Matt Yglesias

Cleavagegate, The Madness Continues

I can’t believe this CNN segment ever aired, but I think Ann Friedman does an excellent job:

In all seriousness, though, enough is enough. One has to assume, though, that this kind of thing is pretty great for Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign, since it certainly does make me feel like, hey, maybe if we had a woman actually serve as president for a term or two the press would get over their case of the sillies.

David Ignatius, Svengali

David Ignatius must have some kind of magical powers of mesmerism since he managed to provoke a remarkable quantity of serious commentary on Tapped about a column that proposes that the CIA mount a covert program to “install windmills and solar panels to generate electricity” in Waziristan.

Surely that doesn’t pass the laugh test.

As long as we’re allowed to play make-believe, why don’t we just have Treadstone take care of things? It’s completely preposterous. If you want to bribe people, just give them money. The desire to transform a simple exchange of money for favors into an eco-friendly global development scheme is, I think, a tip-off we’re not meant to take this too seriously. Meanwhile, Brian Ulrich notes that the alarming report Ignatius uses to motivate Operation Windmill is actually out of date. Oh, well.

Reality Bites

Max Boot waxes historical:

There is a lesson to be learned here by advocates of an American troop drawdown. Even if the drawdown were to be only partial, it could easily get out of hand by creating the perception that we’re on the way out and can be attacked with impunity. As Napoleon said, “In war, moral considerations account for three-quarters, the actual balance of forces only for the other quarter.” If we set a withdrawal timetable, the moral balance will tip against us even faster than the actual balance of forces—with deadly consequences.

Mona at Unqualified Offerings notes the potentially salient point that Napoleon lost the war. Moral factors, it turns out, couldn’t compensate for the fact that Russia is very big, extremely cold in the wintertime, and pretty far from France. The Emperor could, presumably, console himself with the thought that his forces weren’t so much defeated on the battlefield as that their supply-lines became untenable, but these kind of hair-splitting distinctions are of limited comfort when you’re in retreat.

Boot, though, takes the analogy in another direction, citing the O’Pollahan op-ed from yesterday and hailing it as “pretty significant coming from two Democratic analysts” when it was more like drearily predictable.

Department of Obscure Policy Blunders

The new TNR contains a great piece by Eliza Griswold on the situation in the Horn of Africa “Occupational Hazard: The Other Failed Invasion.”

And so, last Christmas Eve, the Christian-led government of Ethiopia invaded and–supported, later, by U.S. air strikes–successfully dislodged the Islamist UIC, largely because it believed (correctly) that rebels backed by its enemy, Eritrea, were using Somalia as a staging area for attacks. The result is an occupation by Ethiopian soldiers that fuels the local insurgency, threatens to destabilize the Horn of Africa, and offers Al Qaeda an additional talking point in its campaign to persuade Muslims that the West has declared war upon them. Many of the region’s Muslims saw the Ethiopian invasion as a Christmas present from Ethiopia’s leaders to America’s. “When the Americans started backing the Ethiopians around Christmas,” one woman who supported the courts said, “we started calling the Ethiopians kafir, or infidels.” [...]

This is certainly how Al Qaeda would like the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims to view what’s happening in Somalia. In early 2007, Ayman Al Zawahiri called for attacks against the occupying Ethiopian soldiers using “ambushes, mines, raids, and martyrdom-seeking campaigns to devour them as the lions devour their prey.” But his message wasn’t meant merely for Somali ears; it was also intended to inflame Muslims worldwide by suggesting, once again, that the Christian West is at war with Islam.

In the end, though, resentment toward the U.S.-backed occupation may prove to be a greater destabilizing force for the entire region than Al Qaeda ever was, especially in Kenya, where the war on terrorism is directly linked to the rise of radical Islamic identity. In the name of chasing a few bad men, the Christmas invasion played into millennia of distrust between predominantly Christian Ethiopia (4050 percent of the population is Muslim) and Somalia, which is almost 100 percent Muslim. “The popular perception is that Christian soldiers are occupying a Muslim land,” says Roland Marchal, a senior research fellow at Sciences-Po in Paris.

I wonder what James Kirchick thinks now.

And Now I’m Leaving

Unfortuately, just as a Wifi signal from George Miller’s office started to enter the room, the committee declared an hour-long recess to cast some votes. I can’t stick around that long, so I’m heading out. One bit of takeaway, though, is that is the Democratic members of the subcommittee are way, way, way more conservative on average than your average House Democrats. There are tons of white southerners in the group, and very few in the caucus as a whole.

This is a bad pattern for the party and the country. With more progressive members sitting on the relevant committees, you’d have an entry point to get better experts on the testimony lists and a place to try and launch them into more prominent positions in the media. For now, take solace in the fact that the O’Hanlon seems to be edging back left in response to the criticisms he’s taken for his op-ed.

O’Hanlon

Totally backed down. Said the progress has only been against aqi, that sectarian violence and the civil war is as bad as ever, and that the current strategy will probably fail. He thinks we should partition the country. Why the turnabout from the optimistic op-ed? He didn’t say.

Daniel Benjamin, by contrast, is pretty great.

UPDATE: Sorry for the confusion this engendered in some. As you’ll see if you read the posts below, that’s my note-taking of Michael O’Hanlon’s testimony earlier this afternoon before a House Subcommittee.

Hearing

I’m doing this on my phone so it’ll be curt.

So far surge architecht keane and the top GOP member have both praised o’hanlon. Keane says we need to stay in Iraq even if there’s no reconciliation and wants two or three permanent bases. He also asserts — contrary to reality — that sunnis are moving toward reconciliation.

Update: General newbold seems cranky — very cranky — about antiwar sentiment but ultimately endorses the idea that we should ‘indicate a start date’ for withdrawal in spring of 2008.

Update 2: General McCaffrey says we shouldn’t even bother to ask whether or not the surge os working until petraeus — ‘the most talented person I have ever met’ — has had a year. He also says we need to give the iraq security forces many more resources. But he says we need to reduce the number of troops we have in iraq or the army will start unraveling in april. He says we can achieve that by leaving the cities. Acknowledges that this is inconsistent with pet’s strategy.

Reporting!

Weird, I know, but it looks like Mike O’Hanlon’s testifying before a House subcommittee in a bit, so I think I’ll head over.

Defending Gonzalez

Ruth Marcus, driving hard for the wanker of the day prize, decides that though Al Gonzalez “dissembled and misled” and he didn’t commit perjury and so rather than “trying to incite criminal a prosecution that won’t happen of an attorney general who should have been gone long ago,” Democrats “need to concentrate on determining what the administration did — and under what claimed legal authority — that produced the hospital room showdown. They need to satisfy themselves that the administration has since been operating within the law; to see what changes might guard against a repetition of the early, apparently unlawful activities; and to determine where the foreign intelligence wiretapping statute might need fixes.”

The possibility that if the administration continues to dissemble and mislead congress, and is told in advance that it can get off the hook for doing so, it might be difficult to get to the bottom of this matter doesn’t seem to have occurred to her. Oh, well.

21st Century Campaigning

My colleague Marc Ambinder and his partner in crime Chuck Todd rate Rudy Giuliani most likely to win the Republican nomination. I don’t really see it. There’s the whole abortion thing. And also his record on immigration, which he won’t be able to keep weaseling away from forever. But what’s more, the dude’s campaign doesn’t even own RudyGiuliani.com — it’s like he’s not even trying.

Point of Information

If you’re inviting, say, Ezra Klein to fun YearlyKos-related parties and have been leaving me off your lists out of a misguided belief that I must have better things to do, consider yourself corrected, I’ll be in Chicago and am eager to attend your function! Otherwise, you’ll find me crying myself to sleep blogging after hours in my hotel room.

Interesting Times, Indeed

George Packer’s reaction to the O’Hanlon/Pollack op-ed yesterday was a good deal more measured than mine, but his eyebrow’s raised at this:

As of a few weeks ago, O’Hanlon advocated a partition of Iraq and Pollack was talking about containing the civil war within Iraq’s borders. Neither of them had much faith that the Administration’s strategy could succeed. Have they changed their minds? If so, what’s their political strategy for sustaining the surge into 2008?

Good questions.

The Horror, The Horror

Michael Cannon offers us another horror story from the nightmare world of socialized medicine, a Guardian headline: “Woman, 108, Must Wait 18 Months for Hearing Aid”.

Fortunately, here in the land of the free a 108 year-old woman has Medicare, not one of these big government boondoggle like they have across the pond. Oh, wait.

The New Celtics

It looks like yesterday’s rumored Kevin Garnett trade has come to pass and the Big Ticket is heading to Boston in exchange for “a package of players that reportedly includes Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Ryan Gomes, Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff and at least one first-round pick.” Reactions:

• Due to the utter lack of depth, this is going to be a less-than-overwhelming team despite the starpower — maybe 45-50 wins.
• Since it’s the Eastern Conference, 45-50 wins could easily make for a Finals-caliber team.
• And of course this makes Boston an attractive destination for free agents still on the market.

Most of all, though, the fact that Minnesota put itself in a position where this rather sad offer was the best they could do is just terrible, terrible general management. In particular, it’s pretty astounding that no Wolves-Bulls trade came together back when PJ Brown’s expiring deal was still on the table.

Cash for Nukes

I think there’s a fairly compelling abstract logic that given the pressing nature of the climate change issue, it’d be a good thing to have more electricity generated by nuclear power plants despite the waste issue. The concrete reality of the matter, though, is that the nuclear power industry is basically looking for handouts and I see no reason why they should get them. A sensible energy policy would, through caps or taxes, effectively penalize energy sources that emit large amounts of carbon thereby de facto advantaging nuclear power along with wind, solar, hydro, etc. and I don’t have a problem with that. But if we’re going to be handing out additional subsidies (and I’m really not sure we should be) they should be directed at the very cleanest things available, which nuclear certainly isn’t.

Signs Your Political Career Might Be In Trouble

It’s not good when the FBI raids your house.

Weapons for Saudi

Brad Plumer quoting William Arkin and Tariq Ali notes an interesting wrinkle in the Saudi arms sale deal — both sources say the reason the Saudi military is so terrible despite buying so much expensive US military equipment is that the house of Saud doesn’t want a competent military. After all, a competent, independent military might stage a coup. Similarly, it seems clear enough to me that US policy in the Persian Gulf is centered around Dissuading the Gulf Cooperation Council states from developing the capacity to defend themselves against Iran (or, back in the day, Iraq), the better to leave them as dependent clients of the United States.

Photo by Flickr user John Rawlinson used under a Creative Commons license

No End in Sight

Politically, I had some problems with this film which appears to suggest at times that if we’d only not disbanded the Iraqi Army or just listened to Richard Armitage more that everything in Iraq would have turned out roses. It also doesn’t offer any hint that Iraq occurred in a wider context of a mad scheme for regional domination and that this scheme compelled some of the otherwise inexplicable choices. That said, it’s a stunning film and will remind many and teacher others for the first time about the depth and breadth of the madcap ignorance and incompetence with which the administration plunged into Iraq. Go see it, and bring your less-political friends.

Conceding a Point

I still think Ross Douthat and Jon Chait are wrong about the professional incentives facing Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, but I’ll concede to them both that I wasn’t right either. The smart play for the job-seeker is probably to just not say anything. More broadly, I really shouldn’t be speculating about their motives, because it’s all neither here not that.

That leaves us with the small matter of the war itself. I think the evidence that O’Hanlon and Pollack are wrong here is fairly overwhelming. Statistics don’t really corroborate what O’Hanlon and Pollack say, there’s no particular reason to privilege “on the ground” knowledge if it was just fed to them by official sources (which appears to be the case), and, most of all, the point of the surge was to change the political situation in Iraq, and they concede it hasn’t done that. I’d be interested to know what Jon, in particular, thinks about all that.

Bye, Bye Tenure?

I’m really curious as to what Stanley Kurtz could be thinking here about the need for “a serious campaign to eliminate academic tenure” starting with “a fairly conservative-leaning legislature, in a state with its own university system.” Suppose we started with Texas, a conservative state with a major public university. And suppose the University of Texas abolished tenure because National Review writers and the Texas state legislature wanted to subject Longhorn professors to more direct political supervision. What would happen?

Texas would just rapidly become a much, much worse university — one with huge problems recruiting faculty and students. Even your more talented conservative and conservative-sympathetic professors wouldn’t want to teach there. The school would rapidly become a backwater, and this would have potentially devastating effects on the local economy.