procrustean (adj) -
From The Guardian:
China‘s best-known dissident, Liu Xiaobo, today won the Nobel peace prize from the prison cell where he is serving 11 years for incitement to subvert state power.
The announcement provoked a furious reaction from Chinese authorities, who warned that the decision would hurt relations with Norway.
This is one of those times where I think Chinese government’s reaction is totally idiotic. By displaying outrage and saying that relations with Norway will be harmed (can anyone say “saber rattling”), China looks a child throwing a tantrum because of who was picked first to play a pick up game.
No matter how pissed off they were/are the best reaction would have been no reaction at all.
In today’s POLITICO Playbook Mike Allen writes about John Boehner, one of the GOP’s many front man now-a-days, and compares him to Mad Men‘s Don Draper.
Granted, they do look somewhat alike, but other than this [literal] surface similarity I don’t see that comparison as being very apt. But then again, what the fuck do I know?
What I find interesting about the comparison is that Boehner is being compared to Draper and not the other way around.
Nonetheless, I belive that this is another example of how Don Draper has become Zeitgeist.
(For the record: I don’t think that Boehner is Zeitgeist at all. I see him as a sort of anti-Zeitgeist. Seriously.)
I’m a history / civics teacher, and I’m really into data visualization. So as I was preparing for a class, where my goal was to explain the shift in political idology which took place in Germany prior to World War II, I was looking for a good visual example and/or representation of the political spectrum.
I found some really great stuff that I thought I’d share with anyone who happens to read this blog.
1. A great text breakdown from the public domain. (I know it can’t be read below. Click on the image and you will see the full -readable- version.)
via: Chicago Indy Media
2. A very good at-a-glance chart
via: cyberlearning-world.com
A great bit of dialogue from the Big Lebowski appeared in an article in The Atlantic about Sandy Koufax…
The Dude: It’s all part your sick Cynthia thing, man. Taking care of her fucking dog. Going to her fucking synagogue. You’re living in the fucking past.
Walter Sobchak: Three thousand years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax…You’re goddamn right I’m living in the fucking past!
I believe that this is evidence of just how much a part of the zeitgeist Lebowski has become… Oh, and for the record I think that Koufax is kinda zeitgeist-ish as well. Just sayin’.
[Update: I found out that the entire script of the Big Lebowski can be read on the web. The URL for the scrips, and I want you to read the URL, is http://web.mit.edu/putz/Public/big_lebowski.txt ... fucking double-plus-awesome, eh?]
Today Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has tweeted …
Israel Is A Hideous Entity In the Middle East Which Will Undoubtedly Be Annihilated
Obviously, a perk of being an Ayatollah is that you can use Twitter without governmental interference.
I saw this comment by retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor in a post over at Tom Rick’s blog.
Not a pretty picture to contemplate, but a likely scenario. Despite the crowd of academics in the United States that says we can live with an Iranian bomb, Israel will not allow the Iranians to go nuclear — at least, not while a Holocaust denier who has made pointed threats against the Jewish state remains in power.
Now I’mjust thinking out loud here… Makes me wonder if someone is saying something along the lines of, “Listen, we can avoid dorpping bombs. All we have to do is take out this Ahmadinejad nut job. So lets get someone on making sure that he accidentally falls down the stairs on purpose.”
This goes along with another post I wrote today. In it I continue to sort of think out loud about the long term stability of Iraq…
Michael Tomasky has a great article today in The Guardian about the withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq.
There’s a lot of big-think, big-picture stuff I could be saying about Iraq today, looking back over the whole arc of the thing, but I’ll leave that for another time, or leave it to you all to debate among yourselves.
What I wish to raise this morning is this question: what conditions would have to obtain for the US to have to resume combat operations there one day? Because this is the bottom-line question, right?
Mr. Tomasky goes on to state that he believes that as Iraq comes into its own politically it is very likely things will become violent. (He uses points made by Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy to further to back his opinion). Tomasky seems to be suggesting that the level of violence could, and and probably will, force the US military to become involved in combat.
However, Mr. Tomasky (rightly) suggests that Shi’a militias will be looking to set up a fundamentalist regime in Iraq.
I find this disturbing for two reasons…
1. If the Shi’a militias deliberately draw the US into combat that can help them politically. i.e. it will give the Shi’a a chance to capitalize on anti-US feelings in Iraq and win political power.
2. If the Shi’a militias don’t draw the US back into combat, such an event can help them politically. i.e. it will give the Shi’a a chance to use violence unchecked to win political power.
In short: I really hope that the US has gamed this sucker out ad nauseum and has some creative solutions in mind for the about 50,000 non-combat (but combat ready) troops that will still be hanging out in Iraq. Because if there is not a damn good plan for how to proceed when shit gets nasty it is only a matter of time before people are saying things like, “If only we had just finished the job we started back in 2010, we would not be needing to deal with [insert catastrophe here] today.”
Unfortunately, this is an election year, and as Mr. Tomasky also points out:
Back in 2006-2007, as Congress debate the question of a “date certain” for withdrawal, Republicans said that if the baddies know the pull-out date, they’ll obviously start planning mischief for immediately thereafter, while Democrats said, well, you gotta pull out sometime (and our base wants us out, although that part they didn’t much say).
Our elected officials have a different set of priorities that focus on shot term electoral victories rather than long term geopolitical stability.
A paragraph this good -and by good I mean packed with information that most people don’t know- just needs top be shared. Notice the area that I bolded..
The inner circle includes but is not limited to the Hazara Vice President, Karim Khalili; Kabir Mohabat, an Afghan with American citizenship; “Marshal” and now Vice President Muhammad Qasim Fahim, a Tajik; and “Marshal” Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord who disdains any government post but is the President’s “right hand.” (Dostum deserves an Olympic gold medal for opportunism. A leader of the Uzbek people of the North, he fought the Russians, then joined them to fight the insurgents; then he joined the insurgency to fight the Russians; next he joined the Taliban; then he switched sides again to join the anti-Taliban “Northern Alliance” and is infamous for suffocating in steel lift vans in the sweltering summer captured Taliban soldiers. Now – for how long? – he is a supporter of President Karzai.) It also includes Zara Ahmad Mobil who ran what is regarded as the most corrupt organization in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Interior, and (as an editorial in The Guardian put it) “is now in charge of the opium industry;” and, of course, the Karzai family. [Source, first paragraph on the page.]
My reaction to this was to read the paragraph three times in a row. Sit back and think about it for a a few seconds, then read it a forth time.
I can’t make up someone that shady! And yet… Un-fucking-believable.
Time to get some lunch.
I heard a great bit on NPR as I drove into work today where Stephen Biddle, a defense analyst who has advised the U.S. military on Afghanistan, was interviewed. During the interview Biddle was asked to compare the surge in Iraq with the surge in Afghanistan
The surge — President George W. Bush’s decision to deploy an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq — is often credited for the turnaround there. But [Biddle says that was only one piece of the puzzle. He says it was the Sunni Awakening — when Sunni leaders stopped fighting the Americans and joined with them against al-Qaida — that ultimately tipped the scales in favor of the U.S. and its allies.
"The Awakening without the surge would have died under an al-Qaida counterattack," he said. "The surge without the Awakening wouldn't have been nearly large enough to suffocate an insurgency the size of Iraq's. It was the two coming together that made the difference."
Link: Text & audio of the story.
[Disclosure: I think it is important that Mr. Biddle is far more qualified to provide an analysis of the current effects of US foreign policy than I am. However, being less than qualified has never stopped me from shooting off my mouth...]
I totally agree with Mr. Biddle that the Sunni Awakening played a major role in the initial success of the surge in Iraq. However it remains to be seen if Sunni Awaking, which is also known as the Sons of Iraq, will have a positive effect on Iraq long term.
Consider the following two groups of information:
Group One: Minority status + privilege = Sunnis
Group Two Armed Sunnis + Shi’a controlled government – US funding = Potential Problem:
My point:
The Sunni Awakening was one of the things that undoubtedly lead to the success of the surge in Iraq. However, even though I hope it is a long lasting success, it remains to be seen if this success will carry into the future. i.e. it is very possible that hooking up the Sunnis was great short term, but could backfire long term.
So the fact that there is no equivalent of the Sunni Awakening in Afghanistan is going to mean that the US is going to have to employ the surge differently. My guess is that the surge in Afghanistan will not enjoy the same level of initial (short term) success that it did in Iraq. I won’t make any long term projections as to how the surge will work out over the aggregate (long term) in Afghanistan… that region is just so unstable, and I don’t have anywhere near enough information to feel comfortable saying what things will look like in a week, let alone what they will look like in six months or a year.