Turkish Funerals Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Steven Cook is guest blogging over at the economist this week.  He's one of the few American scholars who is a genuine Turkey expert.  Should make for some interesting reading this week.  Here is one interesting tidbit.

The policy of kicking the can down the road and hoping for the best may well have precipitated the very outcome the Bush administration wanted to avoid. All the while, leaving the Turks to wonder whether “Washington was with them or against them” in their fight against terrorism. The answer is clear as 83% of Turks have an unfavourable view of America. At the funerals of Turkish soldiers killed at the hands of the PKK, a common refrain among the (often thousands) mourners is “Down, down PKK…Down, down USA.” Heartwarming, I know. This is a huge shift from the late 1990s when America was quite popular in Turkey despite the fact that the government in Ankara was under the leadership of that prickly nationalist Bulent Ecevit, who seemed preternaturally suspicious of the United States. Currently, if 10 is the best and 1 is the worst, I’d put US-Turkey relations at 3.

Sanction This Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Rarely does a newspaper as good as the Washington Post manage to have three stories about one subject in one day and absolutely completely blow all of them.  But today they hit the trifecta with the Iran sanctions story.

First, the ed board piece.  This isn't shocking.  Fred Hiatt is often off the mark, but calling these sanctions part of a "diplomatic offensive" and saying they are a "welcome boost" is simply ridiculous.  I am not opposed to the sanctions on principle, but they need to be part of a broader diplomatic strategy.  The United States should be ratcheting up the pressure on Iran, but at the same time it should be maximizing the opportunities for agreement by offering more financial carrots or at the very least sitting down to talk with the Iranians about common interests and disagreements.  Instead, the administration sticks to its pigheaded approach of making bilateral talks conditional on the suspension of uranium enrichment activities.  It's been  five years people!  That policy has failed.  The sanctions would make a lot more sense if we knew exactly what we wanted to get out of them, or if the Iranians had a clear idea of what they would need to do to get rid of them.  But neither of those points are clear.  So the sanctions aren't going to do anything other than just escalate tensions.

Second, is a story talking about how the President is using sanctions as a way to prevent war and provide more flexibility for the next President.  I think he's doing just the opposite and inevitably locking the next President into a choice of accepting an Iran with nuclear weapons or trying air strikes.  The U.S. continues to twiddle its thumbs and refuses to talk to the Iranians as they build up their nuclear capabilities.  Everyday that the U.S. waits it loses leverage.  These sanctions only make the situation more complicated. Sanctions are very easy to slap on.  However, removing them will require the next President to get a major concession from the Iranians or face significant political heat at home. 

Finally, the Post dedicates an above the fold front page story to the fact that oil prices will rise if the U.S. attacks Iran.  In other news, humans walk on two legs and mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes both minty and chocolaty.

Homeland Insecurity: DHS prevented firefighting seaplane from entering US Posted by Max Bergmann

In some of the more shocking news of the day, NPR reports that...

A giant firefighting seaplane that was supposed to arrive from Canada Wednesday was temporarily held up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Hmm... I guess that's what happens when you have too many liquids on board. Great work keeping America safe DHS.

2004 all over again? Petraeus abandons strategy to keep casulaties down Posted by Max Bergmann

Fred Kaplan in his war stories column connects the dots...

So, what accounts for the decline in American deaths since the summer? It's hard to say for sure, but one little-reported cause is almost certainly a shift in U.S. tactics from fighting on the ground to bombing from the air.

An illustration of this shift occurred on Sunday, when U.S. soldiers were searching for a leader of a kidnapping ring in Baghdad's Sadr City. The soldiers came under fire from a building. Rather than engage in dangerous door-to-door conflict, they called in air support. American planes flew overhead and simply bombed the building, killing several of the fighters but also at least six innocent civilians. (The bad guy got away.)

In other words, though the shift means greater safety for our ground troops, it also generates more local hostility.

As I wrote yesterday, the quadrupling of airstrikes, along with the continued use of overly aggressive security contractors, totally undermines a counter-insurgency approach that emphasizes "protecting Iraqis." It seems that Petraeus has quietly abandoned his strategy in favor of the 2004 focus on force protection that got us nowhere.

So what exactly is Petraeus doing? Is this just another example of a sycophant General so concerned with public opinion that he is abandoning his stated strategy? At the very least he should explain why airstrikes have quadrupled.

Strategic Solvency Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

When I was at Columbia Richard Betts was one of the most popular professors there (And my personal favorite).   His piece on military spending in this month's issue of Foreign Affairs is simply superb and another example of his ability to take conventional wisdom and turn it on its head with simple rational arguments. 

Betts argues that military spending has gotten completely out of control because of overinflated fears. 

In recent years, U.S. national security policy has responded to a visceral sense of threat spawned by the frightening intentions of the country's enemies rather than to a sober estimate of those enemies' capabilities and what it would take to counter them effectively.

He also argues that a strategy based on benevolent American hegemony is a silly idea that would realistically cost trillions. 

The last two U.S. presidents, finally, have embraced ambitious goals of reshaping the world according to American values but without considering the full costs and consequences of their grandiose visions. The result has been a defense budget caught between two stools: higher than needed for basic national security but far lower than required to eliminate all villainous governments and groups everywhere.

His take on what terorrism means for military spending

With rare exceptions, the war against terrorists cannot be fought with army tank battalions, air force wings, or naval fleets -- the large conventional forces that drive the defense budget. The main challenge is not killing the terrorists but finding them...It does not require half a trillion dollars' worth of conventional and nuclear forces.

Betts also has a great response for those who argue that we need to prepare for China.

Although military rivalry with China is more likely than not, it is not inevitable, and it is not in U.S. interests to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy -- something that premature or immoderate military initiatives targeted at China could achieve. There will be time to prepare before such conflict begins in earnest...The correct way to hedge against the long-term China threat is by adopting a mobilization strategy: developing plans and organizing resources now so that military capabilities can be expanded quickly later if necessary. This means carefully designing a system of readiness to get ready -- emphasizing research and development, professional training, and organizational planning.  Deferring a surge in military production and expansion until then would avoid sinking trillions of dollars into weaponry that may be technologically obsolete before a threat actually materializes. (The United States waited too long -- until 1940 -- to mobilize against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. But starting to mobilize in 1930 would have been no wiser; a crash program in aircraft production back then would have yielded thousands of ultimately useless biplanes.)

Read the whole thing.  But if you are too lazy.  There are more excerpts below the fold

Armitage: invasion of Iran "would be the worst of all worlds" Posted by Max Bergmann

Last night on PBS' Frontline, Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, explained that an impending invasion of Iran “would be the worst of all worlds, unless it was absolutely necessary for the safety and welfare of this nation, for an outgoing administration to start a conflict.”

Armitage added that “We need to speak with our enemies perhaps even more than we need to speak with our friends, so we took the point of view that no matter how difficult relations are with any one country, we should not cut ourselves off from them, and we ought to talk them.”

Watch the whole episode here.

Red Sox vs. Yankees (Good vs. Evil) Posted by Michael Cohen

Below my blog-mate Heather Hurlburt has made an incendiary claim:

I do believe Red Sox and Yankees fans can live in harmony.

I like Heather, she's a wonderful person, but no more absurd statement has ever been made on Democracy Arsenal! Red Sox and Yankees can live in some sort of detente-like situation, but harmony - NEVER!

This is the root of the problem with Rudy saying he is supporting the Red Sox - no true Yankees fan would ever support the Red Sox, just as I, a Red Sox fan, would rather stick sharp pencils in my eyes then root for the Yankees.  I hate the Yankees more than I hated Communism. The only thing that makes me happier then seeing the Red Sox win is seeing an unhappy Yankees fan (and some of my best friends are Yankees fans).

If the Yankees were playing the Al Qaeda All-Stars I still couldn't root for the Yankees.

After September 11th, when everyone rallied around the Yankees, I rooted for the Diamondbacks. To do otherwise would have meant the terrorists had won.

And I'm quite sure that every Yankees fan who is reading this site feels the exact same way I do about the Red Sox. That's the nature sports, we shouldn't have it any other way - which pretty much makes Rudy Guiliani the most inauthentic person running for President. Except of course for Hillary Clinton who said if the Yanks and Cubs were in the World Series she would alternate who she would root for. Sheesh, that's awful! Sorry, but there are some things that no politician should try to spin.

Bombing ourselves in the foot Posted by Max Bergmann

Last week I wrote about how Blackwater and aggressive private security firms were undermining Petraeus' counter-insurgency strategy - an argument recently supported by a State Department panel reviewing its use of contractors. The basic premise was that violent action that causes civilian deaths is bad, really bad, especially when you are attempting to uproot an insurgency.

So news that the U.S. military has increased airstrikes four fold this year should raise some serious questions about what Petraeus is doing in Iraq. From USA Today,

Coalition forces launched 1,140 airstrikes in the first nine months of this year compared with 229 in all of last year, according to military statistics...

However, increased use of air power raises the chances of killing innocent civilians, said Mark Clodfelter, a professor at the National War College. Winning over the population is key to defeating insurgents.

"You don't want bombing to be a recruiting method for the insurgents," Clodfelter said.

As Juan Cole notes "You can't drop a bomb on an urban apartment building without killing lots of people, not only inside the building but also all around it." Airstrikes, while in some cases may be necessary against a concentration of enemy forces, but stories like this clearly undermine any efforts to win back "hearts and minds":

Iraqis voiced outrage Friday over a U.S. military airstrike that killed an estimated 15 civilians -- nine children and six women, one of the highest reported civilian death tolls from an American bombing in months.

All this talk about a new counter-insurgency strategy - adopting less kinetic approaches, emphasizing the security of Iraqis, the need for U.S. Soldiers to take more risk and operate under stricter rules of engagement, etc., etc. - seems really hollow if at the same time, we are lobbing four times as many bombs from the air then we were before.

A strategy needs to be coherent. And Petraeus' clearly isn't.

The Definition of Chutzpah Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Does Rudy Giuliani really think he can go to Boston, announce he's rooting for the Red Sox in the World Series, and not get called on it?

That would be the sports equivalent of, say, wrapping yourself in a major national tragedy for purely political reasons?  Getting married three times and then discovering that other people's behavior puts our social fabric at risk?

Oh, yeah.  Same guy.

I wouldn't take Colorado (the purple-turning-blue state or the streaking baseball team) for granted myself.  And I do believe Red Sox and Yankees fans can live in harmony.  It just requires a little class.

    

Responding to Robert Kaplan, Reach for the Civics, Not Psychology, Text Posted by David Shorr

With all due respect to both Shadi and Heather, the issue at the heart of Robert Kaplan's "Modern Heroes" piece really boils down to the basic concept a military mission, and how a small 'd' democratic nation sends its sons, daughters, wives, fathers into battle. It's not, as Kaplan claims, Americans' discomfort with traditional warrior virtues that is troubling us; it's our slowly dawning sense of responsibility They are there on our behalf. Yes, the choice to serve was (is) theirs, but the choice of the fight, this fight, is ours. Through the lens of the civics book, the duality of heroism and victimization is clear. This isn't cultural ambivalence, it's the political system righting itself.

Kaplan is correct that respect for skill and professionalism in the art of war, rather than appreciation for sacrifice, is in some ways a more appropriate form of honor. But if, as the old saying goes, "theirs is not to reason why," then whose is it? Who decides the tasks to which these skills are applied? We do. Ultimately, we're the deciders. [Just to avoid confusion, let me be clear that I mean the nation as a whole. In one sense, the war is fought 'not in our name' for the war's opponents -- in another sense it's in all of our name (about which more below).]

Kaplan resists the sentimentality that seems to pity the troops, but gets so wrapped up in his own romantic notion of valor that he misses the central issue: have we sent the troops into a battle that's winnable, no matter how great their professionalism? At root, the public's reaction isn't pity; it's buyer's remorse. The point isn't the hardship the troops are enduring. The point is that we put them there, and does what we've asked them to do make any sense??

A few last words about civilian casualties and detainee abuse. Again, there are important issues regarding the relationship of the nation and its people to such misdeeds. National Journal last week had an excellent Sydney Freedberg cover story about rules of engagement and proper use of force. We cannot absolve fighting men and women of their duty to conform to the rules of engagement and obey the laws of war (I suspect Robert Kaplan would agree, on the grounds of respecting rather than pitying). But it must also be said that there are heightened stresses associated with being an occupying force surrounded by guerrillas and militias -- again the issue of the situation in which we have placed our troops. Finally, I am perplexed that Kaplan is perplexed by the focus put on the detainee abuse committed by US troops. Here there is the added issue of the ramifications for the United States' standing in the world. We believe in individual rather than collective guilt, but again, the troops represent the country (and maybe even official policy). I didn't think it needed pointing out, but, to put it mildly, this is a really big deal. Do we really think the media has overplayed this? Really?