save a few soldiers lives in any given encounter, at the cost of alienation of the population, increasing sympathy for one’s own enemy and increasing the depth of resources upon which the insurgency can draw. Rather clear in the progression of opinion polls in Iraq by the CPA that this has been precisely the result of American military and reconstruction efforts, a population (Iraqi) that turned against the ‘liberator’ – from indifference to widespread hatred and dislike.
Insurgencies are not defeated by turning the population toward them.
So, again for the dim witted, the point at hand is whatever perceived advantages on the side of the military, the cold calculus of cost versus benefit, on a strategic level, indicates the excercise in the use of air strikes in the context of poor intelligence and an urban insurgency is a loser. Pyhrric victories and all that.
I may add that I disagree with Kaatib that insurgencies can not be defeated with sheer might. They can, but at the cost of engaging in total savagery and the total alienation of the population. It is rather clear in the context of what the Ibn Bush Administration pretended to be seeking in Iraq and in the region (democracy and all that), such a military policy would indeed be self-defeating, in short, Pyhrric. As a parenthetical, this is precisely the point missed by the maundering gits who ramble on about how the United States could have "won" in Vietnam if not for "fighting with one hand tied behind its back." Or similar nonesense, a point of view that entirely forgets that one fights wars(in the modern world, at the state level) to achieve discrete political objectives, not simply to achieve battlefield victories, which may or may not achieve the political goal required. Wiping out the North Vietnamese state was of course possible, doing so of course would have set back global political goals (I note the discredit achieved in 'winning' badly in Iraq.).
Oh yeah there it is, because their "weak" and "fearful", what a contradiction to the overall emphasis.
I am afraid I do not follow this at all, although there is little surprise in that given the muddled thinking here.
On consideration, I think the writer means 'because they [the US military] are weak and fearful,' apparently in response to my side comments on perception of the US being all too willing to kill at a distance, not willing to take casualties, with the side note that there is perhaps some truth in the perception.
First, of course, the source comment was on the perception - I should think I can say globally, not just in the Middle East - of the US as huge bully unwilling to sustain real pain. I do not see anything particularly controversial in noting this perception exists, indeed I should think it is widely acknowledged that after Lebanon, Somalia, etc. the perception is there. Now, the comment there is some truth in the perception, that is somewhat controversial I am sure, but it does strike me that the American military puts such a premium on force protection, that it has generated rules of engagement in the context of insurgency that are counter productive - that is indeed go too far in allowing massive firepower to be used in ambig. situations. I note further that per reports, British military commanders and other Western military concur. What is appropriate, I may add, in regards to posture during a conventional war situation (as in the March-April period), is likely not to be appropriate in a non-conventional, urban insurgency context.
Now, the commentator appears to prefer unthinking "me right" sort of masturbatory commentory. All well and fine, it gets you nowhere fast.
This is exactly whats wrong with journalist, wannabe journalist, and journalism today, facts and objectiveness are conveniently absent, its more about making a statement and taking a position.
Another rather confused statement. What my commentary has to do with “journalism” I have no fucking clue as I am not a fucking journalist, nor do I desire to be a fucking journalist. My field is finance, and I rather like it.
But let us abstract away from that, and even presume that the confused and muddled commentator is addressing Dickey’s commentary.
Of course, primo, Dickey’s commentary is just that, commentary. The voice of the writer is analytical, not reporting.
Leaving that aside, it appears the commentator has an issue not with the “facts” (and certainly not with objectivity, insofar as the commentator seems to feel objectivity means reporting what he wants to hear), but with the discomfort of cognitive dissonance between what is desired and what is actual.
It is so transparent and the general public is realizing how disrespectful to them as the readers and recipients not to be given the credit of the capability to decide for themselves and given the full set of facts.
Again a non-sequitur. What the fuck this has to do with my fucking commentary or even Dickey, I have on bloody fucking clue.
Since I am neither journo nor anything related to journo, I will just say I find the comment moronic. “All the facts” appears to really mean “give me a story that does not provoke cognitive dissonance.” See next sentence:
Check the FOX ratings if you think its not so.
I don’t live in the fucking States and I care fuck all about Fox. Bloody mindless trash, but well, if your taste for news is in your ass, feel free.
I should note that if the commentator feels that he is getting "all the facts" from Fox, my best understanding is this is hallucinatorily stupid. Of course, I do not live in the States and do not watch Fox, however to my best understanding Fox appears to play the non-analytical, emotive, rah-rah line, in short agit-prop. As I recall from nonesense being cited to me from Fox, it tried to sell the line that things were going better than "the media" was reporting up until everything clearly went to hell. I would then hazard the opinion to watch the channel appears to mean not that one wants all the facts, but rather one wants a nice diet of self-indulgent navel gazing.
One last note, the illustration offered by a poster is so simplistic only a child like mind would claim to have redeemed some value from it.
Interesting. Well, considering the logic to date, I must bow to the commentator’s typically muddled and confused analysis, insofar as I no fucking clue as to what this refers to.
If your going to point out a problem, at least offer a solution, until you can do that its really just a bunch of propaganda.
And here we have the final confused nugget.
Of course, critiquing a problem but “not” offering a solution is not “propaganda” – this for the edification of the dim witted. It is, well, critiquing a problem. Now, if the critique is off base, if it has spun the facts in a political manner to support a particular political agenda (I may point the readership to any of the fine bizarro extreme left sites rambling on about stealing Iraqi oil and the like), then that is propaganda. Else, it is not under any ordinary English language usage (again, note to the dim-witted, that which makes you feel uncomfortable is not ipso facto propaganda, sometimes reality does not match conception you know.).
Second, of course, I do suggest a solution: abandon the use of air strikes in an urban insurgency context, use other force, as of course ground forces. Painful and expensive, yes, imperfect, yes. Better, well, worth a shot.
Of course application of force is important as well, again taking lessons from less-than-complete failures in other contexts (and nota bene, one should look to examples that are actually applicable, in re foreign forces).
Posted by The Lounsbury at 12:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2004
Lovely and Rambling a bit about current MENA policy and Iraq
There was a fine report on the news, I think it was Euronews but perhaps BBC World in regards to the claims of Garzon (if I am spelling the name right, and excuse the accentlessness, far too lazy) re northern Morocco as haven for al-Qaeda type activities.
I am not sure I credit this entirely - on the other hand I am not sure I do not - but it certainly is ill-timed for me.
In other matters, via some site or another I stumbled upon Chris Dickey's latest comments on Iraq and the like. I like Chris a lot, not only for his commentary but for the fine Philipinno restaurant that he and his son showed me in the bowels of Jebel Amman some time back. It went out of business, unfortunately, not long thereafter.
Regardless, let me point readers to this:
Dickey responding to questions from readers:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5431483/site/newsweek
First there is this comment by Dickey:
In Iraq today, the United States is playing the role of Israel in 1982, claiming to be fighting terrorism while in fact trying to remake the country to fit our specifications and imaginations. The results in Lebanon were not good for Israel, and for the same reasons the results in Iraq won't be good for us: the ethnic and sectarian friability of the state, the suspicion of outsiders, the role of religious fanaticism, and, not incidentally, the roles of Syria and Iran.
I think it spot on and worth reflecting on.
Then there is this:
"[O]ne of the great failings of the United States is its inability to read foreign cultures, and figure out how to do that. Many of our psy-ops, alas, are really aimed at the U.S. public, not the Iraqis. How it plays in Peoria, or better yet, along the Potomac, is more important than the impact in Mesopotamia."
I believe I brought up just this point relatively recently in re the idiocy that is State and general USG communications strategies, e.g. that fucked up idiotic navel gazing al-Hurra effort.
Question is, is there any way to change such? The ever more extreme bubble world the US is setting up for itself, I think not.
Then a few notes on this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5326366/site/newsweek/
On this opening, I wanted to convey my amusement (it is a bit unfair perhaps, but entertainingly so):
"Iraqis don’t grow bananas, but why should that keep the Bush administration from treating Iraq like a banana republic? The overwhelming invasion, the ill-conceived occupation, the obliviousness to what’s thought of as native culture, and the tendency to trust only those folks who know how to talk and act (and make us think they think) like us—hey, that’s the way we’ve been coming and going in the fever ports of Central America and the Caribbean for well over a century."
Emphasis added. This is, I may add, a key observation.
First, let me note that it is a hard thing not to fall into to some degree, above all over the long term. The guy who knows your social cues, he (or her) is easier to trust than the fellow who does not (and vice versa, of course the reality is the number of Arabs who know Anglo social cues exceeds the inverse). However, there are matters of degree, and a bit of critical thinking can be helpful to pull you up from the bad habit of believing the posturing uncritically. Unfortunately, that is badly lacking in American circles in re the Middle East. Private sector example. I was, several months ago, chatting with a Director of a financial firm in New York who was apparently just getting into the Middle East, and he asked me what I thought about Dubai. I gave some observations, including that the economy is something of a black box and sometimes it is hard to shake the sensation that a portion of the economy is doped, or not quite real and legit. I mentioned the issue of money laundering for example. This guy responds surprised, he's been assured that "they" take the issue seriously, blah, blah, and he's just joined the board of the DFM. I was truly incredulous, essentially I took away from the ensuing convo that this sucker bought everything the Dubai authorities sold him, like a teenager at a used car lot. Such fine English.
(I know weak anectdote, but the more substantial points are not really shareable per se)
Second, Dickey's further point:
So, too, the handover of paper sovereignty yesterday, which took place ahead of schedule and in semi-secrecy, as if departing pro-consul Paul “Jerry” Bremer was embarrassed by what he’d done for the last year, or afraid for his life, or both.
Of course this is a few weeks back. Why quote that? It also amused me. I am afraid I disagree, I don't believe Bremer is capable of being embarrassed, although he should be.
Now Dickey comments:
"Allawi is best understood as the anointed dictator in waiting. His job is to do whatever needs doing to impose order on the current chaos. Martial law, ruthless repression, you name it. With American firepower to back him up, he’s more than ready to take the blame for any rough stuff. Allawi’s defense minister proudly vows to chop off the hands and heads of terrorists. As Franklin Roosevelt is supposed to have said about an infamous Nicaraguan dictator, “He’s a son of a bitch, but at least he’s our son of a bitch.”
Bingo, and no other real choices I may add. None, nada, zilch, zero, walo, wlaishi....
Now, keeping in mind the context that there are no other choices other than a disguised dictatorship - what I have been calling Egypt on the Euphrates for I suppose a year now (remind me, my old readers, when did I start calling it the best possible option of a bad set of choices?), Dickey opines:
Problem is, these SOBs, once they’ve solved our immediate problems, create new ones. They aren’t ours at all. They’re in this for themselves. And they become the vehicles of disillusionment with everything that we Americans think we represent.
There is some following text on the fruits of our SOB policy in the past, I am not sure I entirely am in accord with the specifics, but the overall analysis is spot on.
The issue is, are there better choices? All well and good (and indeed salutory and helpful for realistically pursuing a strategy) to note the unpleasant aspects of the strategy, the negatives, but then one has to put it in the context of the overall costs and benefits of the actually available and realistic menu of options. Again realistic. To take a business analogy, it is all well and good for me to design say a competitive financing strategy for a new product and just assume I have cheap capital access that will allow me to beat the competitors, but if I can't actually achieve that in any real world sense, it mere fantasy to assume that. Such is the Ibn Bush Administration's MENA strategy now, should I need to be more explicit. Wishful thinking, pretending they have access to some magicla machinery that allows them to transform raw materials at no cost into a fancy product that they read about in a SF novel, but oops, the actually available commercialised technology can't do. Phatom widgets to respond to a market that they have imagined up.
So, this realistic menu of actually available options, sure our SOB may have real severe long term costs, but do the other options have worse costs? It would be great to have a magical production line that takes no energy inputs, for example, but if it doesn't exist, well imagining it up doesn't get us anywhere.
My own opinion, there is no way that a non SOB policy will fly, because it will involve a menu of risks that noone is willing to try. It means allowing Iraq to become an Islamic Republic of some kind, because that is what elections would produce. Don't fool oneself, real free elections at present in the region would invariably produce largely anti-Western, largely Islamist governments. Now, on a personal basis, I don't think that is a bad thing. As in Iran, the events would take away the "grass is greener" effect that leads people to yearn for this option, becuase the current options are so bloody fucked. However, the near term risks will be deemed unacceptable - my judgement is that Islamic revolutions would be long term positive for the reason just stated and given the Iranian example of discredit but it is a big gamble to take. No is going to take it. Maybe not even me, if I were in the position to make the judgement and see it become policy.
So, we're left with the SOBs.
However, there are a menu of SOBs and it may be somewhat better informed selection of SOBs can make a difference. Chalabi, in my mind, would have been a disaster (and still may be). An SOB that is reaonably restrained, and a policy that keeps in mind longer term interests of winning over Iraqis to some extent, and making them wealthier through real economic activity (not oil rents) might have a better value than an SOB like the Shah.
Hard calculus, and not clear to be sure.
Now, a final section to comment on
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5431857/site/newsweek
Of which I wanted to focus on the following:
A first priority of the new government is to make the capital city safe and restore public services. That's obviously what you'd want to do, right? But Proconsul L. Paul Bremer, based in the American city-within-the-city known as the Green Zone, lived in a world of self-serving denial every bit as delusional as that of his betters in Washington. His constant blather about free markets and democracy, mouthed in Iraq but meant to be heard inside the Beltway, was matched by a persistent failure to stabilize and revitalize Baghdad itself.
Emphasis added.
I rather like the underlined section, delusional self serving denial. That rather captures present engagement with Iraq.
Deeply frustrating.
I might add one could insert "incompetent and ineffectual."
Dickey adds the following:
Iraqis remember too well that their capital city was surrendered virtually intact, and only destroyed in the days after the Americans rolled into town. The troops stood back while liberated looters stripped the infrastructure of the city to the bone. Since then, Baghdadis have watched with sheer incredulity the Americans' inability to restore regular electrical service. They've learned to fear the ferocious, random firepower of the American soldiers patrolling their streets. At the same time, they've seen criminal gangs turn kidnapping into an industry. "People say the Americans wanted to make us suffer," an Iraqi doctor who works in the air-conditioned Green Zone told me before going home to her sweltering, lightless home.
Noted a number of times, but well worth re-emphasizing. The incompetence displayed so far in reconstruction (even being generous and allowing for the problems of the insurgency which was rather helped along by that incompetence) is a major black eye for Americans. It truly has done much to sap credibility and indeed respect.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 12:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Airstrikes and Insurgency
The uselessness of airstrikes as a counter insurgency method
I remain stunned that the American military seems so entirely incapable of learning a simple lesson – airstrikes against urban targets in the context of an occupation and counter-insurgency are counter productive. I am sure it makes sense in a very limited sense in the context of ‘force protection’ and minimizing direct American casualties, however this limited sense is rather like the corporate finance head who makes every effort to meet the quarterly ‘guidance’ from analysts, at the expense of the long term goals and health of the company.
First, the appearances are at once of callousness – air strikes against a house in an urban area, however precise, can never be without ‘collateral’ effects and the use of heavy bombs simply adds to the impression of disregard. Imagine ‘surgical’ strikes in one’s own neighborhood and one’s own reaction – regardless of the legitimacy or not of the strike, I would say anyone honest with themselves will admit their feelings would turn against the people behind the air strike.
Second, it adds to an appearance of fear. It says that the Americans are too fearful to engage, too fearful of casualties, and have to use their air power rather than close engagements. It is, and I think there is an element of truth here, an expression of weakness in strength.
Third, the imagery is losing imagery. A house turned into a crater – this past evening on al-Arabiyah we were treated to the imagery of children’s clothing mixed in the crater that was the remainder of a house struck by US warplanes in Fallujah. These are images that lose you allies, increase your enemies. In the case of an insurgency, this is the way you lose the war, not win it.
Fourth, without close up engagement – and the fairly numerous errors in Afghanistan also illustrate this – one does not really know if one’s ‘intelligence’ is in any way correct. This is a serious problem, given the clearly piss-poor human intelligence the United States has on the ground – I would wager stemming as much from their complete inability to properly filter what intelligence they are generating as from a lack of proper sources – that is not knowing language or culture or indeed very much about Iraq period, the Americans are piss-poor judges of the information they are generating. Hitting the wrong house, hitting a house because someone wants to get back at a neighbor and perhaps as an added bonus give the Americans yet a worse name – these are all scenarios not just likely but to be considered as the likely default. Foreigners as suckers.
It strikes me that much of this, this idiotic blindness that I would say seems to have characterized American interventions from Vietnam through Somalia, stems from the blindness of self-righteousness and too much self-regard.
This is not to accuse the United States of any particular evil – as most know I rather do take it for granted that the United States is a fairly good actor on the international stage, imperfect and self interested of course but that is life – but rather of a particular blindness arising from a true yet exaggerated sense of being right, and a related incomprehension of other points of view (and perhaps the need to address those points of view even if perceived to be wrong).
Having, I may add stumbled upon Dickey’s related comments, let me illustrate here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5431857/site/newsweek
Dickey writes:
"A key to the problem was the U.S. effort in March and April 2003 to kill individual Iraqi leaders with precision munitions. The smart bombs were guided by dumb people, as it turned out, who dropped them on the basis of execrable intelligence. ... .... Human Rights Watch has since blamed the stupid use of smart bombs, as blunt instruments of assassination, for killing many of the innocent civilians who died during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It appears they killed few or none of the targets they were supposed to hit.
One incident was worse than the others, however, because it turned the course of the long-term war against us. On April 11, two days after American Marines pulled down the statue of Saddam in the middle of Baghdad, the United States tried to kill Saddam's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, by dropping six J-Dam guided bombs on a large villa about 11 miles outside of the city of Ramadi.
They didn't get Barzan, if he was ever there, but they did kill Malik Al-Kharbit, a tribal leader who had worked with the Americans and Jordanians since the mid-1990s to try to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In addition to Malik, another 21 members of his family died under those bombs, including a dozen children.
War is war, with all its collateral implications. But some actions in war are more foolish and self defeating than others. Members of the Kharbit clan are considered the leading figures in an extended tribe called the Dulaym, who number as many as two million. Their strongholds are in Fallujah, Ramadi, Ka'em, Rutbah—places now well known to the U.S. public as "The Sunni Triangle," where so many Americans have gone to die since that precision strike on the wrong target in April 2003.
How do you fix a screw-up like the killing of Malik Kharbit and his family? The Americans never did figure that out. In fact, they've made things worse. A few weeks ago, after Malik's brother Mudher refused once again to cooperate with the United States and rein in the insurgents, eight members of his family were thrown into Abu Ghraib prison, including one brother who'd lost all his children in the April 2003 bombing.
"We are looking to the future," Mudher told me when I saw him in Jordan over the weekend. He doesn't trust Allawi. But he doesn't want to fight the central government forever. He'd like to work with it, have his tribe have a place in it. If Allawi can find a way to accommodate the Kharbit clan, then once again he may be moving his country from war toward peace. An amnesty for those who've killed Americans is one way to start.
Of course, when you think of all the blood and money we've spent here, all this could seem pretty demoralizing. But given the mess we've made of this place, it's surprising how reassuring it is to see the Iraqis reverting to their old ways."
Emphasis added.
Well, I believe this is illustrative of my point, as well as the general point of incomprehension of how to work within the context of reality.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 12:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 10, 2004
On Martial Law, Allaouie and Iraq
Another aged comment: To Collounsbury, and everyone that wants to speak up -- What do you feel about the new laws being passed in Iraq regarding the ability to declare martial law? Do you think it's mostly the new government doing some saber rattling and increasing its power, or a necessary step versus the insurgency? I'm truly undecided on it.
It's realism.
The pissing and moaning in the American press in re authoritarianism is silly. There is no way democracy is going to function during a civil war, and frankly little chance that any democracy will function in Iraq in any real sense, so where is the fucking problem? Losing the illusion of virginity? Without martial law, this simply drags on. The only real question is can Allaouie establish an independent sense of legitimacy, because we have already seen, the American authorities as presently constituted are utterly incapable of grappling with the problem successfully. They pissed away all their opportunities and managed to make themselves hated.
I have a note, by the way, to finish off on this moronic policy of using air power to strike urgan targets in an insurgency. Possibly the stupidest, most self-defeating "force protection" measure yet concieved. Amazing. Amazingly stupid that is. Air strikes in urban areas against an insurgency. Why that is just the recipse for winning over the population and seperating it from the insurgents.
The collosal amount of idiocy that is American Iraqi policy sometimes staggers.
Or better, "penny wise, pound foolish" as if one intends to spend soldiers lives, do not
Posted by The Lounsbury at 01:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Regarding Embassies
A comment was made a bit back in re the "attack" on the Embassy in Amman:
In the future it's highly likely the US will purchase large plots of country land on the outskirts of foreign capitols and develop embassies that have the look of a small liberal arts college campus or magisterial walled estate.
The reason is twofold. Urban landscapes are too prone to creating, as we saw in the Oklahoma city and in Beirut bombings, a perfect environment for shaped charges. The distance of the embassy proper from the outer perimeter negates that possibility ( assuming the terrorists don't drive up with the equivalent of a small nuke) Secondly, we can put more of the damn thing underground and more effectively control access without aggravating the locals.
Zenpundit
I have to say, it's rather besides the point.
First, the Castle in Amman was already done on that basis. It's a monster with set back fortress like walls (the side facing the main street has doubled stone walls, with a five meter dead zone, and then the main, and yes, campus like complex set back again. It is, by design, a fortress. And likely subterranean I would image. When built, it was indeed far from the city, the city grew out to meet it.
The already fortress like nature evidently still does not stop concern, for after the truck bomb incidents, the entire city blocks around the monster were blocked off (cutting off some main thoroughfares I may add).
The proposed line of action in my opinion is futile - unless a vast swath of land even beyond the site is condemned (I suppose a few venal governments might actually opt for that option).
Further, the Fortress America model, is in my opinion, an utter waste. Isolating American diplomats in an inaccessible castle, far from the action of the capitol in which they are located utterly defeats the purpose of having them in the bloody country. Already I can see that with the new security restrictions on them, and the American prediliction to comfort, these guys barely understand their environment. Little getting out and about, and then only under controlled circumstances, little interaction, and by this, little understanding of what they are in effect there to do.
Recipe for yet more pitifully incompetent engagement. Might as well fucking close the fucking embassies then.
At a certain point one either accepts a risk and works with it, or one engages in a fruitless quest for security through ever more self-defeated measures.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 01:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 07, 2004
From private sources
I am told a car tried to breach the wall of Fortress American in Amman. Amazing it could even get near since a whole city block around the damn place is blocked off. Not clear the nature of the event, I am told.
However, let me take the opportunity to note that since the Iraq war, the security perimeters around American goverment establishments was become ever and ever wider. I think this speaks to the real "return on investment" from this policy. Ever and ever wider, and even in friendly countries at that.
These are not good signs, might be tolerable if the underlying policy was well-conceived and successful, but it is not.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 06, 2004
Iraq: Air strikes as a means of fighting a guerrilla war in urban areas.
I remain amazed that the American military thinks this is useful to do, airstrikes against houses.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 05, 2004
Ridiculous CPA (Oops, 'Project blah blah fucking idiots office)
In touch with these drooling morons who first
(a) refer me to a secure server for information. (Oops)
(b) refer me to a server that no longer exists
(c) stop responding to my messages when I ask them if they could kindly point me to the relevant information they promised via means that are actually accessible.
Bumbling idiots.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 12:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 04, 2004
Again, Iraq Reconstruction, criminally stupid incompetence
A rather sad and clear statement on the utter lack of seriousness that characterised the occupation to date:
U.S. Funds for Iraq Are Largely Unspent
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26310-2004Jul3?language=printer
BAGHDAD, July 3 -- The U.S. government has spent 2 percent of an $18.4 billion aid package that Congress approved in October last year after the Bush administration called for a quick infusion of cash into Iraq to finance reconstruction, according to figures released Friday by the White House.
Well that is just fucking super.
(On the other hand, the slow pace of my steel project makes me feel better - not just us, they're just fucking incompetent)
But then there is this:
The U.S.-led occupation authorities were much quicker to channel Iraq's own money, expending or earmarking nearly all of &dol;20 billion in a special development fund fed by the country's oil sales, a congressional investigator said.
Only $366 million of the $18.4 billion U.S. aid package had been spent as of June 22, the White House budget office told Congress in a report that offers the first detailed accounting of the massive reconstruction package.
Well, have to dig into this, might have useful info for me, but else, super. Super. Super. Of course the usage of Iraqi money before US tax dollars is not precisely the best PR one can achieve.
Thus far, according to the report, nothing from the package has been spent on construction, health care, sanitation and water projects. More money has been spent on administration than all projects related to education, human rights, democracy and governance.
Surprise, surprise.
What can I say, if my experience with the Steel project is indicative (and from this one suspects that it is), then it's no fucking wonder they have spent nothing.
Of $3.2 billion earmarked for security and law enforcement, a key U.S. goal in Iraq, only $194 million has been spent. Another central objective of the aid program was to reduce the 30 percent unemployment rate, but money has been spent to hire only about 15,000 Iraqis, despite U.S. promises that 250,000 jobs would be created by now, U.S. officials familiar with the aid program said.
No comment.
U.S. officials involved in the reconstruction blame security concerns and bureaucratic infighting between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House for delays in the allocation of funds. By the time the Pentagon's contracting office in Baghdad began awarding contracts, the risk of kidnapping and other attacks aimed at foreign workers was so dire that many projects never began. Several Western firms that won contracts have summarily withdrawn their employees from Iraq.
They might also blame it on the sheer incompetence of the CPA / Pentagon PMO office (the contracting office).
Officials with the contracting office contend the amount of money actually spent does not reflect the full scope of work being performed. A more accurate figure, they said, is the amount of money allocated for reconstruction work. Just over $5.2 billion had been allocated as of June 22, according to the White House budget report.
Yeah, right.
Well insofar as I know from personal comms that at the present risk level, most contractors are trying to minimize upfront outlays because of the risk and exposure, I think you can safely conclude little of the $5.2 billion allocated but not disbursed is really moving.
"The money that is disbursed is typically not disbursed until the work is completed, so it doesn't give the best picture of what's going on," said John Proctor, a spokesman for the contracting office. "Some of our projects take months, or even years, to complete."
Guess what chucklehead, you don't got fucking years, and frankly not much fucking work is occuring because of the fucking bombs and kidnappings.
I'll leave the rest of the article for the readers to follow, it is far too frustrating to comment on. Fucking pissing away opportunities.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More on communications: al-Jazeerah and Fox
Kristof of The New York Times had an interesting set of commentary that dovetailed with my own a few days ago re the present American Administration's strange inability to even pretend to sell its own point of view in the proper venues in the Middle East, preferring its own special little echo chambers. Let me quote and comment then on this
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Al Jazeera: Out-Foxing Fox
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: July 3, 2004
First, the opening, of course:
If President Bush wants to rescue his Iraqi adventure, here's a suggestion: Spend less time with C.I.A. sycophants like George Tenet and more time watching Al Jazeera television.
The Bush administration's central intelligence failure was not that it failed to tap enough telephones. Rather, it didn't bother to understand the mind-set in Iraq or the larger Arab world — and it still doesn't.
Emphasis added.
Let me leave aside the phrasing CIA sycophants re Tenent and focus on the last sentence as well as the issue of watching al-Jazeerah.
First, on the last, nothing could be more correct. I have yet to see the slightest sign that the present Administration has anything like a glimmer of an understanding that getting a solid conception of the mind-set of your "enemy" as well as those who you wish to engage is not wishy-washy liberalism but good, solid realism. It helps prevent idiotic own goals.
Kristof adds:
The transfer of sovereignty is a useful moment to look back at what went so wrong in Iraq. As I see it, the root problem was hubris born in a Washington echo chamber, and a resulting conviction that Iraqis would welcome us with flowers.
When I visited Iraq in the run-up to the war, I met another foreigner by the pool of the Rasheed Hotel, where we hoped our conversation couldn't be bugged, and we spoke of our bafflement. Senior U.S. officials seemed genuinely convinced that our invading troops would be hailed as heroes, while ordinary Iraqis often talked about fighting U.S. troops with guns, grenades and suicide bombs. Iraqis typically hated Saddam, but also hated the idea of an invasion.
But the neocons refused to hear it. From their Washington and New York cocoons, they insisted that ordinary Iraqis welcomed an invasion. Ahmad Chalabi had told them so. Or they read it in The Weekly Standard.
Emphasis added.
I believe I raised these points precisely over the past year and just recently.
Among the more severe issues is believing one's own propaganda. In some very strange ways the Washington Bolsheviks seem to be echoing the habits of the old Soviets, in sincerely believing the oppressed classes must clearly welcome with open arms the (foreign) liberators.....
Strange the symetry. But then these new Bolsheviks seem to share the same conviction that ideology must trump pragmatism, that purity is the truth. Irrealism of the worst kind.
I should nuance the above (Kristof) comments by noting that there was some basis to have a genuine belief that in the initial aftermath a good percentage of Iraqis would... well not throw flowers at the feet of the invaders, but be favorably disposed. Very, very briefly favorably disposed before the nationalist reflex took over. Again, our Washington Bolsheviks, as the original Bolsheviks seem blissfully unaware of the reality of other national feelings - although they have a tender concern for their own, although dressed up in 'universalist' messianism.
They even mangled the country's name — Mr. Bush called it Eye-rack — yet they bet American lives that all would go well. That's "the arrogance of power," as Senator William Fulbright termed it when Democrats made similar blunders in Vietnam. (An excerpt is at www.nytimes.com /kristofresponds, Posting 505.)
Such arrogance has a long and sad lineage. The Wolfowitz of World War I was Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander who launched an offensive that cost the British 420,000 casualties. "It naturally pleased Haig to have carefully chosen and nicely cooked little tidbits of `intelligence' about broken German divisions, heavy German casualties and diminishing German morale served up to him every day and all day," Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote. "He beamed satisfaction and confidence. His great plan was prospering. The whole atmosphere of this secluded little community reeked of that sycophantic optimism."
Sound familiar?
leaving aside the somewhat unfair jibe at Ibn Bush's lack of speaking skills - not directly relevant although hard to resist - the phrase sycophantic optimism is well placed.
"We know that Al Jazeera has a pattern of playing propaganda over and over and over again," Don Rumsfeld complained during the war. "What they do is, when there's a bomb that goes down, they grab some children and some women and pretend that the bomb hit the women and the children. . . . We are dealing with people that are perfectly willing to lie to the world to attempt to further their case — and to the extent people lie, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility."
Good point.
Irony there at the end. In case you miss it, Rumsfeld's accusations directed at al-Jazeerah rebound upon him.
Kristof directs attention to this documentary - I have not had the occasion to see it so I have no direct sense as to its quality:
The gulf between the American and Arab realities is the subject of "Control Room," a powerful documentary by Jehane Noujaim, an Egyptian-American. She looks at Al Jazeera's coverage of the war, offering a sobering reminder that there are multiple ways of perceiving the same events.
President Bush's narrative for the war was: "Altruistic Americans risk their lives to topple evil dictator and establish democracy and human rights." The Arab narrative was: "The same Yankees who pay for Israelis to blow up Palestinians are now seizing Iraqi oil fields and maiming Iraqi women and children."
Emphasis added:
Rather more to the point, regardless of the quality or accuracy of either perception or either narrative, if (as is clearly in my opinion the case) winning one's goals or achieving one's goals requires at least some modicum of convincing or at least neutralising perceptions, then whinging on about how "inaccurate" or "biased" the other side's media are does little to no good. The Arabs have played that game for a good thirty years or more - whinging in the place of effective strategies for communicating with the target audiences (in their case, the American public), and for the pure delicious symmetry, I note that they (the various Arab points of view) have had every bit as much success as the present Administration. Again, the problem faced is symmetrical as are the goals, from an Arab point of view there is no way for them in say a year or five to utterly change the point of view of the average American, largely hostile to them and largely incomprehending (for some very valid as well as not so valid reasons I may add), but one can aspire to limiting one's downside and achieving a modicum of a turn around. Miracles, no, modest change, limiting the negative side, yes. But as in the case of the present Administration, Arabs have preferred to wallow in their own discourse, their own echo chambers, and have generally made little effective effort to communicate in a way that might aspire to success.
Symmetrically, the present Administration of Ibn Bush is engaged in the same fiasco. Wonderful, they take their "lessons" from possibly the least politically successful interest group on the entire planet (allowing for available resources and the like). Speaking to itself and its home audience, with no sense of how to engage and turn around their image in a region where it is desperately needed - and no sense of how even to communicate in a manner that might limit the downside. Radio Sawa and TV al-Hurra (the name itself speaks to idiotic hubris and is needless and ineffectually insulting, never mind as I noted some time back its programming is American navel gazing- unlike BBC Arabic I note, or the private American venture, CNBC al-Arabiyah.).
Kristof adds:
I'm not a big fan of Al Jazeera, which tends to be emotional and nationalistic. As U.S. Lt. Josh Rushing astutely notes in "Control Room," Al Jazeera is the Arab version of the Fox News Channel: "It benefits Al Jazeera to play to Arab nationalism because that's their audience, just like Fox plays to American patriotism, for the exact same reason — American nationalism — because that's their demographic audience and that's what they want to see."
If the Arab world is going to break out of its self-pitying self-absorption, it's going to have to understand American attitudes — and it could do worse than switching its televisions from Al Jazeera to Fox. And if the Bush administration is going to turn Iraq around and engage the Arab world effectively, then it must try harder to escape the echo chamber and understand the Arabs — and it could do worse than switching from the reassuring euphony of Fox to Al Jazeera.
On the first paragraph, I note that I agree. al-Jazeerah is emotional, yellow journalism. Yet, unlike state journalism here, it is real journalism. That is to say, they are effectively free to report (given on the ground limitations on information gathering) and effectively free to respond to their customer basis. The quotation above is spot on in regards to the symmetry of patriotic pandering. Yellow journalism.
The second paragraph of course touches on my point supra, and I note as a general matter that if American Administrations wish to have some modicum of success in the region, they will have to engage the reality, not the wishful thinking and deeply inappropriate analogies to Eastern Europe that have characterised rather too much discussion on the right end of the spectrum. That does not mean, I add forcefully, sucess requires pandering or kowtowing to the prejudices of the Arab region as one sometimes gets the sense from commentators on the Left feel is required, quite the contrary, but it does require an intelligent design of an engagement to sell one's own goals. That is to say, the company has to understand its market and what products can be sold directly, what needs to be done to prepare the terrain for future products and what products will just have to stay on the shelf, realistically. One cannot simply assume that one's bright and shiney democracy products are just going to leap off the shelves and run around telling the Board that the customers just "have to" get it.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 03:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New Month and Fourth of July: The Usual 'Survey' of Readers and an introductory note
My "tradition" as it were.
However, as we near the first annivesary of this little commentary, I think I perhaps should take a moment to introduce myself again to the 'new' readers who have had the misfortune to stumble upon my acerbic self.
First, although it is a regretably common misperception, I am not a Colonel nor have I ever had anything to do with the military - best I can do is a brother who was in the Marines. Col is short for Collier. The collounsbury moniker arises from the typical shortening of Collier many seem to prefer.
Second, who am I? Well, some people have met me in person and can vouch I actually exist, but otherwise I am deliberately vague for a number of important professional reasons - which is to say no need for people who deal with me professionally to run into this and read my comments. Yes, by the way, collounsbury is my real name, but only part of it. Vagueness is a virtue in this respect.
Otherwise, professionally I presently work in the financial sector after several years in pharma (although in ip and strategic issues, not the science end, which was only a hobby). I largely work in areas related to risk capital and direct investments, although I have done and do consulting on a broader range of activities, when people unaccountably are duped into thinking I know more than I do. As many have discerned, I have a certain penchant for the region, and I guess about a decade worth of experience in and around the region. I do speak 'fluent' Arabic, several dialects, read and write as well. I put fluent in 'quotes' as one should always acknowledge that an adult learner is never truly 'fluent' in the proper sense of the word, but in the ordinary sense I am fluent. Which is to say, it often takes even native speakers some time to figure out I am not an Arab - and if I am in certain regions I can go a good long time at it.
This aside, I began this "blog" (I hate the word) or journal after getting myself booted off a message board which I tended to express myself rather ... well like I do here. I believe the key event was telling someone they could respond properly or "else, fuck off." Given the person in question was an idiot, I felt it was well-desevered. In any case, the medium has grown on me, although I despise livejournal, but am too lazy to migrate to blogger. I should, and fully intend to do so in some mythical time when I get either the time or the gumption to see about transfering my "archives" - also might drop the collounsbury moniker, it comes to mind that my 'cover' is uncomfortably transparent.
This aside, I should say that I long eschewed commenting on the Middle East in the online world - only sheer frustration and contempt for the idiocies often pronounced on the region led me to do so. I suppose there is a place then for commentary on the Middle East from my own particular point of view, neither academic (although as anyone can tell, I have what some characterised as a moderately academic style, too much education I suppose), nor journalistic, nor political pundit. I like to think of myself as a hard core centrist although I suppose this may put me to the right of many, but in any case, I am I think, correctly, characterised as a pure pragmatist, as for example in the case of free markets and the developing world (for all that I enjoy sincerely castigating the idiotic leftist anti-globos for their naive vision).
Well, enough of this, some substance shortly.
Back to work then.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 30, 2004
Further to the disaster, on Media and Incomprehension
A well-done article on the Arabic media on this - I only caught parts on al-Arabiyah that morning but this analysis strikes me as on target:
Nagm is a cautious man, and his "if there is a ceremony" spoke volumes. By Sunday, the escalation of violence and the persistence of rumors that the handover might be moved up had journalists here and in Baghdad ready for fast-breaking news. But the timing of the handover -- which took place Monday, two days ahead of schedule and without warning or advance notice -- not only took al-Arabiya by surprise, it left the network scrambling for "visuals." No one, it seems, had bothered to call the Arabic-language channel that says it has the largest viewership in Iraq. Their cameras were not even in the room when Iraq was reborn as a sovereign nation (or "so-called sovereign" in the local parlance).
"I don't know what they were thinking -- they didn't tell anybody," said Abdul Kader Kharobi, an assignment editor at al-Arabiya, a few hours after the transfer at 10:26 a.m. local time. There was no frustration in his voice, just disgust and a lot of weary irony. The Americans have been all but incompetent in manufacturing images, he said, and yet what does it matter? After Abu Ghraib, and after what he believes was a sham investigation into the March 18 killing of two al-Arabiya journalists in Baghdad by U.S. soldiers, who believes the Americans anyway?
Emphasis added.
Again and again, needless stumbles.
"It doesn't look promising," he said. "Like some people in a bunker doing something illegal."
Later, it was announced that Bremer had left, but it took time to get images of the man (whose "reign" was widely criticized by Arab media as a failure) touching terra firma in Iraq for the last time in his trademark boots and suit. Richard Nixon, skulking out of Washington after his resignation, looked more exultant.
The paucity of images on Arab television, and lag time during the first hours after the handover, contributed to a sense that the American part of this moment was a bit furtive and sad. Al-Arabiya, which spent the day interviewing notable political and cultural leaders, often split its screen, returning again and again to a tape loop of Bremer, at the handover, looking exhausted and almost dazed. For much of the afternoon, Arab leaders talked over him, plunging into all the problems the new nation faces, the violence, the debts inherited by the new government, the question of the interim government's legitimacy. They talked, and Bremer listened, or so the juxtaposition of images seemed to say. A neat reversal of who dictates to whom, and perhaps a last dig at a man sometimes referred to on Arab television as a "dictator."
and
The most striking aspect of Monday's coverage -- besides the fact that channels al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera were left on the outside of an event that one might have expected the Americans to spoon-feed them -- is how quickly everyone moved on. Although an al-Arabiya journalist, doing man-in-the-street questions, asked a group of Iraqis, "Is this a government of stooges to the United States?" there wasn't a lot of obsessing about the meaning of the actual transfer. Rather, the handover itself was nudged to the side, and the conversation turned to the future: money, police, safety, foreign affairs, the future of Saddam Hussein (taking possession of, and prosecuting him, may be the first items of business attempted by the new government).
I still do not understand the childish peevishness of the present American govenrment in regards to the Arab Sats. Yes, they are hostile to you, but this is not Soviet TV, this is not State TV, the Arab Sats are more or less genuinely free - some limits exists due to their home bases, but then their home bases are tiny insignificant and comfortable countries - but most of their reporting is "market driven" for all the idiotic gnashing of teeth in America regarding Jihadi propaganda (which the Arab Sats are not). They respond to what their viewers tastes are - largely speaking.
For that, one has to talk to them - excluding them, not talkiing to them merely means one's own voice is not heard at all, and one talks to oneself in an echo chamber. That appears to be the sole concern of the present Administration, and it is dangerous. It is indeed true there is no convincing much of the prospective audience of the goodness of one's overall aims, above all when policy re Israel is so Sharon-centered, but damage control is often about limiting the down side, not turning a bad event into a good event.
(all from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13301-2004Jun28.html)
Posted by The Lounsbury at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Further Reflections on the Iraq Failure: Ignatius of WP
Rather busy at the moment (who knew setting up an office was such a bloody nightmare), but a quick note on this:
After the Handover
By David Ignatius
Tuesday, June 29, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13503-2004Jun28.html
Ignatius has long been my favorite American commentator on Iraq, and I may add a richer and more interesting one than Freidman's idiotic bowlderizations of the latest nitwit observation spoonfed him by the pampered elites.
In particular I want to draw attention to this:
"The invasion also helped spawn a wave of anti-Americanism in the Islamic Middle East and around the world. Bremer's departure from Baghdad yesterday may ease those divisions, but the damage to America's reputation is significant. In Europe and Asia, as much as in the Arab world, the United States is seen as the god that failed.
As with any policy reversal, the essential question is whether its architects have learned from their mistakes. "
Precisely, and I note that working for an American firm I am seeing the hesitations, the resistance. Doing business, as I have noted several times, is becoming harder - where only two or three years ago, to take a North African example - you heard things like "We're sick of being captive to the French [business] interests, we want to work with Americans" now you hear rather snide jokes about Iraq, skepticism that American products are worth the trouble.... One can do business, but clearly the mental barriers are up, the reflexive skepticism has increased.
There is a real price, then, to the political angle. Now, sometimes prices have to be paid, but it is painful to see this price being paid for an incompetent folly, and administration one that continues to muddle along blindly, without any real sense of how to turn things around, and yet incapable either of learning from the mess. Only seeking to push off real accounting until after the elections.
I also note the following for its entertainment value as well as its sardonic truth:
"Ahmed Chalabi smiled contentedly at the thought. L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator who ran Iraq like a viceroy for more than a year, was reduced to a hasty exit with a stealthy helicopter ride to the airport, seen off without fanfare by no one higher-ranking than a deputy prime minister. "Bremer put his hand in his pocket and went to the airport ignominiously," Chalabi chortled Tuesday, the day after Bremer's departure. "And Dan Senor with him," he added, referring to Bremer's spokesman, who had denigrated Chalabi on television."
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16002-2004Jun29.html)
I confess some guilty pleasure in Chalabi laughing at Senor.
But here is a more useful nuggest:
"Iraq has a long history of Arab nationalism and support for Palestinians against Israel, dating from before Hussein's Baath Party took over in 1968. As a result, its foreign policy, if tradition and popular sentiment are followed, could end up being adversarial with that of the Bush administration."
Could? It will, if of course popular sentiment is followed. But then the real model is the Egyptian one - the faux democracy covering a vampire state. Not even one that brings economic progress like Tunisia, but is a convenient lap dog.
Posted by The Lounsbury at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2004
Among the effects of transfer, adieu oh useless CPA
The CPA site is suddenly silent, although they continue to send me their useless press oriented blather.
No more updates on cool things like what fucking things are not working and other fine things that enabled one, if one wanted to, to track how fucked up everything is. (Although I am amused to note that at some point they stopped posting the security reports for "security reasons" - never noticed when that stopped)
Good planning opportunities of course.
Now the route seems to be Iraqi ministerial. Have to probe on that. Investment memo proceeding apace, but pain in the ass to work on when I am also looking for a new damned apartment.
Should try to find some time to comment on the transition and the like - wonder how this will play in the US?
Posted by The Lounsbury at 09:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2004
Reconstruction Articles: indictments of the CPA
The Washington Post has been running a rich series on the "reconstruction" of Iraq, which I find rather confirmatory of my own observations and explanatory of why reconstruction has been such an abject failure.
In the current edition, the following article has some interesting gems:
An Educator Learns the Hard Way
Task of Rebuilding Universities Brings Frustration, Doubts and Danger
washingtonpost.com
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56414-2004Jun20?language=printer
Second of three articles
The article focuses on a certain John Agresto, responsible for the "reconstruction" of the university system. Without meaning to sneer, the naivete recorded rather explains the failures.
A few quotes: "Like everyone else in America, I saw the images of people cheering as Saddam Hussein's statue was pulled down. I saw people hitting pictures of him with their shoes," said Agresto, the former president of St. John's College in New Mexico. "Once you see that, you can't help but say, 'Okay. This is going to work.' "
Well, I should hope some minority in American paid attention to the wider context, which was there, of vast and deep distrust for the US and ambiguous feelings regarding the toppling of "their president" by a foreign army. Fool.
Although he notes:
""I'm a neoconservative who's been mugged by reality," Agresto said as he puffed on a pipe next to a resort-size swimming pool behind the marbled palace that houses the occupation authority.
"We can't deny there were mistakes, things that didn't work out the way we wanted," he added. "We have to be honest with ourselves.""
This is perhaps the key to understanding why he and his ilk when so wrong:
He knew next to nothing about Iraq's educational system. Even after he was selected, he did not pore through a reading list. "I wanted to come here with as open a mind as I could have," he said. "I'd much rather learn firsthand than have it filtered to me by an author." He did a Google search on the Internet. The result? "Not much," he said.
...
None of that fazed him. He assumed, he said, that Iraq would feel like a newly liberated East European nation, keen to embrace the West and democratic change. "
Blindness and hubris, fundamentally misunderstanding the situation and the problem. It strikes me the idiotically misplaced, utterly ahistorical analogies with the Cold War and Eastern Europe indeed informed most of the CPA-Iraq ideologues understanding of Iraq. It is little wonder they failed to understand what was going on around them, and failed to respond in practical manners.
It rather does behoove one, I would add, to learn something of the country you are trying to remake, if only to understand what the real basics you are working with actually are, so as to avoid the silly idiocy of believing some selective, distorted TV images, and thinking like a naive fool that your invasion is going to be like Praque 1989. The differences should have been obvious to anyone who knew even a modicum about the history of the region, never mind the culture and the religion. Leaving aside, however, the Islamic versus outsider issue, one need only look to the rather more ambivalent Russian attitudes compared with Eastern European to understand Eastern Europe, under a foreign empire's domination, was/is in no way a sociological model for understanding a post-Sadaam Iraq.
This particular passage amused and annoyed me, I may add:
"While acknowledging American mistakes, Agresto aimed some of his most pointed criticism at Iraqis. In his view, the Americans toppled a dictator and prepared the ground for democracy, but Iraqis have not stepped up to build on that start.
"They don't know how to be a community," he said. "They put their individual interests first. They only look out for themselves.""
Well, no shit. There has not been a community and a modicum of reading regarding Iraqi sociology would have taught him that Iraqi society has remained highly tribalized, and indeed regreseed along those lines in the 1990s. A modicum of preparation, rather than trying to "learn" on the ground, wrapped in a bubble.
I would like to note I consider this statement to be pure rubbish and deeply hypocritical:
"Had it been someone different than Agresto, the possibility of that would have been so much better," said Keith Watenpaugh, an assistant professor of Middle East history at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., who traveled to Baghdad last year to assess Iraq's university system. "The politics of the occupation were so divisive, and the American academy felt so disempowered by the way things were happening, that when such political creatures like Agresto came asking for things, it was too difficult to put aside those politics. If the administration had really been committed to rebuilding Iraq's education structures, they wouldn't have sent Agresto."
Emphasis added.
American academy felt disempowered? Oh poor whinging ineffectual babies. Bloody twit: at least Agresto is honest - a fool but honest - this whinging twit would have me believe he would have let go of his attachment to "the Academy" (one of those idiotic pomposities that I so despise from this kind of academic), and his politics to work on Iraq? I should think not.
Agresto was a mistake, to be sure, for his lack of background in the region and his idiotic lack of preparation on that, but his past fights with "The Academy" strike me as irrelevant except to highlight the self-indulgence and navel gazing.
Now, more naivete:
Agresto, who was inside the palace and heard the blast, assumed that the attack would provoke widespread revulsion at the taking of innocent life, and would rally popular sentiment against the insurgency and in favor of the goals of the occupation.
"What I expected was the Mothers March for Peace or the Don't Kill Our Kids movement or somebody to come out and say: 'Stop this. We want democracy,' " he said. But that never occurred. Iraqis held funerals and went on with life. U.S. troops erected even larger concrete blast walls in front of the gate.
When he asked Iraqis working for the CPA why there was not more outrage, he sensed apprehension. Everyone he talked to was too scared to condemn the insurgents in public.
"I saw people still afraid," he said. "I saw how easy it was to speak against the Americans and how dangerous it was to speak for democracy and liberty."
The aftermath of the bombing led Agresto to rethink some of his most fundamental assumptions about the American effort to transform Iraq. Suddenly, a goal that had appeared attainable seemed so far from reach. Perhaps, he concluded, U.S. planners should have settled for something less than full democracy.
A mother's march for peace? Well, that has some entertainment value - although it sadly displays how much he and his ilk have been living in a fantasy world disconnected from the realities of Iraqi society,
He reasoned that the occupation's chief goal should have been to restore security, and only later to begin other work in earnest.
"We're trying to establish a democratic government without a democratic people," he said. "I don't know how possible that is."
Here, here at least we have some realism. It is not possible, is the answer, first one has to create the conditions necessary. .
Now, perhaps a dose of realism:
"Later in the meeting, Agresto distributed copies of a revised education law written by the CPA that included the rights document. He said the CPA had decided not to promulgate the law and instead was giving it to the ministry with the hope that it would be approved by the university presidents and the minister. The changes would have more legitimacy, Agresto figured, if they were enacted by the new minister, rather than the occupation authority."
Well, at least a tiny bit of realism regarding what they can achieve.
Now regarding the prior article,
Mistakes Loom Large as Handover Nears
Missed Opportunities Turned High Ideals to Harsh Realities
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54294-2004Jun19?language=printer
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 20, 2004; Page A01
Bloody long and very much worth reading, although if you have been reading my ranting about my experiences with the CPA since May of 2003, none of this is a surprise.
Some key items
First, this one line summary: "The ambitious, 15-month undertaking stumbled because of a series of mistakes that began with an inadequate commitment of resources and was aggravated by a misunderstanding of Iraqi politics, religion and society in occupied Iraq, these participants said."
Well ain't that beautiful. What truly irritates me, however, as this was painfully obvious a bloody year ago, and to anyone with the least sense, the combination of an occupation administration that knew literally nothing and had no resources, was a recipe for disaster (although I note we had the usual suspects in the mindless cheerleading camp try to pimp that idea everything was going fine off of some senseless neo-Con journo morons quick trips through safe zones. Indeed, let me point out the importance of "loyal criticism and its utility over mindless sycophantic cheerleading. Should the USG morons have heeded well placed criticisms, they would have avoided massive errors.
But more on this later.
"We blatantly failed to get it right," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who served as an adviser to the occupation authority. "When you look at the record, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that we squandered an unprecedented opportunity."
Squandered is bloody right. Nothing had to be this bad. Not even after the looting, but again, the current Administration's blind mendacity, its extreme preference for sycophants over skilled and pragmatic operators is deadly. Martin Wolf had it right, opposition to this Administration is a duty for anyone who cares about competency. I am not pleased with the concept of a Kerry White House, but I would rather have the occasion to vote out a mediocre Kerry than suffer through the disasters these incompetent fools are wreaking out of pure blind hubris.
I note this is rich: U.S. reconstruction specialists commonly complain of ungrateful Iraqis. What the fuck these idiots think the Iraqis should be grateful for I don't know, but certainly merely toppling a dictator is not enough, the motherfuckers in Iraq know bloody well that toppling dictators does not make the fucking pie in the end, so no reason to congratulate the Chef for simply having bought the motherfucking ingrediants, he's gotta fucking make the pie in order to fucking congratulate him. Mindless idiots, these stupid fucking American "reconstruction" idiots in the CPA, full of their bloated farts of empty pompous "liberation" posturing.
In many ways, the occupation appears to have transformed the occupier more than the occupied. Iraqis continue to endure blackouts, lengthy gas lines, rampant unemployment and the uncertain political future that began when U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad. But American officials who once roamed the country to share their sense of mission with Iraqis now face such mortal danger that they are largely confined to compounds surrounded by concrete walls topped with razor wire. Iraqis who come to meet them must show two forms of identification and be searched three times.
Emphasis added. I rather think that says all there really needs to be said about this "liberation."
The Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. entity that has administered Iraq, cites many successes of its tenure. Nearly 2,500 schools have been repaired, 3 million children have been immunized, $5 million in loans has been distributed to small businesses and 8 million textbooks have been printed, according to the CPA. New banknotes have replaced currency with ousted president Saddam Hussein's picture. Local councils have been formed in every city and province. An interim national government promises to hold general elections next January.
These are successes? Five fucking million? And replacing Sadaam on the currency?
Most telling:
About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid, despite promises to use the money to employ at least 250,000 Iraqis by this month. At of the beginning of June, 80 percent of the aid package, approved by Congress last fall, remained unspent.Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.
Incompetence.
Pure and simple. Incompetence.
And these people sneered at the UN. With more potential resources they have done a far worse job and squandered vast amounts of political capital.
And of course, my fucking steel project is still fucking stuck.
Yeah, that pisses me off still. But beyond the personal angle, rather emblamatic of who these incompetent fools can't get out of the fucking starting gate.
AS for the political system and that shining beacon of democracy that would transform the region (in their masturbatory dreams of course, naive idiots), well we're going to have an Egyptian style "democracy" as a I long predicted, if not a civil war (I note al-Hayat reports this AM 22 June 04 that Turkey has warned the Kurds not to move into Kirkuk or face consequences).
Of course the following is not surprising at all in the context of the abject failure of the CPA. : On the eve of its dissolution, the CPA has become a symbol of American failure in the eyes of most Iraqis. In a recent poll sponsored by the U.S. government, 85 percent of respondents said they lacked confidence in the CPA. The criticism is echoed by some Americans working in the occupation. They fault CPA staffers who were fervent backers of the invasion and of the Bush administration, but who lacked reconstruction skills and Middle East experience. Only a handful spoke Arabic.
What I always found strange, I may add, is that although I knew a goodly number of CPA Staff, and knew they desperately needed persons like myself, no one tried to recruit me. Now, I am sure it was really quite clear that I am no partisan of Ibn Bush, that I was highly critical of what was going on, however one should think