December 30, 2005
Judging the Case for War
"Did President Bush intentionally mislead this nation and its allies into war? Or is it his critics who have misled Americans, recasting history to discredit him and his policies? If your responses are reflexive and self-assured, read on.
On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq."
Judging the case for war
Chicago Tribune
December 28, 2005
Did President Bush intentionally mislead this nation and its allies into war? Or is it his critics who have misled Americans, recasting history to discredit him and his policies? If your responses are reflexive and self-assured, read on.
On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others. We predicted that this exercise would distress the smug and self-assured--those who have unquestioningly supported, or opposed, this war.
The matrix below summarizes findings from the resulting nine editorials. We have tried to bring order to a national debate that has flared for almost three years. Our intent was to help Tribune readers judge the case for war--based not on who shouts loudest, but on what actually was said and what happened.
The administration didn't advance its arguments with equal emphasis. Neither, though, did its case rely solely on Iraq's alleged illicit weapons. The other most prominent assertion in administration speeches and presentations was as accurate as the weapons argument was flawed: that Saddam Hussein had rejected 12 years of United Nations demands that he account for his stores of deadly weapons--and also stop exterminating innocents. Evaluating all nine arguments lets each of us decide which ones we now find persuasive or empty, and whether President Bush tried to mislead us.
In measuring risks to this country, the administration relied on the same intelligence agencies, in the U.S. and overseas, that failed to anticipate Sept. 11, 2001. We now know that the White House explained some but not enough of the ambiguities embedded in those agencies' conclusions. By not stressing what wasn't known as much as what was, the White House wound up exaggerating allegations that proved dead wrong.
Those flawed assertions are central to the charge that the president lied. Such accusations, though, can unfairly conflate three issues: the strength of the case Bush argued before the war, his refusal to delay its launch in March 2003 and his administration's failure to better anticipate the chaos that would follow. Those three are important, but not to be confused with one another.
After reassessing the administration's nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege. Example: The accusation that Bush lied about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs overlooks years of global intelligence warnings that, by February 2003, had convinced even French President Jacques Chirac of "the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq." We also know that, as early as 1997, U.S. intel agencies began repeatedly warning the Clinton White House that Iraq, with fissile material from a foreign source, could have a crude nuclear bomb within a year.
Seventeen days before the war, this page reluctantly urged the president to launch it. We said that every earnest tool of diplomacy with Iraq had failed to improve the world's security, stop the butchery--or rationalize years of UN inaction. We contended that Saddam Hussein, not George W. Bush, had demanded this conflict.
Many people of patriotism and integrity disagreed with us and still do. But the totality of what we know now--what this matrix chronicles-- affirms for us our verdict of March 2, 2003. We hope these editorials help Tribune readers assess theirs.
THE ROAD TO WAR: THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S NINE ARGUMENTS
Biological and chemical weapons
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
The Bush administration said Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Officials trumpeted reports from U.S. and foreign spy agencies, including an October 2002 CIA assessment: "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions."
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
Many, although not all, of the Bush administration's assertions about weapons of mass destruction have proven flat-out wrong. What illicit weaponry searchers uncovered didn't begin to square with the magnitude of the toxic armory U.S. officials had described before the war.
THE VERDICT
There was no need for the administration to rely on risky intelligence to chronicle many of Iraq's other sins. In putting so much emphasis on illicit weaponry, the White House advanced its most provocative, least verifiable case for war when others would have sufficed.
Iraq rebuffs the world
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
In a speech that left many diplomats visibly squirming in their chairs, President Bush detailed tandem patterns of failure: Saddam Hussein had refused to obey UN Security Council orders that he disclose his weapons programs--and the UN had refused to enforce its demands of Hussein.
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
Reasonable minds disagree on whether Iraq's flouting of UN resolutions justified the war. But there can be no credible assertion that either Iraq or the UN met its responsibility to the world. If anything, the administration gravely understated the chicanery, both in Baghdad and at the UN.
THE VERDICT
Hussein had shunted enough lucre to enough profiteers to keep the UN from challenging him. In a dozen years the organization mass-produced 17 resolutions on Iraq, all of them toothless. That in turn enabled Hussein to continue his brutal reign and cost untold thousands of Iraqis their lives.
The quest for nukes
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
Intelligence agencies warned the Clinton and Bush administrations that Hussein was reconstituting his once-impressive program to create nuclear weapons. In part that intel reflected embarrassment over U.S. failure before the Persian Gulf war to grasp how close Iraq was to building nukes.
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
Four intel studies from 1997-2000 concurred that "If Iraq acquired a significant quantity of fissile material through foreign assistance, it could have a crude nuclear weapon within a year." Claims that Iraq sought uranium and special tubes for processing nuclear material appear discredited.
THE VERDICT
If the White House manipulated or exaggerated the nuclear intelligence before the war in order to paint a more menacing portrait of Hussein, it's difficult to imagine why. For five years, the official and oft-delivered alarms from the U.S. intelligence community had been menacing enough.
Hussein's rope-a-dope
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
The longer Hussein refuses to obey UN directives to disclose his weapons programs, the greater the risk that he will acquire, or share with terrorists, the weaponry he has used in the past or the even deadlier capabilities his scientists have tried to develop. Thus we need to wage a pre-emptive war.
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
Hussein didn't have illicit weapons stockpiles to wield or hand to terrorists. Subsequent investigations have concluded he had the means and intent to rekindle those programs as soon as he escaped UN sanctions.
THE VERDICT
Had Hussein not been deposed, would he have reconstituted deadly weaponry or shared it with terror groups? Of the White House's nine arguments for war, the implications of this warning about Iraq's intentions are treacherous to imagine--yet also the least possible to declare true or false.
Waging war on terror
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
Iraq was Afghanistan's likely successor as a haven for terror groups. "Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror ... " the president said. "And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network."
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
The White House echoed four years of intel that said Hussein contemplated the use of terror against the U.S. or its allies. But he evidently had not done so on a broad scale. The assertion that Hussein was "harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror" overstated what we know today.
THE VERDICT
The drumbeat of White House warnings before the war made Iraq's terror activities sound more ambitious than subsequent evidence has proven. Based on what we know today, the argument that Hussein was able to foment global terror against this country and its interests was exaggerated.
Reform in the Middle East
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
Supplanting Hussein's reign with self-rule would transform governance in a region dominated by dictators, zealots and kings. The administration wanted to convert populations of subjects into citizens. Mideast democracy would channel energy away from resentments that breed terrorism.
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
U.S. pressure has stirred reforms in Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and imperiled Syria's regime. "I was cynical about Iraq," said Druze Muslim patriarch Walid Jumblatt. "But when I saw the Iraqi people voting . . . it was the start of a new Arab world... The Berlin Wall has fallen."
THE VERDICT
The notion that invading Iraq would provoke political tremors in a region long ruled by despots is the Bush administration's most successful prewar prediction to date. A more muscular U.S. diplomacy has advanced democracy and assisted freedom movements in the sclerotic Middle East.
Iraq and Al Qaeda
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
President Bush: "... Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy--the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.... Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bombmaking and poisons and deadly gases."
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
Two government investigative reports indicate that Al Qaeda and Iraq had long-running if sporadic contacts. Several of the prewar intel conclusions likely are true. But the high-ranking Al Qaeda detainee who said Iraq trained Al Qaeda in bombmaking, poisons and gases later recanted.
THE VERDICT
No compelling evidence ties Iraq to Sept. 11, 2001, as the White House implied. Nor is there proof linking Al Qaeda in a significant way to the final years of Hussein's regime. By stripping its rhetoric of the ambiguity present in the intel data, the White House exaggerated this argument for war.
The Butcher of Baghdad
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell: "For more than 20 years, by word and by deed, Saddam Hussein has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using the only means he knows--intimidation, coercion and annihilation of all those who might stand in his way."
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
Human Rights Watch estimates that Hussein exterminated 300,000 people. Chemical weapons killed Iraqi Kurds and Iranians; Iraqi Shiites also were slaughtered. Tortures included amputation, rape, piercing hands with drills, burning some victims alive and lowering others into acid baths.
THE VERDICT
In detailing how Hussein tormented his people--and thus mocked the UN Security Council order that he stop--the White House assessments were accurate. Few if any war opponents have challenged this argument, or suggested that an unmolested Hussein would have eased his repression.
Iraqis liberated
WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID
President Bush and his surrogates broached a peculiar notion: that the Arab world was ready to embrace representative government. History said otherwise--and it wasn't as if the Arab street was clamoring for Iraq to show the way.
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
The most succinct evaluation comes from Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.): "Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them."
THE VERDICT
The White House was correct in predicting that long subjugated Iraqis would embrace democracy. And while Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites have major differences to reconcile, a year's worth of predictions that Sunni disaffection could doom self-rule have, so far, proven wrong.
December 19, 2005
New World Economy
Well, I've graded the last economics mid-terms.
Good bi-partisan article in this week's NYT Magazine considering the changing nature of our economy.
If government were to remove the burden of health care costs from businesses, enabling them to better compete, wouldn't it then be more reasonable to create disincentives for employers who are thinking of shipping their jobs overseas?
December 18, 2005
The Way We Live Now
New World Economy
By MATT BAI
In recent weeks, looking toward next year's midterm elections, leaders of both parties have engaged in highly charged arguments about withdrawal from Iraq, Medicaid shortfalls and allegations of Republican corruption. Anyone bothering to peruse the rest of the front page, however, might have noticed a few items that seemed tangentially related, but that, together, tell a story that is far more consequential for the next 50 years of American life. First, just before Thanksgiving, General Motors, buckling under the weight of $2 billion in losses, announced that it now planned to lay off 30,000 workers and scale back or close a dozen plants. A few days later, at the traditional commencement of the holiday season, thousands of American consumers began lining up in the dark hours of morning to be among the first to pile into Wal-Mart, hoping to re-emerge with discounted laptops and Xboxes under their arms. Wal-Mart has now inherited G.M.'s mantle as the largest employer in the United States, which is why these snapshots of two corporations, taken in a single week, say more about America's economic trajectory than any truckload of spreadsheets ever could.
G.M., of course, was the very prototype of 20th-century bigness, the flagship company for a time when corporate power was vested in the hands of a small number of industrial-era institutions. There is no question that rising labor costs hurt G.M., but that obscures the larger point of the company's decline; caught in the last century's mind-set, it has often been unable or unwilling to let consumers drive its designs, as opposed to the other way around. Must the company keep making Buicks and Pontiacs until the end of days, even as they recede into American lore? Many of the workers G.M. decided to lay off last month were its best and most productive. Their bosses simply couldn't give them a car to build that Americans really wanted to buy.
As it happens, G.M.'s inability to adapt offers some perspective on our political process, too. Democrats in particular, architects of the finest legislation of the industrial age, have approached the global economy with the same inflexibility, at least since Bill Clinton left the scene. Just as G.M. has protected its outdated products at the expense of its larger mission, so, too, have Democrats become more attached to their programs than to the principles that made them vibrant in the first place. So what if Social Security and Medicaid functioned best in a world where most workers had company pensions and health insurance and spent their entire careers with one employer? The mere suggestion that these programs might be updated for a new, more consumer-driven economy sends Democratic leaders into fits of apoplexy.
While G.M. rusts away like some relic from the last century, Wal-Mart beckons us toward our shrink-wrapped and discounted future. Wal-Mart's founding family is said to be wealthier than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined, and yet more than half of the company's employees don't receive health care, and its enduring quest to bring us lower prices drives down wages everywhere. Here we have the model for globalization as Republicans envision it - a world in which rugged entrepreneurialism is overly romanticized and the unskilled expendable, and where shareholder profits are the only measure of success. Republicans have embraced the future of the global marketplace, but to them the future looks a lot like "Road Warrior."
The debate over Wal-Mart centers on whether it is, on the whole, good or not so good. Jason Furman, a Democratic policy expert, has prepared a persuasive report for the Center for American Progress in which he notes that Americans may have saved as much as $263 billion last year - that's $2,329 per household - by shopping at Wal-Mart, which amounts to the equivalent of a massive tax break. This argument over Wal-Mart's virtue or villainy is interesting but ultimately academic; it is like having had an argument, at the dawn of the microchip, about the merits of automation. The service economy is a reality of our time, and it would be wishful to expect that its engine can sustain the middle class in the way that industry once did. Wal-Mart didn't ask to be the new G.M., and even if it wanted to treat its employees as generously, it couldn't; Furman concludes that Wal-Mart's profits would be obliterated by adopting companywide health care or a significant raise in wages. It makes little sense to blame one company for the pain caused by a profound economic transformation.
What would be more constructive, probably, is a total reimagination of the basic contract between government, businesses and workers - a process that Clinton tentatively put in motion but that has since stalled as both parties retreated from the vexing challenges of globalization. After all, if you were going to sit down and create a system for our time, it probably wouldn't look much like the one we have. Does it make sense to expect businesses to finance lavish health care plans when foreign competition is forcing companies to cut their costs? Isn't government better equipped to insure a nomadic work force while employers take on the more manageable task of childcare - a problem that hardly existed 50 years ago? If government were to remove the burden of health care costs from businesses, enabling them to better compete, wouldn't it then be more reasonable to create disincentives for employers who are thinking of shipping their jobs overseas? Isn't the very notion of a payroll tax for workers antiquated and inequitable in a society where so many Americans earn stock dividends and where a growing number are self-employed? If they were to spend more time debating these and other longer-term questions, our politicians might have some small hope of leaving a legacy to match their predecessors' - a legacy better than the choice between the New Deal and no deal at all.
Matt Bai, who covers national politics for the magazine, is working on a book about the Democratic Party.
December 14, 2005
Deconstructing War
This was emailed to me by my father-in-law, who is an officer in the Air Force.
Very interesting speech to the Naval War College on the future of the military and international relations.
War is changing, and not for the better. Like much else in our world, it is essentially deconstructing and re-emerging as a changed enterprise.
Clearly, we will continue to engage in some form of armed conflict in the years and decades ahead.
http://ebird.afis.mil/ebfiles/e20051213406843.html
December 2005
Deconstructing War
By Vice Admiral James Stavridis, U.S. Navy
War is changing, and not for the better. Like much else in our world, it is essentially deconstructing and re-emerging as a changed enterprise.
Clearly, we will continue to engage in some form of armed conflict in the years and decades ahead.
As war deconstructs, along with much of what we understand about the world itself, new thinking is required. We must begin by understanding the new reality of the world in which we live. We swim in a strange sea, far different from the one that historically spawned the traditional principles of war, and quite different even from that which existed in the 1990s.
The world is simply moving so much faster today than at any point in any of our lifetimes; and it appears a good bet that this sense of speed-indeed, this sense of acceleration-will only continue.
Our World
We live in a world of satellite television and satellite radio beaming 24-hours a day on hundreds of specialized channels, weighing and judging everything we do, recording every change and breathlessly reporting it to us.
We live in a world always connected by digital cell phones, e-mail, and satellite networks. A teenager's cell phone has much more computational power than the first word processors graduate students used 20 years ago. The minute anything changes in anyone's life or city or country, everyone seems to know about it instantly.
We live in a world constantly scrutinized and recorded by both professional journalists and average citizens, armed with digital camcorders, cameras, and high-quality audio recorders. All of this power to record feeds into a tapestry of constant change that sweeps across our view screens.
We live in a world of extraordinary technological and scientific change. Adding up all the major scientific discoveries of the first 5,000 years of recorded history, the sum total of accomplishment likely would amount to much less than what we have produced over the past 50 years. And much more is to come. As we emerge from the currently-hyped Age of Information, we are clearly moving into an Age of Biology that will reshape our expectations in dramatic ways about human life itself.
And finally, we live in a world where events are moving so very rapidly that we scarcely have time to catch our breath from one big story before the next one suddenly bursts on the scene. The Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster of Christmas week 2004-which killed 250,000-is a perfect metaphor for the rapidity of how change washes across our society, filling the screens of the television with shocking images, demanding instant reactions. Yet we know that there are only more waves to come.
In many ways, we may have indeed reached the "end of history" that Francis Fukuyama wrote about so eloquently at the conclusion of the 20th century. The days of massive coalitions of national armies, navies, and air forces contesting each other may be coming to a close.
Could there be a flare up or two, a throw-back to nation-on-nation fighting? Perhaps-it is generally unwise to bet against the tendency of the human race to find ways to create conflagrations, most recently evidenced by the world wars, which killed tens of millions in the 20th century. India and Pakistan constantly circle in a potentially deadly dance, armed with nuclear weapons; a conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan's status cannot be ruled out; the Korean peninsula may see massive fighting yet; and other scenarios can be drawn that could ignite some level of nation-on-nation combat.
The Likely Challenge
Yet on balance, it seems we are more likely to face a splintered world in which small and deadly forces will seek asymmetric advantage over large countries and coalitions of countries-similar to the current global war on terrorism, which may be a precursor of worse to come.
Unfortunately, such splintered forces will have at their disposal weapons of extremely lethal character: chemical, biological, psychological, kinetic, and nuclear. The principles of war operate best in nation-on-nation war. That is the conflict for which they were developed.
In the emerging world of the 21st century-in which the smallest cadres can create devastating effects-no simple list of principles will apply. The span of potential warfare events and venues is simply too great-indeed, the very nature of "what is war" has changed irrevocably with the advent and dispersal of weapons of mass destruction.
What we think of as war has been essentially deconstructed into a kaleidoscope of individualized conflicts, which will range from assassinations of single important individuals to the destruction of vast tracts of the earth . . . from drive-by shootings to demolition of satellites in space . . . from battle at the bottom of the ocean to wars conducted in the inner space of computer networks.
War has always been chaotic. Now it is pure chaos. Instead of fashioning a list of principles, we must think universally and holistically about how to control chaos.
As war itself deconstructs, essentially in parallel with much of the modern world, we must develop mechanisms that can morph instantly, getting inside the decision loop of whatever entity we must fight.
The bottom line is: winning war will be about opening our minds and speeding change. We need an utterly open mindset and brilliant tool sets that can change instantly. We also need a variety of mechanisms-what we think of today as command/control systems-that can harness our open mindset and our instantly changeable brilliant tool sets. One traditional element we will continue to need: a national will to organize ourselves to fight and win the wars that really matter. And finally, we will need a clear sense of moral value, of what is evil and what is good. This will generate the national morale and support to prevail in armed conflict.
Brilliant Tool Sets
Assuming we can develop leaders with an open mindset who are unafraid of change-most difficult in military organizations, of course-the next most pressing need is brilliant tool sets. The sets we need are:
* Integrated National Information Systems. Nothing will be more important than our ability to manage information and nothing will be more difficult. We are, of course, awash in a sea of redundant, useless, and easily obtained information; but in that sea sail the golden nuggets that we will need to win our nation's conflicts. We need to focus relentlessly on the ability to obtain, process, analyze, and disseminate those nuggets.
* Networked Communication and Networked Intelligence. Closely related to information systems will be networked communication and intelligence systems. If information systems constitute the broad and overarching tool set, networked communication and intelligence are the precise tools that allow use of all the information.
* Coalition Management Systems. It is hard to imagine scenarios in which the United States will act completely alone. In the majority of future conflicts, we will be operating at least at some level with coalition partners on the international scene. The range of tool sets we need to manage our coalitions are quite significant, ranging from far better linguistic programs, to preparing our warriors and strategists, to implanted advance teams in host nations to linkages between our diplomats and warriors. This is a vast and important set of tools that needs considerable attention, and it is the area in which we are most deficient.
* Media Management (not Manipulation). In this deconstructed and utterly transparent world, the ability to manage the global media will be critical. We need warfighters who understand how to present our positions in such a way as to help maintain the viability of U.S. positions. We must not lie or seek to deliberately manipulate the news-despite the fact that others will. Instead, we must seek to ensure we get our story out clearly and well. Multiple channels are available to get our correct and true version of events to the public: we must develop the ability to do so.
* Precision Destruction. Clearly, as we fight against networks and splintered organizations, we will need to increase our already formidable capability to undertake precise levels of destruction. While we will never completely eliminate collateral damage, we must continue our efforts to minimize it. In addition, we need the ability to find and destroy discrete weapon systems, from "loose nukes" to vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, from satellites to safe-houses. Closely coupled with precision destruction, of course, is precision location; essentially advanced man-hunting. Taken together, the ability to precisely locate, and then selectively destroy, will be among our most critical brilliant tool sets. Fortunately, this is the area in which we have gained the most ground thus far.
* Preemption Discovery. In a world in which the enemy can inflict massive levels of damage from a very small organization without tactical or strategic warning, the ability to strike preemptively will be at a premium. Our sensors-mechanical and human-must be able to create opportunities for preemption. This will be extremely controversial and often difficult to justify in the eyes of many; yet the consequences of failure here are massive. This is largely a political calculus, of course, but it has distinct military aspects that must be considered.
* Scientific Preeminence. Huge levels of research and development funding will be necessary to maintain a significant technological and scientific lead over potential adversaries. We will win-or lose-the next series of wars in our nation's laboratories. While often not the most glamorous use of funding, basic research frequently leads to the most valuable discoveries. We need a national database that can find and develop the most promising combat technologies.
* Biological Manipulation. The Age of Information is passing and will be superseded by the Age of Biology. In it, many of the most vexing combat challenges will be solved by application of new biological solutions. Unfortunately, new biological challenges-notably in the application of manipulated biological agents-will drain an increasing level of resources. This is the frontier of warfare and will engender change in everything we do, from allowing our personnel to perform at extraordinary physical and mental levels to providing organic swarming sensors on the battlefield. In this tool set, we will only be limited by our ability to first imagine and then create.
The Leadership Challenge
In addition to brilliant tool sets, we need leaders with open minds. This may be the greatest challenge of all. One of the worst aspects of the military mind is its tendency to operate like a light switch-either fully on or fully off. The ability to operate like a rheostat, to see the world in shades of gray, is so often a stretch for the military mind.
For some number of our best young officers, a different approach may be warranted. We should consider starting with a cadre of our finest youngest officers, just as they are completing their apprenticeship years, around the five-year point of their service. They should at this time be sent outside the military for a year, to work in industry that is enmeshed in change. Which one does not matter terribly, but medicine and biological research, international finance and business, or information systems all would seem apt. During this "year out," they should be encouraged to focus on embracing change, seeing solution sets in entirely different ways, and overcoming the tightening of the mind that so often accompanies development of a junior officer.
These young officers would then serve a tour in a different service from their own-a more truly joint experience than is currently undertaken. Finally, they would complete a year at a Joint Command and Staff College that would focus on interagency, international, joint, and combined warfare-sharpening the tool sets needed for war in the 21st century. Each would also be required to learn at least one foreign language, preferably a large percentage of them taking challenging non-traditional languages of real import-Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, and Hindi come to mind.
Between a focus on getting the right officers trained and ready and building strength in the right tool sets, we will have best positioned our nation for combat operations in this chaotic century.
Are the principles of war still useful? Somewhat. They remain helpful benchmarks to be used in the analysis of nation-on-nation combat, perhaps in the preparation of contingency plans for such activities. They should be updated to include some thinking on the speed and acceleration of operations in this century, with additional focus on precision, media management, and synchronicity.
What we truly require, however, for this emerging deconstructed version of warfare goes beyond a staid set of principles. One size does not in any sense fit all. Instead, we need leaders with utterly open minds, capable of violent change; we need brilliant tool sets that can morph and change as circumstances will; and we need the enduring values for which our nation will continue to stand-liberty, justice, and truth.
Vice Admiral Stavridis is the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. He has commanded the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) Carrier Strike Group, Destroyer Squadron 21, and the USS Barry (DDG-52). He holds a PhD in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has served in a wide variety of strategic and long-range planning jobs in the Pentagon.
December 13, 2005
December 12, 2005
Paul Krugman on Wal-Mart's PR
Last Friday I had my economics students read and discuss an article in their WSJ: Classroom Edition and got some reasonably good discussion.
I was happy when I saw that the Economist's View posted Paul Krugman's new column, which was previously hidden from me by Times Select. For the record, Times Select is an awful idea.
Big Box Balderdash
by Paul Krugman
NY Times
I think I've just seen the worst economic argument of 2005. ... The argument came in the course of the latest exchange between Wal-Mart and its critics. A union-supported group, Wake Up Wal-Mart, has released a TV ad accusing Wal-Mart of violating religious values, backed by a letter from religious leaders attacking the retail giant for paying low wages and offering poor benefits. The letter declares that "Jesus would not embrace Wal-Mart's values of greed and profits at any cost." You may think that this particular campaign - which has, inevitably, been dubbed "Where would Jesus shop?" - is a bit over the top. But it's clear why those concerned about the state of American workers focus their criticism on Wal-Mart. The company isn't just America's largest private employer. It's also a symbol of the state of our economy, which delivers rising G.D.P. but stagnant or falling living standards for working Americans. ... So how did Wal-Mart respond to this latest critique?
Wal-Mart can claim, with considerable justice, that its business practices make America as a whole richer. The fact is that ... its low prices aren't solely or even mainly the result of the low wages it pays. Wal-Mart has been able to reduce prices largely because it has brought genuine technological and organizational innovation to the retail business. It's harder for Wal-Mart to defend its pay and benefits policies. Still, the company could try to argue that ... it cannot defy the iron laws of supply and demand, which force it to pay low wages. (I disagree, but that's a subject for another column.) But instead of resting its case on these honest or at least defensible answers to criticism, Wal-Mart has decided to insult our intelligence by claiming to be, of all things, an engine of job creation. ...[T]he assertion that Wal-Mart "creates 100,000 jobs a year" is now the core of the company's public relations strategy. ...
But adding 100,000 people to Wal-Mart's work force doesn't mean adding 100,000 jobs to the economy. On the contrary, there's every reason to believe that as Wal-Mart expands, it destroys at least as many jobs as it creates, and drives down workers' wages in the process. Think about what happens when Wal-Mart opens a store ... The new store takes sales away from stores that are already in the area; these stores lay off workers or even go out of business. Because Wal-Mart's big-box stores employ fewer workers per dollar of sales than the smaller stores they replace, overall retail employment surely goes down, not up... And if the jobs lost come from employers who pay more generously than Wal-Mart does, overall wages will fall...
This isn't just speculation on my part. A recent study by David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and two associates at the Public Policy Institute of California, "The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets," uses sophisticated statistical analysis to estimate the effects on jobs and wages as Wal-Mart spread out from its original center in Arkansas. The authors find that retail employment did, indeed, fall when Wal-Mart arrived in a new county. It's not clear ... whether overall employment ... rose or fell ... But it's clear that average wages fell: "residents of local labor markets," the study reports, "earn less following the opening of Wal-Mart stores." So Wal-Mart has chosen to defend itself with a really poor argument. If that's the best the company can come up with, it's going to keep losing the public relations war with its critics. Maybe it should consider an alternative strategy, such as paying higher wages.
The Year in Ideas
Really interesting stuff here. If you haven't bothered to register for free yet, now's a good time.
December 07, 2005
Adbusters Videos
In response to Ben's recent CokerAvenue post, I offer what these guys have to say. They do it better than I can.
My Letter to the Editor
My local paper ran my letter to the editor today. Here it is for your perusal. I'm interested in your feedback.
Letter to the editor: Rampant consumerism isn't Christian festivity
December 7, 2005
In regard to your recent front page story about the increasingly fewer number of local retailers displaying the phrase "Merry Christmas" this season, I have simply to say, "So what?"
Perhaps removing the term "Christmas" from the buying process will stop people from assuming they are participating in a Christian or otherwise spiritual activity by merely engaging in our culture's rampant consumerism.
December 06, 2005
Canadian Heroin Injection Site
Are you a pragmatist or an ideologue?
Addicts bring in drugs purchased illegally on the street, and self-inject them under medical supervision. There are onsite emergency services in case of overdose and staff nurses and counselors to provide health care and referrals to rehabilitation facilities.
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A National Public Radio report this summer, marking the 40th anniversary of the Watts riots, earnestly examined the lingering problems in the area. The report included interviews with community leaders like Sweet Alice Harris, who talked about persistently high unemployment. The reporter also mentioned, less predictably, that Harris is "living in a brand new house built by the 'Extreme Makeover' TV show."
Entertainment Poverty
By ROB WALKER
'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition'
A National Public Radio report this summer, marking the 40th anniversary of the Watts riots, earnestly examined the lingering problems in the area. The report included interviews with community leaders like Sweet Alice Harris, who talked about persistently high unemployment. The reporter also mentioned, less predictably, that Harris is "living in a brand new house built by the 'Extreme Makeover' TV show."
"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" is one of the highest-rated "reality" shows on television; it is part of the reality subgenre that turns on improving the life of a lucky subject - in this case by remodeling or rebuilding someone's house. It was recently in the news when it was reported that Laura Bush would be making a cameo in an episode scheduled to air next week dealing with hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast. Because the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina raised so many uncomfortable questions about race and class in America, this would seem to be strange ground for a reality show to tread upon. But the truly strange thing is that such issues are recurring - if very carefully handled - themes on the show.
Every episode includes a solicitation for viewers to suggest a family whose home needs an "extreme makeover," and of course the applicants are legion. Those selected get a visit from the hunky host, Ty Pennington, and his "design team" of architectural, shopping, decorating and "glamour" experts, who tend to look fabulous and have names like Dawson. Often they simply rip down the house and build a bigger one, tastefully appointed and filled with high-end appliances and the occasional plasma-screen television. "I wanted to do this for people who needed it and, to the extent you can judge it, people who deserved it," says Tom Forman, the show's executive producer.
You could dismiss all this as a mere exercise in Oprah-esque tear-jerking do-goodism, and on one level it is: the families chosen have heartbreaking back stories, and the only element more common than children with disabilities are scenes in which grown men cry. On the other hand, there is often a social component - these are the American families who are stuck in tough neighborhoods, whose children die in Iraq, who have no health care, who are swindled by contractors or who are so close to the edge that a lost job is a financial catastrophe. Episodes last year featured a Hispanic family who lost a mother to a stray bullet and a young African-American man in South Central Los Angeles crippled in a mistaken gang hit. On the latter episode, the design team went to the site of the shooting and listened to a recording of the horrifying 911 call; one of them observed that "the worst thing is, around this area, that's commonplace." These are, in other words, the American families who do not exist in the world of more traditional TV hits like, say, "The O.C." or "Desperate Housewives," and certainly not in "Pimp My Ride" or "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."
A former news producer, Forman says he looks for interesting stories and tries to "embrace these families on their own terms." This may mean that class issues emerge, or it may mean that the families express their gratitude for this startling ride from crushing desperation to material abundance in openly religious terms.
If there are two Americas, as John Edwards argued during the last presidential campaign, prime time seems like a curious place for the trading up and the falling down to meet. It's hard to know how to process the sudden shift between Pennington's calling the area where Sweet Alice lives a "barren wasteland" and Dawson's exclamation, "We just got all these free pansies!" Or when the program directs viewers to a Web site to "find out more about the products used on tonight's show." But the attraction is that the two Americas not only meet on the show; they also seem, reassuringly, to be neatly resolved and reconciled by the forces of tasteful consumption. At the hour's end, there appears to be no problem that the miracle of sponsored entertainment cannot solve. The Sweet Alice installment reached a climax with a child, in prayer, saying, "Thank you for ABC, thank you for Extreme Makeover."