Featured Find: Osama bin Laden's American Legacy

Tom Engelhardt discusses Osama bin Laden's real significance:

As is now obvious, bin Laden’s greatest wizardry was performed on us, not on the Arab world, where the movements he spawned from Yemen to North Africa have proven remarkably peripheral and unimportant.  He helped open us up to all the nightmares we could visit upon ourselves (and others) -- from torture and the creation of an offshore archipelago of injustice to the locking downof our own American world, where we were to cower in terror, while lashing out militarily.

In many ways, he broke us not on 9/11 but in the months and years after.  As a result, if we don’t have the sense to follow Senator Aiken’s advice, the wars we continue to fight with disastrous results will prove to be his monument, and our imperial graveyard (as Afghanistan has been for more than one empire in the past).

At a moment when the media and celebratory American crowds are suddenly bullish on U.S. military operations, we still have almost 100,000 American troops, 50,000 allied troops, startling numbers of armed mercenaries, and at least 400 military bases in Afghanistan almost 10 years on.  All of this as part of an endless war against one man and his organization which, according to the CIA director, is supposed to have only 50 to 100 operatives in that country.

9-11 Nine Years Later: The Definition of Insanity

Creating new enemies?This is Part III of a five-part series on the ninth anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks.

Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001 and their effects are the biggest issues of our time, they should not be discussed only briefly on or around that date, but the attacks and their implications should be explored and examined repeatedly until the problems we have created for ourselves are resolved.

It remains unclear whether Benjamin Franklin or Albert Einstein first said, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  If this quote is to be taken as truth, then our policy since September 11th, 2001 is insane.  Two principle direct, observable causes of the September 11th attacks were (1) bureaucratic incompetence - a lack of communication between the FBI and the CIA resulted in the terrorists who perpetrated the September 11th attacks falling off the grid and not re-emerging until mid-flight; and (2) aggressive policy in the Middle East - the Middle East is a fairly complicated place.  By playing politics with the Middle East, basically breaking it up into meaningless nation states - meaningless because the Middle East is largely organized along tribal or ethnic lines - we created power vacuums, which usually we tried to micromanage by supporting dictators loyal to us over the Soviets.  This stirred up grassroots hatred and caused otherwise disparate peoples to organize and unite around mutual anti-Americanism (for example, Iran's fervent support for Palestine, al Qaeda in Afghanistan).  It might have turned out differently if, while maintaining a firm grip on political control of the region, we had also encouraged economic and infrastructure development in conjunction with intra-regional competition (our East Asia strategy under MacArthur).  

Click to read more ...

July 2010 News Time Capsule

This is from the EconomistI decided to celebrate the birth of my second daughter with a rehashing of news stories from the last time I really kept a continuous link with civilization via the mass media: here is July 2010 as a time capsule of our civilization's most idiotic component.

In the Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses the famous fire hydrant experiment in which subjects were shown increasingly less blurry pictures of a fire hydrant until they were capable of identifying the object.  The experiment concluded that subjects were more likely to correctly identify the object sooner if they were shown fewer pictures.  Taleb interprets these counterintuitive results as proof that if we have discontinuous, intermittent exposure to something, we are more likely to understand that something.  He particularly discusses how intermittent exposure to news stories makes one more likely to know what's truly going on in the world than those who voraciously follow the news.

As an American living in Japan and returning to the U.S. twice a year on average, I sympathize with Taleb's premise (another post), but I think this particular overgeneralization is one of very few glaring faults in his book.  Either way, I'd like to present a news roundup of sorts.  I receive "the Slatest" everyday from Slate Magazine, which basically offers snapshots of news stories, and so I'd like to present some selected Slatest stories, and offer my visceral two cents.  Here it is:

Click to read more ...

Why Individual Freedom Sucks and We Shouldn't (Necessarily) Fear China

image courtesy of www.patriotdepot.comI'm about to commit an American taboo worse than almost anything except making a racist joke: I'm about to make the suggestion that the individual freedom held as a sacred value in Western Democracies can be bad.  As a libertarian, this is especially uncharacteristic of me, but self-criticism is necessary and awesome.  Keep in mind that I'm not saying that individual freedom is always bad; I'm simply making the point that there are trade-offs, and a strong case to be made for restraint coercive or otherwise, preferably otherwise. 

Click to read more ...

This Gift Horse has some Cavities

Looking into a gold mine - by CavinIncredibly, the news that Afghanistan, previously thought to be entirely worthless, boasts massive and incredibly valuable mineral wealth has been greeted with catcalls and cold water by seemingly everyone.  The consensus opinion holds that Obama and the Pentagon have planted the story to distract from what a terrible mess the war in Afghanistan has become.  Moreover, this story actually should be understood as bad news, since it will encourage US to stay there.  This analysis massively underestimates the gravity of an economically prosperous Afghanistan, tossing out the baby but keeping the bathwater.

 The biggest industry in Afghanistan today is terrorism.  Technically it's opium, but the value of exported opium is dwarfed by the Western money that flows into Afghanistan to deal with terrorism.

Click to read more ...

Afghanistan, I'd Like You to Meet Japan...

Tetrapods, coming soon to Afghan desserts?Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell has a good response to a New York Times story on the tremendous untapped mineral wealth of Afghanistan.  (Basically, Hounshell finds the timing of the story suspect given the current negative news cycle on Afghanistan and the fact that knowledge of Afghanistan's mineral wealth has been freely available on the Internet since 2007.)  For our Japanophiliac purposes, however, I'd like to focus on Hounshell's conclusion:

According to an article in the journal Industrial Minerals, "Afghanistan has the lowest cement production in the world at 2kg per capita; in neighbouring Pakistan it is 92kg per capita and in the UK it is 200kg per capita."Afghanistan's cement plants were built by a Czech company in the 1950s, and nobody's invested in them since the 1970s. Most of Afghanistan's cement is imported today, mainly from Pakistan and Iran. Apparently the mining ministry has been working to set up four new plants, but they are only expected to meet about half the country's cement needs.

Click to read more ...

Brookings: How We're Doing in the World

Brookings recently released its annual survey of how the U.S. is doing in the world, a series of indices for the last four years concerning foreign policy and diplomacy as well as global economics and development.  According to the survey, the United States has made considerable diplomatic progress under the Obama Administration in nearly all spheres, while global economic indicators have gotten decidedly worse across the board.  And while this shouldn't surprise anyone, the progress made over the last two years goes to show the enduring power of a cooperative and cordial international stance and good PR, and the statistics highlight several neglected issues.

Click to read more ...

Justified Homicide: Drone Warfare

Drone Attacks in PakistanThe Telegraph published results from a study by the New America Foundation that estimates that 32% of deaths caused by drones attacks in Pakistan since 2004 were civilians.

Their report, The Year of the Drone, studied 114 drone raids in which more than 1200 people were killed. Of those, between 549 and 849 were reliably reported to be militant fighters, while the rest were civilians.

"The true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32 per cent," the foundation reported.

The actual study demonstrates how difficult it is to reliably ascertain who was killed by the attacks, as the confirmed number killed varies from 834 to 1,216.  If just the total casualty count varies by that much it's hard to imagine that knowing who exactly is included in the deaths is all that precise.  Nevertheless, the ratio of combatants to fatalities in either the low (34%) or the high (30%) estimate are close enough that their figure passes the smell test.

Click to read more ...

Flawless Victory: Airstrikes and COIN

Yesterday, in a television address that was aired nationally in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChystal apologized for the NATO airstrike on Sunday that mistook a civilian bus convoy for insurgent reenforcement to the battle in Marja and resulted in as many as 27 deaths including four women and a child.  Apart from wondering about efficacy of television addresses as strategic communication in a country where in 2005 only 19% of households owned a TV, NATO's newfound sensitivity to civilian collateral damage underscores the difficulty of counter-insurgency warfare.  Can the U.S. win wars fought with its principal advantages used sparingly, a tactical necessity to avoid any mistakes to adhere to larger strategic goals and sharp political reprisals from allied leaders should any errors occur?  Moreover, will we have the patience and will to even try?

Click to read more ...

The Silent Good Times Roll

If you listen to the mood of cultural zeitgeist right now, you'd think the world was slipping inevitably towards calamitous anarchy.  The economy is in decline, our cultural values are eroding and America's place in the world is in doubt even as we are confronted with a multitude of problems: two wars, climate change, pandemic disease, Islamic terrorism, the rise of China and a looming deficit, debt and entitlement problem.  While this analysis contains some of substance, this granular reality obscures a larger truth: things in the world and in America are better than at any time in history, perhaps excepting five years ago when we had all of this plus a housing bubble.  This relatively brief moment of crisis has not weakened the core strength of American society, culture and economy and the arc of history continues to bend towards increasing societal welfare.

Click to read more ...

A New Plan for Afghanistan

our newest allies?Today, world leaders, including Hamid Karzai, are meeting in London to shape a plan for reintegrating the Taliban into Afghan society.  Al-Jazeera reports that a $1 billion fund for luring Taliban fighters away is being gathered from contributions from Japan, the U.S. and the U.K.  The tactic hopes reintegrate that milder elements of the Taliban in Afghan society with the promise of new jobs focusing on infrastructure and rural development.  This is an important step that the Inductive has advocated in the past.  Rather than an indication on failure from the Afghan Surge, the new plan could serve as a turning point in the war effort.

Click to read more ...

Osama bin Laden is Conan and America is NBC

The upcoming trial of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed should be used to redefine the War on Terror as being about bringing the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice.

The Washington Post recently reported that al Qaeda Grand Poohbah, Osama bin Laden, has endorsed the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound jet:

The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes of the Sept. 11," he said of the Nigerian suspect in the Dec. 25 botched attack.

"If our messages had been able to reach you through words we wouldn't have been delivering them through planes."

Directing his statements at President Barack Obama - "from Osama to Obama," he said - bin Laden added: "America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine."

While bin Laden would seemingly make a perfect Bond villain, this is a non-story.

Click to read more ...

Book Review: David Loyn - In Afghanistan

In a new reoccurring feature, The Inductive will review relevant policy books.

David Loyn's In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian and American Occupation tells the story of history forgotten and repeated.  Afghanistan has never been important in and of itself, but it touches so many important things, geographically, strategically, politically and religiously, that the great powers sought to possess it and had to pay again and again to learn that it will not be ruled.  Peppered with references to current battles in its descriptions of the violence of antiquity and as it reaches the modern day the locations reveal the permanent violence that we continue.  I felt overwhelmed by the sense that our current war there was not even the culmination of history, but its pathetic continuation as a lesson forever unlearned.  

Click to read more ...

Obama Makes No One Happy: Afghanistan Surge

David Guttenfelder Photo of Troops Sleeping in AfghanistanThere is a great Calvin and Hobbes quote - "A good compromise leaves everyone mad" - that sums up Obama's decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.  The left has learned more about this war it wants nothing more to do with, while the right does not like Obama's plan to start removing troops in July 2011 as it seems defeatist.  I'm more charitable, but then this is exactly the recommendation I gave last month: give the generals what they want on the condition of leaving, rather than create a fragile peace that invested us there long term.  In a vacuum we should just leave now, but Afghanistan isn't a vacuum.

Click to read more ...

Germany's Paradox in Afghanistan

Afghan Security Forces inspect the remains of a bombed fuel tanker. (AP/Getty Images)At 1:51 a.m. on the morning of September the 4th, German Colonel Georg Klein ordered two American F-15's to bomb a pair of stranded fuel tankers that had been hijacked by the Taliban only hours earlier.  There were people swarming around the tankers at the time, but an informant had confirmed that they were all Taliban, including four leaders.  NATO General Rules of Engagement and Standard Operations Procedures require specific conditions for calling in an air strike: the target must be time sensitive and NATO troops must be in immediate danger in the area.  Neither was true that night; there were no NATO troops present and the tankers had been stuck in the mud for hours.  NATO rules alternately call for a warning to limit civilian casualties and so the American pilots asked to fly over the tankers at a low altitude- a "show of force" to give the people on the ground a chance to flee.  Klein refused the request and ordered an immediate bombing - perhaps in response to intelligence that the Taliban was going to use trucks in an attack on the Germans.  With Klein's terse "weapons release" order, the "planes released two GBU-38 radar-guided bombs, each with a 500-pound warhead. The target dissolved in an enormous fireball."  Rather than entirely consisting of Taliban, at least 79 Afghan villagers were killed in the process of unloading the fuel for the Taliban under armed coercion. 

Click to read more ...