Month: October 2006

As the campaign winds down in to the final week, we’re going to hear more and more of the standard talking point about Democrats cutting and running, or “losing” in Iraq. Even if the Democrats win the House and/or Senate next week, the unwarranted vilification from the Republicans — and possibly from even a few of the Democrats — for those who want to withdraw troops from Iraq will continue at a high volume for the two months before a new Congress convenes and probably for months after.

There’s a simple, easy answer to that charge, though, and it’s one that ought to be on the lips of everyone who opposes the Administration’s policy in Iraq: The Democrats can’t lose the Iraq war, because the Republicans have already lost it.

Any slim chance the Bush Administration had to create a stable Iraq is long gone. None of the lofty goals floated for the war have been achieved. The war in Iraq has lasted nearly as long as the US involvement in World War II, during which time the US retook the Pacific from the Japanese, and defeated the Germans in North Africa and Europe. No more putting to try to get the ball in the hole. Game over.

Thursday, NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” ran a segment called “Is Victory in Iraq Still Possible?” Host Neal Conan was joined by retired Gen. John “Jack” Keane, former Army vice chief of staff, and Larry Diamond, an author and former senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

Gen. Keane has been cited in a number of articles, and in testimony before Congress as saying the Iraqi people were passive after 35 years of oppression (the violence, paradoxically, doesn’t seem particularly passive). Diamond — who opposed the war but worked in the occupation government — wrote in his book Squandered Victory that the lesson of Iraq is not “‘don’t do it’ but ‘don’t do it alone’ and ‘don’t do it with an imperial approach'”. In essence, both of the interviewees — while not necessarily advocates of the war in Iraq — were participants in the execution of the war and occupation.

Which leaves me to wonder why — given all that has transpired in this war which has lasted almost as long as the US involvement in World War II — nobody from the ranks of the people who advocated against going to war in Iraq in the first place ever seems to be asked to join these panels. Shouldn’t the opinion of people who were right from the outset — predicting that there were no WMDs, no connection to al-Qaeda, that deposing Saddam Hussein would lead to a civil war, that an American occupation would not be welcomed with open arms, etc. — be more valuable than the constant re-estimations of the people who’ve been wrong about everything since before the invasion?

More particularly, as we ramp up for future military operations (both Democrats and Republicans have called in the past for more troops to be sent to Iraq, but we’ll probably need them for Iran next month) it’s time for the networks to cast beyond their stable of military warhorses for commentary on strategy and tactics.

The networks need to get people involved in the conversation who aren’t ex-military. Retired generals may know how to run a military machine, but that doesn’t make them astute political observers, historians, or even knowledgeable about military strategy. Sure, they may know about strategy but it doesn’t mean they were good at it themselves.

More importantly, American generals are about the most unlikely people to unsparingly criticize current US foreign policy or military operations. We’ve seen over the past five years (including the failure of both in Afghanistan as well as Iraq) where a lack of critical discussion of the reasons for going to war and how the war is conducted can get us. It’s as if you’d decided to convene a panel to select the greatest films of all time and filled it with nothing but STAR WARS fans. It’s going to skew the results.

So please, great gods of cable news, get some people who’ve studied politics and conflict in region on your speed dials before the next military action. If you’ve got to use military guys, get some foreign generals who aren’t going to be beholden to their former colleagues running the show or who will feel unpatriotic if they make a criticism. Because sometimes we need a little truth for clarity.

Variations of this story have been around since well before Nouri al-Maliki took his seat as prime minister:

Senators Urge Bush on Pressuring Maliki to Stop Violence

Sunday, October 22, 2006

WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats urged the White House on Sunday to step up the pressure on Iraq’s prime minister to crush the militias that are inciting sectarian violence and undermining a fragile democracy.

Senators from both parties expressed wavering confidence in Nouri al-Maliki’s ability to come to grips with the rising bloodshed. They said he was the “best horse” for now to support. But they agreed that if no political solution can be found between warring Shiite and Sunni sects, peace will never be achieved.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the leading Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Bush administration must pressure the Iraqis to make political compromises on power and oil resources.

….

Why, just last spring — a Friedman Unit ago — there were stories like this when Iyad Allawi was still PM:

Bush Predicts ‘Victory’ Three Years After Iraq Invasion

Washington (AFP) Mar 20, 2006

…

With political party and faction leaders in Baghdad deadlocked over forming a national government, top US senators called on Bush to put greater pressure on them.

Hagel, who said the country had been in a “low-grade” civil war for as long as a year, added that the United States has to stop talking about “victory” and think through responses to a worst-case scenario, like all-out civil war.

“Are we better off today than we were three years ago? Is the Middle East more stable than it was three years ago? Absolutely not,” Hagel told ABC.

….

But seriously, do useful idiots like Hagel and Levin have a clue about the pressure Iraqi leaders are already under? They, the Bush administration, and the morons running this show are living in Washington DC. Despite their security guards and armored convoys. Allawi, Maliki, and other members of the Iraqi government are living in Baghdad, are living in a country occupied by the US, with militias and police and militia/police and Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi soldier/militiamen (and a small percentage of al Qaeda terrorists) fighting each other, killing civilians, setting off bombs, using drills for torture, and cutting off people’s heads. No member of the US Congress or administration has been assassinated. No member of the US Congress or administration has been shot by US troops.

What kind of “pressure” do these people think can put on members of the Iraqi government that’s somehow more powerful than watching their country slide into oblivion?

Billmon has a post along similar lines today, but I wrote my idea down before I saw his column — I swear — so I’m staying the course.

The fact that the Dow Jones Industrial average reached the 12,000 mark on 19 October, the 19th anniversary of Black Monday — the largest drop of the DJIA so far — was mentioned in a number of news stories.

Given the superstitious natures of investors, it’s not too surprising that the presence of a different anniversary is less visible. This Sunday is the 77th anniversary of Black Thursday (24 October 1929), the first day of the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. Five days later (29 October 1929) — as jittery investors rushed to get their money out of the market — the DJIA took a 12% loss.

The DJIA had reached an all-time high less than two months earlier.

As someone on the fringes of software development (by which I mean most of the projects I’ve worked on over the past dozen years or so would be considered trivial in programming complexity by developers outside the multimedia community) I don’t do a lot of reading in programming theory, design, or management. Once in a while, though, I’ll dip my toe into the water and read an article that’s not specific to one of the applications I use. One that came through from the Gamelan Java Update e-newsletter today was particularly interesting, both professionally and — amazingly enough — in a political context.

The lead article in the latest GJU is an excerpt from a book on software project management by E. M. Bennatan. Bennetan was a senior director at Motorola and a vp of engineering at Midway Corporation. His book — published last spring — is titled Catastrophe Disentanglement: Getting Software Projects Back on Track.

The chapter discusses what exactly constitutes a “catastrophe” in a development project. He relates the case of a company that attempted to capitalize on a project written in the COBOL language in the post-Y2K era — after older COBOL applications had been converted to more modern languages — only to have their experienced programmers reach retirement age or leave, leaving the company with a partially-updated project, not enough experienced programmers on board, and a shrinking pool of talent to draw from outside the company (does that sound familiar Lingo gurus?).

This case illustrates the difficulties decision makers have in accepting the need for drastic measures and is reminiscent of a gambler who cannot get up and walk away. First, there is the natural tendency to put off making the difficult decision in hope that conventional methods will eventually get the project back on track. A second difficulty involves over-commitment to previous decisions, prompting the investment of more resources to avoid admitting mistakes (this is known as escalation).

The whole article is well worth a read (as is a recent New Yorker piece by John Cassidy on neuroeconomics). It places its points in the realm of software development, but there’s nothing there that’s technical in nature. It could easily be applied to many other types of projects.

Near the end of the excerpt, Bennatan states the steps needed for the catastrophe disentanglement process:

1. Stop.
2. Assign an evaluator.
3. Evaluate project status.
4. Evaluate the team.
5. Define minimum goals.
6. Determine whether minimum goals can be achieved.
7. Rebuild the team.
8. Perform risk analysis.
9. Revise the plan.
10. Install an early warning system.

The ten steps should be completed in sequence, and the entire process should take no more than two weeks to complete.

I can think of a couple of people this book would be worth sending to. If only they actually read books.

Fifty Days Out

4 October 2006 is the 1,849th day of the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism War On Terror. That’s 1,295 days since the invasion of Iraq.

In fifty days — on Thanksgiving — the Iraq war will have lasted as long as the American involvement in World War Two.

Now, I never believed that the US had any credible evidence that Iraq posed any kind of threat to the country or that there were any grounds for an invasion. But if you’re going to mount a military campaign, it should be done in a professional manner, it should accomplish your objectives, and it should be executed with deliberation. You don’t — as the saying goes — want to take a knife to a gun fight. The Indiana Jones corollary to that saying is that if you’ve got a gun, bring it to the knife fight.

Between the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and V-J Day on 14 August 1945, the US mobilized enormous resources to fight Japan and Germany. By 1942, the US and its allies had invaded North Africa and begun to turn back the Japanese in battles at Midway. In the next year, Italy was invaded and the Marines took Guadalcanal and Tarawa. 1944 saw the invasion at Normandy and the retaking of the Philippines. By the spring of 1945 Germany fell. And on the 1,345th day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor Japan surrendered.

Yet in the same period of time, the Bush administration has been unable to defeat and successfully occupy Iraq, despite having an overwhelming advantage as the world’s only superpower. America in World War II faced enemies with large populations and standing armies, military technology that was on a par with (and in some cases more advanced than) ours, massive industrial capacity, navies, and air forces. Iraq, on the other hand, had a population 1/12 the size of the US, no heavy industry, hadn’t controlled its own airspace for a dozen years, etc., etc. Still, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and the gang couldn’t manage to come up with a plan to at least create some sort of stability in Iraq in the same amount of time it took FDR, Truman, and the US government to defeat the Axis powers. That’s a heck of an incompetent job