"Until and unless we get ground forces in there to fight side by side with the rebels,"
We (meaning the US or NATO) could simply provide at lot more close in air support of rebel forces and theater level aerial bombardment of Gaddafi's forces and infrastructure, which would break any stalemate, and I would even say guarantee rebel military victory. But, for one, that more visibly exceeds the UN mandate, for two, that risks killing *a lot* more civilians, and three, doesn't do anything to prevent or mitigate Gaddafi loyalists from going to ground and starting an insurgency of their own once the rebels declare victory. And recent history indicates that an accelerated air campaign would probably accelerate that third thing.
You conflate too much, to the point of nonsense
This is one kitchen utensil accusing another kitchen utensil of having his own pan-chromatic spectrography. To try (unsuccessfully) to be real short in what is an off-topic diversion
1) Massoud *was* the closest thing to being a good guy in all this
2) The USSR left Afghanistan in 1989
3) The Berlin fall fell in 1989, the USSR in 1991, this radically altered what the CIA and the entire US govt did all over the world.
4) With perfect 20-20 hindsight what we should have done was support the post-Soviet regime, particularly after the 'soft' revolution in 1992 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen_Victory_Day when they stopped being explicitly Marxist. But we didn't. We didn't get involved in a lot of civil wars in the 90's. The Taliban themselves were, and still are, just garden variety third world assholes. We hate some of them, are grudging allies with others, and don't give two shits about the rest. It was support to Al Qaeda that got the US Goverment's attention, and the 9/11 attacks that got the US population's attention. Otherwise, they'd still be there.
5) We built a whole lot of overpriced overdone stuff in the Cold war. We're even still paying for some of it - witness the recent Supreme Court case on the A-12.
6) The Chinese didn't build a large arsenal of nuclear weapons not because of some inscrutable wisdom and long term thinking but because a) they started 20 years late b) were a much poorer country, esp with the economic & political turmoil associated with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural revolution. Of the US, Russia, and China, China is the one to have conducted a nuclear test most recently.
7) The cold war did have standard set piece conventional military battles (Korea, and yes Vietnam, particularly in the end game). The crisis regarding the Berlin airlift shows there was a standard military aspect of a larger political struggle from the very beginning. The Islamist threat, such as it is, is entirely asymmetric from a Western point of view.
8) Last, Osama was indeed handed a gift by the Bush administration in the invasion of Iraq. If you look at Osama's strategy, it actually focuses on the 'far abroad' rather than enemies closer to home (in historically Muslim countries). It's a view that many of Osama's colleagues and followers disputed, and wound up doing their own thing anyway. But the Bush administration's epic strategic blunder post-hoc validated Osama's grand strategy - even though conducting an insurgency in Iraq (or Afghanistan or anywhere else) is ironically not what Osama felt should be a main focus in his organization. But I strongly doubt the Islamists or anyone else can count on this level of miscalculation in the future from their enemies.
Is this to imply that the somewhat arbritary 'in-group'/'out-group' split of US Citizen/non-US citizen has some normative moral standing all its own? Because we did after all deliberate target and kill the non-fictional but also non-US citizen Yamamoto.
our war in Afghanistan was so stupidly waged we managed to make enemies of former allies in the Haqqani clan, once the CIA’s most ferocious warriors against the USSR.
As a point of fact Jalaluddin Haqqani was an ally of the Taliban prior to Sept 11, 2001.
The rest of the beginning I agree with, the last 2/3 buys into the incorrect assertion (oft made by the US political right these days) that Islamism is anywhere near the existential threat Soviet Communism was. (It is in fact a neglible existential threat - which is not to say there aren't some nasty people out there who mean to do harm to Americans and others)
You're wrong about this too. The very senior Generals and Admirals are personally selected by the President and the Secretary. And every one - actually every single officer above 0-3 - has to be approved by the Senate. (the lower ranks are usually rubber stamped, but I've seen rather junior officers pulled from the promotion list because their name would raise attention if submitted).
"In every other profession, the professionals make policy"
Not really. Best example - the military. The day to day procedures and rules are indeed (for the most part) set by people in uniform itself, but big picture stuff, (and numerous details) are set by 'outsiders'. (as it should be)
Alternatively, Haiti has 40+% unemployment (and closer to 2/3 if you would use what we call the U-6 number). And a nominal GDP of between 600-700 dollars per capita, so 3 dollars a day would be actually above the average economic output per citizen.
And we don't know what the cable actually said because all we got is the slanted Nation story* and everyone on the internet that picked up on it.** Because that whole project hasn't been about transparent dissemination of government information for a while now.
* Haiti had one of the worst examples of actual no-kidding slavery in the Western Hemisphere, so I wouldn't have been so casual throwing around the term 'slave wages'
**nobody as far as I could see linked to an actual cable and a search for 'haiti levi' (no quotes) doesn't come up with anything on the .org's website
"The rise of self-containing suburbs and exurbs. Maybe some more mixed-use and walkable neighborhoods, but mostly shorter drives and people consolidating their shopping trips to super stores."
But that's the thing. Once you have a 'self-contained' anything, you basically have a city by any other name. Macy's on 34th street was a 'super store' before Sam Walton was even born.
I don't think the growth of population centers around 'satellite offices' and the like would be a new thing as much a return to an old thing. The waves of pre-automobile industrialism had some concentrated, unified areas, like NYC*, but also created many smaller but discrete cities (e.g. Cleveland/Akron, Lowell/Lawerence/Worchester around Boston, the Connecticut coast) - which have only been woven into economically interconnected 'metro areas' with the triumph of the automobile.
*but remember Brooklyn was also its own city until just before the turn of the 20th century
It's an example of the 'Sports Bar' on the internet, as coined by a frequent commenter on Unqualified Offerings (and (mostly) formerly on reason's blog), dhex.
The sports bar is the perfect metaphor to describe how people deal with partisan politics. it's bizarrely tribal and vicious and vacuous - but most importantly, it's waged on behalf of people who neither know nor care about the denizens of the sports bar and their trivia except in a macro view. (T-shirts & tickets sold standing in for polling & voting patterns)
USPS finances are a dog's breakfast all around and impossible to compare to their UPS / Fedex etc counterparts. In addition to everything that has been stated so far, a good portion of current USPS retirees are not on the balance sheet as they came in when the Post Office was a no kidding Cabinet department and/or before the pension system significantly altered in the 80's - and so are either way on a regular civil service retirement system. They don't have cargo planes but they do have a hell of a lot of vehicles (but which by now they are paying for themselves) and moreover land - which for the most part they are, iianm, not paying taxing on, and furthermore a lot of which was inherited 'free' from its legacy as a government agency.
My gut take after reading it is that
1) I belive the Obama administration has a few arrows in the quiver that would avoid a 14-1 veto scenario in the security council. Though I could see a closer vote with veto scenario.
2) A 14-1 vote would undoubtably mean that the General assembly would have the 2/3 vote required, but a closer security council vote would correlate with General assembly support that may not meet the supermajority threshold. I'd give the odds of reaching that threshold at no better than 50/50 at this time.
3) A really overwhelming vote would be hard to ignore, but a closer vote to accept a Palestinian state (that is one w/o Security Council imprimatur but with the bare 2/3 majority) would be less difficult - there's already plenty enough of internal contradictions in the UN that one more, even this relatively large one one make much difference (and of course no credible enforcement mechanism, unless the US or (maybe) everyone else on the security council - together - get involved). And of course, if it doesn't pass, status quo prevails.
Bottom line, I think this will push the issue, but not to the point of crisis that some observers - and the Palestinian leadership itself - believes it will. Or rather, it would be a crisis is would not be substanitally different than either of the last two infitadas, or the last Gaza incursion, or the last Lebanon incursion.
"1.8 million hourly-paid workers earned the federal minimum wage (1.45% of all workers)
- 2.5 million hourly-paid workers (2% of all workers) earned below the federal minimum wage due to various exceptions to it"
Well, that's one thing I would have got very wrong. I would have said, if asked, that not only the number of people at minimum wage are greater than those below min wage, but also that the former number would be a full order of magnitude than the latter.
I knew the min wage exception was mostly carved out of waitstaff and farmworkers, but I had no idea it was that big (and exceeded those at the minimum)
Term limits are awesome -particularly in a design with a strong executive - because after all is said and done, it's relatively pretty easy to steal an election (especially if you're an incumbent)
Is there a good link (or a future post) on the details of the machinations at the UN that are leading to the September vote on Palestinian statehood? I presume that the Palestinian representation at the UN and/or their proxies have been laying the groundwork for a while, but I gotta think that the events of the last few months have muddled things up, even as Abbas (for example) uses them as a reason for pushing forward even harder now.
For instance, the Arab league is in a bit of a disarray, with, among other things, their member states undergoing leadership changes, their own leader just changed out, their summit postponed, a small rift between them and the GCC over what happened in Bahrain, and a large rift between them and the African Union over what's happening in Libya. (and of these I think the last is by far the most important for rounding up UN votes)
The fundamental problem with the internet is that when people say 'spoiler warning' for Game of Thrones, they are not alerting people that may not yet have caught up to the current episode, but are in fact warning people that haven't at all read the books. :)
IANM, the Kurds made out well enough under the umbrella of the northern no fly zone and achieve some measure of soverignty from Baghdad in the interwar years (i.e. 91-03). And in the aftermath of Gulf war 2, are the only people in the world that don't want the US to leave by the end of this year.
It was the Shia Arabs (aka the 'Marsh Arabs') that got totally hosed - were rather brutally put down in an uprising that they though they were going to be supported in the aftermath of Desert Storm.
I will say Mr Blaise, that often it's hard as all heck to unpack what you write, but I really liked this:
Every war is its own problem domain, from precursors to postwar fallout: we cannot compare one war to another. That which passes, passes like clouds: today’s Big Hot Button Issue is tomorrow’s trivia question
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Cyrenaica Conflict Causes Constitutional Crisis”
"Until and unless we get ground forces in there to fight side by side with the rebels,"
We (meaning the US or NATO) could simply provide at lot more close in air support of rebel forces and theater level aerial bombardment of Gaddafi's forces and infrastructure, which would break any stalemate, and I would even say guarantee rebel military victory. But, for one, that more visibly exceeds the UN mandate, for two, that risks killing *a lot* more civilians, and three, doesn't do anything to prevent or mitigate Gaddafi loyalists from going to ground and starting an insurgency of their own once the rebels declare victory. And recent history indicates that an accelerated air campaign would probably accelerate that third thing.
On “At My Real Job: Targeted Killing and the Rule of Law”
You conflate too much, to the point of nonsense
This is one kitchen utensil accusing another kitchen utensil of having his own pan-chromatic spectrography. To try (unsuccessfully) to be real short in what is an off-topic diversion
1) Massoud *was* the closest thing to being a good guy in all this
2) The USSR left Afghanistan in 1989
3) The Berlin fall fell in 1989, the USSR in 1991, this radically altered what the CIA and the entire US govt did all over the world.
4) With perfect 20-20 hindsight what we should have done was support the post-Soviet regime, particularly after the 'soft' revolution in 1992 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen_Victory_Day when they stopped being explicitly Marxist. But we didn't. We didn't get involved in a lot of civil wars in the 90's. The Taliban themselves were, and still are, just garden variety third world assholes. We hate some of them, are grudging allies with others, and don't give two shits about the rest. It was support to Al Qaeda that got the US Goverment's attention, and the 9/11 attacks that got the US population's attention. Otherwise, they'd still be there.
5) We built a whole lot of overpriced overdone stuff in the Cold war. We're even still paying for some of it - witness the recent Supreme Court case on the A-12.
6) The Chinese didn't build a large arsenal of nuclear weapons not because of some inscrutable wisdom and long term thinking but because a) they started 20 years late b) were a much poorer country, esp with the economic & political turmoil associated with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural revolution. Of the US, Russia, and China, China is the one to have conducted a nuclear test most recently.
7) The cold war did have standard set piece conventional military battles (Korea, and yes Vietnam, particularly in the end game). The crisis regarding the Berlin airlift shows there was a standard military aspect of a larger political struggle from the very beginning. The Islamist threat, such as it is, is entirely asymmetric from a Western point of view.
8) Last, Osama was indeed handed a gift by the Bush administration in the invasion of Iraq. If you look at Osama's strategy, it actually focuses on the 'far abroad' rather than enemies closer to home (in historically Muslim countries). It's a view that many of Osama's colleagues and followers disputed, and wound up doing their own thing anyway. But the Bush administration's epic strategic blunder post-hoc validated Osama's grand strategy - even though conducting an insurgency in Iraq (or Afghanistan or anywhere else) is ironically not what Osama felt should be a main focus in his organization. But I strongly doubt the Islamists or anyone else can count on this level of miscalculation in the future from their enemies.
"
Is this to imply that the somewhat arbritary 'in-group'/'out-group' split of US Citizen/non-US citizen has some normative moral standing all its own? Because we did after all deliberate target and kill the non-fictional but also non-US citizen Yamamoto.
(To answer my own question, yes, I think it does)
"
our war in Afghanistan was so stupidly waged we managed to make enemies of former allies in the Haqqani clan, once the CIA’s most ferocious warriors against the USSR.
As a point of fact Jalaluddin Haqqani was an ally of the Taliban prior to Sept 11, 2001.
The rest of the beginning I agree with, the last 2/3 buys into the incorrect assertion (oft made by the US political right these days) that Islamism is anywhere near the existential threat Soviet Communism was. (It is in fact a neglible existential threat - which is not to say there aren't some nasty people out there who mean to do harm to Americans and others)
On “Post-GOP debate open thread”
but discount Paul despite his edge in polls, national visibility, and fundraising ability?
Because he had all those things going into New Hampshire last time (probably more than now), but very much underperformed in gettting actual votes.
On “The use of knowledge in our educational system”
You clearly have a problem with the English language today.
"
You clearly do not understand how the Service Secretariats work
"
You're wrong about this too. The very senior Generals and Admirals are personally selected by the President and the Secretary. And every one - actually every single officer above 0-3 - has to be approved by the Senate. (the lower ranks are usually rubber stamped, but I've seen rather junior officers pulled from the promotion list because their name would raise attention if submitted).
"
BlaiseP, I'm career military. I know how the systems work.
You are simply wrong. Plenty of policy is made at the undersecretary level in both the DoD as a whole and all of the service branches.
And most recently and famously, the (ongoing) repeal (*and* the initial implementation) of DADT was made by Congress.
"
"In every other profession, the professionals make policy"
Not really. Best example - the military. The day to day procedures and rules are indeed (for the most part) set by people in uniform itself, but big picture stuff, (and numerous details) are set by 'outsiders'. (as it should be)
On “How the World Works”
Alternatively, Haiti has 40+% unemployment (and closer to 2/3 if you would use what we call the U-6 number). And a nominal GDP of between 600-700 dollars per capita, so 3 dollars a day would be actually above the average economic output per citizen.
And we don't know what the cable actually said because all we got is the slanted Nation story* and everyone on the internet that picked up on it.** Because that whole project hasn't been about transparent dissemination of government information for a while now.
* Haiti had one of the worst examples of actual no-kidding slavery in the Western Hemisphere, so I wouldn't have been so casual throwing around the term 'slave wages'
**nobody as far as I could see linked to an actual cable and a search for 'haiti levi' (no quotes) doesn't come up with anything on the .org's website
On “The Car & The City”
"The rise of self-containing suburbs and exurbs. Maybe some more mixed-use and walkable neighborhoods, but mostly shorter drives and people consolidating their shopping trips to super stores."
But that's the thing. Once you have a 'self-contained' anything, you basically have a city by any other name. Macy's on 34th street was a 'super store' before Sam Walton was even born.
"
I don't think the growth of population centers around 'satellite offices' and the like would be a new thing as much a return to an old thing. The waves of pre-automobile industrialism had some concentrated, unified areas, like NYC*, but also created many smaller but discrete cities (e.g. Cleveland/Akron, Lowell/Lawerence/Worchester around Boston, the Connecticut coast) - which have only been woven into economically interconnected 'metro areas' with the triumph of the automobile.
*but remember Brooklyn was also its own city until just before the turn of the 20th century
On “Somalia and Binary Thinking”
It's an example of the 'Sports Bar' on the internet, as coined by a frequent commenter on Unqualified Offerings (and (mostly) formerly on reason's blog), dhex.
On “The Post Office’s Problems Aren’t Its Employee Costs”
USPS finances are a dog's breakfast all around and impossible to compare to their UPS / Fedex etc counterparts. In addition to everything that has been stated so far, a good portion of current USPS retirees are not on the balance sheet as they came in when the Post Office was a no kidding Cabinet department and/or before the pension system significantly altered in the 80's - and so are either way on a regular civil service retirement system. They don't have cargo planes but they do have a hell of a lot of vehicles (but which by now they are paying for themselves) and moreover land - which for the most part they are, iianm, not paying taxing on, and furthermore a lot of which was inherited 'free' from its legacy as a government agency.
On “How to Build a State”
My gut take after reading it is that
1) I belive the Obama administration has a few arrows in the quiver that would avoid a 14-1 veto scenario in the security council. Though I could see a closer vote with veto scenario.
2) A 14-1 vote would undoubtably mean that the General assembly would have the 2/3 vote required, but a closer security council vote would correlate with General assembly support that may not meet the supermajority threshold. I'd give the odds of reaching that threshold at no better than 50/50 at this time.
3) A really overwhelming vote would be hard to ignore, but a closer vote to accept a Palestinian state (that is one w/o Security Council imprimatur but with the bare 2/3 majority) would be less difficult - there's already plenty enough of internal contradictions in the UN that one more, even this relatively large one one make much difference (and of course no credible enforcement mechanism, unless the US or (maybe) everyone else on the security council - together - get involved). And of course, if it doesn't pass, status quo prevails.
Bottom line, I think this will push the issue, but not to the point of crisis that some observers - and the Palestinian leadership itself - believes it will. Or rather, it would be a crisis is would not be substanitally different than either of the last two infitadas, or the last Gaza incursion, or the last Lebanon incursion.
"
I was the one who asked. Thanks!
On “The Percentage Sign as a Signaling Device”
"1.8 million hourly-paid workers earned the federal minimum wage (1.45% of all workers)
- 2.5 million hourly-paid workers (2% of all workers) earned below the federal minimum wage due to various exceptions to it"
Well, that's one thing I would have got very wrong. I would have said, if asked, that not only the number of people at minimum wage are greater than those below min wage, but also that the former number would be a full order of magnitude than the latter.
I knew the min wage exception was mostly carved out of waitstaff and farmworkers, but I had no idea it was that big (and exceeded those at the minimum)
On “Quote for the Day”
Term limits are awesome -particularly in a design with a strong executive - because after all is said and done, it's relatively pretty easy to steal an election (especially if you're an incumbent)
On “Liveblog at the End of the Universe”
“Jesus can’t eat m&ms”.
Because he keeps on throwing away all the 'W''s? (or was that St. Peter?)
On “Only Nixon Could Go to China”
Is there a good link (or a future post) on the details of the machinations at the UN that are leading to the September vote on Palestinian statehood? I presume that the Palestinian representation at the UN and/or their proxies have been laying the groundwork for a while, but I gotta think that the events of the last few months have muddled things up, even as Abbas (for example) uses them as a reason for pushing forward even harder now.
For instance, the Arab league is in a bit of a disarray, with, among other things, their member states undergoing leadership changes, their own leader just changed out, their summit postponed, a small rift between them and the GCC over what happened in Bahrain, and a large rift between them and the African Union over what's happening in Libya. (and of these I think the last is by far the most important for rounding up UN votes)
On “Cersei”
The fundamental problem with the internet is that when people say 'spoiler warning' for Game of Thrones, they are not alerting people that may not yet have caught up to the current episode, but are in fact warning people that haven't at all read the books. :)
On “America, Forever At War”
You mean unlike Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, World War 1...?
"
IANM, the Kurds made out well enough under the umbrella of the northern no fly zone and achieve some measure of soverignty from Baghdad in the interwar years (i.e. 91-03). And in the aftermath of Gulf war 2, are the only people in the world that don't want the US to leave by the end of this year.
It was the Shia Arabs (aka the 'Marsh Arabs') that got totally hosed - were rather brutally put down in an uprising that they though they were going to be supported in the aftermath of Desert Storm.
"
I will say Mr Blaise, that often it's hard as all heck to unpack what you write, but I really liked this:
Every war is its own problem domain, from precursors to postwar fallout: we cannot compare one war to another. That which passes, passes like clouds: today’s Big Hot Button Issue is tomorrow’s trivia question
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.