Michael eventually wrote the following (way down in the thread of comment #9):

The question is why or whether they [The Palestinians] would be interested in a state for themselves, knowing at this point what it would consist of (not what it might have done). You are eliding the question by saying that they should want it if they have interest in a state on that territory. That is the question. Palestinian nationalism is largely a thing of the 1980s and to some extent 90s. Since then, it has largely been a crutch for the U.S. and Israel’s efforts at peace. Whatever reason Palestinians once had to desire the state on offer has been long since spoilt by war and economic siege. I honestly don’t see what reason they would have to accept what they can now get. It would not even come with any guarantee of security from Israeli interference pursuant to “security interests’ — no Israeli government could ever take that off the table. Given the history, and given that the Palestinian “state” would be effectively demilitarized, the “state” would amount to nothing more than a voluntarily promise of nonintervention from Israel. The cumulative effects of economic isolation and sense that historical wrongs had only been institutionalized would guarantee eventual violence directed at Israel from the new “state,” and the cycle of intervention and retaliation would begin anew.

This is a very important and well articulated point of view.  As a quick review, my own sense of how crippled the Two State Framework is, led me to argue (in the comments) for the out-there idea that the US should take over the West Bank to create a kind of state-tutelage for the Palestinians, cover security for the Israelis, and separate the two populations.  An admittedly somewhat insane idea*, only surpassed in its insanity (I think) by the current state of affairs and its seemingly unstoppable trajectory towards Israel ruling over a stateless ethnic majority disenfranchised politically.  The consequences of an increasingly unstoppable Accidental Empire.

Michael’s argument gains support from Juan Cole, who in the conclusion to a classic takedown of Jeffrey Goldberg (always in good order), says the following:

Does Goldberg have a plan “B”? Because his two-state solution is so 1993. The problem is, it is almost certainly past the point where any such thing is possible, given the size and extent of Israeli colonies in the Palestinian West Bank. Goldberg admits that the only two likely outcomes of the current policies of Binyamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are Apartheid or a one-state solution.  (boldface in original)

For those interested, the best argument I’ve ever read towards a a one state solution is that of Ali Abu Nimah (titled One Country).  The book makes some strong arguments and is definitely worth reading and considering, but I still admit to thinking there are serious potential flaws in the idea.  Flaws that push (as discussed in this interview with Abu Nimah) even people like Jimmy Carter and Noam Chomsky to favor a two state solution.  In that same interview Abu Nimah counters:

What I argue in the book [One Country], of course this isn’t about destroying Israel. It isn’t about turning things over from one day to the next. Palestine-Israel is not the only country that faces this sort of power struggle along ethnic, religious, and other lines. We have to look for structures, and I talk about this in some detail in the book. How they did it in South Africa, where by the way, the same sorts of arguments were made against ending Apartheid and against one person, one vote. We have to look at countries like Belgium, we have to look at Northern Ireland.

There are many models out there for dealing with those sort of things. So that you have one person, one vote, full democracy, full equality, while at same time, ethnic communities, the Israeli-Jewish community, the Palestinian community, will have mechanisms for expressing their national identity, for decision making over issues that concern them. We have to stop thinking this very simplistic, binary way. And this is where I’m trying to take the discussion with this book.

While I generally think the idea of Two States is much more workable in theory, I’m leaning more towards the notion that it is has become unfeasible in practice, however preferred it might be at the hypothetical/policy level.  I think these kinds of discussions need to take place–what do we do if the Two State Solution fails?  What do we do if the Two State Solution is not workable, if there is no realistic path from here to there?

If the Two State Solution is dead (or at least becoming incapacitated with little to no hope of legitimate recovery), then we are left only with the choice of Israeli domination of a (soon to be) ethnic majority without political rights, which would call into question the legitimacy of the state of Israel and continue the horrible, right-less existence of the Palestinian people.  Or one state.  Again that binary choice occurs IF the Two State Solution is dead.  My own view is that The Two State Solution is increasingly on the precipice–while for others we’ve already fallen off that edge.

I think much more work needs to be done on thinking about what safeguards there would be in a One State framework.  Abu Nimah begins that discussion, but I think it needs to go much further.

–

* I didn’t know these previous to TEH GOOGLE telling me, but apparently this fellow has argued that the united Israeli-Palestinian state become the 51st State in the US.

His ideas on that subject (which are worth the read) are here.

Obligatory preface on Stephen Walt–I didn’t find his Israel Lobby book persuasive.  I do find his questions about the future of the two state solution very important and worth consideration.  (i.e. The second link above).

The Two State Solution, which as Walt correctly notes was only official policy at the extreme terminus of the Clinton administration, was officially endorsed (from the beginning) by George W. Bush (but never really followed up on) and is now the de facto position across the board, reflected by the Obama administration’s outrage over the recent Israeli decision to start construction on 1600 (1600!!!) houses in East Jerusalem.  East Jerusalem being of course at the center of the Two State Solution as the planned capital of the (hypothetical) Palestinian state.

The Two State Solution I believe is an extension of the earlier successes of US, Arab, and Israeli diplomacy–the so-called Land for Peace paradigm.  Israel gave back land captured in the Six Day War to various Arab states who in turn recognized the legitimacy of the state of Israel and end the state of war between the two countries.

This basic format worked in the case of The Camp David Accords with Egypt and formed the template for the later Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement, which President Clinton helped negotiate.  It’s also the deal that President George H. W. Bush offered (via Sec. of State Baker) to the Syrians (and by extension at the time their proxies Lebanon) and continues to this day to be on the table–which the Syrians have yet to take the Israelis up on.

This framework, however, worked because the states in question already existed as states.  Applying this model to the Palestinian process appears to have put the cart before the horse.  The failure of the Oslo Accords looms large in this scenario.  If you take a more pro-Israeli position, the failure occurred because the PLO/Fatah never really led in the fashion of true statesmen.  If you take the side of the Palestinians, Oslo failed because the deal offered was not a viable one that any group (including Fatah) could have claimed domestically as a win and thereby cemented their legitimacy.

In other words, the PLO wasn’t a state and therefore couldn’t negotiate under a paradigm presuming its existence existence as a state.  [Even PM Rabin more or less unilaterally declared the PLO the rightful spokespersons for the Palestinian Authority.]

Here is Walt on the options remaining if (as I believe looks increasingly likely) the Two State Solution dies: [Read more →]

I recommend Br. Brafford’s post on non-foundationalism for the layman, but I find his treatment of Thomas Kuhn quite unfair:

I’m reading Thomas Kuhn’s controversial classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which Kuhn put forward, among other things, the suggestion that there not be any sense in which we can say that modern science puts us closer to the truth than Aristotelian and Ptolemaic science. Kuhn rejects the kind of foundationalist epistemology that claims we can have objective certainty about our knowledge. Since intellectuals were practically required to take a position on Kuhn in the several decades after he published, I’ve been flipping through the books on my shelf to see if I can make more sense out of discussions of Kuhn the second time through.

As one of the three members of the League born and raised in the greater Cincinnati area, it is incumbent upon (at least one of) us to defend a native son of our fair city and his very important (when correctly understood) philosophical insights.

Kuhn’s work is best analyzed in relation to the the theories of Karl Popper, then dominant in the field of philosophy of science.

The wiki on Kuhn is here helpful:

In this book, Kuhn argued that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called “paradigm shifts” (although he did not coin the phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. In general, science is broken up into three distinct stages. Prescience, which lacks a central paradigm, comes first. This is followed by “normal science“, when scientists attempt to enlarge the central paradigm by “puzzle-solving”. Thus, the failure of a result to conform to the paradigm is seen not as refuting the paradigm, but as the mistake of the researcher, contra Popper’s refutability criterion. As anomalous results build up, science reaches a crisis, at which point a new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with the anomalous results into one framework, is accepted. This is termed revolutionary science.

As stated, Kuhn revealed the limitations of Popperian falsification theory by showing the way in which science exists in a scientific worldview or cultural space.  This intrinsic worldview element to science, however, does not mean there are no better or worse theories than others, that none give us scientific objective insights.  It simply means there is no myth of the given but rather contextualized truth worlds–which generally build upon key insights of earlier worlds.

Because of the adherence to a scientific frame, various scientists observe and seek out evidence confirming the already existing overarching theories.  They form hypotheses influenced (if not directly deduced from) said dominant overarching theory (or paradigm cum worldview).  The data that emerges via such experiments and observations is data (under almost all circumstances) that makes sense within the dominant paradigm.

Sometimes, however, data will emerge (via a more sophisticated technology perhaps or by sheer luck/accident, etc.) that will reveal new data which disconfirms the dominant scientific narrative.  Here is where Kuhn adds an element missing in Popper–in Popper such data intrinsically falsifies the current paradigm.  However Kuhn showed historically this was not necessarily the case and it required scientists to open creatively to new framework and thought.   To allow themselves to think thoughts (or be thought by thoughts you might say) not arising within the current frame.

Take the move to quantum physics, a (uh-oh there’s the word) paradigmatic example of a scientific revolution.   [Read more →]

As the League’s resident ordained clergyman to be, I read with piqued interest Br. Jason’s take on Ross Douthat’s take on the American take on contemporary religious mysticism.

Jason quotes this passage from Baba Ross D:

[It may be that] something important is being lost as well. By making mysticism more democratic, we’ve also made it more bourgeois, more comfortable, and more dilettantish. It’s become something we pursue as a complement to an upwardly mobile existence, rather than a radical alternative to the ladder of success. Going to yoga classes isn’t the same thing as becoming a yogi; spending a week in a retreat center doesn’t make me Thomas Merton or Thérèse of Lisieux. Our kind of mysticism is more likely to be a pleasant hobby than a transformative vocation.

Jason comments:

I have a hard time seeing anything other than snobbery here. America is a mass-produced society, the first and the most resolute of the type. You want full-time mystics? We do happen to have those by the dozens. You want a weekend — but only just a weekend — of mystical transport? Heck, we invented that trip.

Whether Ross is being a snob I’m not sure (maybe? partially?); I’ll leave that to the readers to make up their own minds.

But I think a similar or related critique of pop mysticism could be made that wouldn’t be intrinsically snobby.

To wit, Ram Dass (nee Richard Alpert), one of the godfathers of the LSD mystical hit turned pilgrimage to India, author of the magisterially trippy (Remember) Be Here Now (from which the above picture is taken), said the real issue was “altered traits not altered states.”

I would further say (contra Ross and seconding Jason) that the American phenomenon of religion, from its inception, is, as Harold Bloom argued, spiritual experientialism:  Pentecostalism, Revivalism (out of which grew Joseph Smith and the uniquely American religion of Mormonism), The Great Awakenings, The Shakers, New Thought movements, Esalen, William James and the scientific study of mysticism, pre Vatican II “High” Roman Catholic Eucharistic Adoration and Liturgy, Spiritualism, Billy Graham stadium spectacles, and now since the 60s the entrance of Eastern forms of mystical experience.

America , as Jason says, is a mass-produced society and so we mass produce mystical experiences–whether in sports, sex, even cooking.  And of course in various meditation practices, retreats and so forth.  (I’m 2 out of 3 on that scale, which, as they say, ain’t bad.).  And of course drugs as temporary ecstatic states, technically exogenous mystical states (which I definitely have never experienced).  Meditation-induced states are labeled endogenous.

Still, these are all leave open the issue of altered traits, not altered states.  As in, a person can have all kinds of altered states but if their traits aren’t altered, what’s been gained really?

This isn’t snobbery but to ask, “What’s the point?” Or in 1980s language, “Where’s the (transformative) beef?”  Though I’m not sure that later question will go over with a lot of would be seekers, (of the Eastern-influenced variety), given the popularity of vegetarianism in such circles.

Mystical states are generally higher potential capacities of the human body-mind.  I would say they are only “higher” insofar as humans haven’t yet adapted to them as common occurrences as a species.  [You might call that view a naturalized mysticism if you like].  That means they have a relative value and can be good things, but they can also be (as mystics of all traditions have long pointed out), just another source of egocentrism–in fact arguably an even more pernicious form of egocentrism as now you are (as a friend of mine once said), “Enlightened yes, but still an asshole.”

But it leaves open the question of an Absolute Awakening (often incorrectly called mystical/spiritual).  What Ram Dass above calls Absolute Compassion and therefore a changed way of being human at fundamental levels of identity, emotion, speech, bodily action, and thought.  As opposed to temporary groovy experiences or “getting spiritually high” (with or without actually getting high).   [Read more →]

Defying a sustained barrage of mortars and rockets in Baghdad and other cities, Iraqis went to the polls in strength on Sunday to choose a new Parliament meant to outlast the American military presence here.

Insurgents here vowed to disrupt the election, and the concerted wave of attacks — as many as 100 thunderous blasts in the capital alone starting just before the polls opened — did frighten voters away, but only initially.

The shrugging response of voters could signal a fundamental weakening of the insurgency’s potency. At least 38 people were killed in Baghdad. But by day’s end, turnout was higher than expected, and certainly higher than in the last parliamentary election in 2005, marred by a similar level of violence.

Overall, the election has looked like a real achievement–we’ll have to see how it plays out but it looks as if the results will be publicly accepted (given some likely back room dealing), the elections were generally free and fair, and the races fairly competitive.

All of which is to the good.  I wish the Iraqi people (after so many decades of horror), some bright spots going forward.

That said, this frame concerning the “fundamental weakening of the insurgency” either needs some serious contextualization or is flat out misleading.

Minus a real hardcore element (the so-called irreconcilables in COIN language), an insurgency uses violence to achieve political ends.  The Iraqi insurgency from the get go was dominated by Sunni Iraqis–particularly after the insurgency became the Iraqi Civil War (reaching a climactic moment at the bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque).  This point was entirely missed in the US press during the time (and still today), which referred to said events primarily through the lens of an “insurgency”– but the Sunni were only fighting the US so long as the US was aligned with the Shia.

Once the Shia won the Civil War (2004-2007), the Sunni-dominated insurgency as such lost its rationale.  The Sunni insurgency was at that point bought off by the American government, i.e. during the so-called Anbar Awakening.  But the only real “awakening” was the dawning realization on the part of Sunni tribal sheiks that they would have to accept Shia dominance going forward and they might as well get the US to give them something in return for that recognition. [Read more →]

From Time’s Alex Altman:

It’s tempting to dismiss the section on foreign policy as an attempt to see how many different formulations Romney can use to profess his belief in American exceptionalism. But the theme is at the heart of the contrast Romney draws between himself and the president: while his prescriptions are designed to preserve American supremacy, Obama espouses American equivalence. “If the president accepts that America is in an irreversible state of decline relative to the world, it may well come to pass under his stewardship,” Romney warns.

It’s a dangerous perspective, Romney argues, at a time when China’s clout is growing, Russia is resurgent and the U.S. remains mired in a grinding war with Islamic extremists. “The truth is that we are at war with a formidable enemy and that nations like Russia and China are intent on neutralizing our military lead,”

I realize there are some potentially very fruitful (if potentially poisoned) political gains for Romney in this attack.  See Br. Matthew’s post at to why.  As further proof, consider how hard it will be for Romney to really distinguish himself substantially from Obama in any presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, for the record, it’s worth stating that Obama is nothing if not an American exceptionalist to the core (at times embarassingly so).  Obama is rallying support for a surge against a localist insurgency by trying to connect that conflict to a broader Global War on Terror which pretty much no one else is buying, he has violated Pakistani airspace/sovereignty all over the place (which, by the way, he said he would do as a Democratic primary candidate!!!), and gives laudatory paeans to America as guiding light of the world.

Depending on your point of view, you might find all of the above sickening or positive (or some combination of the two), but Obama actually seems to believe those things.  In short, he falls squarely within the American exceptionalist camp.

What Obama has realized and is working to accommodate is not US decline, but rather the rise of other powers.

Obama was snapped with a copy of Fareed Zakaria’s Post-American world in his hands during the early phases of the election campaign.  Obama has also consulted extensively with Parag Khann, whose work on second world powers (e.g. Turkey, Indonesia) is an excellent primer on emerging nations.

All of which points to the reality that America is not per se in absolute decline but that others are catching up relative to the United States, though none are anywhere close to taking the lead (Romney’s Chinese Red Dawn hints are laughable).

The Post-American world is not a world after American exceptionalism or after American influence/power.  It’s post American hyperpower status.

There are structural/economic reasons for why this state of affairs exists and is bound to continue.  Economic reasons that Mitt Romney is nothing but a gigantic supporter of, incidentally.  The main one being that there is no revolutionary form of economics with sufficient global influence to challenge capitalism — hence the failure of Fascism and Communism in the 20th century.

If you look at Foreign Policy’s list of 33 conflicts on the planet, notice how they are all local/regional insurgencies, civil wars, ethnic battles, independence movements and the like.  This ought to alert us to something very important–i.e. no more big wars.

Obama is willing to admit this state of affairs (you can call him a realist) and is trying to formulate a strategy to deal with it.  I wouldn’t say that strategy has been super effective to date, but it’s a start.  It’s certainly preferable to The Green Lantern Theory of Foreign Policy advocated by Romney.

In other words, there’s American exceptionalism that leads to increased isolation (Romney) or American exceptionalism that (potentially) leads to greater co-operative action.  But at the end of the day, the world is headed in an increasingly multi-polar/regionalist direction.  When others powers rise (even if only in degrees and not absolutely) they are going to want political buy-ins/recognition.  They are in a kind of adolescent state of nationhood and want independence and to be acknowledged while they learn there are rules in the World’s House they need to abide by.  The US, however, will no longer be The Mommy/Daddy in this case (if it ever was).

–

* Update/Clarification:  The reference to “punch” was not intended as a (in poor taste) er “jab” :) at Romney’s quasi-fight on the plane recently.

One year later Obama has single-handedly allowed the Iranians more than a year of unfettered progress toward a nuclear weapon with less pressure and inquiry from the international community. Even the slow-moving, state-the-obvious International Atomic Energy Agency announced this week that it fears Iran is working toward a nuclear warhead to go along with its undisclosed uranium enrichment activities. While Obama experimented with his classroom thesis of talking dictators out of their nuclear pursuits, many in the international community celebrated the fact that they weren’t being confronted by the United States with the lingering Iran problem. From Cairo to Berlin, the world celebrated Obama’s perceived world peace and even gave him the Nobel Prize. The Iranians, meanwhile, continued to build a nuclear weapon. While Obama did his world-wide victory lap, the Iranian Government celebrated their freedom. And although the United States has been negotiating with Iran for more than 30 years, Obama has been acting like this nation has never tried diplomacy. It is dangerous for a President to believe that his personality is so different from previous leaders’ that people will change their course of action just because of who is asking.

Since this sounds awfully John McCain-esque…

My friends, the Iranians are going to get a nuclear weapon.  Either that or they will reach a state like Canada and Japan where they have acquired de facto nuclear deterrence without actually building the bomb.  They just have to turn on the ol’ uranium coffee pot one morning and hit brew.

It doesn’t matter if Hillary Clinton or John McCain had won and pushed for tougher sanctions or whether “Professor” Obama talks with them.  The world is not a genie which submits to every wish the US makes.  I would call this reminder the foreign policy equivalent of The Secret.

My guess is that the Iranian regime has already reached a de facto state of ’soft’ deterrence in the region.  If the Israelis or US do indeed strike, it may well knock back their progress (which still appears to be quite far off from a bomb, but who knows?) towards a nuclear weapon, but it won’t stop it.  And if we do strike, the Iranians have multiple and very deadly ways of retaliating: e.g. cutting off the Straits of Hormuz;  oil price spikes; asymmetric attacks on US forces in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan; proxy attacks on Israel via Hezbollah and/or Hamas; potentially even terror attacks on Saudi Arabia via proxies in Yemen or through disaffected Shia elements in Saudi Arabia itself. Not to mention the Chinese and Russian reactions in the event of a US/Israeli strike.  Both countries could respond by making life very difficult for the US/NATO in Afghanistan.

The only chance (and I mean chance, not guarantee) the US ever had of derailing Iranian proliferation came early in the Bush administration. At the tail-end of President Khatami’s regime, the Reformer camp was apparently given the green light from Khamenei to make an offer for full negotiations: collaboration on terrorism, mutual recognition, nuclear disarmament, support for the invasion and aftermath of Iraq, etc.  The Bush administration completely ignored these overtures. Opinions will vary as to whether this was a good faith offer or not and whether the US was right to ignore it, but either way the course of events after the Iranian offer was rejected seems basically inevitable:  at that point, the Iranian regime had to acquire nuclear deterrence for the sake of self-preservation.

After which point, the Reformers were sidelined by Khamenei, forcing him (after some initial colddness) into the camp of Ahmadinejad and his allies.

If you want a much more knowledgeable and articulate piece on this topic, read this one from Robert Baer.

On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally got around to acknowledging what a lot of people have known since Iran’s contested election last June — there’s been a military takeover in that country, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) grabbing every important lever of power. As Clinton put it during a televised town-hall meeting, “The Supreme Leader, the President [and] the parliament is being supplanted, and Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship.”

So instead of focusing, as too much US foreign policy coverage does (like Grenell’s schlock above), on what the president’s rhetoric is, we should examine the actual state of play in the other country.  In this case I agree substantially with Baer that what occurred since the botched (illegitimate) re-election of Ahmadinejad is that Khamenei and other clerics in the old guard have basically been forced to acquiesce to a soft military coup.  The Praetorian Revolutionary Guards are now the real power in Iran.   [Read more →]

Today word is out that another high ranking Afghan Taliban was captured by the Pakistanis.  This time it was Mullah Abdul Salam, Governor of the so-called Afghan Shadow Government in the Province of Kunduz.

Add to this Jane Perlez’s brilliant piece last week in the New York Times and I think Pakistan’s strategy in the region begins to come into focus.

Perlez:

Pakistan has told the United States it wants a central role in resolving the Afghan war and has offered to mediate with Taliban factions who use its territory and have long served as its allies, American and Pakistani officials said…What the Pakistanis can offer is their influence over the Taliban network of Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani, whose forces American commanders say are the most lethal battling American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.

So after reading the (chai?) tea leaves on this one, here is my take:

The Pakistanis are making their move and want to make clear to the Americans (and NATO) that they are going to be the power broker in the post-occupation government of Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s military appears to be deploying its own version of a “reconcilables” vs. irreconcilables” COIN strategy with respect to the various anti-Western insurgent groups in Afghanistan and even their own tribal territories. The Pakistanis have (I think) decided which Afghan Taliban (the so-called Quetta Shura) are unable to be converted/dealt with and are turning them in.  This puts pressure on the Taliban left in Afghanistan ito make the deals that the Pakistanis are now going to push for and that President Karzai has previously said he is willing to make—in essence amnesty, payoffs, and probably government/military posts.

Furthermore, the Pakistani Army has taken on the southern Waziristan strongholds of the so-called Pakistani Taliban (Tehri-i-Taliban), allowing the US to assassinate (via drone) various leaders within the movement–first Beitullah Mehsud and more recently, Hakimullah Mehsud.

The Pakistanis, however, have a long standing (since the anti-Soviet jihad) relationship with the Haqqani network and the Hizb i Islami party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyr.

The Pakistanis seem to be playing good cop/bad cop with the Haqqanis, telling them that they (the Pakistanis) are the only thing holding back more drone attacks.  If the Haqqanis and the Hekmatyr forces see the Afghan Taliban leadership as increasingly vulnerable, maybe this brings them to the negotiating table.

The Pakistanis did not participate in the Bonn Conference negotiations which brought to power the Karzai government, a deal that was largely struck with the Iranians and the Indians – in other words, Pakistan’s two biggest regional rivals.  The Pakistanis now see a couple of things:

1. The occupation has failed and the new COIN strategy, however effective militarily, is too heavily dependent on the corrupt Karzai government to be long-lasting.

2. The Bonn Conference paradigm of Afghanistan (2001-2010) is also a failure: cf the rigged elections from last fall.

The Pakistanis now see their opening to force the US (and other regional actors) to accept a post-Bonn Afghanistan, which will not be a total return of power of the Taliban as in the 1990s but will include a number of anti-Western insurgent groups in the eventual governing structure.

It’s a shrewd if very dangerous game on the part of the Pakistani military–who in everything but name is now back to running the country, at least with respect to foreign policy.

To answer Scott’s skepticism, all of this again points to the fact that the US should just eliminate the middle man by ignoring the failed Afghan national government in favor of buying off local groups.   Scott suggests the Taliban are practicing a form of 4th generation warfare, complete with their own version of “winning hearts and minds.” Still, the Taliban continue to rely a strategy of body count terrorism—roadside and suicide bombs, etc.   I believe the Afghan Taliban are vulnerable to a joint US military “surge” plus a program of buying off and even deputizing various insurgents and/or tribal leaders (including whole swathes of former Taliban operatives), keeping up the pressure on Taliban leadership with assistance from the Pakistani military, and accepting the likelihood of amnesty for the Haqqanis and Hekmatyr in Afghanistan.

It won’t be a pretty situation but this would probably allow the US to keep a sufficient presence in the area to prevent al-Qaeda’s re-emergence.  This strategy would also allow the US and NATO to exit (I would guess) within the next two to two-and-a-half years.  A strategy of clear, hold, build, and hand over to the Afghan National Government, however, is a complete non-starter and would give plenty of time for the Afghan Taliban to re-group, hide out, and bide their time, while preventing any movement towards a deal with Haqqani and/or Hekmatyr and their forces.

1. It’s pretty surreal to live in a city that is hosting the “Winter” Olympics when I was outside for a run yesterday in shorts and T-shirt.  Yesterday’s high was 11 (51 Fahrenheit).

2. I need to get me a pair of the Norwegian Men’s Curling Team pants.  They’re supa dupa fly.  (Photo after the break)

2.5 I have a potentially unhealthy fascination (addiction?) for the sport of curling.

3. The traffic getting to and from downtown Vancouver (where I work) has not been what I originally feared.  I was skeptical that this city could pull it off and worried we were about to enter the Traffic-pocalypse, but so far, all signs suggest that people understand they shouldn’t  be driving downtown.  Crowds have been large-ish but not overwhelming, which is also nice.

4. I think a bronze medal would be solid for the US Men’s Hockey Team and a silver would be a real accomplishment, but man the Canadians are stacked.  If they win the gold here, this place is going to explode.  [Though it might explode anyway if the Canucks don't win].

5. An interesting, counter-intuitive take on the tale of Lindsey Jacobellis.

6. The women’s moguls was possibly the best event so far.  [And I don't say that just because as a future "Camerican," the gold went to the US and the silver to Canada].

7. Americans getting their NBC feed on opening night missed out on the half ludicrous/100% awesome ride of The Great One in the back of a sport utility vehicle getting mildly drenched by the Vancouver rain as he rode down to ignite the alternate torch by the water.  As he was riding, it was quite amazing to see people just running alongside the car.  It was somewhat nerve wracking actually, reminiscent of Ali’s torch-lighting.

8. Video after the break of the “violent” protests that “rocked” our fair city on Saturday morning.  I was at work (a church in the middle of downtown) but was downstairs at the time – apparently, a couple of the black-clad protesters entered the church and changed and then ran back outside.  I later found some black clothes in the garden the next morning.  To steal a line from Br. Dave:  ”F@#!’in Nihilists!!!”  Although watching the video I have to say these are some really p—y nihilists, if I’ve ever seen any.  Those newspaper boxes you see them throwing in the street are mostly from free daily papers.  You know, the same elitist “free” papers oppressing the masses.  WTF???  They did do some window damage at The Bay and one moron shoved a cop from behind who was arresting his “comrade” and was immediately smacked with a baton for his troubles.  They freaked some civilians, but beyond that there wasn’t too much physical excitement.

[Read more →]