Should I Read Or Not? Updated

Tom Ricks of ricks.foreignpolicy.com reviews Peter Bergen's latest book that assesses the war between the US and Al-Qaeda in the Sunday NYT book review.  I ponder whether I should read it because I am not sure how much is new in it.  After all, Bergen spends much time on castigating the US:

Bergen is evenhanded but ferocious in reviewing the failures of the Bush administration, noting that in the wake of the worst security failure in American history, no one was fired, no one resigned and no one took responsibility. It’s widely understood that the White House ceded the moral high ground by embracing torture and secret prisons, but Bergen highlights how flatly unprofessional these actions were: seasoned interrogators were shunted aside in favor of eager amateurs who thought the facts could be physically wrung from detainees.
Colin Powell comes off as a chump who should have resigned in November 2001, when he learned about the administration’s new policy on detainees from a news broadcast on television, and long before he delivered one of the most misleading speeches in American history, his rallying cry for war at the United Nations. Dick Cheney appears less a brooding presence and more a red-faced buffoon, which may well be how history comes to regard him. I was surprised, however, at how badly Condoleezza Rice appears in this historical record. Bergen makes it clear that she was at best misleading about the actions of the administration.

 I am not surprised by the condemnation of Rice, as her job was to coordinate American foreign policy and provide the President with informed assessments of the options, which she clearly did not do.  Given that Ricks wrote a book called Fiasco about the Iraq war, I would think that he would expect criticism of the person who was supposed to be coordinating the decision-making of that Fiasco.

So, on this side of things, the book may only provide more details about that which we already know.  Given that Bergen is one of the experts on Al-Qaeda, that would be the part of the book that would provide the most new information.  The US side would provide details that will undoubtedly just reinforce my anger at the Bush Administration.  After all, this is how Ricks concludes his review:

“The Longest War” is one of the most important accounts on the subject to appear in years. But be warned: You will read it and weep.

UPDATED: I had an email conversation with Tom Ricks this morning, and his surprise was not so much that Condi Rice did stuff that should be criticized, just that she is rarely called out.

Waffler?

This image suggests that Michel Ignatieff is a waffler on Afghanistan.  Which may be the case.  However, it seems to be the case that he has been prompted to criticize the government not just because mindless opposition is his job, but because it is pretty clear that the decision to send 800 trainers and other guys after June 2011 was not worked through the  various agencies.  NATO does not need 800 trainers behind the wire, but does need more training via embedding and partnering with Afghan units.  But that is precisely not what the Canadians will be doing.  So, this cartoon is amusing but it misses the point--the Harper government did not work this policy out well.  Criticizing it for screwing up the process is fair game, as it makes all of Harper's assertions about behind the wire and in Kabul somewhat easy to disbelieve.

I am a Card Carrying Member of the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex

Yep, I get $$ from the Canadian Department of National Defence and from NATO.  So, forget everything I have ever said or will say since I am completely compromised by my role in the military-industrial-academic complex.

Ok.  Of course, the problem is that this concept, like globalization or "neo-liberalism" among many others has been abused so much that it loses much of its meaning.  This piece reviews a book about Eisenhower's speech that introduced the term.  Of course people have used it to justify their own beliefs, but Ike was not arguing that militaries are evil, that war is never necessary or that the complex causes war.  Nope, he just warned that too much power in the hands of the military-industrial complex might lead to too much spending (he liked programs that were cheap--bigger bang for the buck) and perhaps a garrison state where international threats justify an intrusive government.  Well, that latter dynamic can happen with or without a military-industrial complex as we had Red Scares after World War I, Adams and the Sedition act and so forth.  So, international threats can breed over-reactions without being cheer-led by General Dynamics and the generals in the five-sided building. 

To blame the military-industrial complex for anything is easy.  Because of their power, we sometimes buy armored fighting vehicles that do not work, planes that crash too often, ships that are entirely too expensive.  But did the military cause the US to invade Iraq?  Did the big defense industries?  No.  The causes of the Iraq war are both simple and complex.  Simple in that we had a group of individuals running the country who desired this war at a time where the usual checks and balances were not in play due to 9/11 (not that they caused 9/11 to have this effect--they were just, pardon the term, lucky).  Complex in that each of these actors had different reasons for wanting a war, and a lot of it had to do with dysfunctional cognitive processes like confirmation bias, wishful thinking, groupthink, analogical reasoning and so on.

To argue that somebody caused something because they benefited from it is a common fallacy.  I benefited from the Canada Research Chair program.  How did I cause it?  My research has benefited from the complexities of Afghanistan.  How did I cause that?  Obviously, it is easier to draw the connections when the people in power have ties to those who benefit, such as Cheney and Haliburton, but it is far easier to argue and demonstrate that Haliburton got good contracts because of its political connections than it got the war it wanted....

Who is More Naive: Harper or Layton?

Um, I think I will go with Layton since he believes the Canadians can play a leadership role in Afghanistan without having any boots on the ground.

"He said Canada can play a "leadership role" to spark talks aimed at building an accountable government, a justice system and legitimate elections in Afghanistan."

Sure, right.  While impartial mediators can play a role, and even partial ones can help, it is not clear how a country that had been a combatant but then pulled out would be seen as a significant voice.  The reality is that influence comes with commitment.  No commitment, not much influence.

There are good arguments to be made for Canada not to be in Afghanistan, but Layton seems to like making bad ones.  He argues that Harper is lying or naive about keeping trainers in the classrooms and behind the wire, but that just means that Layton has not been paying attention to the past ten years of caveats and other restrictions.  Countries can and do restrict their troops from combat all the time, and this has not been such a secret in Afghanistan.  Perhaps I should send him the Steve and Dave paper (draft, email me for the final version coming out of ISQ in 2012).

I am not a big fan of the Harper approach, having called him a weenie, but Layton is simply bad at being a pacifist.  That is, he makes lousy arguments that weaken the position.

Underestimating the Costs of War, part 2

The NYT is continuing to document the costs of war and how to mitigate them.  It includes video that shows the treatment of a severely wounded soldier.  I tend not to watch TV news, so I have missed stuff like this, but we need to watch occasionally so that the flippant folks (that would be me) are less flip.

Smart Stuff on Tunisia

Some sharp stuff written on Tunisia at Foreignpolicy.com.

First, Nathan Brown argues that a constitutionally governed process of change is good in theory, but in practice pretty difficult given that the constitution was set up to keep the old status quo in place.

Second, Ethan Zuckerman addresses the question of how much did twitter matter in all of this.  Just because someone uses a # in a poster does not mean that tweeting brought down the regime.  I am pretty sure it was the folks with the guts to go out in the streets and the guys in the army with the guts not too shoot.  Does twitter facilitate collective action by informing people that there are fellow gutsy people out there protesting and not shooting?  The case Zuckerman makes is that it is about grievances more than anything else, and that is interesting people this set of grievances is not unique to Tunisia in the Middle East.  But Zuckerman makes a good point:

One way to understand the significance of social media in Tunisia is to examine the government's attempts to control and silence it.

So, social media did matter in spreading information about what was happening, but we should not exaggerate it.  On the other hand, it may not be so much social media but attempts to repress it that might matter:

Not content just to filter content, last summer Tunisian authorities began "phishing" attacks on activists' Gmail and Facebook accounts. By injecting malicious computer code into the login page of those services through the government-controlled Internet service provider, Ben Ali's monitors were able to obtain passwords to these accounts, locking out the activists and harvesting email lists of presumed activists.

That would surely anger me.  One of the big unresolved questions in Political Science is the impact of repression.  Sometimes, it decreases dissent, sometimes it increases it, and sometimes it does not make a difference at all.  One testable hypothesis to emerge out of this is whether repressing internet access is more or less effective than less high tech means of repression.  What we do know is that frustration over the long term does tend to breed dissent and violence.  Zuckerman concludes that "Tunisians took to the streets due to decades of frustration, not in reaction to a WikiLeaks cable, a denial-of-service attack, or a Facebook update."

We can count on Marc Lynch to have a nuanced take on all of this, arguing we ought to

Guns and Correlations

Correlation does not mean causation, but this article has a nice figure or two and some numbers to show that, for some strange reason, states with gun control have less gun-related deaths.  I would say heaps of the correlations here are spurious--that they are actually reflecting something else.  That is, states that voted for McCain do not use guns to kill people because they are McCain voters, but rather the conditions that might lead to more McCain voters would also lead to more gun-related deaths.  For instance, if a state's population really wants un-regulated guns, then they would vote for McCain and reap the benefits of un-regulated guns--more deaths. 

Anyhow, check it out.  Some inconvenient facts here, no doubt.

Digital Immortality

What happens to one's digital life when one dies?   Interesting, although a bit long, piece.  I have a hard enough time remembering my own passwords for everything so giving all of that info to someone is harder still.  But definitely worth thinking about and planning.  Yes, no doubt folks are going to make money on digital funerals/archives.  I don't think anything I have done thus far--here, facebook, twitter--needs to be saved for eternity, although the pics I have put up on facebook might come close.  I have most of them on my hard drive, but they do have meaning for some folks who are not me.  Good thing I don't have an avatar on Warcraft or Second Life to worry about.  Yet.

So, dear readers, what digital pieces of your life are worth saving forever or five years? 

Tunisia? I Hardly Know Her

I don't know anything about Tunisia, but twitter alerted me to the flight of the President and the stepping in of the military and then the Prime Minister.  Since I am pretty ignorant, I will just raise a few questions that will probably never be answer-able:

• Is this the first government to be brought down by wikileaks?  Revelations about the President's lifestyle/corruption might have played a role as an accelerant. 
• Does this prove that the key to political change is a large middle class?  Political scientists have always leaned on the middle class as the key to democracy.  Of course, we have no idea if Tunisia will get any real/sustainable democracy.
• Was this a case of bad coup-proofing?  That is, the police seemed willing to be violent, but not the army.  Or so the reports have suggested.  The big question in these situations is always, always, always--is the army going to fire on the civilians?  In this case, the answer is no.  Thus far.
• Which leads to the next question: will the army return to the barracks quickly and easily? 
• If this is really the first successful mass uprising in the Mideast as my grad student averred, will it travel?  Does it mean that other less than fully democratic leaders will allow protests so that there is no violence that might spiral?  Or do they prevent protests from developing at all?  There are many lessons to learn from this event, and it is far from certain that "the right lessons" whatever they might be are the ones that travel.  While I have argued against contagion in much of my work, we may see more spread of this stuff here because the conditions are, superficially, pretty similar in other countries in the region: corrupt leaders, few real outlets of dissent, likely hamhandedness (oops, not halal) by elites, etc.  On the other hand, do other countries in the region seem to have as large a middle class?

Really too soon to speculate much, but I was short in blog posts today.

Type Much?

I disagree with this piece.  I really do.  Yes, really.  It argues that putting two spaces after a period is wrong.  I disagree.  It is hard enough to read student papers, for instance, when they no longer use commas, but not having sentences that clearly end.  And a new one begins.  But if we only use one space, then the sentences will seem to run together. Right. So, let me ask my readers: do you prefer one space? Or two?  I will not change, but I will know whether I should feel shame.  Or not.

The Academic Hiring Process

Folks complain all the time about hiring in academia-- the job rumor site is so venomous is not just because there are too many applicants chasing too few jobs, but also because the process seems pretty damned random.

For an amusing yet too truthful take, see this piece.  What does Jacques Berlinerblau suggest as the bugs in the process?

1. "Because half the committee does not read the damn CV's"  I don't think that is quite the problem, but not reading what the candidates write probably is.  That is, reading CVs for a couple hundred candidates is not that hard since more than half come no where near fitting the job or being competitive.  It has been a couple of years since I have been on a search, but the first run through the files was pretty quick.  The problem comes when you need to sort among twenty-five or thirty files, and having to read hunks of chapters/articles while still doing all of that pesky teaching and writing.
2. "Because your department is completely dysfunctional."  The good news is that my current dept, hiring is not very problematic, even when my preferred candidate loses (which happens surprisingly or not so surprisingly often).  We tend to make good decisions as evidenced by the records of the folks who are now approaching or getting past the tenure process.  The sure sign of a dysfunctional department is when they hire people consistently that: a) do not get develop the record to be tenure-able; b) develop the record that is tenurable but are denied anyway; c) flee long before tenure.  My prior job had the last problem--we did a great job of hiring junior faculty when I was at Texas Tech, but they all fled pretty quickly.  The record was one year in my time and the average was probably around three years.  Again, a fundamental principle is that if you hire someone to do something and they do that thing well, you cannot deny them tenure for not being some other kind of scholar.  
3. "Because someone on the committee once did summer stock theater with the eventual first choice."  I know this to happen once in a place where I served as a visiting instructor.  Folks outside of the field for which the job was designed collaborated to poach the position, despite not really caring much about the development of their field.  One of the poachers had ties to one of the candidates.  However, the joke was on the them because they brought in a very, very good scholar despite their best efforts, making them look pretty inadequate.
4. "Because you overlooked the adjunct in your gate [meaning department]."  That is, if you have hired a someone to fill out your course catalog on a temporary basis, that person may be discounted. Familiarity breeds contempt.  It can work the other way, that an inside candidate can gain an edge over strangers.  It happens both ways.  I certainly messed up being an inside candidate at my first job--and I am forever thankful that I did.  The road to my current position has not been smooth or logical, but it has worked out for the best, even with current gripes considered.
5. "Because letters of recommendation are not always elucidating."  Indeed.  One bigtime scholar tends to write a very short letter that barely covers half a page.  That really indicates nothing as he does this for many folks, but folks elsewhere might read too much into this.  Other folks become famous for saying each of their students is the best one ever.  I try to avoid that trap in writing letters, but it can be hard.  Folks tend to read into letters what they want to see.  That is why I sometimes do see the length of the letter to be a key variable--it shows that the letter writer cares about the student.  Still, letters are not always useful.
6. "Because selecting junior faculty is a total crap shoot anyway." Berlinerblau then uses the example of drafts in sports--that football teams go to great lengths, for instance, to assess the players that they might draft, with lots more information, effort and money, and often fail.  We, who spend far less time, and the aspirants, whose skills are far less obvious than speed and strength and size, are much harder to assess.

 In the end, at my current department and even in ye olde dysfunctional TTU, we did pretty darned well given how hard this is.  But it is easy to see how aspirants could view the process as random or dysfunctional.  Certainly, when I have lost out to others, I have sometimes wondered what they were thinking.  Of course, other times, I knew that I blew it or that the other candidates had better records. 

To enter this process, one has to be ready for rejection.  Indeed, after getting a job, the rejection continues--from journals, presses, grant-giving agencies, etc.  Spending too much time trying to understand the process is likely to cause headaches.  Which is why I discourage my students from entering the market too soon.  It causes a great deal of stress even when nothing is going on.  The good news is that two of my students found good tenure track positions this year.  I hope to do as well next year.

Speaking of the American Family

When a child faces a challenge, we all pitch in to help:

While there was an initial laugh, the crowd jumped in and helped the girl along when the audio cut out.  Patriot or not, it is moving.

A President for the Entire Country

Some have pondered where this President was on health care (Gail Collins of the NYT, for instance), as Obama gave a very moving speech last night.  I think this kind of question underestimates the differences between standing up for a policy and standing for a nation.  I do think that Obama could have articulated better his policies over the last two years, but it is a different circumstance where he could be not a partisan but a President. 

I was not in love with the entire speech because I do not like the invoking of a religion (or any religion), but I understand that kind of stuff usually has a role in events such as memorials.  I was also uncomfortable with allof the cheering and applause breaks given that this was a memorial and not a state of the union address.  I think the President and his wife both felt uncomfortable with the cheering.  But it was abundantly clear that Obama was doing more than playing a part--he spoke with moving conviction, building on the details of those who died, to make an appeal towards unity and a higher level of discourse. 

Obama was clever not to lay blame anywhere but yet call on folks to rise to the expectations of our children.  This was probably both heartfelt and strategic.  That is, he probably believes it, but it also positions various folks, especially on the right (I will not make the error of false balancing left and right), as letting us down if they continue as they have:

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

This phrasing puts the onus on the stone-casters to lay down their rocks.  If they do not, then they are lousy Americans, and they are failing to meet the expectations of our children.  I found this part of the speech to be a combination of touching, sensitive, and, yes, strategic and political.

Will Obama's speech and the events over the weekend alter the spirals of hostility and intolerance that the US has been experiencing?  I am not so sure.  One thing I do note is that I have been thinking of "The President" the past 12 hours or so, rather than just Obama the guy with the job.   Much prouder to be an American today than 24 hours ago.  And to honor the President's speech, I promise to reduce the shrill of the Spew by 25%.

Boys Will be Boys

When my daughter was really young, I observed something at the playground that made re-think the notions that the sexes were pretty much the same and all differences were due to cultural conditioning.  The boys, even the very youngest, seemed to approach the various devices at the playground, especially the steel carousel/whatchamacallit spinny thing, as means to risk their lives.  The girls used the same equipment, but mostly for how they were intended to be used.  The boys would spin the spinny thing really fast and then lean back to see if they can get their head into the water that lined the rut around it.

Turns out it was not just Texan boys, but perhaps a bit of hardwiring of all males versus females.  This Slate piece explains why boys like sticks more than girls do.  The science of this shows that this starts when kids are really young, before social conditioning can really kick in, and chimps do it too. 

This does not mean that the feminists were wrong to call for equality of the sexes.  It just means that we need to take seriously here as elsewhere that outcomes are a mixture of nature and suture.

Snow Lessons

This is why I got a snow rake:


A few lessons for those of you who are getting unfamiliar white stuff from one who has seen plenty over the past nine years:

1. You probably don't have to remove snow from the roof at all.  Unless you got alot (a foot or more), your roof, if it is in decent shape, can take it.  That is, unless you expect an ice storm or a rain/freeze situation to turn the snow into a much heavier problem.
2. Try to remove as much snow without getting on the roof.  If you poke at the snow at the edge, much may fall a la an avalanche: better to be hit by falling snow when is on the ground than the roof.  
3. If you must go on the roof, try to climb to a peak, so that you can put your weight on both sides of the roof, and then push the snow down.  Starting at the edge of the roof is asking for what this guy experienced.
4. Take your time.  I damn near had a heart attack pushing snow off of my roof a couple years ago when we had about 18 inches of snow up there.  

Good luck with the snow.  For you Southerners, be patient.  It will melt. Up here in Canada, melting may not occur until April.

Half Right on China

Max Boot is half right on China--he argues that the test of their stealth plane as Gates was visiting demonstrates perhaps that China's leadership does not have full command over its military.  That is, indeed, troubling.  However, he continues to beat the drum for more and more military spending.  Again, to win an arms race with China is not about more and more, but smarter and perhaps even cheaper.   Finding weapons systems that get at China's vulnerabilities rather than investing in our own stuff that is vulnerable is the way to go. 

And speaking of such, since the US has had stealth planes for more than twenty years, perhaps we might be good at defeating the Chinese first generation of stealth planes?  We might not be broadcasting that because we want them to waste money on such stuff?  Just a guess or two here.  It is highly unlikely that the first generation of Chinese stealth aircraft will be something we haven't, ahem, seen.

As Gates has put it, the US no longer just buy and buy without restraint (actually it should not have been doing so anyway).  It needs to be smart about it, and over-reacting is not smart.

Some Steves Have Their Priorities

Don't mess with this guy's beer, or else he will escalate the situation.

Hypocrite Moment Du Jour

Forget about the blood libel comment (that would require more awareness than we expect), but Sarah Palin actually said, in response to a possible bill to limit images that might incite violence against members of Congress:

"Recall how the events of 9-11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to trade our freedoms for perceived security. And so it is today."

As my family would say: Seriously?  SERIOUSLY? serIOUSly?  You have got to be kidding.  I am pretty sure that if I spent some time, I could come up with a dozen statements and policy stances where Palin does exactly that--try to trade our freedoms for perceived security.  Opposing the closing of Gitmo?  Opposing the banning of torture?  What was her position on waterboarding?

 Up is down, black is white?  I just love that Palin is now criticizing trading off freedom for security.  Where has she been since 2001?  If this is her moment to demonstrate her Presidential qualities, I think we are done.

Insanity Has Found Its Way to TV Screens

Slate has become my go-to site for clear discussions of complex stuff.  Sure, it tends to run with my ideological preferences, but it remains a website that consistently posts great explanations and histories of interesting stuff.  So, my abuse of the word crazy in previous posts led me to this post on the insanity defense.  I did not know that there was so much effort to restrict its application even though it is not the magic card to get out of jail that apparently is widely believed.  "Contrary to popular belief, the insanity defense is used in fewer than 1 percent of all cases* and only has about a 26 percent success rate. In 90 percent of the successful claims, the defendants had been previously diagnosed with mental illness."

So, it is rarely invoke.  And if successful, the person ends up staying incarcerated longer than a normal prison sentence.  Unless you attempt to kill a President.  In which case, the actual sentence will be the same--life.

Of the many reactions to the horror of the weekend, including blaming rhetoric, thinking about gun control, a natural one is to ponder the state of our mental health care system and call for more funding.  I am about as optimistic that this event will lead to improvements in US mental health care as it will lead to gun control and a more civil political discourse.  Mental health has always been short-changed, and I am pretty sure that is going to continue, despite the best efforts of groups that have sprung up to lobby for better care.

One last political science-y thought on this.  I wish I was gifted with the ability to create smart polls in a timely manner.  My best guess is that this event probably did not cause that many people to alter significantly their views.  The left will be reminded that Palin is irresponsible in her rhetoric and that the right wing has been amping up the crazy talk about tyranny and Obama and all the rest.  The right will think that the left will politicize anything.  The people in the middle will be annoyed by everyone and remain disengaged from much of the political discourse.  That is, the event will confirm people's beliefs and attitudes.  I hope that I am wrong. 

I hope that this tragedy would slow the tide of hate and fear, but since we have already accumulated enough of these events recently (guy flies a plane into a public building, guy shoots in the US Holocaust Museum, etc) and more distantly (Oklahoma City) and not learned that much, I am pessimistic that any good will come from this event.  After all, isn't one of the classic definitions of insanity being one expects a different outcome even though the same thing happens again and again?



*  Cases of what?  All crimes including theft and speeding, or just murder?

Guns, Guns, Guns

The gun control debate has begun anew even though the recent election makes any real progress close to impossible.  My friend and fellow blogger, Steve Greene, posts a response to those who say more guns in the hands of the citizens could have prevented this.  NRA types argue that ordinary citizens could have shot the shooter, stopping the spree.  Indeed, one of the people who helped bring down Loughner was packing a gun and had aimed it in the direction of the attacker.  However, he targeted one of the people trying to stop Loughner and was lucky enough to pause.  The point of Steve's piece and of the Slate piece he quotes is that we are more likely to see friendly fire--hitting the innocents--than stopping the bad guys because of the chaos of the moment and the lack of training by the armed citizenry. 

It just goes to show that the NRA and its friends are so deep into their myths/gun religion that they cannot see reality.  The reality is that most folks in such situations would probably miss with at least a few shots, probably hitting bystanders.  The reality is that a crazy person would not be deterred by the possibility of others carrying guns.  The reality is that guns with bigger magazines will kill more people.  To ignore these realities is, well, crazy.  But this would not be the first time that folks used the phrase Gun Nuts.