Guide to Elections 2008

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Time for a refresher course: How to avoid making mistakes in understanding events of the past

From Ibn Khaldun in "An Arab Philosophy of History" translated and arranged by Charles Issawi. Though this was written sometime in the the late 1370s, it is as relevant today as it must have been then.

All records, by their very nature, are liable to error....

The first of these is partisanship towards a creed or opinion. ....should the mind...be biassed in favour of an opinion or creed, it at once accepts every favourable piece of information concerning this opinion. Therefore, partisanship acts as a blinker to the mind, preventing it from investigating and criticizing and inclining it to the reception and transmission of error.

The second factor conducive to error is over-confidence in one's
sources. Such sources should be accepted only after thorough investigation involving the criticism of falsehoods and the correction of distortion.

A third factor is the failure to understand what is intended. Thus many a chronicler falls into error by failing to grasp the real meaning of what he has seen or heard and by relating the event according to what he thinks or imagines.

A fourth source of error is a mistaken belief in the truth. This happens often, generally taking the form of excessive faith in the authority of one's sources.

A fifth factor is the inability rightly to place an event in its real
context, owing to the obscurity and complexity of the situation. The chronicler contents himself with reporting the event as he saw it, thus distorting its significance.

A sixth factor is the very common desire to gain the favour of those of high rank, by praising them, by spreading their fame, by flattering them, by embellishing their doings and by interpreting in the most favourable way all their actions.

The seventh cause of error, and the most important of all, is the
ignorance of the laws governing the transformations of human society. For every single thing, whether it be an object or an action, is subject to a law governing its nature and any changes that may take place in it. If, therefore, the historian understands the nature of events and of changes that occur in the world, and the conditions governing them, such knowledge will help him more than anything else to clarify any record and to distinguish the truths it contains from the falsehoods. . . .

. . . Another cause of error is exaggeration. . . . Thus we find that most of our contemporaries give free rein to their imagination, follow the whisperings of exaggeration, and transgress the limitations of customary experience, when speaking of the armies of contemporary states, or of states which existed in the recent past; or when discussing the troops of Muslim or Christian nations; or when enumerating the revenues of kings, or the taxes or dues levied by them; or when estimating the expenditure of the wealthy, or the fortunes of the rich....

The real cause of this error is that men's minds are fond of all that is strange and unusual, and that the tongue easily slips into exaggeration, while the investigator and critic is apt to overlook things, so that he does not try to check his statements or weigh them up in a fair and critical spirit of enquiry and investigation, but rather gives his imagination a free rein and lets his tongue loose in a pasture of falsehoods. . . .

Who could have guessed...given all the reportage

Melik Kaylan, a refugee from Saddam's Iraq, writes in the Wall Street Journal:

A recent mission to Iraq headed by top archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K. who specialize in Mesopotamia found that, contrary to received wisdom, southern Iraq's most important historic sites -- eight of them -- had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion. This, according to a report by staff writer Martin Bailey in the July issue of the Art Newspaper.

As Malik goes on to report:

Up to now, it had seemed a clear-cut case. It stood to reason that a chaotic land rich with artifacts would be easy to loot and plunder. Ergo, the accusations against the U.S., the de facto governing authority, had been taken on faith. No one had bothered to challenge the reports, the evidence or the logic, not least because many ancient sites were in hostile terrain and couldn't be double-checked.

But as Malik duly notes:

When looters attacked the Baghdad Museum in 2003, the news media put the number of destroyed and looted objects at 170,000 -- a figure equal to the entire collection. It emerged later that most of the important pieces had been successfully hidden away. Others were soon found. The number of missing objects that is cited has since fluctuated between 3,000 and 15,000, with the figure never taking into account the systematic semiofficial looting and frequent substituting with fakes that occurred in Saddam's time.

So what did archeologists find on this latest trip? According to Malik who quotes the Art Newspaper article:

"The international team . . . had been expecting to find considerable evidence of looting after 2003 but to their astonishment and relief there was none. Not a single recent dig hole was found at the eight sites, and the only evidence of illegal digging came from holes which were partially covered with silt and vegetation, which means they [were] several years old." Furthermore, the most recent damage "probably dated back to 2003," to just before and after the invasion when the Iraqi army maneuvered for the allied attack. (According to other experts, looting probably took place when the Iraqi army first moved out of areas near sites to counter the invasion.)

So how, you ask,did the facts on the ground get so distorted? According to Malik:

In phone conversations with me, both Donny George and Lawrence Rothfield argued that the eight sites were all known to be well-protected. ...But Dr. George, perhaps the world's leading authority on the subject, also conceded that the greatest damage done by looters had generally occurred in the 1990s, in
Saddam's time. Prof. Rothfield said that the no-fly zones back then had allowed illicit digging to occur...

[Or as the Art Newspaper reported:]The upshot seems to be that] "little damage was . . . caused by coalition forces." Much of it was done by Saddam's forces.

Index of good news

USA Today reports:

European and Asian companies are beating their American rivals into Iraq now that security has improved the investment climate, Iraq and U.S. officials say.

"It's starting to turn … and the people who are getting in on the ground floor are not American," said Paul Brinkley, the Pentagon official who is leading U.S. efforts to help Iraq rebuild its economy. "It's ironic."

Foreign companies, including U.S. investors, have committed to deals worth about $500 million so far this year and Brinkley expects at least $1 billion in foreign investment by the end of the year.

Duh - Rand Report April 2008

This Rand conclusion in the recent released "Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan" seems almost too intuitively obvious to post but given the lack of confidence in common sense -in spite of the fact is is often so much more sensible than "expert" advice - I post it anyway:

...the most successful information operations were from indigenous actors such as religious, tribal, and political leaders - often without U.S. assistance.

"Catastrophic success" in Afghanistan?

That is how a recent operation by Company C of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit is being characterized. Today's NYT reports:

The district of Garmser, a fertile valley along the Helmand River, had been under control of the Taliban and members of Al Qaeda for most of the last two years and much of it had become a war zone, as the Taliban traded fire with British troops based in the district center. One of the largest poppy-growing areas in the country, Garmser District has been an important infiltration route for the insurgents, sending weapons and reinforcements to the north and drug shipments to the south to the border with Pakistan.

And check this out:

But Company C served in Anbar Province, once one of the most intractably violent areas of Iraq, which quieted last year under a new strategy of empowering local groups called Awakening Councils, which now provide security.

The marines were confident they could put that experience to good use here.
Only when you win over a critical balance of the local population and empower them to stand up to the insurgents can you turn the situation around, several marines said.
First Lt. Mark Matzke led a platoon for nine months last year in the Anbar city of Ramadi, where he said he got to know every character in a small neighborhood, both the troublemakers and the power brokers. But it was only when he sneaked in after dark and listened to people’s grievances in private that he was able to work out a strategy for protecting them from the insurgents.

“Through listening to their grievances, you could figure out that the people did not like the insurgents,” he said. But their biggest fear was that the marines would pull out, he said, leaving them at the mercy of insurgents who would treat them as collaborators.

As trust was built up, the people began to side with the marines and started to tip them off about who the insurgents were and where to find them. “You just need to give them confidence,” he said.

Villagers are still skeptical about how long the situation will last as the NYT goes on to report:

“I don’t think I will go back until complete peace and security comes,” said one elder, who said he had heard his house had collapsed under bombardment. “This is not the first time we have suffered. Several times we have seen such operations against the Taliban, and after some time the forces leave the area and so the Taliban find a way to return.”

“If NATO really wants to bring peace and make us free from harm from the Taliban,” he said, “they must make a plan for a long-term stay, secure the border area, install security checkpoints along the border area, deploy more Afghan National Army to secure the towns and villages, and then the people will be able to help them
with security."

Here's an offer that bears consideration

A leader of the tribal revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq told The New York Sun that he would be happy to send military advisors to Afghanistan. The NY Sun continues:

Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi told The New York Sun that in April he prepared a 47-page study on Afghanistan and its tribes for the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Kabul, Christopher Dell.

...The success of the Anbari tribal rebellion known as the awakening spurred Multinational Forces Iraq to try to emulate the model throughout Iraq, including with the predominately Shiite tribes in the south of the country.

..."Al Qaeda is an ideology," Sheik Ahmad said. "We can defeat them inside Iraq and we can defeat them in any country."

...Of his meeting with Mr. Bush, Sheik Ahmad said he was impressed. "He is a brave man. He is also a wise man. He is taking care of the country's future, the United
States' future. He is also taking care of the Iraqi people, the ordinary people in Iraq. He wants to accomplish success in Iraq."

...In Washington, Sheik Ahmad also met with some members of Congress. He said he told them that American soldiers should stay in Iraq for at least as long as it takes to rebuild Iraq's national army. The Democratic majority in Congress has tried and failed to mandate deadlines for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq regardless of conditions on the ground.

"We have to rebuild a national Iraqi army, not built on sects, but the same way they built up the Anbar police," he said. "They must be well-armed, so they will be able to protect the country and all the American interests in the area. We also have to make a friendship treaty based on mutual respect between the two parties, and then the United States will be able to withdraw from Iraq, if they wish, and we will succeed in Iraq the same way America succeeded in Japan and Germany."

..."We fully trust the Americans. We know the United States never in its history occupied a country. On the contrary, they were occupied and they were able to fight the occupier," he said, referring to the American rebellion against the British in 1776.

Taliban fleeing Afghanistan to....Guess where

The New York Times reports:

Marines of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit have been clearing Taliban and foreign fighters from the district of Garmser, in southern Helmand Province, an
important infiltration and drug trafficking route used by the Taliban to supply
insurgents farther north.

“The insurgents, after experiencing these several weeks of pressure below Garmser, are trying to flee to the south, perhaps to go back to the sanctuaries in another country,” said the NATO commander, Gen. Dan K. McNeill.

He did not name Pakistan, but Helmand Province shares a border with Pakistan, and the Taliban and drug traffickers have long used refugee camps across the border as a sanctuary from American firepower.

And look:

Governor Mangal said hundreds of foreign fighters had joined the Taliban in
their fight against marines in Garmser in recent weeks.

But he said they had suffered heavy losses.
Nineteen bodies of foreign fighters were found in one location, he said.

Alas the news is not entirely good given that "close by" places have decided to appease terrorists by offering them safe haven and in Afghanistan, the opium lords still reign. As the Times report continued:

General McNeill, who hands over command of NATO forces in Afghanistan this week
after 16 months in the post, said that if the Taliban and foreign insurgents continued to enjoy free sanctuary outside Afghanistan, their numbers would continue to grow.

He also seemed to warn Pakistan to contain the threat emanating from its land.
“If there are insurgencies in places that are not in Afghanistan, but very close by, and security forces are not taking them on, I don’t think that bodes well for the whole region,” General McNeill said.

Despite the rout of Taliban forces, the general warned that they were not the only problem in Helmand Province and that the enormous opium crop and the powerful drug business posed a comparable threat to Afghanistan’s stability.

Is the Taliban winning or losing?

The London Telegraph quotes the commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, Brig Mark Carleton-Smith:

The new "precise, surgical" tactics have killed scores of insurgent leaders and made it extremely difficult for Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to prosecute the campaign, according to Brig Mark Carleton-Smith....

Taliban fighters are apparently becoming increasingly unpopular in Helmand, where they are reliant on the local population for food and water.

"I can therefore judge the Taliban insurgency a failure at the moment," said Brig Carleton-Smith. "We have reached the tipping point."

Telegraph report suggests that the insurgency is running out of so much juice in Afghanistan, it has to be fought by foreigners:

The number of Afghans involved in the insurgency has also fallen, with increasing numbers of Pakistanis, Chechens, Uzbeks and Arabs found dead on the battlefield.

Now how does the NY Times sees the situation? Today's headline: "Taliban Leader Flaunts Power Inside Pakistan" gives us a clue. As the lead paragraphs continue:

With great fanfare, the Pakistani Army flew journalists to a rugged corner of the nation’s lawless tribal areas in May to show how decisively it had destroyed the lairs of the Taliban, including a school for suicide bombers, in fighting early this year.

Then, just days later, the usually reclusive leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, held a news conference of his own, in the same region, to show just who was in charge.

Mehsud, incidentally, is suspected by Pakistani and U.S. authorities of having masterminded the assassination of Benazir Bhutto:

He and his main ally, Qari Hussain, whom officials and associates have described as a highly trained and vicious militant, have methodically built up strongholds in North and South Waziristan — killing uncooperative tribal leaders, recruiting unemployed young men to their jihad and filling the vacuum left by a lack of government services. Now, they also have lieutenants and allies across the tribal region.

In South Waziristan, they run training camps for suicide bombers, some of them children, according to the former Taliban member. Their realm is so secure that in April Mr. Mehsud’s umbrella group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, held a conference of thousands of fighters that culminated in a public execution, according to a local resident

How you wonder do such upstanding guys attract "loyal" followers? The Times continues:

[A former Taliban member] said he had worked in the propaganda wing of Mr. Mehsud’s cohort from May 2006 to May 2007, and left after Mr. Hussain ordered the killing of eight of his relatives in a dispute....

He described Mr. Hussain as a kind of enforcer, a deputy to Mr. Mehsud who would order killings of tribesmen and often personally slit a person’s throat....

Mr. Hussain ran the school for suicide bombers where he would indoctrinate boys as young as 10, the former Taliban member said. “He called every child by his name, and talked to him about life in the next world,” he said.

Does the Times really think the Taliban is winning?

I'm not so sure and frankly, don't care to guess.

But check out how the story ends to see what at least somebody might be angling for here. The Times finishes the story with an interview with a NWFP police inspector, Malik Navid Khan who has a plan how to get rid of the Taliban. First he engages in a little hard selling:

“[The Taliban] are now on the periphery,” Mr. Khan said in an interview. If nothing is done, it could be “a matter of months” before Peshawar falls, he said.

Get it? Buy this idea or die.....So what does Inspector Khan suggest?

To woo young men away from the Taliban, he wants to create a broad “conservation corps” to employ 300,000 men — approximately one from every family — to build roads and bridges in the impoverished tribal region. The men would get a stipend to counter the generous 13,000 rupees (about $200) the Taliban pay some members each month.

“The economic effect will be immediate,” said Mr. Khan, who says he is impatient with a slow-moving $750 million five-year American aid program that began a few months ago. He recites his ideas to the many American development experts who come through his door offering to help.

The Americans all say about his employment plan, modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s: “ ‘We are thinking about it,’ ” he said. “I say: ‘Don’t think about it, do it.’ ”

As to who Inspector Khan has in mind to disperse the $60 million per month this program will cost we will no doubt find out in the Times' follow-up - when Inspector Khan describes phase two of his plan: How each tribal family must now have a Toyota Land Cruiser to keep up with - I mean- get away from the Taliban.

McClellan: Me think he doth protest too much

In spite of what he now seems to be characterizing as serious long-term and politically expedient lapses in his judgment, Pres. Bush's former press secretary Scott McClellan's does seem to grasp at least one obvious point:

The press amplifies the talking points of one or both parties in its coverage, thereby spreading distortions, half-truths, and occasionally outright lies in an effort to seize the limelight and have something or someone to pick on. And by overemphasizing conflict and controversy and by reducing complex and important issues to convenient, black-and-white story lines and seven-second sound bites the media exacerbate the problem, thereby making it incredibly hard even for well-intentioned leaders to clarify and correct the misunderstandings and oversimplifications that dominate the political conversation. Finally, it becomes much more difficult for the general public to decipher the more important truths amid all the conflict, controversy and negativity. For some partisans, that is fine because they believe they can maneuver better in such a highly politicized environment to accomplish their objectives.

McCain's candidacy explained

George Packer writing in the New Yorker:

McCain doesn’t try to stir a crowd’s darker passions or its higher aspirations. He doesn’t present himself as a conservative leader; he is simply a leader. His favorite book, according to Salter, is “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” because it’s the story of a man who struggles nobly even though he knows the effort is doomed. McCain says to audiences, Here I am, a man in full, take me or leave me. This might be the only kind of Republican who could win in 2008

Memorial Day reading

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times will publish its detailed studies of the nearly 500 Californians who have made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is their preview:

Nearly 500 Californians have lost their lives while in service to their country in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least 58 were immigrants; more than 160 were parents, who left behind more than 300 children. One descended from two presidents; another was a Guatemalan street orphan taken in by an American
family as a teenager. One high school lost six of its graduates.

As The Times reports:

At age 7, Victor H. Toledo-Pulido was smuggled across the border from Mexico through rugged mountains into California. He and another soldier were killed in May 2007 when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle southeast of Baghdad. "They judge us, and they say we just come to take their jobs and positions, but we also make sacrifices. Victor worked since he was little, in the fields and in restaurants," his mother, Maria Gaspar, said after the 22-year-old was killed. "He was Mexican, but he thought like an American. And he gave his life for this country."

The father of Bunny Long, 22, a Marine lance corporal who immigrated to the U.S. from Cambodia, where he spent four years in a Khmer Rouge labor camp recalled.

"This is our home," his father, Sim Long, said after his son was killed in March 2006 by a suicide car bomber in Fallouja, west of Baghdad. "I'm very proud that Bunny was able to give back to his country. Our country."

Another father had a different perspective:

"I had my doubts about him and the Marines, knowing how my son rebelled against authority," said Ken Walker, the father of Marine Staff Sgt. Allan K. Walker, 28, of Lancaster, who was killed in April 2004 when his Humvee convoy was attacked in Iraq's Anbar province. "When he came back from boot camp, I was so proud. They took a punk kid and turned out a young man with a sense of honor."

Then there were those who joined because of what happened on Sept. 11:

"I'm ready to fight for my country," Marine Lance Cpl. Derek L. Gardner, 20, of San Juan Capistrano told The Times before he deployed to Iraq. He was among seven Marines killed in September 2004 when a bomb-laden vehicle was detonated near their convoy outside Fallouja.

Many of those killed were married. As one wife recalled:

"He saw his baby do his first steps. He was a real good father and a real good husband," Rebekah Reyes said of her husband, Army Spc. Daniel F. Reyes, 24, of San Diego. "He was always thinking about us. He called me every morning from Iraq." Reyes was one of two soldiers killed in July 2007 when their unit was attacked with indirect fire -- a military term that usually refers to mortar or rocket fire -- in Tunis, Iraq, south of Baghdad.

Check out the full report this Sunday, Memorial Day.

Who knew: Deaths related to terrorism have declined since 2001

The Canadian Press reports:

A group of researchers from Simon Fraser University says global terrorism is on the decline, despite previous data and public perceptions that suggest otherwise.

The university's Human Security Report Project says fatalities from terrorist attacks around the world have, in fact, decreased by 40 per cent since 2001.

Researcher Andrew Mack says previous data showing increases in terrorism have included civilian deaths in Iraq.

But he says such deaths in civil wars have traditionally been treated as war crimes, not terrorism, and it makes sense to remove them from the data entirely.

Mack says even in Iraq recently there has been a sharp decline in attacks after several years of increased violence.

He says part of the reason is that global support for Islamic terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida has declined.

Al Qaeda: How much more depraved can it get?

Their latest exploit: Children

CBS News reports from Pakistan:

Amid cries of ‘Allah o Akbar’ (god is great), a young boy, barely 12 years old, lifts his machete and strikes at his victim who is lying on the ground, all tied up for the kill.

Waving a ‘V’ for victory sign with his right hand, the boy picks up the severed head and shows it around to the chants of applause from an audience gathered in a remote part of the region straddling the mountainous range which divides Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The performance in this chilling episode which may simply shock most people around the world, is the case of militant justice meted out to supposed traitors. It involves Al Qaeda and the Taliban slapping exemplary punishment to an individual suspected to be a spy for the government.

To me this suggests adults are not signing on to the cause. As the report continues:

This video has been captured by Pakistan’s military troops during their operations in the country’s semi autonomous tribal areas, as they went from village to village, searching for militant sanctuaries.

In the village of Spinkai-Roghzai where a group of journalists including CBS News were taken by Pakistan’s military on Sunday in the Waziristan tribal region, officials showed debris of what is described as a suicide training ‘nursery’....

“There is no harm in taking ‘jehad’ (holy war) for the right cause” read the sign board in a training class, documented in yet another Pakistani intelligence video, secretly captured ahead of the operation, through the use of hidden cameras inserted around the front compound of the school. A teacher, who wrapped himself up to his face with a piece of cloth, pointed towards a list of “recommendations for students” while surrounded by teenagers, urging them to embrace virtues such as “accept the way forward through sacrifice” and “accept that laying down your life for the right cause is not a waste”.

More evidence Al Qaeda is being defeated in Iraq

Nibras Kazimi, a former Iraqi dissident and now Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington and widely-read blogger at Talisman Gate on Iraq, reports on a recent posting on an Al Qaeda website:

A prolific jihadist sympathizer has posted an ‘explosive’ study on one of the main jihadist websites in which he laments the dire situation that the mujaheddin find themselves in Iraq by citing the steep drop in the number of insurgent operations conducted by the various jihadist groups, most notably Al-Qaeda’s 94 percent decline in operational ability over the last 12 months when only a year and half ago Al-Qaeda accounted for 60 percent of all jihadist activity!

As Kazimi points out, this study can be found on one of Al Qaeda's chief media outlets: the Al-Ekhlaas website.

In his study the author provides figures and graphs and states that the number of operations that Al Qaeda in Iraq has dramatically declined. As Kazimi writes:

Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq could claim 334 operations in Nov. 06 and 292 in May 07, their violent output dropped to 25 in Nov. 07 and 16 so far in May 08. Keep in mind that these assessments are based on Al-Qaeda's own numbers.

Below are the charts the Al-Ekhlaas writer posted. The figures he describes above are represented in the bars on the left; the smaller bars represent operations figures for other radical groups also operating in Iraq: