JustinLogan.com

Another Guy I Owe a Beer

Quaker student creams Bill Kristol.

Hat tip: The Corner.

Update: On further reflection, it may have to be a lemonade.  You know, the whole Quaker thing and all...

The Crapification of DC Culture

Is it just me, or has Film Fest DC been on a sharp downward slide since, well, 2002?  Check out this year's schedule.  Absolutely nothing compelling.

For my money, the only possibles are here, here, and here.

Bah.

Empire Watch

Arthur Silber links to this Chicago Tribune article, which notes:

U.S. engineers are focusing on constructing 14 "enduring bases," long-term encampments for the thousands of American troops expected to serve in Iraq for at least two years. The bases also would be key outposts for Bush administration policy advisers.

As the U.S. scales back its military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq provides an option for an administration eager to maintain a robust military presence in the Middle East and intent on a muscular approach to seeding democracy in the region. The number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, between 105,000 and 110,000, is expected to remain unchanged through 2006, according to military planners.

"Is this a swap for the Saudi bases?" asked Army Brig. Gen. Robert Pollman, chief engineer for base construction in Iraq. "I don't know. ... When we talk about enduring bases here, we're talking about the present operation, not in terms of America's global strategic base. But this makes sense. It makes a lot of logical sense."

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations for the coalition in Iraq, said the military engineers are trying to prepare for any eventuality.

"This is a blueprint for how we could operate in the Middle East," Kimmitt said. "[But] the engineering vision is well ahead of the policy vision. What the engineers are saying now is: Let's not be behind the policy decision. Let's make this place ready so we can address policy options."

Now, it's perfectly reasonable (responsible, even!) for the military folks to be preparing for any policy or policies that may emerge from the Iraq quagmire.  It's also reasonable that they don't want to comment on the policy issues here, not being policymakers and all.

But can we get a ruling from the administration on this?  Can they explain what our medium term intentions are for Iraq?  In something other than vacuous, nauseating platitudes?  Is there a chance that we're going to try to make Iraq the new Saudi Arabia and have to relive the past thirteen years all over again, switching Mecca and Medina for Kerbala and Najaf, and the Twin Towers for some other catastrophe?

Their own former advisor worries about just such a problem.  Said Larry Diamond:

I urged the administration to declare when I left Iraq in April of 2004, that we have no permanent military designs on Iraq and we will not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. This one statement would do an enormous amount to undermine the suspicion that we have permanent imperial intentions in Iraq. We aren't going to do that. And the reason we're not going to do that is because we are building permanent military basis in Iraq.

We'd better start talking about this, or else it's just going to happen.  Of course, it'll probably happen anyway, but the least we could do is try to pin these folks down and put them on the record.

Umm, We Went to War to Prevent Instability?

Damn, those White House pressers are still pretty friggin' acrimonious:

Q Would the President still have gone into war if he'd known what will be in this report, that there were no weapons of mass destruction?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think he's already addressed that issue, and his position remains the same. And I think that what he said earlier today was important to note, as well. We are seeing that the Iraqi people are serving as an example --

Q That was not the point when we went to war.

MR. McCLELLAN: We are seeing that the Iraqi people are --

Q They were supposed to be threatening us.

MR. McCLELLAN: Okay, well, you've expressed your opinion, and you've heard ours, as well.

Go ahead, Goyal.

Q I've told you what you told us.

MR. McCLELLAN: Saddam Hussein's regime was creating instability in the region and we are better off with his regime out of power. And the Iraqi people are showing --

Q The American people were told they were under threat.

MR. McCLELLAN: The Iraqi people are showing, through their courage and determination --

Q Are you sorry you told the American people a falsehood?

Right, Scott, 'cause, you know, we wouldn't want the region to be, you know, unstable or anything...

Smart, Unhappy People

That's as opposed to "Shiny, Happy," for the uninitiated.

A survey reports that:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A long-held stereotype that Harvard undergraduates feel neglected by their professors and don't have as much fun as students at other colleges now has some data to back it up.

The study's mostly about the students' perception of their educational environment and experience, but I've long suspected a correlation between smart people and general unhappiness.  (A lot of morons out there, you know...)  Further, I imagine this unhappiness can lead smart people to drink...

The Perils of Arithmetic

Just in from Carnegie:

Training Iraq’s security forces is the centerpiece of President George W. Bush’s strategy in Iraq. To the extent that training records can be uncovered in the muddle of conflicting reports, the chronicle of the past eighteen months raises grave doubts about the strategy’s hope of success. Pentagon figures show that not only has there been no progress over the past year, but the gap between the total number of Iraqi security forces and the total required is now almost twice the size of the gap reported fourteen months ago.

[...]

The following charts on [report] pages 3 and 4 (based on official figures published weekly at www.defendamerica.mil), which track the actual and required number of Iraqi police and army troops, illustrate the confusion. Forces change names. The Civil Defense Corps is now the National Guard. Sometimes police are just the police; at other times the number includes the Civil Intervention Force and the Emergency Response Unit. Sometimes army numbers include the National Guard, the Prevention Force, and the Special Operations Force; sometimes they do not. Categories of readiness come and go without explanation. At one point, data are broken into three subcategories—untrained, partially trained, and fully qualified. Later, the seemingly most relevant category—fully qualified—disappears, leaving only the untrained and trained categories. Other forces are first labeled as operating forces, then forces on duty, then on hand, and, finally, trained/on hand—all terms with different meanings.

Yet the graphs reveal what these gyrations obscure: precious little progress has been made.  The graph of the Iraqi police force, for example, shows essentially two lines. The upper line,  “total reported,” reflects data that have been used in countless official speeches and talking points as evidence that training is proceeding apace. The lower line, “trained,” represents the number of officers who have actually received some training. This line has been painfully close to flat for fourteen months.

The author of the report, Jeffrey Miller, is right to point out that estimates and categories of Iraqi forces have been all over the map.  As he drills the numbers down, though, you see a rather ominous picture emerge.  One hopes that Rumsfeld himself has some idea of what's going on with Iraqification.

Hopes, I said.

More Kennan

Foreign Affairs has opened the Kennan archive, putting a lot of Kennan's old (and some not so old) F.A. articles up for free on its website.  I encourage you to check them out.  As a teaser, here are a few choice bits:

From Morality and Foreign Policy (1985):

The interests of the national society for which government has to concern itself are basically those of its military security, the integrity of its political life and the well-being of its people. These needs have no moral quality. They arise from the very existence of the national state in question and from the status of national sovereignty it enjoys. They are the unavoidable necessities of a national existence and therefore not subject to classification as either "good" or "bad." They may be questioned from a detached philosophic point of view. But the government of the sovereign state cannot make such judgments. When it accepts the responsibilities of governing, implicit in that acceptance is the assumption that it is right that the state should be sovereign, that the integrity of its political life should be assured, that its people should enjoy the blessings of military security, material prosperity and a reasonable opportunity for, as the Declaration of Independence put it, the pursuit of happiness. For these assumptions the government needs no moral justification, nor need it accept any moral reproach for acting on the basis of them.

This assertion assumes, however, that the concept of national security taken as the basis for governmental concern is one reasonably, not extravagantly, conceived. In an age of nuclear striking power, national security can never be more than relative; and to the extent that it can be assured at all, it must find its sanction in the intentions of rival powers as well as in their capabilities. A concept of national security that ignores this reality and, above all, one that fails to concede the same legitimacy to the security needs of others that it claims for its own, lays itself open to the same moral reproach from which, in normal circumstances, it would be immune.

[...]

Where measures taken by foreign governments affect adversely American interests rather than just American moral sensibilities, protests and retaliation are obviously in order; but then they should be carried forward frankly for what they are, and not allowed to masquerade under the mantle of moral principle.

There will be a tendency, I know, on the part of some readers to see in these observations an apology for the various situations, both domestic and international, against which we have protested and acted in the past. They are not meant to have any such connotations. These words are being written -- for whatever this is worth -- by one who regards the action in Afghanistan as a grievous and reprehensible mistake of Soviet policy, a mistake that could and should certainly have been avoided. Certain of the procedures of the South African police have been no less odious to me than to many others.

What is being said here does not relate to the reactions of individual Americans, of private organizations in this country, or of the media, to the situations in question. All these may think and say what they like. It relates to the reactions of the U.S. government, as a government among governments, and to the motivation cited for those reactions. Democracy, as Americans understand it, is not necessarily the future of all mankind, nor is it the duty of the U.S. government to assure that it becomes that. Despite frequent assertions to the contrary, not everyone in this world is responsible, after all, for the actions of everyone else, everywhere. Without the power to compel change, there is no responsibility for its absence. In the case of governments it is important for purely practical reasons that the lines of responsibility be kept straight, and that there be, in particular, a clear association of the power to act with the consequences of action or inaction.

[...]

A first step along the path of morality would be the frank recognition of the immense gap between what we dream of doing and what we really have to offer, and a resolve, conceived in all humility, to take ourselves under control and to establish a better relationship between our undertakings and our real capabilities.

And from On American Principles (1995):

[T]he principles of a government are not entirely the same as those of an individual. The individual, in choosing his principles, engages only himself. He is at liberty to sacrifice his own practical interests in the service of some higher and more unselfish ideal. But this sort of sacrifice is one that a responsible government, and a democratic government in particular, is unable to take upon itself. It is an agent, not a principal. It is only a representative of others.

When a government speaks, it speaks not only for itself but for the people of the country. It cannot play fast and loose with their interests. Yet a country, too, can have a predominant collective sense of itself -- what sort of a country it conceives itself or would like itself to be -- and what sort of behavior would fit that concept. The place where this self?image finds its most natural reflection is in the principles that a country chooses to adopt and, to the extent possible, to follow. Principle represents, in other words, the ideal, if not always, alas, the reality, of the rules and restraints a country adopts. Once established, those rules and restraints require no explanation or defense to others. They are one's own business.

[...]

Let me also point out that principles can have negative as well as positive aspects. There can be certain things that a country can make it a matter of principle not to do. In many instances these negative aspects of principle may be more important than the positive ones. The positive ones normally suggest or involve action; actions have a way of carrying over almost imperceptibly from the realm of principle into that of policy, where they develop a momentum of their own in which the original considerations of principle either are forgotten or are compelled to yield to what appear to be necessities of the moment. In other words, it is sometimes clearer and simpler to define on principle the kinds of things a country will not go in for -- the things that would fit with neither its standards nor its pretensions -- than it is to define ways in which it will act positively, whatever the circumstances. The basic function of principles is, after all, to establish the parameters within which the policies of a country may be normally conducted. This is essentially a negative, rather than a positive, determination.

[...]

To what extent, then, could [John Quincy] Adams' principle of nonintervention, as set forth in 1823, be relevant to our situation today?

One cannot ignore the many respects in which our present situation differs from that which Adams was obliged to face. This writer is well aware of the increasingly global nature of our problems and the myriad involvements connecting our people and government with foreign countries. I do not mean to suggest a great reduction in those minor involvements. But what is at stake here are major political-military interventions by our government in the affairs of smaller countries. These are very different things.

First of all, we do not approach these questions with entirely free hands. We have conducted a number of such interventions in recent years, and at least three of these -- Korea, Iraq, and Haiti -- have led to new commitments that are still weighty and active.

There are several things to note about these interventions and commitments. First, while some may well have helped preserve peace or promote stability in local military relationships, this has not always been their stated purpose; in a number of instances, in particular, where we have portrayed them as efforts to promote democracy or human rights, they seem to have had little enduring success.

Second, lest there be any misunderstanding about this, the interventions in which we are now engaged or committed represent serious responsibilities. Any abrupt withdrawal from them would be a violation of these responsibilities; and there is no intention here to recommend anything of that sort. On the contrary, it should be a matter of principle for this government to meet to the best of its ability any responsibilities it has already incurred. Only when we have succeeded in extracting ourselves from the existing ones with dignity and honor will the question of further interventions present itself to us in the way that it did to Mr. Adams.

Third, instances where we have undertaken or committed ourselves to intervene represent only a small proportion of the demands and expectations that have come to rest on us. This is a great and confused world, and there are many other peoples and countries clamoring for our assistance. Yet it is clear that even these involvements stretch to the limit our economic and military resources, not to mention the goodwill of our people. And even if this were not a compelling limitation, there would still be the question of consistency. Are there any considerations being presented as justifications for our present involvements that would not, if consistently applied, be found to be relevant to many other situations as well? And if not, the question arises: If we cannot meet all the demands of this sort coming to rest upon us, should we attempt to meet any at all? The answer many would give to this question would be: yes, but only when our vital national interests are clearly threatened.

And last, beyond all these considerations, we have the general proposition that clearly underlay John Quincy Adams' response to similar problems so many years ago -- his recognition that it is very difficult for one country to help another by intervening directly in its domestic affairs or in its conflicts with its neighbors. It is particularly difficult to do this without creating new and unwelcome embarrassments and burdens for the country endeavoring to help. The best way for a larger country to help smaller ones is surely by the power of example. Adams made this clear in the address cited above. One will recall his urging that the best response we could give to those appealing to us for support would be to give them what he called "the benign sympathy of our example." To go further, he warned, and try to give direct assistance would be to involve ourselves beyond the power of extrication "in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom." Who, today, looking at our involvements of recent years, could maintain that the fears these words expressed were any less applicable in our time than in his?

Smart feller, that George F. Kennan.

Wow, Thanks!

Thanks to Nathan at Registan for a nifty backhanded smear that grossly misrepresents my views and tapdances around admitting his own.  He does so in the process of getting in a shot at Yglesias, too, who dared weigh in on that Subject Which Dare Only Be Analyzed by Registan, Central Asia.  (I had not weighed in on Kyrgyzstan in particular, but I got a nice low blow from Nathan regardless.)

Nathan continues to naively conflate U.S. national security with the spread of democracy into every nook and cranny of the globe.  I believe this is shoddy, dangerous reasoning.  In fact, in light of stories that Nathan himself links to, I rather worry about the effect of destabilizing the region.  (This should not be confused with supporting any leader of any state.  I believe that we should not be propping up governments at all, with the possible exception of Musharraf's.)  In spite of reports (subscription required) that the IMU, the most pressing threat in the region, is on the run and heading for zee hills in Afghanistan, there is, in fact, an Islamist problem in the region.  I'm much more concerned with containing threats to U.S. national security than I am with fostering or cheerleading insurrections in the region.  Nathan informs me of my views thus:

I’m not trying to give Bush credit. The Kyrgyz deserve all the credit for what they’ve accomplished just as they’ll deserve the blame if things go wrong. But, Matthew’s attempt to head off any credit for the administration (and it does deserve some, even if he’s right that the Bush administration’s policy is a continuation of Clinton’s, though, in my opinion, it has more teeth) makes me wonder if he’ll jump up to blame Bush if things do go wrong (as the Justin Logan’s and Justin/Dennis Raimondo’s of the world are chomping at the bit to do).

Well, if it does "deserve some" credit for fomenting the revolution, it ought to at least "deserve some" of the blame if things go to hell, and our security is endangered.  In fact, I'm still enamored of that old-fashioned notion that the president should be actively and narrowly focused on securing the United States and its citizens.  Restated, then, Nathan's point is essentially true as to my prospectively blaming Bush if something goes wrong, with the rather important caveat that I am by no means "chomping at the bit" for something bad to happen.  I genuinely worry that to the extent President Bush has supported this behavior (which, despite his protests, Nathan rather ferociously seems to believe, evidenced by his lashing out when anyone dare criticize the president), it may come back to bite us in the ass in the form of terrorism or other negative consequences spawned from the tumult of revolutionary politics.  I do not believe that a color revolution tamps out existing dangers.  I believe that it can, in some cases, make things more dangerous for us.

Nathan is content to bide his days pulling stories from AP and covering the day-to-day details of Central Asian politics.  That's fine -- there's a role for that.  He should at least respect, though, that some of us are more concerned with U.S. national security.

Thoughts on Thomas P.M. Barnett

There's been a disturbing trend I've noticed in the blogosphere lately, among people I respect like Yglesias and Praktike: referencing Thomas P.M. Barnett as though he's interesting or informative.

"Not That There's Anything Wrong With That..."

I actually paid a bit of attention to the Romanian presidential elections, but how I could have missed this gem is beyond me:

The Romanian Prime Minister is offering to sleep with the wives and girlfriends of journalists on a Romanian newspaper to stop them claiming he is gay.

Adrian Nastase, who is also a candidate in this weekend's presidential run off elections, made the offer after being asked by reporters about rumours a local newspaper was to out him as gay.

[...]

"If people from Evenimentul Zilei newspaper want me to prove to them that I have no homosexual inclinations, I will test all their wives and girlfriends to show them where my preferences really are."

Heh.  In case you were wondering, Nastase lost the election.

Hat tip: Dad.