"The government calmly goes on printing these scraps of paper, because, if it stopped, that would be the end of the government. Because once the printing presses stopped - and that is the prerequisite for the stabilization of the currency - the swindle would at once be brought to light. Believe me, our misery will increase. The scoundrel will get by. The reason: because the State itself has become the biggest swindler and crook. A robbers' state! If the horrified people notice that they can starve on billions, they must arrive at this conclusion: we will no longer submit to a State which is built on the swindling idea of the majority. We want a dictatorship." Adolph Hitler, quoted in Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
06 April 2009
Quote of the day
Please note, then, for the record: the penalty for unleashing hyperinflation can be horrible; can be tragic:
McArdle on the new Mark to Market FASB rules
So... YOU are a bank. You own some stuff. How much is that stuff worth? What you paid for it? Something else? Or is it worth what you could get if you sold that stuff?
As my sister says, Well.
The third choice passes the smell test, the common sense test, and the intuitive test: something is worth what you can sell it for.
Problem: houses that banks own are often worth a lot less than they were a little bit ago. Therefore, banks have less money. Therefore, they can lend less money. Therefore, the economy slows down and may deflate.
Ach, du lieber!
So, with the encouragement of .... God alone knows who... the financial accounting standards board (FASB) has agreed that banks can value property at what they think they can sell for in the future.
Obviously, this is fraught: "Gee, Joe, maybe some demented kazillionaire will walk down the street and give us the full value for the house. Look, a flying pig!"
Well, as Megan points out, banks are still required to back out the difference in the notes of the prospectus.
As Megan further points out, if you're too damn lazy to read, you're either too damn lazy to invest or your deserve screwing yourself.
And none of this has been covered in the financial press. Which is why you should read Megan!
As my sister says, Well.
The third choice passes the smell test, the common sense test, and the intuitive test: something is worth what you can sell it for.
Problem: houses that banks own are often worth a lot less than they were a little bit ago. Therefore, banks have less money. Therefore, they can lend less money. Therefore, the economy slows down and may deflate.
Ach, du lieber!
So, with the encouragement of .... God alone knows who... the financial accounting standards board (FASB) has agreed that banks can value property at what they think they can sell for in the future.
Obviously, this is fraught: "Gee, Joe, maybe some demented kazillionaire will walk down the street and give us the full value for the house. Look, a flying pig!"
Well, as Megan points out, banks are still required to back out the difference in the notes of the prospectus.
As Megan further points out, if you're too damn lazy to read, you're either too damn lazy to invest or your deserve screwing yourself.
And none of this has been covered in the financial press. Which is why you should read Megan!
25 March 2009
A Conversation With David Kilcullen
A Conversation With David Kilcullen
Interview by Carlos Lozada
Sunday, March 22, 2009; B02
Why is an Aussie anthropologist coaching American generals on how to win wars? David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq, has spent years studying insurgencies in countries from Indonesia to Afghanistan, distinguishing hard-core terrorists from "accidental guerrillas" -- and his theories are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West. Kilcullen spoke with Outlook's Carlos Lozada on why Pakistan is poised for collapse, whether catching Osama bin Laden is really a good idea and how the Enlightenment and Lawrence of Arabia helped Washington shift course in Iraq. Excerpts:
What is the real central front in the war on terror?
Pakistan. Hands down. No doubt.
Why?
Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.
How important is it to kill or capture Osama bin laden?
Not very. It depends on who does it. Let me give you two possible scenarios. Scenario one is, American commandos shoot their way into some valley in Pakistan and kill bin Laden. That doesn't end the war on terror; it makes bin Laden a martyr. But here's scenario two: Imagine that a tribal raiding party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, "You are a traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed infidels, and we're now going to deal with you." They could either then try and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to the International Criminal Court. If that happened, that would be the end of the al-Qaeda myth.
President Obama has said that he will be "as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in." Is his decision to remove combat forces by August 2010 and leave 50,000 non-combat troops careful or careless?
I think it is politically careful. The distinction between combat and non-combat forces in a counterinsurgency environment is largely theoretical. Anyone who is still in Iraq will actually or potentially be engaged in combat.
How much longer will the war last?
The intervention ends when the locals can handle it. Right now they can't. I think that within three to five years, we can say that the chance that the Iraqis will be able to hold their own against their internal threats is pretty high. So I'd say we have another three to five years of substantial engagement in Iraq. But one other factor here is external interference. What are the Iranians doing, what are the Saudis doing, what are the Jordanians and the Syrians doing? The Iraq part is not the problem, it's the regional security part that is the problem.
When history has its say, who will be the real father of the surge? Is it Jack Keane, David Petraeus, Raymond Odierno, Fred Kagan? Someone else?
It's Petraeus. If this thing had [expletive] up, everyone would be blaming Petraeus. You wouldn't find Keane and Odierno and Kagan and President Bush and everyone else stepping forward. So I think the true father of the thing was and is Petraeus.
You argue in your book, "The Accidental Guerrilla," that if Petraeus had been killed in Iraq, the impact on morale alone could have lost the war. Do you fault President Bush for feeding the cult of Petraeus?
Our biggest problem during the surge was a hostile American Congress. They could have killed the thing. There was really nobody except [Senators] McCain and Lieberman arguing for a continued commitment. So I don't fault President Bush for pushing General Petraeus forward. I think what he was trying to do was to find a figure with sufficient credibility to restore hope within Congress and to gain a measure of support for the effort from the U.S. domestic population.
What are the lessons of Iraq that most apply to Afghanistan?
I would say there are three. The first one is you've got to protect the population. Unless you make people feel safe, they won't be willing to engage in unarmed politics. The second lesson is, once you've made people safe, you've got to focus on getting the population on your side and making them self-defending. And then a third lesson is, you've got to make a long-term commitment.
Obama has suggested that it might be possible to reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, along the lines of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq. Would that work?
If the Taliban sees that we're negotiating for a stay of execution or to stave off defeat, that's going to harden their resolve. . . . I'm all for negotiating, but I think the chances of achieving a mass wave of people turning against the Taliban are somewhat lower in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq.
Did the U.S. military take too long to change course in Iraq?
I think it took them a historically standard period of time. In Vietnam it took three to four years to reorient. In Malaya the British took about the same amount of time. In Northern Ireland they took longer. The British in Iraq took longer than the Americans in Iraq. And again, it was Petraeus. . . . He put forward this whole change movement within the military. We were almost like insurgents within the U.S. government. My marker of success is that when I first arrived, we had to talk in whispers about stuff that is now considered commonplace. The conventional wisdom now was totally unorthodox in '04, '05.
Does having a medieval scholar as a father affect how you see war?
My father is a true believer in the Enlightenment. He always encouraged me to develop an evidence-based approach to whatever you do. But the other thing is, when I was 10 years old, my dad gave me a copy of a book by Robert Graves called "Good-Bye to All That," which is about the first World War. That was where I first encountered T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And as a child I was steeped in Lawrence's way of thinking about tribes. In tribal warfare you don't go directly to your objectives, you work through a ladder of tribes. You go from one tribe to the next tribe to the next tribe to get to your objective. That's what we tried to do in Iraq.
In 2006 you wrote an essay on counterinsurgency called "28 Articles," one-upping Lawrence's "27 Articles." Do you consider yourself a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia?
No. I don't think there is a modern equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia. But we can all learn from his thinking about insurgency. The other thing about Lawrence is he understood and worked with the cultures that he dealt with, and he spent the rest of his life advocating policies to support the welfare of those people. He was one the biggest advocates of Arab independence, even when his own nation's policies were against that.
Interview by Carlos Lozada
Sunday, March 22, 2009; B02
Why is an Aussie anthropologist coaching American generals on how to win wars? David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq, has spent years studying insurgencies in countries from Indonesia to Afghanistan, distinguishing hard-core terrorists from "accidental guerrillas" -- and his theories are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West. Kilcullen spoke with Outlook's Carlos Lozada on why Pakistan is poised for collapse, whether catching Osama bin Laden is really a good idea and how the Enlightenment and Lawrence of Arabia helped Washington shift course in Iraq. Excerpts:
What is the real central front in the war on terror?
Pakistan. Hands down. No doubt.
Why?
Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.
Let's start talking about the particular issue that worries me. Pakistan has 100 nukes, and enough technology to potentially get an airplane 37,000 feet (about 11,300 meters) in the air with a device on board. Properly placed, that takes down ALL the electronics between Boston and DC.
How important is it to kill or capture Osama bin laden?
Not very. It depends on who does it. Let me give you two possible scenarios. Scenario one is, American commandos shoot their way into some valley in Pakistan and kill bin Laden. That doesn't end the war on terror; it makes bin Laden a martyr. But here's scenario two: Imagine that a tribal raiding party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, "You are a traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed infidels, and we're now going to deal with you." They could either then try and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to the International Criminal Court. If that happened, that would be the end of the al-Qaeda myth.
Someone ought to be carving this on a mountain. To the extend that OBL is a threat, just making him disappear will do it. If his body gets laid out surrounded by 15 children killed with him, the damage really outweighs the gain.
President Obama has said that he will be "as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in." Is his decision to remove combat forces by August 2010 and leave 50,000 non-combat troops careful or careless?
I think it is politically careful. The distinction between combat and non-combat forces in a counterinsurgency environment is largely theoretical. Anyone who is still in Iraq will actually or potentially be engaged in combat.
How much longer will the war last?
The intervention ends when the locals can handle it. Right now they can't. I think that within three to five years, we can say that the chance that the Iraqis will be able to hold their own against their internal threats is pretty high. So I'd say we have another three to five years of substantial engagement in Iraq. But one other factor here is external interference. What are the Iranians doing, what are the Saudis doing, what are the Jordanians and the Syrians doing? The Iraq part is not the problem, it's the regional security part that is the problem.
When history has its say, who will be the real father of the surge? Is it Jack Keane, David Petraeus, Raymond Odierno, Fred Kagan? Someone else?
It's Petraeus. If this thing had [expletive] up, everyone would be blaming Petraeus. You wouldn't find Keane and Odierno and Kagan and President Bush and everyone else stepping forward. So I think the true father of the thing was and is Petraeus.
You argue in your book, "The Accidental Guerrilla," that if Petraeus had been killed in Iraq, the impact on morale alone could have lost the war. Do you fault President Bush for feeding the cult of Petraeus?
Our biggest problem during the surge was a hostile American Congress. They could have killed the thing. There was really nobody except [Senators] McCain and Lieberman arguing for a continued commitment. So I don't fault President Bush for pushing General Petraeus forward. I think what he was trying to do was to find a figure with sufficient credibility to restore hope within Congress and to gain a measure of support for the effort from the U.S. domestic population.
What are the lessons of Iraq that most apply to Afghanistan?
I would say there are three. The first one is you've got to protect the population. Unless you make people feel safe, they won't be willing to engage in unarmed politics. The second lesson is, once you've made people safe, you've got to focus on getting the population on your side and making them self-defending. And then a third lesson is, you've got to make a long-term commitment.
Obama has suggested that it might be possible to reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, along the lines of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq. Would that work?
If the Taliban sees that we're negotiating for a stay of execution or to stave off defeat, that's going to harden their resolve. . . . I'm all for negotiating, but I think the chances of achieving a mass wave of people turning against the Taliban are somewhat lower in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq.
Did the U.S. military take too long to change course in Iraq?
I think it took them a historically standard period of time. In Vietnam it took three to four years to reorient. In Malaya the British took about the same amount of time. In Northern Ireland they took longer. The British in Iraq took longer than the Americans in Iraq. And again, it was Petraeus. . . . He put forward this whole change movement within the military. We were almost like insurgents within the U.S. government. My marker of success is that when I first arrived, we had to talk in whispers about stuff that is now considered commonplace. The conventional wisdom now was totally unorthodox in '04, '05.
Does having a medieval scholar as a father affect how you see war?
My father is a true believer in the Enlightenment. He always encouraged me to develop an evidence-based approach to whatever you do. But the other thing is, when I was 10 years old, my dad gave me a copy of a book by Robert Graves called "Good-Bye to All That," which is about the first World War. That was where I first encountered T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And as a child I was steeped in Lawrence's way of thinking about tribes. In tribal warfare you don't go directly to your objectives, you work through a ladder of tribes. You go from one tribe to the next tribe to the next tribe to get to your objective. That's what we tried to do in Iraq.
In 2006 you wrote an essay on counterinsurgency called "28 Articles," one-upping Lawrence's "27 Articles." Do you consider yourself a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia?
No. I don't think there is a modern equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia. But we can all learn from his thinking about insurgency. The other thing about Lawrence is he understood and worked with the cultures that he dealt with, and he spent the rest of his life advocating policies to support the welfare of those people. He was one the biggest advocates of Arab independence, even when his own nation's policies were against that.
A Conversation With David Kilcullen
A Conversation With David Kilcullen
Interview by Carlos Lozada
Sunday, March 22, 2009; B02
Why is an Aussie anthropologist coaching American generals on how to win wars? David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq, has spent years studying insurgencies in countries from Indonesia to Afghanistan, distinguishing hard-core terrorists from "accidental guerrillas" -- and his theories are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West. Kilcullen spoke with Outlook's Carlos Lozada on why Pakistan is poised for collapse, whether catching Osama bin Laden is really a good idea and how the Enlightenment and Lawrence of Arabia helped Washington shift course in Iraq. Excerpts:
What is the real central front in the war on terror?
Pakistan. Hands down. No doubt.
Why?
Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.
How important is it to kill or capture Osama bin laden?
Not very. It depends on who does it. Let me give you two possible scenarios. Scenario one is, American commandos shoot their way into some valley in Pakistan and kill bin Laden. That doesn't end the war on terror; it makes bin Laden a martyr. But here's scenario two: Imagine that a tribal raiding party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, "You are a traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed infidels, and we're now going to deal with you." They could either then try and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to the International Criminal Court. If that happened, that would be the end of the al-Qaeda myth.
President Obama has said that he will be "as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in." Is his decision to remove combat forces by August 2010 and leave 50,000 non-combat troops careful or careless?
I think it is politically careful. The distinction between combat and non-combat forces in a counterinsurgency environment is largely theoretical. Anyone who is still in Iraq will actually or potentially be engaged in combat.
How much longer will the war last?
The intervention ends when the locals can handle it. Right now they can't. I think that within three to five years, we can say that the chance that the Iraqis will be able to hold their own against their internal threats is pretty high. So I'd say we have another three to five years of substantial engagement in Iraq. But one other factor here is external interference. What are the Iranians doing, what are the Saudis doing, what are the Jordanians and the Syrians doing? The Iraq part is not the problem, it's the regional security part that is the problem.
When history has its say, who will be the real father of the surge? Is it Jack Keane, David Petraeus, Raymond Odierno, Fred Kagan? Someone else?
It's Petraeus. If this thing had [expletive] up, everyone would be blaming Petraeus. You wouldn't find Keane and Odierno and Kagan and President Bush and everyone else stepping forward. So I think the true father of the thing was and is Petraeus.
You argue in your book, "The Accidental Guerrilla," that if Petraeus had been killed in Iraq, the impact on morale alone could have lost the war. Do you fault President Bush for feeding the cult of Petraeus?
Our biggest problem during the surge was a hostile American Congress. They could have killed the thing. There was really nobody except [Senators] McCain and Lieberman arguing for a continued commitment. So I don't fault President Bush for pushing General Petraeus forward. I think what he was trying to do was to find a figure with sufficient credibility to restore hope within Congress and to gain a measure of support for the effort from the U.S. domestic population.
What are the lessons of Iraq that most apply to Afghanistan?
I would say there are three. The first one is you've got to protect the population. Unless you make people feel safe, they won't be willing to engage in unarmed politics. The second lesson is, once you've made people safe, you've got to focus on getting the population on your side and making them self-defending. And then a third lesson is, you've got to make a long-term commitment.
Obama has suggested that it might be possible to reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, along the lines of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq. Would that work?
If the Taliban sees that we're negotiating for a stay of execution or to stave off defeat, that's going to harden their resolve. . . . I'm all for negotiating, but I think the chances of achieving a mass wave of people turning against the Taliban are somewhat lower in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq.
Did the U.S. military take too long to change course in Iraq?
I think it took them a historically standard period of time. In Vietnam it took three to four years to reorient. In Malaya the British took about the same amount of time. In Northern Ireland they took longer. The British in Iraq took longer than the Americans in Iraq. And again, it was Petraeus. . . . He put forward this whole change movement within the military. We were almost like insurgents within the U.S. government. My marker of success is that when I first arrived, we had to talk in whispers about stuff that is now considered commonplace. The conventional wisdom now was totally unorthodox in '04, '05.
Does having a medieval scholar as a father affect how you see war?
My father is a true believer in the Enlightenment. He always encouraged me to develop an evidence-based approach to whatever you do. But the other thing is, when I was 10 years old, my dad gave me a copy of a book by Robert Graves called "Good-Bye to All That," which is about the first World War. That was where I first encountered T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And as a child I was steeped in Lawrence's way of thinking about tribes. In tribal warfare you don't go directly to your objectives, you work through a ladder of tribes. You go from one tribe to the next tribe to the next tribe to get to your objective. That's what we tried to do in Iraq.
In 2006 you wrote an essay on counterinsurgency called "28 Articles," one-upping Lawrence's "27 Articles." Do you consider yourself a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia?
No. I don't think there is a modern equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia. But we can all learn from his thinking about insurgency. The other thing about Lawrence is he understood and worked with the cultures that he dealt with, and he spent the rest of his life advocating policies to support the welfare of those people. He was one the biggest advocates of Arab independence, even when his own nation's policies were against that.
Interview by Carlos Lozada
Sunday, March 22, 2009; B02
Why is an Aussie anthropologist coaching American generals on how to win wars? David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq, has spent years studying insurgencies in countries from Indonesia to Afghanistan, distinguishing hard-core terrorists from "accidental guerrillas" -- and his theories are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West. Kilcullen spoke with Outlook's Carlos Lozada on why Pakistan is poised for collapse, whether catching Osama bin Laden is really a good idea and how the Enlightenment and Lawrence of Arabia helped Washington shift course in Iraq. Excerpts:
What is the real central front in the war on terror?
Pakistan. Hands down. No doubt.
Why?
Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.
How important is it to kill or capture Osama bin laden?
Not very. It depends on who does it. Let me give you two possible scenarios. Scenario one is, American commandos shoot their way into some valley in Pakistan and kill bin Laden. That doesn't end the war on terror; it makes bin Laden a martyr. But here's scenario two: Imagine that a tribal raiding party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, "You are a traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed infidels, and we're now going to deal with you." They could either then try and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to the International Criminal Court. If that happened, that would be the end of the al-Qaeda myth.
President Obama has said that he will be "as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in." Is his decision to remove combat forces by August 2010 and leave 50,000 non-combat troops careful or careless?
I think it is politically careful. The distinction between combat and non-combat forces in a counterinsurgency environment is largely theoretical. Anyone who is still in Iraq will actually or potentially be engaged in combat.
How much longer will the war last?
The intervention ends when the locals can handle it. Right now they can't. I think that within three to five years, we can say that the chance that the Iraqis will be able to hold their own against their internal threats is pretty high. So I'd say we have another three to five years of substantial engagement in Iraq. But one other factor here is external interference. What are the Iranians doing, what are the Saudis doing, what are the Jordanians and the Syrians doing? The Iraq part is not the problem, it's the regional security part that is the problem.
When history has its say, who will be the real father of the surge? Is it Jack Keane, David Petraeus, Raymond Odierno, Fred Kagan? Someone else?
It's Petraeus. If this thing had [expletive] up, everyone would be blaming Petraeus. You wouldn't find Keane and Odierno and Kagan and President Bush and everyone else stepping forward. So I think the true father of the thing was and is Petraeus.
You argue in your book, "The Accidental Guerrilla," that if Petraeus had been killed in Iraq, the impact on morale alone could have lost the war. Do you fault President Bush for feeding the cult of Petraeus?
Our biggest problem during the surge was a hostile American Congress. They could have killed the thing. There was really nobody except [Senators] McCain and Lieberman arguing for a continued commitment. So I don't fault President Bush for pushing General Petraeus forward. I think what he was trying to do was to find a figure with sufficient credibility to restore hope within Congress and to gain a measure of support for the effort from the U.S. domestic population.
What are the lessons of Iraq that most apply to Afghanistan?
I would say there are three. The first one is you've got to protect the population. Unless you make people feel safe, they won't be willing to engage in unarmed politics. The second lesson is, once you've made people safe, you've got to focus on getting the population on your side and making them self-defending. And then a third lesson is, you've got to make a long-term commitment.
Obama has suggested that it might be possible to reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, along the lines of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq. Would that work?
If the Taliban sees that we're negotiating for a stay of execution or to stave off defeat, that's going to harden their resolve. . . . I'm all for negotiating, but I think the chances of achieving a mass wave of people turning against the Taliban are somewhat lower in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq.
Did the U.S. military take too long to change course in Iraq?
I think it took them a historically standard period of time. In Vietnam it took three to four years to reorient. In Malaya the British took about the same amount of time. In Northern Ireland they took longer. The British in Iraq took longer than the Americans in Iraq. And again, it was Petraeus. . . . He put forward this whole change movement within the military. We were almost like insurgents within the U.S. government. My marker of success is that when I first arrived, we had to talk in whispers about stuff that is now considered commonplace. The conventional wisdom now was totally unorthodox in '04, '05.
Does having a medieval scholar as a father affect how you see war?
My father is a true believer in the Enlightenment. He always encouraged me to develop an evidence-based approach to whatever you do. But the other thing is, when I was 10 years old, my dad gave me a copy of a book by Robert Graves called "Good-Bye to All That," which is about the first World War. That was where I first encountered T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And as a child I was steeped in Lawrence's way of thinking about tribes. In tribal warfare you don't go directly to your objectives, you work through a ladder of tribes. You go from one tribe to the next tribe to the next tribe to get to your objective. That's what we tried to do in Iraq.
In 2006 you wrote an essay on counterinsurgency called "28 Articles," one-upping Lawrence's "27 Articles." Do you consider yourself a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia?
No. I don't think there is a modern equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia. But we can all learn from his thinking about insurgency. The other thing about Lawrence is he understood and worked with the cultures that he dealt with, and he spent the rest of his life advocating policies to support the welfare of those people. He was one the biggest advocates of Arab independence, even when his own nation's policies were against that.
16 March 2009
An anthem
Yep, the emphasis is mine:
Whether the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth—
These are matters of high concern
Where State-kept schoolmen are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.
Whether The People be led by The Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by vote—
These are things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.
Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give,
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King—
Or Holy People’s Will—
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!
Saying—after—me:—
Once there was The People—Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once there was The People—it shall never be again!
Whether the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth—
These are matters of high concern
Where State-kept schoolmen are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.
Whether The People be led by The Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by vote—
These are things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.
Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give,
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King—
Or Holy People’s Will—
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!
Saying—after—me:—
Once there was The People—Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once there was The People—it shall never be again!
Wherefore
Quickie definition of an Episcopalian -- before the retromingent pithecoids of the liturgical commission got 'hold of the Book of Common Prayer -- "someone who can correctly use 'wherefore' in a sentence."
The Word of the Day for March 15, 2009 is:
wherefore • \WAIR-for\ • adverb
*1 : for what reason or purpose : why
2 : therefore
Example Sentence:
"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)
Did you know?
In our example sentence, Juliet is not inquiring into her beloved's whereabouts. Rather she is asking why it is that Romeo must be Romeo, a member of the Montague family and, therefore, an enemy of Juliet's own family, the Capulets. Yet, wherefore does "wherefore" mean "why"? Starting in the early 13th century, a number of new words were formed by combining "where" with a preposition. In such words, "where" had the meaning of "what" or "which," giving the English language such adverbs as "wherein" ("in what"), "whereon" ("on what"), and "wherefore" ("for what"). English speakers have largely dropped "wherefore" in favor of "why," but the noun "wherefore," meaning "an answer or statement giving an explanation," continues to be used, particularly in the phrase "the whys and wherefores."
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
13 March 2009
Facebook News Feed version of Hamlet.
Polonius says Hamlet’s crazy … crazy in love!
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet are now friends.
Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.
Hamlet thinks Ophelia might be happier in a convent.
Ophelia removed “moody princes” from her interests.
Hamlet posted an event: A Play That’s Totally Fictional and In No Way About My Family
The king commented on Hamlet’s play: “What is wrong with you?”
Polonius thinks this curtain looks like a good thing to hide behind.
Polonius is no longer online.
09 March 2009
wisdom
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane
01 March 2009
Paul Harvey, RIP
http://www.abcrn.com/harvey/index.html
I can remember, as a young man, being of two minds wrt his voice. When my oldest son was three, he used to refer to the noon broadcast as "Paw Harvey".
Harvey was a welcome contrast to the lockstep of the MSM. Goodspeed, Mr. Harvey.
I can remember, as a young man, being of two minds wrt his voice. When my oldest son was three, he used to refer to the noon broadcast as "Paw Harvey".
Harvey was a welcome contrast to the lockstep of the MSM. Goodspeed, Mr. Harvey.
25 February 2009
Genesis of a Crisis
Courtesy of the the always interesting Foundation for Teaching Economics (FTE) comes an overview of the economic crisis and the causes written by Prof. Dale DeBoer, Chairman, Department of Economics, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs:
Read the rest here.
It would be nice if the cause of the credit crisis could easily be pinned on poor government regulation, greedy lenders, or careless borrowers. Unfortunately, no one actor is to blame and the causes of the crisis extend back in time. This makes developing an understanding of the crisis a bit of a history lesson.
In 1973 (unfortunately, the story goes back at least that far), the Bretton Woods Monetary System came to an end. The Bretton Woods System was a global mechanism for maintaining fixed exchange rates and encouraging international economic interconnections. At the heart of the system was the U.S. dollar. Under this system, the U.S. government maintained (at least initially) a promise of backing every $35 issued with 1 ounce of gold. This promise constrained U.S. ability to expand the money supply and provide liquidity to markets. Unfortunately, this promise proved unsustainable due to global and domestic need for more liquidity than was possible under the gold constraint. This led the Nixon Administration to move the dollar to an international “float” by 1973. By moving the dollar to a float, any inherent limit on the number of dollars in circulation was removed. Rather, the volume of money in the economy became constrained only by the good faith of the monetary authority – the Fed. Fortunately, the Fed maintained this faith well for 25 years. Unfortunately, it is clear that this restraint waned in recent years.
Adding to the complexity of events, by the 1980s the Japanese economy had attained economic maturity. With this economic maturity came high levels of savings. During the 1980s, a significant portion of these savings found outlet in the global economy. Given the dominant position of the U.S. economy, a large share flowed into the U.S. economy. This flow into the U.S. was greeted with some domestic alarm (a very visible instance centered on the Japanese purchase of Rockefeller Center in 1989), yet the inward flows continued.
The savings flow from Japan did slow somewhat with the downturn of the Japanese economy during the early 1990s. However, waiting to take up the slack were the South Korean and Chinese economies. The significant trade surpluses these countries ran with the U.S. kept a large flow of foreign savings coming into the U.S. These foreign financial inflows kept the cost of borrowing low in the U.S. and helped fund the strong economic performance of the U.S. economy during the 1990s.
Unfortunately, much of the world did not mirror the strong growth of the U.S. economy. Growth in the European economies was slowed by the costs of adopting the euro. Worse, the East Asian economies fell into a serious economic contraction in 1997 and the Russian economy was hit by a separate crisis in 1998. With the U.S. the dominant global economic actor, the world looked to us to provide stability. Further, these crises had direct ramifications for the U.S. economy. The Dow Industrial Average saw a 10 percent fall in 1997, and an additional fall of 17 percent in 1998 (though there was a recovery in value between the two downturns). Beyond declines in the broader market, U.S. officials saw evidence of risk of a serious financial collapse with the failure of Long- Term Capital Management hedge fund. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as it may turn out), the Fed responded to these risks by utilizing the increased discretionary ability it gained following the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement. It increased the money supply to stabilize the economy (this is seen by the ¾ point lowering of the Federal Funds Rate in 1998-99). It is noteworthy that the Fed acted to stimulate the economy through an expansion of the money supply in the midst of the longest peacetime expansion in the history of the United States. For our story, the import lies with the Fed reinforcing the expansion in liquidity already underway due to the inflows of foreign savings.
Beginning in late 1999, the Fed did try to rein in liquidity by raising interest rates (to a high of 6.5 percent). Unfortunately, the economic downturn of 2001-02 forced the Fed to reverse this tightening, and by 2004 the Federal Funds Rate had fallen to 1 percent. The Fed was more aggressively pushing liquidity into the economy than at any time in history. And the policy was successful – the recession of 2001-02 was very shallow and short lived. But all that money needed an outlet; one turned out to be the market for housing.
It would be easy to make too much – or too little – of this part of the story. The high levels of liquidity generated by inflows of foreign savings and loose domestic monetary policy were not the cause of the current credit crisis. However, without this liquidity the run up in the housing market would have been unlikely to occur. As such, high levels of liquidity provided one important contributor to the ongoing credit crisis. The change in financial oversight provides another.
Read the rest here.
24 February 2009
Tea party this Friday in DC
Feb. 27 (Friday)
Washington DC Tea Party -
12:00pm - 2:00 pm- Washington Monument
Sponsors:
* Americans for Prosperity
* Americans for Tax Reform
* Young Conservatives Coalition
* The Heartland Institute
Washington DC Tea Party -
12:00pm - 2:00 pm- Washington Monument
Sponsors:
* Americans for Prosperity
* Americans for Tax Reform
* Young Conservatives Coalition
* The Heartland Institute
20 February 2009
13 February 2009
Steny HOYER?
h/t NRO Corner
Steny Hoyer, a few minutes ago on the House floor:
I would hope that every member on this floor, of whatever party, of whatever ideological persuasion, would pray that this bill works. Not for political purposes, because if this bill works we will create those three and a half million jobs. Am I absolutely sure that it will? I am not. I regret that I am not.
Deficits/Surplus as a share of GDP
Greg Mankiw of Harvard. Please note that the chart borrowed form the WSJ does NOT include the structural deficit from -- ready? -- intergenerational transfers, which add between 50 and 80 Trillion bucks and creates a chart that make sensible people want to gargle with Cognac.
I supppose I should say something about Dr Mankiw's failure to publicly jump ugly with the 43rd president on the subject of spending -- GWB was supposed to be a cheapskate republican, after all -- but I won't.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/02/budget-balance.html
I supppose I should say something about Dr Mankiw's failure to publicly jump ugly with the 43rd president on the subject of spending -- GWB was supposed to be a cheapskate republican, after all -- but I won't.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/02/budget-balance.html
The one, The only Virginia Postrel
You can't make life safe for people who live, on the great coordinate plane of life, too close to the point where the learning curve crosses the mortality rate. [I should, I guess, point out that I'm paraphrasing from Reason Magazine back in the 80s.]
"They Don't Suck Their Socks"
A priceless Headmistress post on the CPSIA's insanity:
One concern is that the age limits themselves are unreasonable. It is ridiculous and completely unreasonable to treat bikes ridden by 8-12 year olds as though they pose the same risks as teething rings owned by 1 year olds. The CPSC cannot change that, as it would require commonsense changes at the foundational level of the law.
As we see more and more products pushed out of the market by the CPSIA, products which have never caused lead poisoning, it becomes clear that the law itself, which requires that all components of all products intended for the use of children 12 and under have the same lead limits, is unreasonable. 10 year olds do not chew their bike tires, lick their brakes, or suck on their tire valves.
They don't suck their socks.
They do not eat their books, not even books published before 1989. No book has ever been associated with elevated lead levels in the blood, yet as this law is written, those who do not wish to see books banned must first prove a negative- something that can only be fixed by the law.
Banning zippers and snaps is unreasonable, there is no evidence a child has ever been harmed by sucking his zipper pulls and snaps (no evidence that this is even something tiny babies are interested in doing, either), yet, the zipper company must first prove a negative, and this can only be fixed within the law itself, not by the Commission.
Read the whole thing.
If they're really concerned about zipper-licking 10-year-olds, they might consider all those kids (like me) who wore adult sizes when they were 10. Why stop with products "primarily" for kids? Why not test everything a kid might encounter, from sofa cushions to bathroom mirrors?
But maybe I shouldn't say that. Public Citizen might get ideas.
11 February 2009
Too little too late
If history is a guide -- and it mayn't be -- the approaching 'stimulus' will be passed just as the economy emerges from recession by itself.
Here's a link from the NYT
I couldn't have made this up if I'd tried!
POTUS Pile-on
My bruddah-in-law points out that POTUS44 has been aboard for three weeks. It is, therefore, not fair to start on the clearly-he's-not-ready-for-the-deep-end-of-the-pool comments yet. EXCEPT... some of his advisers (specifically the advisers which had me thinking [relatively] good thoughts about a lawyer from the Chicago Machine) are going miles out of their way to hide behind "the President believes..." instead of answering the question: "Is this a good idea".
This -- "the President believes" -- is the kind of statement that's as good a way of stirring up policy geeks as any I can think of, bar waving a red flag (*joke).
And one of the first to be stirred up is the ever-readable Dr David Henderson of, inter alia(har!), the Naval Postgraduate School:
And because Dr Summers is both entertaining and worth reading, the link is here
If this is piling on, Fiat Voluntuas Dei!
This -- "the President believes" -- is the kind of statement that's as good a way of stirring up policy geeks as any I can think of, bar waving a red flag (*joke).
And one of the first to be stirred up is the ever-readable Dr David Henderson of, inter alia(har!), the Naval Postgraduate School:
Have you noticed that we haven't heard any strong endorsement of the bill by Summers? The standard way a political appointee deals with the situation when he/she doesn't like what his/her boss is doing is to be quiet or, if asked his/her opinion, to say, "the President believes."
And because Dr Summers is both entertaining and worth reading, the link is here
If this is piling on, Fiat Voluntuas Dei!
"We are ruled by people who have achieved the remarkable distinction of being both dull and frivolous."
As Samizdata notes, the question is: should be ruled at all?
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