Dual-Track Politics?

Two points made by Mahan Abedin in the Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor suggest that progress has been made in Iraq, but suggest that the future maybe more complex than many seem to anticipate. First, he calls the political process that has centered on elections "irreversible." That seems optimistic, but it is certainly plausible, given the growing participation of all parties, especially the Sunnis. All parties, save Zarqawi's jihadists, seem to believe that they have a stake in the formation of the new Iraqi government.

The other point is allied to this. To quote Abedin:

There is already evidence that the Arab Sunni political parties coordinated their electoral strategy with several insurgent organizations. Indeed several insurgent groups have called for a ceasefire during the elections, and virtually the entire “nationalist” insurgency (save for a few hardcore Ba’athists) was in favor of Arab Sunni participation in the elections.

Abedin suggests that the insurgents may try to follow a sort of dual-track politics. They will use a combination of violence and political means to gain their ends. The election made this possible, as the quote suggests, by giving the insurgents a voice in the political process through Sunni parties like those that make up the Iraqi Accord Front. This voice can help both to legitimize the insurgency and to add pressure on the Americans to leave. While, Abedin argues, Moqtada El-Sadr has been co-opted by the political process, other Shiite groups may adopt a similar dual-track strategy.

This does not diminish the threat of civil war. Indeed, the success of religious parties in the election may have increased it. Iraqis seem bent on factionalism, which the infant political system may not be able to contain.

Moreover, there is no figure comparable to Mandela or Kenyatta in the insurgency--a widely respected nationalist who could unite the country should the insurgents succeed in gaining political power. That is one more unfortunate result of Zarqawi's success in becoming the public face of the anti-American forces in Iraq. And yet El-Sadr might become such a figure, if he can reach out to the Sunnis (and the Kurds) as Mandela was able to reach out across the color lines in South Africa.

Elections in Iraq

The Iraqi elections seem to have turned out well for everyone but the hard-core insurgents. Turnout was high, even in Sunni areas, and violence was low.

The most remarkable thing was that the insurgents not only did not try to disrupt the elections, in parts of Iraq they even posted guards at polling stations. The Guardian, among other sources, reported on this:

In Ramadi, a centre of armed resistance to the US occupation, masked gunmen guarded polling stations in Ramadi. "The mujahedin were at the polling station urging us not to let our voice be split. They urged us to go for either of the two Sunni lists, the Consensus Front or Saleh al-Mutlaq," said Ali Abed al-Dulaimi, a retired car salesman, in a telephone interview. Both lists, one Islamist, one secular, claim to have links with the nationalist gunmen.

No doubt there was some intimidation there. There can be little doubt, too, that there were irregularities in the election. But even the insurgents seem to believe that their aims can be served through representation in the newly elected government. And Zarqawi's decision to stand aside and let the vote happen is one more indication that sentiment favoring elections was strong. As if actions were not enough.

Elections alone do not a democracy make, and while the success of this is promising, all three groups of Iraqis--the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds--must perceive that the government that will be formed can serve their needs adequately. Given the agendas of the Kurds and the Shiites and the strength they will probably have when the new government is formed, this perception may be difficult to achieve. Moreover, the insurgency, with its irreconcilable, Zarqawi-led kernel, and the need--ever paramount--for all in Iraq to feel secure will create their own difficulties for the new government and the United States.

Fortunately, the elections left those inclined toward peace stronger.

We Will Withdraw, Like It or Not

The Times has published a story that reports that American and British troops will leave Iraq soon after the new government is sworn in. The story says that will be as early as March and that the number of American troops may fall below 100,000 "in the coming months." The sources seem to be both American and British.

This is one more sign that the apparent hard-line against withdrawal taken by President Bush and others is softer than it appears. Political reality is pushing us toward withdrawal.

Two other points of the article are worth noting as they point to dangers that withdrawal may bring. The first is the protestation of Iraqi authorities that premature withdrawal may, first, increase the risk of intervention by Iraq's neighbors (primarily Iran and Turkey, though those two countries are not named) and, second, "encourage the rise of militias, leading to sectarian strife and the settling of old scores."

The second point worth noting is a poll the BBC conducted in Iraq. Only 10 percent of those responding thought that American withdrawal should have a high priority for the new government. Indeed, the Times concludes: "The public has doubts about the ability of the Iraqi security forces, in particular the police, which is riddled with militia, and the army, which lacks equipment, training and leadership." Others have different opinions about the results of the poll.

The poll results do show the respondents to be optimistic about the future. Moreover, when asked about what would be the best thing that could happen to Iraq in the next year, less than 6 percent said it would be with withdrawal of American troops. Security was named by a third and peace and stability were named by another fifth. A question about priorities also showed that an increase in security ranked far higher than the removal of foreign troops. In answer to a question about when the coalition forces should leave Iraq, only a quarter said they should leave now. More than that said they should leave when stability is restored. On the other hand, only an infinitesimal number are eager for American troops to stay and well more than half oppose the presence of coalition forces.

A successful withdrawal is predicated on the Iraqi forces improving, becoming much better than they currently appear. The poll and the concerns of the Iraqi authorities underline the dangers of leaving too quickly. While national feeling remains strong, there may be an important role for American troops until Iraqis feel secure.

A question few seem to ask is how long and in what strength the United States should remain in Iraq. An allied question is whether the Iraqi public can accept a large, extended deployment. The BBC poll suggests that they may. If we want a secure, peaceful Iraq, we may have to. Those who cite the model of Japan and Germany after World War II should remember that we only left Japan after 5 years (and retained extensive basing rights) and that we still remain in Germany.

Timetables

The disagreement over timetables reflects a failure of imagination. This is too often true in public disputes over policy. The Democrats are urging the President to simply pull troops out according to a strict timetable, with the moderates simplifying lengthening the time. The President digs in his heels and says "No."

This serves nobody. There are real benefits that a timetable for withdrawal can give us, by making it clearer to the players in Iraq and the region that the United States will withdraw. I doubt that anyone truly believes that the United States will not withdraw, given the falling support for the war in Iraq. SO the President is gaining little by being stubborn.

But why not set a timetable linked to milestones? These could be accomplishments of the Iraqi government--number of troops trained; number of units reaching certain levels of accomplishment. Some of the discussion by officials in the administration has suggested linking the withdrawal of troops to such measures, anyway. Other milestones could be economic accomplishments--these could be linked to other measures. They could also be successful actions of the insurgents: for example, if incidents across the country or in certain provinces fall below a given number, then troops can go home. An advantage of a milestone like that is that it puts part of the onus for the continuing presence of American troops on the insurgents. That could be a weapon to use against reconcilable elements among them.

Senator Kerry has proposed something like this, linking withdrawal to "benchmarks" like this month's elections. But he still has the goal of withdrawing "the bulk of American combat forces by the end of next year." That makes the deadline too certain and, as the Administration will point out, gives the insurgents notice that they simply have to wait for the Americans to leave.

A more imaginative, subtle approach might help the administration out the trap into which it is falling by trying to hold firm to a policy that is becoming unsustainable owing to changes in American public opinion.

Wesley Clark on Iraq

In this morning's New York Times, Wesley Clark, the former commander on NATO forces who had a brief fling as presidential candidate in 2004, presents his plan for Iraq. Much of it makes sense. Much of his analysis is focused on Iran, which he and his interlocutors in the Arab World see as the big winner in Iraq. I have read elsewhere that the Iraqi Shiites are by no means as taken with Iran as others feel, but we should work to minimize the influence of Iran in Iraq. One distressing result of a civil war could well be the creation of an Iranian satellite state centered on Basra.

Two other things are noteworthy. First, his critique of other approaches on the table:

"Staying the course" risks a slow and costly departure of American forces with Iraq increasingly factionalized and aligned with Iran. Yet a more rapid departure of American troops along a timeline, as some Democrats are calling for, simply reduces our ability to affect the outcome and risks broader regional conflict.

Note that he has both the Administration and the Democrats advocating departure, only at different speeds. The President is not saying that, but as a matter of practical politics, he may soon have to begin a slow withdrawal.

Second, he advocates a stronger effort to co-opt the insurgents, a bigger carrot to go along with a solid stick:

...these efforts must go hand-in-glove with intensified outreach to Iraqi insurgents, to seek their reassimilation into society and their assistance in wiping out residual foreign jihadists. Iraqi and American officials have had sporadic communications with insurgent leaders, but these must lead to deeper discussions on issues like amnesty for insurgents who lay down their arms and opportunities for their further participation in public and private life.

As I said before, some of the decisions necessary to make such a policy effective will not be easy to make ("...amnesty for insurgents...."?), but this offers a course toward becoming effective on the ground that seems more likely to be successful than what we are doing now.

Games, Viruses, and Our Experiment Life

The world of malware--worms, viruses, and the like--is changing. Once the loner teen wrote the bad code while burning the midnight oil, soaking in Mountain Dew. Now it is becoming a commercial enterprise and the bad guys are becoming more professional. The threats are becoming more sophisticated. This entry by Eugene in the weblog of Kaspersky Labs has some interesting observations about this:

Once upon a time, back when everyone knew why a "floppy disk" was "floppy", computers were not completely Windows-ized, and the black screen of DOS was the standard "desktop", virus writers were just kids who happened to write viruses. They did it for fun, to assert themselves, to hit their friends and neighbours systems, or to get revenge on the world at large. They wrote some very silly viruses, and some very complicated viruses. They used different kinds of infection and stealth technologies, and there were lot of these "true" viruses - I remember a time when we were adding about 100 records per week to our antivirus database updates.

And now most malicious code is "commercial" - it's designed to control infected networks and/or earn money (see more at the beginning of this article. In among these programs, we still find "true" viruses and Trojans. But surprise! Not as many as in the past. Looking at our statistics, I see that we are now adding less than 10 "true" viruses and Trojan programs a week - ten times less than ten years ago. Does this mean that virus writers have stopped creating "true" viruses? Yes. But why? The situation should be totally the opposite - there are more and more teenagers getting access to computers, so shouldn't there be more and more "true" viruses written by them?

I think increased access to computers is actually the reason why the number of "true" viruses is decreasing. The fact is teenagers don't have time for writing viruses - they're busy playing online games.

They can assert their personality, they can create their own worlds, and destroy the existing one. They can find real friends, and "kill" virtual enemies in their virtual worlds. They attack and protect. They don't need extra proof anymore.

So - the kids have left the world of "true" virus writing. This was a world which had bad, sometimes very bad, consequences, but sometimes it lead to the creation of technically interesting or sophisticated programs. In moving out of this world, they stopped training their brains by developing their own virtual creatures - now they're lost in the virtual underworld of online computer games.

Is this good or bad, for us and for them? I don't know. My colleague Teodor Cimpoesu, from KL Romania, has also had some thoughts about this:

"People might think that it's good for the AV vendors if virus writers produce malicious programs, and the more numerous and more complex, the better. This is one point of view.

From a security point of view, less complex viruses mean easier intervention. But with serious virus writers moving into the commercial arena, it looks like we may start to see more complex business malware soon - and then the AV industry may end up playing a significant role in blocking or breaking cybercrime.

Most of the social effects of video games, when we come to understand them, are unlikely to be so beneficial. Unfortunately, we hardly know what they are. As has often happened, technology has thrown us into the middle of a social experiment. We may know the outcome twenty or thirty years from now. If we are wise enough to recognize it. But do we really know how television has changed us? Or how radio and the movies changed our parents? In truth, we lose context and become unable to compare our own experience with pervasive technologies like radio and television with that of others who have not had them. This can be a challenge for sociology.

Withdrawal from Iraq?

The withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is now on the table. Rep. Jack Murtha and some Democrats favor a complete withdrawal immediately. Senator Russell Feingold has called for one in a year. Senators Kerry and Biden and more Democrats support a partial withdrawal. There a three rationales for a withdrawal, aside from any wish to simply disengage from a war that they (and this writer) view as a mistake. The first, which Murtha suggests, is that if we leave, the Iraqis will be forced to step up to the plate to defend themselves. Murtha assumes that, just as the ill-trained colonists were able to defeat the professional Redcoats after 1776, so the ill-trained Iraqis will find the strength and skill to defeat the insurgents.

The second rationale is that much of the insurgency is fueled by the presence of American troops. The third is that the insurgency gains strength because of the sense that the Americans will never leave. The second and third rationales are linked. A complete withdrawal, of course, addresses both. A partial withdrawal (and a timetable, for that matter), provides hope that the Americans will soon be on their way out and so indirectly addresses the second rationale.

The Administration opposes a withdrawal largely on the grounds that it would send a wrong message to both our allies and our enemies in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East.

Any proposal for a withdrawal makes assumptions about the capabilities of Iraqi forces that will not be addressed here, aside from noting that those who favor withdrawal tend to optimistic at the same time that many of them criticize the Administration for being ineffective in training the Iraqi forces and the Administration is pessimistic while arguing that the training is effective. We cannot now know which side is right. We can only guess.

Another interesting set of assumptions on both sides, however, is about the message that a withdrawal sends. Or, rather, messages, because different groups will, in fact, get different messages if our troops leave. This is a case where both sides of an argument are correct. The difference is really about whose point will prove to be the more significant.

There are five possible audiences within the Arab world listening to sounds. We will leave aside the greater Middle East, Europe, and the American electorate, all of whom have their ears cocked to catch any words uttered about withdrawal, as the discussion about a withdrawal is focused on its consequences for American policy in Iraq. The insurgents, of course, who can be divided into the irreconcilable foreigners and the domestic insurgents (see my last two posts for more on divisions within the insurgency), and lastly, the Iraqi people who do not actively oppose us. The last group can assuredly be subdivided as well, but we will avoid that complication here.

The President asserted in his speech in Annapolis that a withdrawal or a timetable to withdraw "will encourage the terrorists, it will confuse the Iraqi people." There can be little doubt about the first part of this formulation, particularly if they do not fear the Iraqi security forces. Almost assuredly, they do not now fear them. The second part, confusing the Iraqi people, is curious. Rather than describe a departure as abandoning our friends, he describes consequences that are somewhat less serious. Why? At least part of it has to be that he does not want to suggest that the Iraqi security forces are not on the verge of becoming able to hold their own against the opposition. It might also be that he is holding open the possibility of a change in position. After all, important forces in Iraq have been calling for a timetable for withdrawal. Moqtada El-Sadr is one. The Cairo conference, held last month under the auspices of the Arab League is another. Negotiating a timetable for withdrawal with the government that will be elected on December 15 would have benefits for both sides--it would help legitimate the Iraqis and help the Administration lead us out of an increasingly unpopular war. A timetable created under such circumstances need not cause confusion in Iraq.

President Bush minimizes the effects that a withdrawal will have on the Iraqi people; those who favor one focus on those effects almost exclusively. All who favor withdrawal see the American presence in Iraq as a source of anger among Iraqis that helps to fill the ranks of the insurgency. An American withdrawal, therefore, far from sowing confusion among Iraqis will, they argue, make it clear to the Iraqi people and, perhaps, the domestic insurgents that the current government is legitimate. The insurgency would then weaken; the irreconcilables would be defeated and fade away.

These are not their terms, of course, and I may be suggesting an argument that the proponents of withdrawal do not make. Nonetheless, if seems to follow easily from what they say. If the withdrawal did not help legitimate the government, then its collapse and either anarchy or the victory of the insurgents must follow. No one suggests that.

Murtha. Kerry, and others make the additional argument that with the Americans gone, our Iraqi allies would become more effective. If you favor withdrawal and are concerned about the subsequent outcome in Iraq, you must believe that the legitimacy and effectiveness of our Iraqi allies will increase, at least relative to those of the insurgents. That is the bottom line, and neither legitimacy nor effectiveness can be assumed.

Yet that is close to what many of the proponents of withdrawal do. Murtha, Kerry, and others make assertions about what will happen. They argue based on historical precedent and experience, but much of what they say amounts to a leap in the dark. The failure of the president to come with a timeline of some kind for withdrawing from Iraq seems increasingly untenable politically. Yet the case for withdrawing is not tied to a strong case that a withdrawal will do anything but weaken our allies. A decision will soon be made that will engender costs to be borne. Let us hope they are seen clearly.

Iraq: Presidential Distinctions

A key element of President Bush's speech on Iraq at the Naval Academy was the distinction he made between parts of the Iraqi insurgency. He was echoing the National Security Council's National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. Indeed, much of his speech came verbatim from that document.

The three parts are the Rejectionists, the Saddamists, and the Terrorists, in descending order of reconcilability. The President seemed to suggest what my previous blog entry indicated might prove useful, a strategy to divide the insurgency and to coopt its reconcilable, Iraqi-born elements.

There are three points to make here. First, an effective strategy of cooption will mean that hard choices must sometimes be made. It has to be a carrot and stick policy: in war, sticks are easy to wield, easy to justify, because a war is easiest to conduct when it is done in black and white. Carrots are harder to use if you are not offering your opponent only a chance to surrender because they suggest that the opposition includes grays as well as black. Second, I hope that intelligence analysts have found that "Saddamists" is a meaningful category in how the insurgents think of themselves. The category may prove counterproductive in policy if we refuse to offer former Baathists a chance to change sides. That kind of thinking--equating members of the Baathist Party with hard-core supporters of Saddam, led to some of our most grievous mistakes in Iraq, when we forbade Baathists to hold position in the new government and when we dissolved the Iraqi army. Both errors filled the ranks of the insurgency.

The third point is about the President's rhetoric. In his speech, after introducing the terms for the segmentation of the opposition, he seemed to reserve "Terrorists" for Zarqawi and the irreconcilable foreigners who have infiltrated Iraq. This rhetorical distinction would be welcome if he holds to it, for it suggests that the "War on Terror" is being limited, at least in Iraq. But this may or may not prove significant. Rhetoric that recognizes subtle distinctions had not been characteristic of the Administration. Or its opponents, for that matter.

Progress in Iraq?

Last week saw the first call for a rapid, complete withdrawal from Iraq by a congressman and increasing indications that there will be a partial withdrawal early next year. Americans are tiring of the war. It seems clear that we will be unable to sustain the presence of more than 150,000 troops there for much longer.

Yet there are indications that we are making progress toward ending the insurgency. It is difficult to know how significant they are. The truth is, I doubt that anyone truly knows which way the wind is blowing in Iraq, even the intel people in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Nonetheless, there have been a few signs in recent weeks that things may be looking up for our side. These signs become much more significant if you keep in mind that the insurgency has at least two parts that do not have the same goals past getting the Americans out. The jihadists--Zarqawi's group--are almost assuredly incapable of compromise. The local insurgents may not be. Indeed, omne of the revelations of Larry Diamond's Squandered Victory is that in December 2003 "They were indicating a readiness, a desire, to come out into the open and become political. They wanted to talk to the United States directly." (p. 64) Nothing came of it then, but it suggest that we may be able to coopt at least part of the opposition and make our counterinsurgency efforts more effective. Indeed, General Abizaid and Secretary Rumsfeld confirmed in June that such talks had already occurred. Recently, some insurgents have tried to reach out to the Iraqi government and Ambassador Khalilzad spoke again of reaching out to a part of the insurgency.

Any willingness on either side to talk becomes more important as the disenchantment with Zarqawi increases. The bombing in Amman seems to have accelerated the spread of a sense that Zarqawi had been going too far. Writing in The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Focus, Stephen Ulph writes of "the rising controversy over the targeting of civilians in Iraq, and the negative response to high-profile errors such as the toll of Jordanian Muslims in the November 9 Amman bombings." Even Zawahiri, Bin Ladin's right-hand man, believes that Zarqawi's beheadings and attacks on Shiites are alienating Iraqis if one can believe the letter that he purportedly wrote in an effort to convince Zarqawi to adopt more careful tactics. Perhaps more important, if true, is the story from The Washington Post that Iraqis are turning in insurgents.

None of this is to suggest that the war in Iraq is close to being won. As I wrote above, nobody say say for certain whether it is or not. But Zarqawi's actions show that, unlike the North Vietnamese, he has a tin ear for public opinion and a political outlook that not all in the Arab world share. The possibility that we can coopt the opposition was not present in Vietnam. This may be the difference that makes this war winnable.

But we have to show a patience, a subtlety, a willingness to tolerate political differences, and a wisdom that we have rarely shown in Iraq since we defeated Saddam Hussein. And we have to deal with allies among the Shiites and Kurds who have their own agendas that may make a strategy based on coopting part of the opposition impossible. Almost anything is possible.

Too Little, Too Late?

The announcement that an agreement was reached between leaders of the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds should be greeted with muted applause. The sides agreed, it seems, to punt on the major issues, setting up a commission in the new parliament that can propose revisions in the constitution. On the part of the Shiites and Kurds, this is a step beyond just saying no when the Sunnis demand changes. And there can be little doubt that concession was difficult to get. As some of the Sunni leaders have found the changes sufficient to gain their support for the document, some applause is appropriate.

One danger that the agreement adds to the many dangers already present in the development of an Iraqi polity is that this new commission will be ineffective. It is easy for the three sides to set a commission up, but to be effective, each of the sides must be willing to give up something in order to give the new government legitimacy among all three Iraqi groups. Getting such compromise has been like pulling teeth. Will this change? One hopes.

Yet, can what amounts to a change in procedure, produced four days before tomorrow's vote, offset months of propaganda by the legal opposition, the insurgents, and their allies against the constitution? Almost assuredly not, particularly as the arguments the constitution touch deep seated attitudes that the proposed changes cannot. And there is no guarantee that the Sunni leaders who made the agreement are regarded as legitimate spokesmen for the Sunni community at large.

Perhaps worse, it is not at all clear that United States, the Kurds, or the Shiites are prepared for the defeat of the constitution. The United States, at the least, might have issued statements talking about the value of even a negative vote. As I wrote before, the defeat of the constitution might be the best outcome, albeit a dangerous one. A victory regarded as illegitimate by any one community in Iraq might be worse.

Iraq: The Game's Afoot

Events in Iraq are coming to a head. The vote on the constitution next month will have consequences for our involvement there that may well determine its outcome.

Unfortunately, the agreement to place this text before the voters was made over the opposition of the Sunni negotiators. The Iraqis did us no favors. No side placed the interests of a new Iraq before the interests of their own faction. The killer issue appears to have been federalism. This issue gained its constitution-killing importance only in August, not long before the deadline for an agreement on a draft, when Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of several important Shiite leaders, said "Regarding federalism, we think that it is necessary to form one entire region in the south." Others agreed. The right to do this and its expression in the draft constitution soon became a non-negotiable demand. It left the Sunnis aghast, fearful that the Kurds and Shiites would leave them with only a poor, rump state, the runt of the litter. Agreement was reached, in rough agreement with an arbitrary American deadline. The Shiites were left out.

If the Sunni body politic is truly opposed to this text, with federalism embedded, the best outcome will be for the Shiites to decisively reject the constitution. Such a rejection must be honored: a new legislature would have to be elected; a new constitution would have to be written and approved according to the fundamental law under which Iraq operates.

If all that happened, the Sunnis would know that their vote--their presence in the political process--counts, despite their minority status. It would show that they can affect what happens to them in the new Iraq. That should weaken the influence of Zarqawi and his Iraqi colleagues.

As desirable as this may be, if the Sunnis reject the constitution, Iraq could disintegrate. Easily. Would the Kurds sit still for another election merely to satisfy the Sunnis? Would the Shiites do the same? Would there be enough goodwill on both sides to find the compromises needed make a new draft possible? And then to both have it approved and elect a new government to be governed by it?

Whatever happens, we are entering a field of many hazards. As the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, told the U.S. press, centrifugal forces are threatening to fling Iraqis apart. Their neighbors will be pulled into the conflict as a result. They can already be seen to be watchful, standing ready to intervene if they sense the need. Iran may already be exercising influence among the Shiites covertly. The Turks have long been wary of an independent Kurdish polity. The Saudis look at the mess in Iraq with grave concern. Both Syria and Jordan also have both the means to influence the conflict and interests, vital because of their proximity, at stake there. Chaos in Iraq can easily lead to chaos in the region.

That leaves the United States to tame a dangerous, unpredictable Iraqi Cerberus, a labor that will take more skill than strength. It will take an understanding of the people and forces at play greater than we have shown in most of our time there. Because of our errors and the nature of the Iraqis, the outcome may be in our hands, but just barely. As they say in Monte Carlo: "Les jeux sont faits!"

Seeing Us Through Enemy Eyes

Yesterday President Bush, at the Pentagon, made another speech about Iraq. This was a minor speech. Little of it, if any of it, was new. He has said little new about it for months. In fact, until he announces some change in course, events on the ground--military and political--will have more influence on the American public than any speech of our highest government official.

There is much more to be said about that, later. For now, one passage in his speech caught my ear:

To leave Iraq now would be to repeat the costly mistakes of the past that led to the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. The terrorists saw our response to the hostage crisis in Iran, the bombings in the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the first World Trade Center attack, the killing of American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of two U.S. embassies in Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole. The terrorists concluded that we lacked the courage and character to defend ourselves, and so they attacked us.

Now the terrorists are testing our will and resolve in Iraq. If we fail that test, the consequences for the safety and security of the American people would be enormous. Our withdrawal from Iraq would allow the terrorists to claim an historic victory over the United States. It would leave our enemies emboldened...

He has said this many times. But this argument of the president is not just posturing. He is serious about it, and the argument is worthy of our attention. The insurgents in Iraq, the terrorists everywhere, look at the history of American involvement in the Muslin world and see us withdrawing when things get difficult. In Lebanon, the Marine Barracks was bombed and President Reagan withdrew (this is not characteristic of Democrats alone). In Somalia, our soldiers were beaten by a mob and we withdrew. Those are just two examples, but they are recent, prominent, important. And now, the rising toll in Iraq has us rethinking our involvement. Indeed, 100,000 or more people have gathered on the Mall today to protest our presence in Iraq. We are not now, and have rarely been, a power geared to the long term.

In fact, our military is set up to accomplish its goals quickly and as painlessly as possible. It is a central element in the American way of war and something our president has to consider as he charts our course in Iraq.

The point here is that our enemies consider it, too. As we, the American public, contemplate what we will do in Iraq and elsewhere as we fight Al Qaeda and its allies, we must include their perception of us as we weigh the costs against the benefits of the alternatives available to us, including withdrawal. No course of action will be costless.

There are many other considerations, of course: the cost in lives and the financial cost among them. But let us also remember that if we leave with our task undone--however we define that task--our enemies will take note and act accordingly.

Money, Katrina, and Tsongas

The fallout from Katrina continues even as Rita approaches. The storm caught us unawares in many ways. It shook how we see ourselves. It may define what we do as a society for the next few years. The first intallment of this story is the tremendous effort that the Federal government and the public as a whole has made in the last few weeks to make New Orleans right. Much of what has been been done involves money, but the cost and how we will pay it have yet to be determined.

E.J. Dionne addressed some of these issues in this morning's column in The Washington Post. He suggested that the administration's fiscal policy is "stupid." A milder word will not do. I do not disagree. As I wrote him:

"Stupid." Good word; accurate description. But the blame for our fiscal policies can be spread well beyond the White House. No one seems to be willing to stand and say "Tax me, please."

Of course it would be naive to expect that. But who has come out in favor of sacrifice for the goals we seek. We praise the efforts of others in New Orleans and elsewhere (and, indeed, the outpouring of money and effort for the people hurt by Katrina has said much that is good about this country). But who has said that we as a society must tighten our belts for the good of the country? Who has made a modest suggestion that we might cut back for the sake of the future?

Democrats tend to say that the budget deficit can be solved by taxing, in effect, someone else--the rich. (Even the rich think of themselves as middle class.) President Bush, of course, has never asked us to give up anything for the war on terror--or anything else--other than nail clippers at airports.

We all tend to behave as if the bons temps will roll on forever. These "stupid" fiscal policies will guarantee both that they won't and that they will end with something louder than a whisper.

Where are the people who dare to ask us to give up something now to prevent that bang?

In a postscript, I suggested that we may need Paul Tsongas. The Massachusetts senator ran a losing presidential campaign in 1992 and died a few years after. He made no bones about the need for fiscal sanity. He offerred a conservative, straighforward approach to federal spending, arguing bluntly that the budget should be balanced. In a commencement address at MIT in 1989, he said:

In the 1980s we have gone from being the world's largest creditor nation to the worst debtor nation the world has ever known. And all of this debt we give to you, our beloved children. America is on the verge of economic decline. We are now in an undeclared and unfelt and unrecognized battle for our future standard of living.

We had a good run after that. The economy grew at a fantastic pace. As a result, we were able to balance the budget. But that is past, and we stand again where Tsongas saw us more than 25 years ago. Can we revitalize ourselves as we did then? Many of the President's supporters will say we can. I am less certain. There was bipartisan sentiment that taxes could be increased. They were. It cost the older Bush an election. Both parties agreed to budgetary constraints that vanished soon after the new millenium began. Most importantly, we are a country growing old, with a greater share of its resources promised to the old and less productive (this includes me). No one is saying the things that Tsongas did. No one is asking us to serve the greater good before our personal comfort.

Our country may be on the edge of decline, with our place in the world gradually, but perceptibly diminishing. If we are lucky. If we are not, a greater storm than either Rita or Katrina, born of economic difficulty, may engulf us.

Katrina and FEMA

The best comment on the response to Katrina comes from Bruce Schneier. He says that DHS, including FEMA, should focus on gathering intelligence and responding to emergencies, rather than developing measures designed to prevent terrorism that are bound to be ineffective, like profiling passengers and developing a national ID card.

Indeed, the inattention paid to FEMA over the last few years, particularly since 9/11, is puzzling and, to be kind, myopic. If terrorists had caused a disaster, would not FEMA had been called in? Nor have we been able to postpone natural disasters for duration of the war on terrorism. If FEMA stops being left to people whose most impressive quality is the strength of their political contacts, we may do better with the next emergency than we did with this one.

On the other hand, two friends provide a different perspective on what FEMA has done. Given what it has been designed to do, it has not performed all that badly. Bruce Henderson wrote the Morris Dance Discussion List about his own experience with a hurricane-induced flood in North Carolina. He found that

The Federal government response was much the same. It takes time to assure that the storm has past, then the type of storm damage must be quantified (you really have to deal with a wind-hurricane much differently from a flood-hurricane). Then advance teams have to work out logistics (do people need food more than medical help? Or is a police presence needed first? Are airports open*? Our local airport was flooded and couldn't be used -- and teams have to open roads. Even the Interstates in our area were blocked -- trees were literally broken in half and blown in the road. It took highway crews 3 1/2 days to fully open I-40 from I-95 to Wilmington but some of that delay was waiting for flood water to go down. But a number of areas had been so badly flooded that large trucks couldn't get through.

Once the situation has been analyzed, then the agencies affected (mostly governmental, plus a very large input from the power companies) can agree and Federal agencies can be authorized by local government. Then, coordination between the different groups must be set up.

I asked another friend with extensive experience in disaster relief with FEMA about New Orleans. Bruce's message confirmed what he told me: FEMA was not set up to provide instant response. It is set up to go into an area after the storm has done its worst and some measure of stability has been reached. He did not think this approach best and suggested to his superiors at FEMA that somthing else be tried. In regard to New Orleans in particular, he favored making sure that what would be needed would be in place beforehand and that the more vulnerable people--he had older peoole in mind in particular--be removed before the storm hit.

That approach would probably have prevented much of the horrible scenes that we are now watching in New Orleans. But it has two problems. First, it is expensive. Damn the expense, you might say, people's lives are at stake. Consider the second problem, however: most threats of disaster are false alarms. For each Katrina, several storms will pass by. Yet for each one, preparations will be made and people will be removed. You cannot tell beforehand which alarm will prove real and which false. How many of us will willingly relocate once each year or two to prevent what is, in truth, a remote chance that harm will befall us? Consider that the levees in New Orleans had held for more than a century. that, more than any failure on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers, explains why the levees had not been strengthened. The vulnerability was known but the risk was deemed too small. For the same reason, I find that most people do not back up the data on their computers. As someone who works on computer security, I believe they are shortsighted, but like the people responsible for New Orleans, they choose not to take the time and spend the money to make themselves less vulnerable.

FEMA's plans and actions are the result of political choices made from the day it was organized. There can be little doubt that the agency needs to be reorganized and that it can become more effective. Indeed, my friend stopped working for FEMA because he believed that the agencies managers were serving political expediency rather than the public interest. But that was in the 1990s, when President Bush's work address was in Austin, not Washington.

Fallout from Katrina

The anarchy in New Orleans resembled nothing so much as the horrors of Lord of the Flies after the constraints of authority and civilization were removed. As usual, it is easy to conclude that neither we nor our neighbors would behave like that. Let us hope we are right in thinking so, but we should not be certain that we are. Much of what happened, was a crowd like any other getting out of control. Behavior that had been unacceptable became common. If our neighbors benefit from doing things they shouldn't and it seems that no harm will come to them, can any of us be absolutely certain that we would not join in?

On the other hand, giving to help those who have suffered because of Katrina has become close to a social norm. At work, the question asked has not been whether you will give, but when. I was hit up at the grocery store yesterday (Shoppers Food Warehouse), when the cashier pointed out that the Red Cross would accept contributions made there and then at the checkout stand. That is a mild form of extortion, but when it for an acknowledged social good, that's not always a bad thing.

Alan Abelson is a columnist in Barron's, and perhaps the best reason to buy the paper. You might think of him as the Mark twain of Wall Street, or a combination of Jeremiah and Bob Hope. He usually writes well pointed (and well aimed) wit. But this week he was somber as he described what had happened in New Orleans. He gave a warning to keep in mind over the next few months: we can expect the economic ills that will soon befall us to be blamed on Katrina. We should keep in mind when the bad news comes that our twin deficits (of foreign trade and the federal budget), housing prices that are out of control, and energy prices that were following them even before Katrina are not things that make for a healthy economy. "In sum," quoth Abelson, "never before will a hurricane have done so much to bail out so many people."

Once Again, Evolution

Much of the public is reluctant to dismiss calls to teach creationism or intelligent design alongside evolution in school science classes. That is one result of recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. So was I, as the entry made last month shows. My reluctance has faded as I have give the idea more thought.

Part of that thinking comes from an article in the Guardian Unlimited that addresses the issue forcefully. It argues that the epistemology of intelligent design is questionable. In other words, we do not know how those who favor intelligent design know what they know. Creationists argue that the theory of evolution has gaps that intelligent design can fill, but they do not present the evidence for intelligent design over other theories, a revision of evolution, for example. Contrast, how Copernicus destroyed Ptolemaic cosmology, to take an obvious example. His observations, carefully recorded and reproducible, showed that the earth does not sit at the center of the universe. New facts were brought in to destroy an old theory. In contrast, creationists argue simply that the ineffable complexity of the universe makes a man-made theory like evolution untenable.

A glance at the pages of the Discovery Institute's web site confirms what the Guardian article say about the lack of evidence presented in favor of intelligent design. It includes a page that lists peer reviewed publications that make the intelligent design argument. Several are listed, but they show only that there are gaps in evolutionary theory or that alternative theories are possible, a priori. Who would argue otherwise? Moreover, the page begins by saying that peer-reviewed articles are not necessary for the argument in the first place.

The fact is that one can accept both evolution and the existence of an intelligent designer. After all, Darwin did. So have most biologists since. That God has a place in the universe is not at issue in the physical sciences; scientific theory and the existence of God are not in conflict. Rather, the issue is over how we learn what we do no know about the universe. The creationist answer seems to be to abandon the scientific enterprise in favor of either a closer reading of the Bible or a search for proof of a theory whose truth they do not doubt. If there is another answer, they have not made it apparent.

The Pew poll is disturbing for several reasons. The high proportion of people who seem to believe in creationism is one. Another is that it shows that those who favor creationism have advantages that minority interest groups often have--they are less divided on the topic and more certain of their argument than the opposition. These are advantages that, the poll shows, that are able to take full advantage of.

The Guardian authors fear that a victory for creationism in their efforts to have the theory taught in schools "would be the end of science education in America." As my earlier entry says, the stakes are higher still: Not just education, but science itself.

Design, Evolution, Religion, and Schools

It is difficult to conclude that intelligent design should not be taught in schools alongside evolution if, like the president, you have a sense of fair play and believe that both sides of an issue should be taught. Let there be no doubt that the way science is taught in schools has become an issue on the country’s political agenda, given added prominence by the President's remarks to a group of reporters from Texas on August 2.

Intelligent design is an upscale, sophisticated version of creationism that posits that the universe is too complex to have been created by chance. As such, it has some appeal and cannot be as easily dismissed as the crude arguments of those who insist that the words of Genesis are literally true. But should it be given equal status with evolution in the classroom?

There are several matters to consider here. First, the two theories, evolution and intelligent design, do not have equal weight among scientists. Even President Bush's science advisor, John Marburger III, was quoted as saying that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept" (see the report from the New York Times that appears in the Fort Worth Star Telegram). The truth is that much of the appeal of intelligent design comes not from the scientific qualities of the theory, but from its consonance with fundamentalist strains of Christian thought.

Second, there is a possibility that should intelligent design be taught alongside evolution, other theories favored by the scientifically minded may come under attack as well. The Big Bang is first among those. This theory is not as antithetical to fundamentalist thought as evolution--it does, after all, posit a definite beginning to the universe and leaves open the question of what, if anything, came before. Nonetheless, the Big Bang theory does assert that the universe was created in something more than six days. Moreover, once past the beginning, it is consistent with the idea that the universe more or less developed on its own, sans divine intervention. So bringing evolution in the front door may well leave that door open to the further dilution of science as it is pursued in our schools.

A third, related issue raises a specter whose strength can be too easily exaggerated. This is whether we should let matters of faith determine how we teach science. The specter here is Trofim Lysenko, Stalin's favored biologist. He favored Lamarckianism, which Stalin believed had more in common with Soviet ideology than Mendelian genetics. That is, Lysenko, and Stalin, believed that traits acquired by one generation would simply be passed from one generation to the next. That is, the son of a blacksmith who developed strong arms would also have strong arms (if the mother's traits did not dictate otherwise). Genes had nothing to do with it. It was simple inheritance, rather like the family fortune.

Favoring ideological purity in biology, Stalin pushed Lysenko to the top of the Soviet scientific pyramid. The results were disastrous for Soviet biology, which lost its scientific credibility, in contrast to other parts of Soviet science, physics in particular.

Now, no one in this country is talking about supplanting evolution with intelligent design in our colleges, universities, and research labs. The current discussion is about teaching children of high school age and younger, not how research is conducted. So any parallel with Soviet science in the last century must be inexact and should be drawn carefully. The point of bringing this up, however, is to suggest that by bringing ideological or religious criteria into our approach to science at any level risks doing damage to the scientific enterprise in the United States,

The current policy debates over stem cell research and global warming add to the possibility that some damage may occur. In both debates, one side (at least) has placed the needs or conclusions of science behind religious or political imperatives. The opponents of adding to the supply of stem cells available for research oppose the needs of science with essentially religious arguments. Believing as they do, they would be wrong to do otherwise, but the effect on scientific research is a cost to be considered. With global warming, the conclusions reached by a preponderance of scientists have been devalued in essence because they suggest that politically difficult choices may have to be made.

A fourth consideration is that science is worth learning less because of the facts and theories that are taught and more because it opens the mind of the student. A student can find that common things—the motion of waves in physics, the interaction of compounds in chemistry, for example—can be examined and understood, and not simply looked at as things that happen. Of course, the student also picks up the scientific method, or a rough approximation of it. The essence of that method includes the imperative to follow the evidence to its conclusion, no matter how inconvenient or counterintuitive. One of the great memories I drew out of my science education came from an experiment that proved the hypothesis I started with to be 180 degrees wrong. Much of my research in the social sciences has had similar results, precisely because, like a natural scientist, I declared my assumptions and hypotheses and tested them. Intelligent design, like its cruder companion, begins with the conclusion that God's activity in the universe must be clearly visible to man. That may be good theology; it is not science.

One might question whether it is in fact good theology. Are we so certain that we know what God intends and how God works that we can foreswear the conclusions that scientists have reached? Surely that is an arrogance that anyone contemplating the wonders of the universe should avoid.

As you might imagine after reading this, I have approached the conclusion I declared to be difficult. I do not wish to see kids, particularly my own, taught intelligent design as a theory equal to evolution. I remain uncomfortable with this.

I would be more comfortable with it if the advocates of creationism and intelligent design were more clearly open to an intellectual conversation that went beyond assertions of the tenets of their faith, if they would be open to Bible courses that taught that several interpretations of the good book had equal standing among Christians, or if they insisted that history courses dealt with the development of Christianity over the millennia, treating Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and the many strains of Protestantism, including, yes, Fundamentalism as different parts of a single whole. Barring that, the openness seems too one-sided and the cry for fairness in pedagogy seems a disguised call for a new orthodoxy.

Musing on Watergate

Mark Felt's confession that he was Deep Throat impelled me to read Theodore White's account of Watergate, Breach of Faith, which unfortunately is out of print. I heartily recommend it. Published a year after Nixon resigned, it reflects the spirit of those times quite well, recalling memories of watching the president make his public pronouncements about the scandal, Sam Ervin and his committee peel away the layers that concealed the actions of the president and his minions, and the House Judiciary Committee come to their reluctant, but necessary judgement.

White, an insightful journalist, perhaps the best of those who covered American politics through the 1960s, put the events of those times in context. Naturally, his analysis invites comparision with today. Then as now the country was polarized. The two parties, as White saw them, stood on differents sides of a cultural divide. Sound familiar? the division then, of course, was between the those who looked approvingly at the counterculture and those who were more traditional in outlook. We define the division differently today, but the roots of todays partisanship have their basis in the same difference in outlook. Indeed, one of the elements of Bush's past that is a key to undestanding him was his aversion to the liberal and radical forces that ruled students and faculty at Yale when he went there. He is, in some respects, the counter-counterculture president.

As stark as the divisions of the early 1970s were in White's eyes, they pale before what we have now. In his account of the proceedings of the House Judiciary Committee, he describes the moderate Republicans who leaned toward impeachment and the conservative Democrats who leaned against it. Where are these creatures now? Each party has comfortably walled itself up in a strong fortress manned by the like-minded.

Few have done that more clearly than the president himself. Those who do not speak as the president thinks have short lives in the centers of power in Washington. This is a tendency that has increased as the administration has developed, to judge by the cabinet appointments made for the second term. Nixon had some of this tendency himself but, partly as a result of Watergate, was unable to follow it to the same degree.

Nixon, too, like Bush, tried to centralize power in the presidency. Both felt the need to make the bureaucracies of the Executive Branch speak and act as one. However, whereas Bush has done seems to have done this effectively, Watergate aborted Nixon's efforts to do so.

Let the reader think that I am trying to paint Bush in the same colors as Nixon, however, let it be noted that he lacks Nixon's paranoia and meanness. Nor is he a schemer, and his moral compass seems more firmly set.

He is not, therefore, prone to approach his political problems in an underhanded, illegal manner as Nixon did. Let this entry end with a warning, however, that the drama of Watergate suggests may be apposite. Nixon made his fatal errors in an almost offhand manner. This was not an evil man who planned to cross the line into illegality. Rather, he stepped across it almost casually, without realizing that he had done so. Bush has surrounded himself with people, like Karl Rove, who approach the line of legality as receivers in football approach the sideline--they know exactly where it is and what it means to cross it. Should this small circle around the president miscalculate, they may lead him to disaster, and there is no one of a different mind to tell him no. Let us hope that they, and he, are wiser than that.

Tolerance

Noor Huda Ismail, a Moslem from Indonesia, wrote in Sunday's Washington Post about the madrasa he attended as a teenager. Many of his fellow students, and a co-founder of the school have been arrested as terrorists. The school itself is regarded as a breeding-ground for Islamic extremists.

The article makes it strikingly clear that much the success of the extremist philosophy depends on making the student intolerant of and isolated from those who think differently. It is in stark contrast to what I think of as perhaps the greatest virtue of the American experiment--tolerance. It is this, not freedom alone, that should be our rallying cry. It should be what we seek above all to foster around the world. It is certainly a quality much of the world lacks. Intolerance is the essence of the Islamic jihad.

Americans themselves can certainly be intolerant. Much in our history proves this. The current political climate suggests that the future of this virtue in our land is not assured. Moderation in defense of the public welfare seems to be a vice; partisanship consistently trumps compromise. Yet our battles against discrimination continue, embraced in rhetoric at least, often in action, by the mainstream of both parties. Forty years ago that was not true. These battles--by and for Catholics, Jews, African-Americans, Asians, the Irish, perhaps against all ethnicities at one time or another--have been constant in American history, which can be characterized as a struggle of our best side against our worst. Thus far our best side has come out ahead far more often than not.

Assuredly, other countries have fought similar battles. But their histories have not been shaped by them in the way that American history has. For only Americans define themselves in political terms. Others--the French, the English, the Chinese, the Arabs--define themselves in other ways, in terms of language, religion, ancestry (see Walker Connor's insightful Ethnonationalism for an extended version of this argument). To be American is to believe in the tenets of the founding documents of the United States and the political traditions that they embody,

Tolerance is one of these traditions, strongly embedded in this country from its beginning, found among the most prominent qualities of the early colonies. Its seeds lie not in Plymouth, obviously, but in New Amsterdam, the future New York, as Russell Shorto shows in his enlightening account of the Dutch colony, The Island at the Center of the World.

It is worthwhile to keep in mind not only that the citizens of New Amsterdam included a range of races, ethnicities and faiths, but also that they tolerated each other. That is, they put up with each other. They lived next to each other, dealt with each other as neighbors, merchants, customers, and citizens. They did not necessarily approve of each other. Nonetheless, they managed to create a new society in a difficult land. In truth, at its heart, toleration does not mean concord; it need mean only that people agree to live and let live.

The lesson that we can hope to extend to other peoples, including those Moslems like those Noor Huda Ismail grew up with, is merely that we will all be better off if you and I let each other be. Simple as this message is, spreading it is a Sisyphian task. Catholics and Protestants only learned it after two centuries of massacres; this country often forgets it. Yet it is an essential part, perhaps the most essential part, of what we have to offer.

Our Fools and Iraq

Once again, E.J. Dionne wrote a column in The Washington Post worth commenting on. His subject was whether the administration believed what they told us about Iraq before we invaded it. He suggests they did. I believe they did, and wrote the following to him:

E.J.,

One of the ways the world is divided into two parts is in how people see those they disagree with: Some see them as knaves, others see them as fools. So some have seen the President, the Vice-President, and the rest as knaves, determined to invade Iraq for their own reasons, perhaps out of greed, perhaps for revenge, perhaps with some other malicious motive. But your explanation, that they were fools who acted in good faith but with a mistaken understanding of the situation, is like Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation of what happened. It also happens to fit with the conclusion of the report of the WMD Commission that most of the analysts of the intelligence community believed that Saddam Hussein was a clear threat.

The question now becomes the one on everyone's lips: What do we do now? I believe that this should be divorced from how we got into Iraq. Rather, our answer should come from whether we believe we can do good by staying. To use the Pottery Barn analogy: We broke it, we bought it. Can we fix it? Unfortunately, the answer is far from clear.

Jim Voorhees

The question of what we do now is far from a simple one. My message to Mr. Dionne lays aside the question of cost, but of course it is the costs of the war that are easiest to see: lives lost and ruined, billions spent, a military stretched too far. Can we do enough good in Iraq to justify these? The same issue of the Post carries a piece by Kofi Annan that suggests that progress is being made. The surprising turnout of the elections last January also suggests that, despite the continuing bloodshed, we may be able to leave an Iraq that is stable, democratic, and prosperous. That bloodshed and what appear to be rising tensions among the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds make it clear that such an outcome is not assured. Anyone who believes that we will have such assurance in a year is not paying attention.

Therefore, we should not plan to begin our withdrawal in one year or even two. Our commitment to Iraq should not now diminish. Instead, we should learn from the many errors that we have made and carry on purposefully, unperturbed by setbacks that leave our goal in Iraq achievable.

More on Uzbekistan

In today's Washington Post Jackson Diehl makes many of the same points I did about Uzbekistan on 14 June, though he focuses on giving aid to Kyrgyzstan. He asks "Why should the Bush administration not begin to focus on Kyrgyzstan as a military and political partner, while conspicuously leaving Uzbekistan, and Karimov, in the cold?"

That question has two answers: First, as he points out, Kyrgyz democracy is not yet stable. Should we move our forces to a country where democracy may fail in the next few months? Second, alternatives to the airbase in Uzbekistan will be more costly and possibly less effective. A Kyrgyz base, for example, will increase the distance it takes to fly to either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Do these two considerations mean that abandoning Uzbekistan for Kyrgyzstan is a bad idea? No. The message of support for democratic forces and our willingness to abandon a dictator may well offset these costs. To my mind, they do. But those costs must be seen clearly.

There are other alternatives that should be considered as well. In the July-August issue of Foreign Affairs, the estimable S. Frederick Starr advocates a regional approach centered on a regional partnership for cooperation and development. Not long ago, Chris Seiple of the Foreign Policy Research Institute also argued for greater American involvement in the region.

Indeed, given what appears to be the increasing importance of Central Asia to the United States, the fragility of the governments there, and the proximity of the region to the bubbling cauldron that surrounds the Persian Gulf, perhaps it is time for the United States to pay greater attention to these distant states. There are solid reasons to be tentative--complications in our relations with Russia among them--but we may also benefit from improving the political and economic structures that these Islamic peoples have been building since the Soviet Union collapsed. Our effort might provide an image that can help bleach the vivid colors of terrorism that too many have found attractive.

Note: S. Frederick Starr is currently head of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (CACI) at Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. His proposal is also described in one of CACI's studies.

State, Defense, and the Uzbeks

The Washington Post this morning had an article about a division between the Pentagon and the Department of State over whether to press for an investigation of the recent events in Uzbekistan. Karimov's post-Soviet dictatorship shot hundreds of protesters. State supported tough language in a NATO communique favoring an investigation; Defense opposed it. Defense won.

Both departments have since said that there is no disagreement between them over what to do in Uzbekistan. That is probably true in the sense that both oppose dictatorship, both would like an investiagation of some kind. Nonetheless, we should not doubt that disagreement exists. Indeed, there should be one, because we face choices there that are not easy to make. Rumsfeld was paraphrased as saying that "the Uzbekistan situation had direct implications on NATO operations in the region." He's right. It has implications not just for NATO (in Afghanistan), but the for the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, not just in that region, but throughout the world.

What it comes down to is that there is a conflict between our goal of fostering democracy wherever it springs up and our desire to succeed in political conflicts that we have become embroiled in. This is not a new dilemma for the United States, but decades, perhaps centuries old. It gets to the heart of the ambitions of President Bush as he seeks to leave a legacy that is somewhat greater than a failed war and missing weapons in Iraq.

Rumsfeld noted that our air base in Uzbekistan--jeopardized by efforts to put pressure on President Karimov--is used to transport humanitarian aid (to Afghanistan and elsewhere). That base, made available at some cost to Karimov in his relationship with Russia, has been a key part of our efforts in the region. Were Karimov to forbid us to use it, alternatives would be difficult to find and expensive to use. The support they made possible might also be less effective. In short, opposing Karimov openly and strongly has its costs.

But there are clear costs on the other side as well. These will be especially high if, as I believe, President Bush is sincere, earnest, and determined in his efforts to bring democracy to Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world. It is incontestable that he seeks an Iraq that is strong enough and popular enough for American troops to leave with a sense that they--we--have laid a foundation that will make it possible for Iraq to become a prosperous country with a lasting, democratic government.

Yet a weak reaction to Karimov will undermine Bush's efforts. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are now less military than political. Indeed, while our stage may be in those countries, the audience extends across the Arab world, into the broader Muslim world, and beyond. If we play a realpolitical game in Central Asia, the rest of the Muslim world will note that, when push came to shove, narrow interest came before the broader concerns of local, Muslim population. Moreover, Karimov will not last. Age alone will take its toll--Karimov is 67--even if there is no Uzbek equivalent of the rose or orange revolution. What will happen then? I submit that there is no long term value to our interests in Central Asia that anything but a harsh policy toward Karimov can offer.

In short, Bush's aspirations across the southern part of Eurasia are likely to benefit from a policy toward Karimov that does not mince words. Yet these benefits are somewhat speculative: we do not know what will happen in a country and a region that we but dimly understand. The costs of a firm stand opposed to Karimov are clearer. We have faced a similar choice before--with Marcos, the Shah, Pinochet, and others. This time, the costs the dictator threatens seem to weigh less than the possible benefits of opposing him firmly.

India, China, the United States, and the Rest

Two columns that appeared this week, by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times and Jim Hoagland in The Washington Post, bring me back to a subject that I’ve been pondering for some time—how the world will change in the next half century. There are already signs that the changes that are coming will the least match those that we have seen since World War II. Consider which countries dominated the world in that period: the Soviet Union and the United States, of course. In economics, they were joined by Japan and the countries of the European Union, particularly Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Not coincidentally, all these countries, save France, were among the 10 most populous countries in 1950, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The most populous countries, China and India, were prostrate from internal troubles, economic and political, for part of the period, and only learning how to compete effectively in the economic realm for most of it. (This is a reminder that it takes more than a crowd of people to make a country rich.)

As Friedman and Hoagland point out and many others have also noted, India and China are hitting their stride. Their growth is beginning to have strong effects on parts of the rest of the world economy—China’s growing thirst for oil is helping drive prices to heights never seen; the consternation of Lou Dobbs and other commentators about outsourcing to Bangalore testify to the growing sophistication of Indian technology.

The contrast to the powers that dominated the globe in the last few decades is striking. Russia, as part of the Soviet Union, saw its economic growth rates soar through the 1950s, shrink to nothing in the last years of the Soviet period, and turn sharply negative in between 1990 and 2002 (see the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report 2004 for GDP growth rates). Its economy is growing now, thanks to the rising price of oil, but it can hardly be said to be undergoing an economic miracle.

The United Kingdom continues to grow at a reasonable pace, the rest of “Old Europe” creeps. France’s economy grew at an annual rate of only 1.7 percent between 1975 and 2002. Germany grew sclerotic, its rate slowing from 2 percent between 1975 and 2002, but only 1.3 percent after 1990. Japan did much the same: it matched Germany’s growth rate through the entire period, but slowed even more in its last dozen years. The United States has grown steadily, 2 percent through the period, but far more slowly than the two Asian giants. India grew 3.3 percent after 1975, accelerating to 4 percent from 1990 to 2002; China was spectacular: its growth exceeded 8 percent throughout (whether that data is accurate might be questioned, but it is the data we have).

As your broker might say, past performance is no guarantee of future results. But the shrinking, aging populations of Europe, Russia, and Japan, and, less severely, the United States will guarantee that the robust, youthful energy that brought these countries to global power will not be available to keep them in the positions to which they became accustomed.

Assuming that these trends continue (a tenuous assumption at best), the world is growing into something much different than we are used to. Europe is fading from the global stage. The great hopes that accompanied the unifying reforms of 1992 have not been realized; it is no longer the vital force, but a stagnating one. Russia will remain a regional power at best, but may well weaken even there as its immense Asian neighbors and the more dynamic of its former colonies grow. Japan will join it in weakness.

And the United States? We are dominant as no power has been before. That will not change completely, we will be powerful still. Yet we will see our dominance fade and our vitality pale before the brightening beacons emerging from Asia.

That begins a set of arguments that these few words cannot exhaust.

The FBI Without a Case (File)

One of the running stories in the Washington area IT industry is the failure of the FBI to develop its Virtual Case File (VCF). This has been a program that the Bureau has been trying to develop for years to replace the paper-based system it has used for decades to handle the mass of evidence collected during investigations. Earlier this spring, Director Mueller fired the contractor, SAIC, and declared the program a failure. Each side has blamed the other. The truth is, though, as in most such disputes, plenty of fault can be found on both sides.

A story in today's Washington Post touched on the VCF case again. The Post was given a copy of a report from the House Appropriations Committee that largely blamed the FBI for the problem. Indeed, some of what the FBI was amazingly bad. For instance, they found 400 flaws in the program a year ago, but did not tell SAIC, because "because it did not want the contractor to think these were the only issues remaining"! Yet the bureau kept SAIC on the contract for another year.

That story led me to write a friend at the Congressional Research Service:

I just read the Post report on the FBI's experience with the VCF. Of course, I haven't seen the report from Congress either, but two conclusions seem clear from the Post's account (and other reports I have read):

1. Basic good practices in software development were not followed. In particular, the FBI failed to set firm requirements early and change them only after consulting with the contractor and getting the contractor's agreement--in writing--to make the changes needed. It was as if you signed with a contractor to build a colonial-style house, then changed it to a ranch half-way through.

2. The contractor did not hold the FBI to its word. It contracted to build one system, then in effect and only implicitly, agreed to build a different one after the requirements changed. It should have been willing to drop the contract rather than allow the FBI to continue as it did. That may be a lot to expect from anyone holding such a big contract, but the costs of doing otherwise--both to its finances and its reputation--are precisely what SAIC is paying.

My friend replied to largely agree with me, though he was easier on SAIC than I am. It would, indeed, be difficult to walk away from the millions of dollars involved, particularly as they were bound up in a cost-plus contract, which can be lucrative indeed. Yet a firm is going to get burned if it does not follow practices universally lauded as good and insist that its client does the same. In this case, as in many others, it is a matter of both sides communicating with each other so that both understand what is needed, what can be done, and what the costs are.

The amazing thing, though, is how often contractors and their clients mess things up in similar ways. Too often, an adversarial relationship is taken on one or both sides. I once worked on a project where the federal contracting officer confided to an associate that one had to keep the contractors under a tight reign. Not shy about his views, he did that within earshot of my program manager.

That seems to be part of what happened here. The FBI was determined to bring SAIC to heel and appears to have treated the firm as inalterably obligated to do as the bureau wished. When it failed to produce, the bureau snapped angrily. SAIC, which played into the Bureau's game, has replied in kind.

The truth is, however, that the two scorpions, caught in the same same bottle, have stung themselves. And so we, who rely on the FBI to do its duty, are stuck with an agency whose agents must still to things the old, hard way.

In Security, Plus Ça Change...?

Richard Bejtlich is one of the leading lights in network security these days. He wrote The Tao of Network Security Monitoring, which is a guide to what we are trying to do in my day job. He also runs TaoSecurity and the associated blog, where he recently quoted Marcus Ranum, another bright light working in the gloom of network security. Ranum had written about the lack of progress in security, wondering whether we having been doing anything but spinning our wheels for the last few years. I thought we had, though it is easy to see why is appears otherwise:

It may be true that "Plus ça change..." in security, as you and Marcus Ranum suggest. But the nature of the Internet has been changing dramatically in the last decade. So have the requirements for security.

Remember that access to the Internet was once confined to a small number of like-minded people, mostly Americans in academia and government. It is now open to everyone, with an endless variety of expectations for the Internet, and an endless variety of approaches to it.

By analogy, the Internet was a small town. It has become New York. We didn't need to lock our doors before, now we do. We could safely walk anywhere, anytime. We now must be more careful.

And the changes continue. For one thing, the nature of the bad guys is changing. Instead of solo bandits, they are forming gangs and, perhaps, larger, more institutional agglomerations.

In this environment, is it surprising that things seem to be getting worse?

Two people responded, but neither disagreed with me, in truth.

Something I did not say is that we may be up against a paradox: if we improve how we count something, there may be more of it, whereas it is simply our improvements that account for the increase. With computer security, we have more people, both black hats and white hats, looking at vulnerabilities than we have ever had before. Not surprisingly, they are finding them. It would not be surprising to find, five years hence, that many of our current worries were past. Not that I'm counting on it.

Four Bits on Energy

President Bush, spurred by the increases in the prices of energy, recently spoke about creating a new national energy policy to the National Small Business Conference. His response, and the times, are reminiscent of the energy crisis of 25 years ago. Ronald Reagan and John Anderson had a debate that year, and touched on several issues that resound today.

Anderson, some may recall, proposed a 50 cent tax on each gallon of gasoline. He argued for it even though the price of gas had already risen by that amount. His intention was to raise the price to encourage conservation and to "recycle the proceeds" by reducing taxes. Reagan's approach was less clear. He did offer to encourage conservation, following Anderson, who emphasized it. But Reagan found the solutionlargely in greater production of oil, natural gas, and coal, in Alaska and elsewhere. Unlike Anderson, who saw American oil reserves diminishing by the end of the decade, Reagan believed those reserves to be abundant (in retrospect, he seems to have had the better argument there).

President Bush, of course, favors producing more natural gas and oil, in Alaska in particular. His emphasis, however, is on technology. He sees the cure for American energy ills in the development of new forms of energy, in the development of the more efficient use of energy in homes and cars, and in the power of technology to make coal clean and nuclear power safe. He has put millions into budgets to fund these things. Of course, befitting his philosophy, he has also advocated tax cuts and credits to encourage such behavior.

There are sound environmental reasons to be suspicious of or even oppose some of his measures, especially in Alaska and with nuclear power. But who does not hope that technology can provide the cure that he proposes? Indeed, technology, approached in the abstract, before any technological solution becomes real, is foolproof, costless, and safe. Moreover, our experience with the wondrous changes we have seen in our lifetimes makes it plausible. But can it alone undo what our energy-dependent lifestyle has wrought?

In the long term, quite possibly; in the short term, not probably. President Bush would not disagree, which is why he wants to encourage shorter term increases in production, here and abroad.

He sees energy as a problem largely because we are becoming ever more dependent on foreign sources of energy. This, he says, reduces our freedom of political movement: "Because of our foreign energy dependence, our ability to take actions at home that will lower prices for American families is diminishing." That was not a point of view expressed by either Anderson or Reagan in their 1980 debate, but it is consistent with views widely held at the time. It is curious that President Bush wants foreign producers to increase the supply of the substances to which we are so addicted.

One striking difference with the views expressed in the earlier debate, however, is the absence of any mention of conservation. As with much else in his approach to politics, President Bush is reluctant to call for sacrifice of any kind, even though that would help reduce our dependence on foreign sources. But that was a Carterian approach, abandoned by Reagan. (I recall that in January 1981, the lights of the Lincoln Memorial were turned back on at night--and searchlights around its base scoured the skies--when Reagan took office.)

One more thought. In 1979-80, when OPEC raised oil prices, creating the crisis that Anderson and Reagan addressed, and earlier in 1973-74 when OPEC did the same thing, higher prices led people to find more efficent ways to use energy (this might be called forced conservation). Today's higher prices will do the same. That style of conservation, an unbidden sacrifice, will do more to reduce our dependence on foreign energy, and do it more surely and quickly than any of the solutions President Bush, or any other politician, is offerring. It is, one might suggest, the triumph of the 50 cent solution.

Avoidable Ignorance

In April, I wrote Michael McFaul about an op-ed piece he had written with Peter Berkowitz. Their argument was that universities are producing too few people who know the languages and cultures of the Middle East. They suggested that the Federal government fund such study, much as it did with Soviet studies after World War II. My comments draw on my own experience in academia a decade ago:

Dear Professor McFaul,

I enjoyed your op-ed piece in this morning's Washington Post. However, I just sent the following to the Post message boards:

"It is not enough for the money to be available to promote language skills and regional expertise. Academia must also believe that they are necessary. But academia does not. There has long been a bias against multidisciplinary area studies. This was epitomized by an advertisement for a teaching job at a major university. The applicant was advised that he or she would be teaching courses in Russian politics, but that a comparative approach was needed. That is, Russian specialists need not apply."

"In political science, one is encouraged to study comparative politics, but not the politics of a region. It is often true, as well, that quantitative work that requires deep knowledge of data sets is favored over more qualitative analyses that require knowledge of the local language and culture. Economics shows such biases even more. Where are our Middle Eastern specialists to come from?"

"It is optimistic to say that this will take a generation to change, even if foundations and the government are generous."

I ended there. But let me add that I, too, believe that much depends on our ability to develop a cadre of experts in the Middle East. Like you, I was trained during the last years of the Soviet Union. The knowledge that those who preceded us had of Russia, the other 14 republics, and the rest of the Soviet empire was invaluable. We must indeed, as you argue, develop a cadre of Middle Eastern experts whose understanding rivals that of Kennan, Nove, Mosely, Fainsod, and the students that they and their work produced. Let's hope that someone is paying attention.

Jim Voorhees

It should be noted that the recent report of the WMD Commission also noted the absence of regional expertise in the intelligence agencies, noting, among other things, that "the Intelligence Community did not sufficiently understand the political dynamics of Saddam Hussein's Iraq" (page 174). My basic point is that academia is unlikely to produce such people--they do not see their value.

That leaves the question of where they can come from. In the short term, at least, it will have to be government itself. Of course, it will take a minimum of two years to give someone the proper skills. As the report argues further, changes must be made in the way analysts are treated in the Intelligence Community.

It leads to the depressing conclusion that our ignorance of the regions we are operating in will remain undimmed for some time. Mistakes that stem from it can be expected to continue, with unfortunate results.

Note: Michael McFaul was kind enough to respond, saying that he agreed with me. No one on the Post's message boards addressed my points either way.

The President Appoints

President Bush has made three appointments to foreign affairs positions that are almost guaranteed to roil the waters of U.S. relations with the rest of the world.

One of these, the appointment of Karen Hughes as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy has been hailed by Senator Lugar, among others. Indeed, Ms. Hughes bring several unusual strengths to the position. Chief among these is her relationship with the president. She will have access to him that may rival that of her boss, Condoleeza Rice. That she will have his trust can almost go without saying. However, success in her position is far from guaranteed. Her job, as President Bush said, is "to share and communicate America's fundamental values while respecting the cultures and traditions of other nations." Let no one doubt that she can tell the world what our values are. No one in the Bush White Hosue was able to formulate a message more clearly or stick to it more firmly. But she has little experience dealing with her primary audience, which will no longer be the American media and public, but international media and international publics (plural), many of which have biases that she certainly does not share and may well not understand. Can she learn how to address them? Perhaps. However, the Bush White House in which she worked was not known for its ability to seek out people with differing opinions and consider their points of view. To be effective in this job, she will have to draw on other people and to respect and understand differing ideas much more than she has shown herself able to before. If she does not, she is more likely to light fires than to bank them.

John Bolton's appointment as United Nations ambassador presents a similar challenge He knows the United Nations well, it seems, and has a stronger sense of what it can and should do than he is given credit for. But he has a bull-in-a-china-shop quality about him: he tends to speak loudly and, in the UN, will not have a big stick. Even more than Karen Hughes, he has found it easy to ruffle feathers. To get the UN, the Security Council in particular, to work in consonance with the United States, he will have to show an ability to smooth feathers that has not often been evident. If he and the president want to reform the UN, it will not be enough to argue that reform is needed; they will have to use deft diplomacy as well.

Paul Wolfowitz may be a stronger appointment to head the World Bank than it seems at first glance. When ambassador to Indonesia, he was clearly interested in the problems of development. So he has experience in the issues the Bank deals with and has given some thought to them. As he has greater experience with poitical and security issues, he can be expected to continue Wolfensohn's emphasis on democratic development. That is not a bad thing. More of an academic than Hughes or Bolton, he may be more easily able to draw on the expertise that will surround him than either Hughes or Bolton. However, he was not known to be a good administrator at DoD; he will need to be better at the World Bank. Also, on many issues, he will have to be able to synthesize views rather than expound his own. Can he do that without a stronger background in economics? Quite possibly, but it is not a given. If he does not, he, too, like Hughes and Bolton if things do not work well, will be perceived as an American who does not get what the rest of the world is about.

President Bush, in sum, has chosen to appoint people who may challenge the world t change. Hughes will challenge it to view the United States differently. Bolton will challenge the United Nations to become more effective. Wolfowitz may challenge the World Bank and the development community to change how they approach the developing world. The president has not chosen people who will soothe the world, even though the world opinion has been enflamed against us by what the president has done. It is not certain, but it is likely, that our stock in the eyes of the world will not rise, despite some welcome, promising success with democratization in the Middle East.

I should mention one last appointment. Daniel Fried will be an Assistant Secretary for Europe quite capable of smoothing waters that are easily roiled. Not that he will shy away from telling European leaders truths that they would rather not hear. But he has shown an ability to respect and draw on the opinions of others without compromising his own that is rare in any official. He can also be expected to push strongly for democratic development in the far reaches of the area is responsible for, the parts of the former Soviet empire still plagued by the legacy of dictatorship.

Why Not Darfur?

I have ignored Darfur until now. It has been a story about a place far away that holds little natural interest to me. The horrors have seemed both repetitive and endlesn, with no clear solution.

Nicholas Kristof's column in today's New York Times (registration required) brings home how facile these attitudes have been. He writes about an American witness to what has gone on. A village of 25,000 destroyed. Babies shot. Children smashed with rifle butts. The totality of the crimes committed is reminiscent of Rwanda, Cambodia, Srebrenica. There, as in Darfur, the world did little or nothing.

Of course there are things we can do, but have not yet done. The United States is providing humanitarian aid. As Kristof says, we are managing the genocide. But we are not ending it. Perhaps it is not for us, Americans, to provide the troops needed to end this madness. But the terms of the Darfur Accountability Act, which will soon be introduced by Senators Jon Corzine and Sam Brownback, may point to things that we can do (the statements on Darfur by Corzine , Brownback, and Frank Wolf provide suggestions). Whether the terms of the bill can be effective remains to be seen, even if it is passed. All three members of Congress look to the United Nations, especially Kofi Annan and the Security Council for action. The opposition of members of the Security Council make the UN a weak reed at best. But surely direct support of the African Union is a place to start, and useful in other respects as well.

In any case, something will be done. If we don't start to act, the Janjaweed won't stop.