More 20/20 Hindsight
The Weekly Standard weighs in and takes the FAA to task for not doing more to prevent 9-11. In Jonathan Last's view, they should have revised the hijacking protocols so that planes could not be used as weapons even if that meant passengers were killed in the cabin and the plane risked a crash.
He blames the FAA even though he admits that the pre-9-11 policy worked for nearly 40 years and that there was no US hijackings for a decade.
For Last, agencies must evaluate all threats and implement aggressive counter-measures for all that are plausible.
While that sounds reasonable, a little thought will reveal that it is really a formula for a garrison state and is unworkable in practice.
In fact, i'll wager that Mr. Last doesn't operate in real life in a manner that is consistent with his censure of the FAA.
For example, we know from captured training films that the jihadis have considered using small teams to shoot up public areas like schools, malls, and golf courses. They trained for this in Afghanistan. Further, terror cells in Oregon, Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania actually practiced small group tactics and shooting here in the US. We have the case of Mir Aimal Kasi who killed 2 and wounded 3 on the highway outside of the CIA headquarters in1993, the DC snipers, and the LAX shooter. finally, intelligence agencies have warned of credible threats to shopping malls in recent weeks.
As an individual Mr. Last has to deal with this risk as he goes about his work and recreation. does he avoid malls, crowded highways, and golf courses?
In addition, history is pretty clear that the most effective response for minimizing civilian casualties once an attack starts is vigorous action by armed civilians. Even a rapid police reaction gives the terrorists several minutes of free killing.
So, following Mr. Last's logic that the responsible parties must take aggressive steps to prepare for all plausible threats, i would expect that he does the following:
1. Has a permit for CCW.
2. Carries, at all times, a suitable handgun for an anti-terrorist response. Suitable means a minimum of a 4" barrel and a police caliber. Little revolvers and pocket automatics are not appropriate for engaging terrorists with AK-47s.
3. Has practiced with his handgun so he can hit a 10" plate consistently at 50 yards.
4. Travels with a rifle in his car (but not in the trunk). A handgun is only part of the solution. The terrorists might be 100 yards away or more in which case Mr. Last needs a better tool than his handgun.
I'm sure The Weekly Standard won't have a problem with Mr. Last carrying his rifle to work but malls and golf courses might object. Since he can't leave them in the car (could be stolen and besides, what good is his rifle if it is in his trunk while he is in Home Depot?) he will just have to avoid those places.
This sounds ridiculous and it is. But that is the problem with using only narrow hindsight to assess risks and failures. There are many risks which meet the "plausible and dangerous" threshold. To guard against any failure we must guard against all of them all of the time. That, in itself, becomes unworkable.
Monday, May 03, 2004
Saturday, May 01, 2004
Prisoner abuse
Sgt. Stryker says it best here:
The first rule of a coward, when caught, is to play stupid. The second is to blame someone else. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I don't need a superior to tell me that attaching wires to someone's genitals or beating the living shit out of them is unacceptable. What are you, a fucking idiot? This guy's supposed to be a correctional officer at a Virginia prison, but apparently when it comes to performing his job outside the confines of the Commonwealth, he turns into Sergeant Stupid. "Duh, What do I do? What do I do?"
Sgt. Stryker says it best here:
The first rule of a coward, when caught, is to play stupid. The second is to blame someone else. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I don't need a superior to tell me that attaching wires to someone's genitals or beating the living shit out of them is unacceptable. What are you, a fucking idiot? This guy's supposed to be a correctional officer at a Virginia prison, but apparently when it comes to performing his job outside the confines of the Commonwealth, he turns into Sergeant Stupid. "Duh, What do I do? What do I do?"
We need a new word
What do you call an anti-war activist who lies about being a combat veteran? If hawks who haven't served are chickenhawks, then what are doves who lie about being soldiers? We saw them during and after Vietnam and now it has happened again. Michele has details on a current example.
See also:
What do you call an anti-war activist who lies about being a combat veteran? If hawks who haven't served are chickenhawks, then what are doves who lie about being soldiers? We saw them during and after Vietnam and now it has happened again. Michele has details on a current example.
See also:
UPDATE: On Micah Wright see this from Mrs. Spoons.
"Outrage at Pitzer College"
This Powerline post shows the near total success the New Left had in their march through the institutions.
This Powerline post shows the near total success the New Left had in their march through the institutions.
"A Massacre in Kosovo"
Did you know a Palestinian terrorist killed three Americans on 17 April?
Probably not. The killing didn't happen in Iraq so it lacked "newsworthiness." And the Palestinian was not fighting with the Iraqi "resistence" so it did not fit the pre-fab reporting template.
This article gives the outline of the story. It also raises some serious issues.
Why does the United Nations police force enjoy "immunity from prosecution"? Isn't that a recipe for thuggery? What is the UN equivalent of the US military justice system?
What genius thought it was a good idea to allow radical Muslims with ties to Hamas to work as "neutral" policemen in Kosovo? For the Serbs, Kosovo is the symbol of their resistance to Islamic conquest. Sending radical Muslims there as policemen is no way to win them over.
Why does the UN impose heavy censorship in Kosovo? More importantly, why does the US media tolerate this? After all the whining about Pentagon news management it turns out that they accept outright censorship from Kofi Annon.
UPDATE: Justin Katz comments here.
Did you know a Palestinian terrorist killed three Americans on 17 April?
Probably not. The killing didn't happen in Iraq so it lacked "newsworthiness." And the Palestinian was not fighting with the Iraqi "resistence" so it did not fit the pre-fab reporting template.
This article gives the outline of the story. It also raises some serious issues.
Why does the United Nations police force enjoy "immunity from prosecution"? Isn't that a recipe for thuggery? What is the UN equivalent of the US military justice system?
What genius thought it was a good idea to allow radical Muslims with ties to Hamas to work as "neutral" policemen in Kosovo? For the Serbs, Kosovo is the symbol of their resistance to Islamic conquest. Sending radical Muslims there as policemen is no way to win them over.
Why does the UN impose heavy censorship in Kosovo? More importantly, why does the US media tolerate this? After all the whining about Pentagon news management it turns out that they accept outright censorship from Kofi Annon.
UPDATE: Justin Katz comments here.
Friday, April 30, 2004
Another Lesson from the Army Schools (III)
Previous:
Part I
Part II
Since World War II, the US military has used its schools to strengthen our alliances and to integrate allies into our military structure. Students from allied countries can be found at all levels-- from the service academies to the war colleges. Similarly, each branch opens the doors of its war college to members of the other branches.
The benefits are obvious. It is much easier to cooperate with Peru on counter-insurgency if the Peruvian generals have been exposed to American doctrine and methods. The cooperation can be even more effective if some of the officers know each other from their time in the classrooms at Leavenworth or Newport.
In many cases, study at the American military schools helps foreign officers in their quest for promotion. Over the long-term this strengthens the ties with allied forces: the top ranks of their services are populated with graduates of our schools.
You see the same dynamic at work in the history of the FBI. After Hoover established the FBI Academy at Quantico, he admitted students from local police departments. Local cops were exposed to modern methods of law enforcement, training, and investigation. Most of them left with a positive image of the FBI and were more willing to cooperate with the Bureau if that became necessary.
It seems to me that these same advantages could be leveraged by private businesses. Two side benefits of a better internal education system are better integration of suppliers into the total value chain and closer relations with key customers.
Corporations are learning what Baron von Steuben discovered with Washington's army-- Americans need to know why they are told to do something. The same holds true with suppliers. You can bludgeon them into compliance, but things will go much better if you explain. Including some suppliers in your training efforts makes communication quicker and smoother.
By including customers a firm does three things: First, those customers recognize that the firm is serious about the intellectual aspects of strategy, technology, etc. This is a powerful form of brand enhancement. Second, it creates champions inside its clients who are favorably disposed toward it. Third, the cross-pollination between clients, suppliers, and the firm itself will generate more and better ideas.
Paradoxically, the benefit may be more important to small firms than to their resource-heavy competitors. A small advertising agency can't match a mega-network like WPP when it comes to global scale, money, or head count. But it can tailor an education initiative to its clients more easily than Y&R or TBWA. It will also see more immediate results; it takes a long time and a lot of money to educate 300 creatives in marketing strategy.
One cardinal advantage of using education in this way is that it is a competitive dimension that overseas competitors will find hard to match. Proximity counts in education: nothing can match having students all together in the same room.
Part IV is here.
Previous:
Part I
Part II
Since World War II, the US military has used its schools to strengthen our alliances and to integrate allies into our military structure. Students from allied countries can be found at all levels-- from the service academies to the war colleges. Similarly, each branch opens the doors of its war college to members of the other branches.
The benefits are obvious. It is much easier to cooperate with Peru on counter-insurgency if the Peruvian generals have been exposed to American doctrine and methods. The cooperation can be even more effective if some of the officers know each other from their time in the classrooms at Leavenworth or Newport.
In many cases, study at the American military schools helps foreign officers in their quest for promotion. Over the long-term this strengthens the ties with allied forces: the top ranks of their services are populated with graduates of our schools.
You see the same dynamic at work in the history of the FBI. After Hoover established the FBI Academy at Quantico, he admitted students from local police departments. Local cops were exposed to modern methods of law enforcement, training, and investigation. Most of them left with a positive image of the FBI and were more willing to cooperate with the Bureau if that became necessary.
It seems to me that these same advantages could be leveraged by private businesses. Two side benefits of a better internal education system are better integration of suppliers into the total value chain and closer relations with key customers.
Corporations are learning what Baron von Steuben discovered with Washington's army-- Americans need to know why they are told to do something. The same holds true with suppliers. You can bludgeon them into compliance, but things will go much better if you explain. Including some suppliers in your training efforts makes communication quicker and smoother.
By including customers a firm does three things: First, those customers recognize that the firm is serious about the intellectual aspects of strategy, technology, etc. This is a powerful form of brand enhancement. Second, it creates champions inside its clients who are favorably disposed toward it. Third, the cross-pollination between clients, suppliers, and the firm itself will generate more and better ideas.
Paradoxically, the benefit may be more important to small firms than to their resource-heavy competitors. A small advertising agency can't match a mega-network like WPP when it comes to global scale, money, or head count. But it can tailor an education initiative to its clients more easily than Y&R or TBWA. It will also see more immediate results; it takes a long time and a lot of money to educate 300 creatives in marketing strategy.
One cardinal advantage of using education in this way is that it is a competitive dimension that overseas competitors will find hard to match. Proximity counts in education: nothing can match having students all together in the same room.
Part IV is here.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Specter
I'm glad Arlen Specter won. I wish Pat Toomey had never entered the primary. I know Specter is more much more liberal than i am but i thought Specter was better than Hoeffel, and that was the key match-up. Toomey had little chance November.
As the race developed, i found myself getting angry at the NRO crowd and the Club for Growth. By what right does a bunch of meddlers from Manhattan and D.C. come into my state and my party's primary? They don't live here nor do they have to live with the consequences of a miscalculation.
A couple of months back i posted about my admiration for Kucinich and his willingness to face ridicule to advance his beliefs. The Club for Growth does the exact opposite. They play in the shadows and hope their money can exploit existing state and local parties. They will go after Specter because it is doable-- they are afraid to find conservatives to take on Schumer or Kennedy or Wyden because it is hard.
Cowards, manipulators, and backroom intriguers-- that's all they are and i'm glad they lost.
(See also here).
I'm glad Arlen Specter won. I wish Pat Toomey had never entered the primary. I know Specter is more much more liberal than i am but i thought Specter was better than Hoeffel, and that was the key match-up. Toomey had little chance November.
As the race developed, i found myself getting angry at the NRO crowd and the Club for Growth. By what right does a bunch of meddlers from Manhattan and D.C. come into my state and my party's primary? They don't live here nor do they have to live with the consequences of a miscalculation.
A couple of months back i posted about my admiration for Kucinich and his willingness to face ridicule to advance his beliefs. The Club for Growth does the exact opposite. They play in the shadows and hope their money can exploit existing state and local parties. They will go after Specter because it is doable-- they are afraid to find conservatives to take on Schumer or Kennedy or Wyden because it is hard.
Cowards, manipulators, and backroom intriguers-- that's all they are and i'm glad they lost.
(See also here).
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
In praise of a good hat
James Rummel writes about hats. Not in that icky metrosexual way, but in a pragmatic way that Louis l'Amour or even Kim duToit could appreciate.
Update: Julie Neidlinger comments here.
James Rummel writes about hats. Not in that icky metrosexual way, but in a pragmatic way that Louis l'Amour or even Kim duToit could appreciate.
Update: Julie Neidlinger comments here.
"Looking Through Keyholes"
This column from David Brooks is very, very good. He understands the pundit-mindset completely:
What's going on is obvious. The first duty of proper Washingtonians is to demonstrate that they are smarter than whomever they happen to be talking about. It's quite easy to fulfill this mission when you are talking about the past. It's child's play for a salad-course solon who spent the entire 1990's ignoring foreign affairs to condemn the administration piously for not focusing like a laser beam on Al Qaeda on Aug. 6, 2001.
It's harder to be a smart aleck about the future, especially in regards to Najaf and Falluja, where none of the choices are good ones. Do the Baathists win a victory every day they hold off our siege? Or if we take them out now, do we undermine Sistani? We Klieg Light Kierkegaards will give you the right answer — three years from now, after whatever option the president takes has been judged and found wanting.
Victor Davis Hanson made this point even before the war began here:
Post Modern War
The problem is not partisan or ideological. Rightwing pundits do it too as I noted here and here.
This column from David Brooks is very, very good. He understands the pundit-mindset completely:
What's going on is obvious. The first duty of proper Washingtonians is to demonstrate that they are smarter than whomever they happen to be talking about. It's quite easy to fulfill this mission when you are talking about the past. It's child's play for a salad-course solon who spent the entire 1990's ignoring foreign affairs to condemn the administration piously for not focusing like a laser beam on Al Qaeda on Aug. 6, 2001.
It's harder to be a smart aleck about the future, especially in regards to Najaf and Falluja, where none of the choices are good ones. Do the Baathists win a victory every day they hold off our siege? Or if we take them out now, do we undermine Sistani? We Klieg Light Kierkegaards will give you the right answer — three years from now, after whatever option the president takes has been judged and found wanting.
Victor Davis Hanson made this point even before the war began here:
Post Modern War
The problem is not partisan or ideological. Rightwing pundits do it too as I noted here and here.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Connecting the Dots
Lawrence Auster does just that in The Jordanian Story:
We thus tentatively have an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection, and a WMD-Iraq connection, constituting the very triangle of Iraq/WMDs/Al Qaeda which was our chief reason for toppling the Hussein regime.
Lawrence Auster does just that in The Jordanian Story:
We thus tentatively have an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection, and a WMD-Iraq connection, constituting the very triangle of Iraq/WMDs/Al Qaeda which was our chief reason for toppling the Hussein regime.
Vietnam and Algeria
Outstanding post over at Belmont Club:
No More Groupement Mobile 100s
And America too, is a deadly enemy. Already militarily invincible and capable of immense adaptation, it has already solved the military problems the French faced in Vietnam. Never again can a regimental force be marshaled against an American unit, like NVA Regiment 803. Now America is facing the challenge of a modern Algeria, the prototypical terrorist war. Waging a covert war across the globe, America is likely to succeed, like the French, in destroying the terrorist leadership cadres. Terrorism remains confident that America will be politically defeated though even here doubt grows, because America is also groping for a model of political warfare to use against its enemies.
Outstanding post over at Belmont Club:
No More Groupement Mobile 100s
And America too, is a deadly enemy. Already militarily invincible and capable of immense adaptation, it has already solved the military problems the French faced in Vietnam. Never again can a regimental force be marshaled against an American unit, like NVA Regiment 803. Now America is facing the challenge of a modern Algeria, the prototypical terrorist war. Waging a covert war across the globe, America is likely to succeed, like the French, in destroying the terrorist leadership cadres. Terrorism remains confident that America will be politically defeated though even here doubt grows, because America is also groping for a model of political warfare to use against its enemies.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Doctrine and Fad Surfing
I've lost count of the number of "change efforts" i've been involved with, participated in, and been subject to in the course of my corporate career. Most of them failed to yield the results they promised. Truth be told, some were actually harmful.
This experience is common, maybe even typical. Books have been written about the propensity of corporations to to seize on the idea du jour.
When i read the Marine Corps FMFM-1 "Warfighting" i was struck by the difference between the Marine Corps approach to instilling a common doctrine and the usual methods inside of corporations.
From FMFM-1:
Doctrine is a teaching advanced as the fundamental beliefs of the Marine Corps on the subject of war, from its nature and theory to its preparation and conduct Doctrine establishes a particular way of thinking about war and a way of fighting, a philosophy for leading Marines in combat, a mandate for professionalism, and a common language. In short, it establishes the way we practice our profession. In this manner, doctrine provides the basis for harmonious actions and mutual understanding.
Marine Corps doctrine is made official by the Commandant and is established in this manual. Our doctrine does not consist of procedures to be applied in specific situations so much as it establishes general guidance that requires judgment in application. Therefore, while authoritative, doctrine is not prescriptive.
The majority of corporate initiatives are just the opposite: they are prescriptive without being authoritative. They often demand that detailed templates be followed yet they end up being compartmentalized. Processes will be mapped and reengineered but the results don't translate into changes in the expense budget; managers will focus on delighting the customer in Wednesday's workshop then figure out ways to cut quality on Thursday because they are facing an earnings shortfall. Instead of a holistic approach to strategy, the firm ends up schizophrenic.
A broader problem is that the corporate method suggests that business success is simple and that there is a magic bullet-- reengineering, TQM, an ERP system-- that will make success easy and inevitable. In contrast, the Marines say war is complex and ever-changing. Not only are there no simple answers, even the questions keep shifting. The only way to succeed is for officers to study their profession for their whole lives.
THE OPPENHEIMER RIDDLE
New evidence of Communist membership debated by scholars of Berkeley scientist
Recently uncovered documents show that Oppenheimer belonged to a hidden Communist Party cell of professionals in Berkeley, according to UC Merced history Professor Gregg Herken.
Hiss, White, Coplon, Rosenberg, Currie, now Oppenheimer. It is getting harder and harder to find an "innocent victim of anti-communist hysteria."
See also, this discussion over at Volokh.
New evidence of Communist membership debated by scholars of Berkeley scientist
Recently uncovered documents show that Oppenheimer belonged to a hidden Communist Party cell of professionals in Berkeley, according to UC Merced history Professor Gregg Herken.
Hiss, White, Coplon, Rosenberg, Currie, now Oppenheimer. It is getting harder and harder to find an "innocent victim of anti-communist hysteria."
See also, this discussion over at Volokh.
Broadcast Decency and the New "Censorship"
Terrific post over at Cella's Review
In short, the class of people that still, even at this late date in the progress of egalitarian leveling, retains a considerable bulk of the political power in this country — that is, traditional families with children — got a good look at what awaits their children from the entertainment industry, and reacted as sober citizens of a republic do to brazen depravity. The revelation could not be undone by all the silver-tongued rhetoric about the First Amendment in the world. Clear-headed parents will not be argued into enslaving their children to vice. A predator is not beheld with equanimity by the prey.
Terrific post over at Cella's Review
In short, the class of people that still, even at this late date in the progress of egalitarian leveling, retains a considerable bulk of the political power in this country — that is, traditional families with children — got a good look at what awaits their children from the entertainment industry, and reacted as sober citizens of a republic do to brazen depravity. The revelation could not be undone by all the silver-tongued rhetoric about the First Amendment in the world. Clear-headed parents will not be argued into enslaving their children to vice. A predator is not beheld with equanimity by the prey.
Steve Sailor on Kill Bill 2
From the 10 May American Conservative (not online).
Tarantino represents the apotheosis of all the fanboys who devote their youths and young manhoods to watching hundreds of chop-socky movies. Of course, the reason film geeks have all that time on their hands is because girls aren't dying to go out with them. So, their catfight fetishes grow out of their anger at women, combined with their dreams of someday finding girlfriends cool enough to like slasher flicks too.
From the 10 May American Conservative (not online).
Tarantino represents the apotheosis of all the fanboys who devote their youths and young manhoods to watching hundreds of chop-socky movies. Of course, the reason film geeks have all that time on their hands is because girls aren't dying to go out with them. So, their catfight fetishes grow out of their anger at women, combined with their dreams of someday finding girlfriends cool enough to like slasher flicks too.
Friday, April 23, 2004
"Youth Ignore Newspapers"
Bill Hobbs has some grim news about newspaper readership. Young people just don't read the print editions. This is evidence that the problem i blogged about last year is real and is a stubborn trend.
As i wrote then, "Long term this is bad news for newspapers. Their most devoted readers are term-limited by the actuary tables. And it isn't likely that younger groups will fill the gap."
Currently, newspapers can ignore this problem because there is no competing venue that local advertisers can substitute for classified and display ads. But that can change and it is outside the control of newspaper publishers. That is a scary position for any industry.
Bill Hobbs has some grim news about newspaper readership. Young people just don't read the print editions. This is evidence that the problem i blogged about last year is real and is a stubborn trend.
As i wrote then, "Long term this is bad news for newspapers. Their most devoted readers are term-limited by the actuary tables. And it isn't likely that younger groups will fill the gap."
Currently, newspapers can ignore this problem because there is no competing venue that local advertisers can substitute for classified and display ads. But that can change and it is outside the control of newspaper publishers. That is a scary position for any industry.
"Seeing your face in the mirror"
"One of the reasons some people are drawn to foreign religions is the freedom to see whatever you want to see in a doctrine that you take out of its cultural context. So we have American Buddhists and Vedantins who live wild and crazy lifestyles that wouldn't be remotely acceptable in Buddhist or Hindu villages believing they're perfectly aligned with the Dharma. We see a similar disconnect in the technology and society writing, most of which is done by people who understand neither technology nor society."
RTWT here.
"One of the reasons some people are drawn to foreign religions is the freedom to see whatever you want to see in a doctrine that you take out of its cultural context. So we have American Buddhists and Vedantins who live wild and crazy lifestyles that wouldn't be remotely acceptable in Buddhist or Hindu villages believing they're perfectly aligned with the Dharma. We see a similar disconnect in the technology and society writing, most of which is done by people who understand neither technology nor society."
RTWT here.
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Old News We Have Forgotten
This article is nearly two years old, but it is really on point about the Phoenix Memo and Colleen Rowley's "warning" about Moussaoui.
Rowley doesn't say which of the 19 hijackers might have been apprehended, and for good reason. It appears from public reports that the would-be hijackers had completed their flight training by the time Moussaoui was captured on August 16, 2001. In fact, it appears they had already completed their flight training by the time the Phoenix memorandum was written on July 10, 2001. Moreover, while apparently identifying several suspicious Arab flight-school students, the Phoenix memorandum doesn't name any of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
In addition, Moussaoui's laptop computer, the ostensible subject of Rowley's memorandum, contained information about airliners, crop dusters, and wind currents, but apparently no information about the Sept. 11 hijackers.
This article is nearly two years old, but it is really on point about the Phoenix Memo and Colleen Rowley's "warning" about Moussaoui.
Rowley doesn't say which of the 19 hijackers might have been apprehended, and for good reason. It appears from public reports that the would-be hijackers had completed their flight training by the time Moussaoui was captured on August 16, 2001. In fact, it appears they had already completed their flight training by the time the Phoenix memorandum was written on July 10, 2001. Moreover, while apparently identifying several suspicious Arab flight-school students, the Phoenix memorandum doesn't name any of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
In addition, Moussaoui's laptop computer, the ostensible subject of Rowley's memorandum, contained information about airliners, crop dusters, and wind currents, but apparently no information about the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Intelligence Analysis for Counter-terrorism
Beyond Sharing Intelligence, We Must Generate Knowledge
Analyzing terrorism is not like analyzing Russian naval strength or Latin American political systems; such analyses rely upon well-defined indicators and data sources. In contrast, counterterrorism analysis must provide structure to information that can be highly fragmentary, lacking in well-defined links, and fraught with deception. It must infer specific strategies and plans from small pieces of information. It must find common threads among seemingly disparate strands. And unlike the terrorist, who needs only a single vulnerability to exploit, the analyst must consider all potential vulnerabilities.
Beyond Sharing Intelligence, We Must Generate Knowledge
Analyzing terrorism is not like analyzing Russian naval strength or Latin American political systems; such analyses rely upon well-defined indicators and data sources. In contrast, counterterrorism analysis must provide structure to information that can be highly fragmentary, lacking in well-defined links, and fraught with deception. It must infer specific strategies and plans from small pieces of information. It must find common threads among seemingly disparate strands. And unlike the terrorist, who needs only a single vulnerability to exploit, the analyst must consider all potential vulnerabilities.
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Intelligence "Failure"? (VI)
Previous entries start here.
Rev. Donald Sensing writes this about the reality of intelligence analysis:
Think of the process as putting together an enormous jigsaw puzzle with innumerable, small, irregular pieces. Better yet, putting together many different puzzles when all puzzles use some of the pieces of the other puzzles. Sometimes patterns seem clear, often not. You know you do not have all the pieces for any of the puzzles; in fact, you do not know how many pieces of any puzzle you do have, nor how many pieces any puzzle is supposed to have. Not only that, but you don't know how many puzzles there are.
What that means is that very often when you examine a piece, the puzzle it belongs to will not be self-evident. Often it will. But remember, every day a man walks in with a big box full of pieces and dumps them.
It is worth noting some of the terrorist puzzles the FBI and CIA had to piece together between 1993 and 2001.
The OKC bombing
Sheik Raman's plot to bomb New York's tunnels and landmarks.
Terrorist threats against the Atlanta Olympics in 1996
Investigation of the Olympic Park Bombing
Tokyo subway sarin attacks (the cult responsible had adherents in this country)
TWA 800 crash
Egypt Air 990 crash
Khobar Towers Bombing
Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania
Possible arson conspiracy against black churches
Possible conspiracy behind murder of abortion providers
Terrorist threats against the Millennium celebrations on 12/31/99
Attack on the USS Cole
Each of these investigations required tens of thousands of man hours. Just imagine how many "dots" were thrown up in the 1990s. And in that mass of dots, how many pointed to Atta?
Previous entries start here.
Rev. Donald Sensing writes this about the reality of intelligence analysis:
Think of the process as putting together an enormous jigsaw puzzle with innumerable, small, irregular pieces. Better yet, putting together many different puzzles when all puzzles use some of the pieces of the other puzzles. Sometimes patterns seem clear, often not. You know you do not have all the pieces for any of the puzzles; in fact, you do not know how many pieces of any puzzle you do have, nor how many pieces any puzzle is supposed to have. Not only that, but you don't know how many puzzles there are.
What that means is that very often when you examine a piece, the puzzle it belongs to will not be self-evident. Often it will. But remember, every day a man walks in with a big box full of pieces and dumps them.
It is worth noting some of the terrorist puzzles the FBI and CIA had to piece together between 1993 and 2001.
The OKC bombing
Sheik Raman's plot to bomb New York's tunnels and landmarks.
Terrorist threats against the Atlanta Olympics in 1996
Investigation of the Olympic Park Bombing
Tokyo subway sarin attacks (the cult responsible had adherents in this country)
TWA 800 crash
Egypt Air 990 crash
Khobar Towers Bombing
Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania
Possible arson conspiracy against black churches
Possible conspiracy behind murder of abortion providers
Terrorist threats against the Millennium celebrations on 12/31/99
Attack on the USS Cole
Each of these investigations required tens of thousands of man hours. Just imagine how many "dots" were thrown up in the 1990s. And in that mass of dots, how many pointed to Atta?
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Kill Bill 2
From God of the Machine:
Tarantino is no nihilist in the sense in which Turgenev's Bazarov, for instance, is a nihilist. For Tarantino himself, and for his legions of male adolescent fans, his movies are mere pornographic revenge fantasies, wide-screen versions of the journal of a high-school spree killer. Nihilism presupposes a certain familiarity with the beliefs and ideas you're rejecting. Tarantino's lint-trap mind fastens entirely on movies and TV, and his nihilism is no nihilism at all. In fact KB2 evinces his belief in motherhood, of all things, like the jailbirds with the "MOM" tattoos.
From God of the Machine:
Tarantino is no nihilist in the sense in which Turgenev's Bazarov, for instance, is a nihilist. For Tarantino himself, and for his legions of male adolescent fans, his movies are mere pornographic revenge fantasies, wide-screen versions of the journal of a high-school spree killer. Nihilism presupposes a certain familiarity with the beliefs and ideas you're rejecting. Tarantino's lint-trap mind fastens entirely on movies and TV, and his nihilism is no nihilism at all. In fact KB2 evinces his belief in motherhood, of all things, like the jailbirds with the "MOM" tattoos.
Its very purpose "is to dethrone the serious."
In his book The Long March (highly recommended by the way) Roger Kimball has a good discussion of Susan Sontag. I was struck by by a couple things she wrote about the camp sensibility.
"[it] is the the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of 'style' over 'content' 'aesthetics' over 'morality', of irony over tragedy."
camp "is the solvent of morality."
"the relation between boredom and Camp taste cannot be overestimated."
It's puzzling that this attitude seems to be oozing out of every media channel, just 2 1/2 years after the WTC atrocity. You find it on ESPN, on cable news shows, in infotainment programming, on the op-ed pages of our newspaper of record.
Not even the blogosphere is immune. The hottest site going is Wonkette where wartime politics is just one big joke.
That's the most disappointing thing. All those macho warbloggers who've slapped MoDo around for the last year are now ga-ga over a one trick pony who is just Dowd with a cute graphic. Maybe the medium is more important than the message; having a blog means never getting smacked down by the wargods of the blogosphere. We don't apply the same standards to fellow bloggers that we do to journalists.
Ilyka is on to something when she wrote
"Premise: Nick Denton is to blogging as Dick Clark is to rock-and-roll."
I liked Scott's comment on this thread:
Isn't she a Nick Denton Creation? She gets whatever attention she gets because all the other cool kids want Nick to pick them for his kickball team next. Not that there's anything wrong with that, if you want to cram yourself into Denton's mold.
In his book The Long March (highly recommended by the way) Roger Kimball has a good discussion of Susan Sontag. I was struck by by a couple things she wrote about the camp sensibility.
"[it] is the the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of 'style' over 'content' 'aesthetics' over 'morality', of irony over tragedy."
camp "is the solvent of morality."
"the relation between boredom and Camp taste cannot be overestimated."
It's puzzling that this attitude seems to be oozing out of every media channel, just 2 1/2 years after the WTC atrocity. You find it on ESPN, on cable news shows, in infotainment programming, on the op-ed pages of our newspaper of record.
Not even the blogosphere is immune. The hottest site going is Wonkette where wartime politics is just one big joke.
That's the most disappointing thing. All those macho warbloggers who've slapped MoDo around for the last year are now ga-ga over a one trick pony who is just Dowd with a cute graphic. Maybe the medium is more important than the message; having a blog means never getting smacked down by the wargods of the blogosphere. We don't apply the same standards to fellow bloggers that we do to journalists.
Ilyka is on to something when she wrote
"Premise: Nick Denton is to blogging as Dick Clark is to rock-and-roll."
I liked Scott's comment on this thread:
Isn't she a Nick Denton Creation? She gets whatever attention she gets because all the other cool kids want Nick to pick them for his kickball team next. Not that there's anything wrong with that, if you want to cram yourself into Denton's mold.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Intelligence Failure? (V)
Part I is here.
If only we had connected the dots....
That's been a constant refrain since 9-11. If only our intelligence agencies had seen the pattern in the information, the attack on the WTC would never have happened. It has been repeated so often that it is almost unassailable conventional wisdom. It makes for good headlines and is a good hook for endless op-ed pieces. That doesn't change the fact that it is a cliché that deserves immediate retirement. Not only is it simplistic, the underlying idea is pernicious.
Connect the dots. That's a kid's game on the place-mat at the Ground Round. Can a serious person really think that threat analysis is child's play?
Two post 9-11 books rely heavily on the missed dots motif. Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge and Murray Weiss, The Man Who Warned America. Read either book and you will curse the stupid bureaucrats who were too blind to see. Read both, however, and you find that they themselves only connect some of the dots and when they do, often, they draw two different pictures.
For instance, who captured Ramzi Yousef? For Lance, the heroes are the Diplomatic Security Service. The FBI was late to the party, only showed up when Yousef was in handcuffs, then claimed all the credit. For Weiss, it was an FBI triumph orchestrated by John O'Neill. The DSS barely rates a mention.
Admittedly, any writer is limited by the sources available to them. But that is even more true of secret intelligence. Remember that Lance and Weiss are writing retrospectively about an event that has already happened and their sources are officials in a democratic government. Further, they had all the time they wanted to get their facts together. Now compare that to the FBI investigator trying to discern what might happen in the future, who has to depend on fragments of information gleaned from shadowy criminal conspiracies, and who is under intense time pressure to produce answers for policymakers and prosecutors.
A little understanding is in order and a little less finger-pointing.
Each book is full of other examples that undercut their claims that the dots and connections were obvious. O'Neill, dubbed "The Man Who Knew" by PBS, ended his FBI career investigating bin Laden and failing to convince the government that al Qaeda was a serious domestic threat. Yet, O'Neill was also convinced that there was a nationwide, centrally directed conspiracy to kill abortion providers. He fought to keep FBI resources focused on this "threat" even after Janet Reno recognized that no evidence existed of such a conspiracy. So O'Neill was not infallible and his superiors knew that. There was no reason for them to accept his threat assessment and demands for resources without questioning his evidence and logic. There was room for honest disagreement. He had, after all, been wrong before in his grand theories.
Lance lays out the background on the Phoenix Memo in great detail. It is one of the fattest dots that he thinks was ignored. But, as he presents it, the memo is nowhere close to a smoking gun.
First, he argues that it may have been a mere CYA gesture. The FBI agent who wrote it had been given the information from his source over four years before. The source was about to go public with his dissatisfaction at his treatment by the agent which may have triggered the memo to Washington.
Second, the source was romantically involved with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy. He refused to break-off the relationship when ordered to do so by the FBI and became a vehement public advocate of the woman's innocence. So, his credibility and judgment are at least open to question.
And what was the hot intel this source provided? That radical Islamisists were taking flight training. Did the source point to any of the 9-11 hijackers? Not quite.
Harry Ellen [the source] now believes [i.e. in 2003] that one of the young Islamics he saw outside the mosque back in 1996 was an Algerian pilot named Lofti Raissi. Raissi was arrested by British authorities right after 9/11 and indicted by the US Justice Department on charges of fraud and giving false information on his FAA pilot's application. A British judge set him free months later, declaring there was insufficient evidence to tie him to the 9/11 conspiracy. But the FBI found evidence that Raissi had been in the proximity of one of the key 9/11 hijackers on three occasions.
Hani Hanjour, the Saudi who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, had enrolled at CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona as far back as 1996. On five dates in 1998 he trained on a flight simulator at the same facility as Raissi.
According to Lance, this should have been enough for FBI analysts to figure out that an plan to fly jets into the WTC was imminent. Because a suspect source may have seen someone who was at a school in Arizona when another guy was there. The attack was about to happen because the hijack pilot had done nothing during the five years he was in this country. Why it's a big red arrow pointing directly at Atta down in Florida where the heart of the plot was located.
By the time the Phoenix Memo was sent, there was little FBI HQ could do to prevent 9-11. Even if they ignored PC sensibilities and started to investigate all Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons anywhere in the country, they had less than two months to catch the key figures. They would have been chasing needles in dozens of haystacks with very little time to do it.
For the Phoenix Memo to be useful, it needed to be sent earlier and more digging done by the Phoenix office to describe the actual threat. Yet, in their eagerness to attack the FBI, critics lionize the agent who may have sat on the critical information for years.
Note: Jane Galt returns to this subject here and here. Murdoc Online comments here.
Part I is here.
If only we had connected the dots....
That's been a constant refrain since 9-11. If only our intelligence agencies had seen the pattern in the information, the attack on the WTC would never have happened. It has been repeated so often that it is almost unassailable conventional wisdom. It makes for good headlines and is a good hook for endless op-ed pieces. That doesn't change the fact that it is a cliché that deserves immediate retirement. Not only is it simplistic, the underlying idea is pernicious.
Connect the dots. That's a kid's game on the place-mat at the Ground Round. Can a serious person really think that threat analysis is child's play?
Two post 9-11 books rely heavily on the missed dots motif. Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge and Murray Weiss, The Man Who Warned America. Read either book and you will curse the stupid bureaucrats who were too blind to see. Read both, however, and you find that they themselves only connect some of the dots and when they do, often, they draw two different pictures.
For instance, who captured Ramzi Yousef? For Lance, the heroes are the Diplomatic Security Service. The FBI was late to the party, only showed up when Yousef was in handcuffs, then claimed all the credit. For Weiss, it was an FBI triumph orchestrated by John O'Neill. The DSS barely rates a mention.
Admittedly, any writer is limited by the sources available to them. But that is even more true of secret intelligence. Remember that Lance and Weiss are writing retrospectively about an event that has already happened and their sources are officials in a democratic government. Further, they had all the time they wanted to get their facts together. Now compare that to the FBI investigator trying to discern what might happen in the future, who has to depend on fragments of information gleaned from shadowy criminal conspiracies, and who is under intense time pressure to produce answers for policymakers and prosecutors.
A little understanding is in order and a little less finger-pointing.
Each book is full of other examples that undercut their claims that the dots and connections were obvious. O'Neill, dubbed "The Man Who Knew" by PBS, ended his FBI career investigating bin Laden and failing to convince the government that al Qaeda was a serious domestic threat. Yet, O'Neill was also convinced that there was a nationwide, centrally directed conspiracy to kill abortion providers. He fought to keep FBI resources focused on this "threat" even after Janet Reno recognized that no evidence existed of such a conspiracy. So O'Neill was not infallible and his superiors knew that. There was no reason for them to accept his threat assessment and demands for resources without questioning his evidence and logic. There was room for honest disagreement. He had, after all, been wrong before in his grand theories.
Lance lays out the background on the Phoenix Memo in great detail. It is one of the fattest dots that he thinks was ignored. But, as he presents it, the memo is nowhere close to a smoking gun.
First, he argues that it may have been a mere CYA gesture. The FBI agent who wrote it had been given the information from his source over four years before. The source was about to go public with his dissatisfaction at his treatment by the agent which may have triggered the memo to Washington.
Second, the source was romantically involved with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy. He refused to break-off the relationship when ordered to do so by the FBI and became a vehement public advocate of the woman's innocence. So, his credibility and judgment are at least open to question.
And what was the hot intel this source provided? That radical Islamisists were taking flight training. Did the source point to any of the 9-11 hijackers? Not quite.
Harry Ellen [the source] now believes [i.e. in 2003] that one of the young Islamics he saw outside the mosque back in 1996 was an Algerian pilot named Lofti Raissi. Raissi was arrested by British authorities right after 9/11 and indicted by the US Justice Department on charges of fraud and giving false information on his FAA pilot's application. A British judge set him free months later, declaring there was insufficient evidence to tie him to the 9/11 conspiracy. But the FBI found evidence that Raissi had been in the proximity of one of the key 9/11 hijackers on three occasions.
Hani Hanjour, the Saudi who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, had enrolled at CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona as far back as 1996. On five dates in 1998 he trained on a flight simulator at the same facility as Raissi.
According to Lance, this should have been enough for FBI analysts to figure out that an plan to fly jets into the WTC was imminent. Because a suspect source may have seen someone who was at a school in Arizona when another guy was there. The attack was about to happen because the hijack pilot had done nothing during the five years he was in this country. Why it's a big red arrow pointing directly at Atta down in Florida where the heart of the plot was located.
By the time the Phoenix Memo was sent, there was little FBI HQ could do to prevent 9-11. Even if they ignored PC sensibilities and started to investigate all Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons anywhere in the country, they had less than two months to catch the key figures. They would have been chasing needles in dozens of haystacks with very little time to do it.
For the Phoenix Memo to be useful, it needed to be sent earlier and more digging done by the Phoenix office to describe the actual threat. Yet, in their eagerness to attack the FBI, critics lionize the agent who may have sat on the critical information for years.
Note: Jane Galt returns to this subject here and here. Murdoc Online comments here.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Intelligence Failure? (IV)
Part I is here.
The degree to which the FBI/CIA failed prior to 9-11 is inextricably tied to the question of how sophisticated and robust the al Qaeda conspiracy was. If we think they were simpletons, then almost any action by the US would have permanently derailed the plot. However, if they were smart operatives, then law enforcement's ability to prevent some catastrophic attack at some point was limited.
This matter is at the heart of the statement by Fred Fielding (quoted over at The Truth Laid Bear).
FIELDING: I am sure it's no surprise to you or anybody here that there's a lot of interest in today's hearings and there's a lot of interest simply because on September 11th we were totally beaten. We were beaten and all our systems failed.
Our systems to stop hijackings failed. Our intelligence, domestic and foreign apparatus failed. We had 19 people who were able to -- some of whom were known by the CIA to be terrorists -- entered our country, got visas, were living under their own names in this country, took flight lessons. They beat the security screening with knives to get into the aircraft and turn four aircraft into missiles.
And they had to have -- it was interesting -- they had to have 100 percent success in order to do this and they did.
Notice, though, that Fielding is assuming that the plot would have been easy to derail ("they had to have 100 percent success"). That is simply not borne out by the facts.
The original plot to hijack planes and fly them into buildings was disrupted when the police in Manila arrested one of the conspirators and forced the other two to flee. By the end of 1996 all three were in US custody (including Ramzi Yusef).
One of the first pilots for the reconstituted plot (Ramzi Binalshibh) WAS denied entry into the US. Al Qaeda found other volunteers. When Moussaoui was arrested, the plot continued.
Clearly, AQ did not need 100% success from end to end. They simply needed to keep trying, and get a short string of successes at some point. Fielding understates the real problems we faced in 2001 by minimizing the tenacity of the terrorists.
Similarly, do we know for sure that Atta's original plan called for four and only four planes? For all we know, our actions might have forced them to scale back their plan. That's the problem with intelligence, the murkiness is so deep, nearly every statement of fact can be questioned five different ways.
Part I is here.
The degree to which the FBI/CIA failed prior to 9-11 is inextricably tied to the question of how sophisticated and robust the al Qaeda conspiracy was. If we think they were simpletons, then almost any action by the US would have permanently derailed the plot. However, if they were smart operatives, then law enforcement's ability to prevent some catastrophic attack at some point was limited.
This matter is at the heart of the statement by Fred Fielding (quoted over at The Truth Laid Bear).
FIELDING: I am sure it's no surprise to you or anybody here that there's a lot of interest in today's hearings and there's a lot of interest simply because on September 11th we were totally beaten. We were beaten and all our systems failed.
Our systems to stop hijackings failed. Our intelligence, domestic and foreign apparatus failed. We had 19 people who were able to -- some of whom were known by the CIA to be terrorists -- entered our country, got visas, were living under their own names in this country, took flight lessons. They beat the security screening with knives to get into the aircraft and turn four aircraft into missiles.
And they had to have -- it was interesting -- they had to have 100 percent success in order to do this and they did.
Notice, though, that Fielding is assuming that the plot would have been easy to derail ("they had to have 100 percent success"). That is simply not borne out by the facts.
The original plot to hijack planes and fly them into buildings was disrupted when the police in Manila arrested one of the conspirators and forced the other two to flee. By the end of 1996 all three were in US custody (including Ramzi Yusef).
One of the first pilots for the reconstituted plot (Ramzi Binalshibh) WAS denied entry into the US. Al Qaeda found other volunteers. When Moussaoui was arrested, the plot continued.
Clearly, AQ did not need 100% success from end to end. They simply needed to keep trying, and get a short string of successes at some point. Fielding understates the real problems we faced in 2001 by minimizing the tenacity of the terrorists.
Similarly, do we know for sure that Atta's original plan called for four and only four planes? For all we know, our actions might have forced them to scale back their plan. That's the problem with intelligence, the murkiness is so deep, nearly every statement of fact can be questioned five different ways.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Intelligence Failure? (III)
Part I is here.
In Cloak and Gown his book on the CIA, Robin Winks writes this about Sherman Kent's* view of the realities of of intelligence work.
Unfortunately, many journalists still write as though there was some document the FBI could have obtained that would have revealed the whole conspiracy on 8-1-01.
I know of no evidence that Atta and his handlers had any sort of detailed written plan that they distributed to the other 18 hijackers in the summer of 2001. In fact, bin Laden indicated that many of the hijackers did not know they were going to crash the planes. So unraveling the whole plot would have required arresting Atta or one of the pilots and getting them to confess. Yet, what laws had Atta broken on 8-15-01 that would have justified that arrest?
Even if conspiracy to hijack could have been proven against most of the 19, would there have been a clear picture that they intended to use planes as giant bombs? Or would the reasonable conclusion have been that they were trying to force the release some prisoners as terrorists had often done before?
If the latter interpretation had prevailed, isn't it likely that al Qaeda would have kept trying for a 9-11 style attack? After all, they kept trying after the break-up of the New York terror cells and the arrest of Ramzi Yusef. The problem-- the planners-- were beyond the reach of the FBI and CIA. Stopping one conspiracy in New York offered no protection from the next. (Atta, for example, had no role in any of Ramzi Yusef's earlier plots; he was, recruited after the New York cells and the Manila plots were rolled-up.)
* Kent was the author of the book Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy and the towering figure in the creation of the CIA's analysis and estimate functions.
UPDATE: Donald Sensing comments here.
Part I is here.
In Cloak and Gown his book on the CIA, Robin Winks writes this about Sherman Kent's* view of the realities of of intelligence work.
[There are] no secret documents in the romantic sense of the words. On any important subject, there is no single document or even group of documents that contain "the secret." No spy could know enough to spot such a document if it existed, and no vacuum cleaner approach to espionage, even should it gather up two or three documents of the highest importance, would lead without all the analytical skills of the humanists to any valid conclusions. Documents do not speak: they do not declare that they are "the offbeat thoughts and recommendations of a highly-placed but erratic advisor," not a draft intended only for discussion, not a record of a decision rescinded orally the next day.
Unfortunately, many journalists still write as though there was some document the FBI could have obtained that would have revealed the whole conspiracy on 8-1-01.
I know of no evidence that Atta and his handlers had any sort of detailed written plan that they distributed to the other 18 hijackers in the summer of 2001. In fact, bin Laden indicated that many of the hijackers did not know they were going to crash the planes. So unraveling the whole plot would have required arresting Atta or one of the pilots and getting them to confess. Yet, what laws had Atta broken on 8-15-01 that would have justified that arrest?
Even if conspiracy to hijack could have been proven against most of the 19, would there have been a clear picture that they intended to use planes as giant bombs? Or would the reasonable conclusion have been that they were trying to force the release some prisoners as terrorists had often done before?
If the latter interpretation had prevailed, isn't it likely that al Qaeda would have kept trying for a 9-11 style attack? After all, they kept trying after the break-up of the New York terror cells and the arrest of Ramzi Yusef. The problem-- the planners-- were beyond the reach of the FBI and CIA. Stopping one conspiracy in New York offered no protection from the next. (Atta, for example, had no role in any of Ramzi Yusef's earlier plots; he was, recruited after the New York cells and the Manila plots were rolled-up.)
* Kent was the author of the book Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy and the towering figure in the creation of the CIA's analysis and estimate functions.
UPDATE: Donald Sensing comments here.
Intelligence Failure? (II)
In this piece from NRO Herbert E. Meyer makes a good point about intelligence.
The most vital, most actionable pieces of intelligence aren't "secret" at all. They are visible to anyone with a reasonable grasp of politics and economics — and, above all, anyone with a willingness to see the obvious and then articulate it clearly enough, and forcefully enough, so that policymakers cannot possibly ignore it.
To him it follows that the key failure of the pre-911 CIA and FBI was " a failure of insight, and it was from this failure that all the others flowed. Had our intelligence community made clear back in the 1990s that the country was at war, and under attack, the post-9/11 national focus on terrorism and on radical Islam would have started years before. "
While Meyer may have a point, he overlooks one key thing: In the government there are many people who think they have the insight to see the obvious and they disagree. How, then, is a President to choose among them?
It is obvious now that al Qaeda was the greatest immediate threat to US citizens in 2001. But was the evidence that strong in 1998? After all, before the second attack on the WTC, right-wing extremists had killed more Americans than bin Laden. Moreover, we had captured nearly all of the key figures in the first WTC bombing, good police work had foiled attacks on LAX, Seattle, and the trans-Pacific airliners. How stupid was it to think that the FBI and other agencies had a handle on the threat at home?
Is a president really supposed to believe each person who presents a worst-case scenario? Doesn't that lead almost inevitably to countless adventures abroad and a police state at home.?
Dean Acheson wrote in his memoirs that what presidents "needed was communicable wisdom, not mere conclusions, however soundly based in experience or intuition." That means that the insight must be backed up with facts and logic. Meyer admits this, but he thinks that getting the question formed correctly must come first and that framing the right question is critical to intelligence collection and analysis. Unfortunately, such a course can limit the kind of aggressive action Meyer approves of. As we have seen in Iraq, political support for such actions will erode when the voters suspect that the intelligence books were cooked to justify a pre-conceived course of action.
Easterbrook's "Alternative History" shows the problem with"insight" that is too good and is acted upon too quickly. If we citizens don't recognize the threat, we will punish the "over-reaction."
As a conservative, I am appalled at the way some Democrats have attacked Bush on the Iraq War and the intelligence failures. At the same time, i think that Clinton-Reno overstated the threat from the violent, extreme-right. But, for all i know, Clinton could have prevented 10 more OKC-type atrocities by breaking up neo-nazi and other groups. None of us can know how serious a contained threat really was. To judge any intelligence agency only on the threats it did not contain is worse than unfair; it is childish.
In this piece from NRO Herbert E. Meyer makes a good point about intelligence.
The most vital, most actionable pieces of intelligence aren't "secret" at all. They are visible to anyone with a reasonable grasp of politics and economics — and, above all, anyone with a willingness to see the obvious and then articulate it clearly enough, and forcefully enough, so that policymakers cannot possibly ignore it.
To him it follows that the key failure of the pre-911 CIA and FBI was " a failure of insight, and it was from this failure that all the others flowed. Had our intelligence community made clear back in the 1990s that the country was at war, and under attack, the post-9/11 national focus on terrorism and on radical Islam would have started years before. "
While Meyer may have a point, he overlooks one key thing: In the government there are many people who think they have the insight to see the obvious and they disagree. How, then, is a President to choose among them?
It is obvious now that al Qaeda was the greatest immediate threat to US citizens in 2001. But was the evidence that strong in 1998? After all, before the second attack on the WTC, right-wing extremists had killed more Americans than bin Laden. Moreover, we had captured nearly all of the key figures in the first WTC bombing, good police work had foiled attacks on LAX, Seattle, and the trans-Pacific airliners. How stupid was it to think that the FBI and other agencies had a handle on the threat at home?
Is a president really supposed to believe each person who presents a worst-case scenario? Doesn't that lead almost inevitably to countless adventures abroad and a police state at home.?
Dean Acheson wrote in his memoirs that what presidents "needed was communicable wisdom, not mere conclusions, however soundly based in experience or intuition." That means that the insight must be backed up with facts and logic. Meyer admits this, but he thinks that getting the question formed correctly must come first and that framing the right question is critical to intelligence collection and analysis. Unfortunately, such a course can limit the kind of aggressive action Meyer approves of. As we have seen in Iraq, political support for such actions will erode when the voters suspect that the intelligence books were cooked to justify a pre-conceived course of action.
Easterbrook's "Alternative History" shows the problem with"insight" that is too good and is acted upon too quickly. If we citizens don't recognize the threat, we will punish the "over-reaction."
As a conservative, I am appalled at the way some Democrats have attacked Bush on the Iraq War and the intelligence failures. At the same time, i think that Clinton-Reno overstated the threat from the violent, extreme-right. But, for all i know, Clinton could have prevented 10 more OKC-type atrocities by breaking up neo-nazi and other groups. None of us can know how serious a contained threat really was. To judge any intelligence agency only on the threats it did not contain is worse than unfair; it is childish.
Monday, April 12, 2004
Jane Galt thinks the unthinkable
Maybe 9-11 wasn't a preventable "failure."
Maybe we should call this the Oswald Problem. It's hard to admit that a single twisted self-important punk can change history by killing a popular president. So we manufacture vast conspiracies at work in Dallas. Likewise, we want to believe that some one must have screwed up because 9-11 was such a great tragedy.
Maybe no one screwed up. Maybe 9-11 was just the result of a series of marginally flawed decisions which reinforced each other in a catastrophic fashion.
See also here.
Maybe 9-11 wasn't a preventable "failure."
Maybe we should call this the Oswald Problem. It's hard to admit that a single twisted self-important punk can change history by killing a popular president. So we manufacture vast conspiracies at work in Dallas. Likewise, we want to believe that some one must have screwed up because 9-11 was such a great tragedy.
Maybe no one screwed up. Maybe 9-11 was just the result of a series of marginally flawed decisions which reinforced each other in a catastrophic fashion.
See also here.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Military Education and Business II
(Part I is here)
One key difference between civilian and military education is the military's recognition of the importance of the collective effects of a common curriculum and philosophy. Those who pass through the military schools end up with a shared mindset that is both conceptual (doctrine) and experiential.
One prime benefit of this is that communications can be both clearer and faster. When speed matters, as it does in modern combat operations, speed of communications is more important than the technical specifications of weapon systems. (See more here.)
While business does not move at the pace of combat operations, speed and clarity of communications still matter for strategic planning and execution. It is surprising, therefore, that so few corporations have taken in-house education seriously.
For one thing, strategic thinking is not something that comes automatically via on the job training in a functional department. Outside "professional" education sometimes deals with strategy, but when it does it tends to do so from the perspective of a particular discipline, function or profession. HR people see strategy as employee empowerment and retention. Quality people see it at TQM or Six Sigma. Finance sees only balance sheets, portfolios and shareholder value. None of these are an enterprise strategy and they don't equal one if added together.
In fact, a disparate list of internal initiatives, each "owned" and promoted by a department head, is really the negation of strategy.
The problem is compounded by the fact that at many firms some executives received their OJT and previous strategic experience at a different company. The marketing executive might have recently been with a consulting outfit, the head of finance might have come over from a competitor. They don't just bring differing viewpoints, they also bring completely different ways of doing things and approaching strategy. When outsiders are mixed with their homegrown peers, it is easy for strategic discussions to generate more heat than light and leave fuzzy areas when it comes to implementation.
The problem is even worse when a company has to integrate managers from a merger or acquisition. Then there is a sudden wholesale mixing of protocols and procedures that can take years to sort out. (Take a look at AOL-Time Warner or Citibank-Travelers).
In all these cases, there would be real value in something like the Army's Command and Staff College or the Naval War College. It could shape mindsets in a valuable way and improve the quality of strategic thinking. Moreover, when outsiders are brought into a company, it would offer a formal mechanism to uncover the new ways of thinking they bring with them.
Part III is here.
See also Doctrine and Fad Surfing
(Part I is here)
One key difference between civilian and military education is the military's recognition of the importance of the collective effects of a common curriculum and philosophy. Those who pass through the military schools end up with a shared mindset that is both conceptual (doctrine) and experiential.
One prime benefit of this is that communications can be both clearer and faster. When speed matters, as it does in modern combat operations, speed of communications is more important than the technical specifications of weapon systems. (See more here.)
While business does not move at the pace of combat operations, speed and clarity of communications still matter for strategic planning and execution. It is surprising, therefore, that so few corporations have taken in-house education seriously.
For one thing, strategic thinking is not something that comes automatically via on the job training in a functional department. Outside "professional" education sometimes deals with strategy, but when it does it tends to do so from the perspective of a particular discipline, function or profession. HR people see strategy as employee empowerment and retention. Quality people see it at TQM or Six Sigma. Finance sees only balance sheets, portfolios and shareholder value. None of these are an enterprise strategy and they don't equal one if added together.
In fact, a disparate list of internal initiatives, each "owned" and promoted by a department head, is really the negation of strategy.
The problem is compounded by the fact that at many firms some executives received their OJT and previous strategic experience at a different company. The marketing executive might have recently been with a consulting outfit, the head of finance might have come over from a competitor. They don't just bring differing viewpoints, they also bring completely different ways of doing things and approaching strategy. When outsiders are mixed with their homegrown peers, it is easy for strategic discussions to generate more heat than light and leave fuzzy areas when it comes to implementation.
The problem is even worse when a company has to integrate managers from a merger or acquisition. Then there is a sudden wholesale mixing of protocols and procedures that can take years to sort out. (Take a look at AOL-Time Warner or Citibank-Travelers).
In all these cases, there would be real value in something like the Army's Command and Staff College or the Naval War College. It could shape mindsets in a valuable way and improve the quality of strategic thinking. Moreover, when outsiders are brought into a company, it would offer a formal mechanism to uncover the new ways of thinking they bring with them.
Part III is here.
See also Doctrine and Fad Surfing
Friday, April 09, 2004
"The Intelligence Mess: How It Happened, What to Do About It"
Really great article here.
Excerpts:
Take Iraq?s missing weapons of mass destruction. It may yet turn out that these will be found in Iraq itself, or that they were moved or hidden outside the country in the many months between when we first told Saddam Hussein we were coming and when at last we arrived to depose him. Still, for the moment the stubborn fact remains that the government said the WMD were there and they have not been located. Whose intelligence failure is that? Did our intelligence agencies "fail" in 2003, when, according to David Kay, even Saddam?s Republican Guard believed Iraq possessed the weapons? Or did they "fail" in the 1990?s when the government of the United States regarded the CIA, and spying, and human intelligence, and Iraq as one big pain that should just go away?
*******
Was September 11 the worst intelligence failure in our country?s history? Or was it, rather, a national failure, the failure of a country that allowed its sense of decency to overwhelm its instinct for survival and that effectively convinced its enemies that they could strike with impunity?
The problem with our intelligence apparatus, to repeat, is that we went on a national nap for over two decades. If an entity is systematically warped and mismanaged for 20 or 30 years?not by a single agency director or American President, but by a philosophy?it cannot be fixed overnight. You cannot wake up on Monday and say, "We need more informants," and expect to have them embedded and reporting by the close of the business day. If those lobbying for quick fixes to the intelligence mess do not appear to understand this, might it be because they do not want anyone to start probing whose mess it actually is?
*******
A political class that appreciated the stakes involved would not indulge in this sort of recklessness. It would not hasten to dub every episodic setback an intelligence failure without asking searchingly whether we have set our agencies up to fail. It would have the necessary perseverance, through the inevitable torrent of catcalling, to retrace a quarter-century of missteps. And it would construct its remedies on the basis of a correct diagnosis of the disease. Right now, when we need it most, this is not the political class we have.
And this follows right along with the previous post:
Intelligence is dynamic. Over time, foreign terrorists and spies inevitably learn our tactics and adapt: consequently, we must refine and change those tactics. When we purposely tell them what we know?for what is blithely assumed to be the greater good of ensuring they get the same kind of fair trials as insider traders and tax cheats?we enable them not only to close the knowledge gap but to gain immense insight into our technological capacities, how our agencies think, and what our future moves are likely to be.
In considering the asserted "intelligence failures" of September 11 and beyond, it is worth bearing in mind this information bounty, which our government consciously decided to provide from 1993 through 2001 even as it was increasingly manifest that the enemy was growing more proficient, its attacks more deadly.
Really great article here.
Excerpts:
Take Iraq?s missing weapons of mass destruction. It may yet turn out that these will be found in Iraq itself, or that they were moved or hidden outside the country in the many months between when we first told Saddam Hussein we were coming and when at last we arrived to depose him. Still, for the moment the stubborn fact remains that the government said the WMD were there and they have not been located. Whose intelligence failure is that? Did our intelligence agencies "fail" in 2003, when, according to David Kay, even Saddam?s Republican Guard believed Iraq possessed the weapons? Or did they "fail" in the 1990?s when the government of the United States regarded the CIA, and spying, and human intelligence, and Iraq as one big pain that should just go away?
*******
Was September 11 the worst intelligence failure in our country?s history? Or was it, rather, a national failure, the failure of a country that allowed its sense of decency to overwhelm its instinct for survival and that effectively convinced its enemies that they could strike with impunity?
The problem with our intelligence apparatus, to repeat, is that we went on a national nap for over two decades. If an entity is systematically warped and mismanaged for 20 or 30 years?not by a single agency director or American President, but by a philosophy?it cannot be fixed overnight. You cannot wake up on Monday and say, "We need more informants," and expect to have them embedded and reporting by the close of the business day. If those lobbying for quick fixes to the intelligence mess do not appear to understand this, might it be because they do not want anyone to start probing whose mess it actually is?
*******
A political class that appreciated the stakes involved would not indulge in this sort of recklessness. It would not hasten to dub every episodic setback an intelligence failure without asking searchingly whether we have set our agencies up to fail. It would have the necessary perseverance, through the inevitable torrent of catcalling, to retrace a quarter-century of missteps. And it would construct its remedies on the basis of a correct diagnosis of the disease. Right now, when we need it most, this is not the political class we have.
And this follows right along with the previous post:
Intelligence is dynamic. Over time, foreign terrorists and spies inevitably learn our tactics and adapt: consequently, we must refine and change those tactics. When we purposely tell them what we know?for what is blithely assumed to be the greater good of ensuring they get the same kind of fair trials as insider traders and tax cheats?we enable them not only to close the knowledge gap but to gain immense insight into our technological capacities, how our agencies think, and what our future moves are likely to be.
In considering the asserted "intelligence failures" of September 11 and beyond, it is worth bearing in mind this information bounty, which our government consciously decided to provide from 1993 through 2001 even as it was increasingly manifest that the enemy was growing more proficient, its attacks more deadly.
Open Source Training Tips?
In his book 1000 Years for Revenge, Peter Lance details the thwarted hijacking of an Air France flight in 1994 by Algerian terrorists from the Armed Islamic Group. The hijackers intended to crash the fuel-laden plane into the Eifel Tower. The January 5, 1995 issue of Time carried a story, "Anatomy of a Hijack", which "detailed every moment" of the hijacking and the rescue. A copy of that magazine was found in Ramzi Yousef's apartment in the Philippines when police raided it.
It seems likely that al Qaeda learned a few things not to do from the Algerians's experience. Which raises a troubling question: To what degree does an open society provide free "lessons learned" to terrorists and criminals?
Modern media companies can draw upon the expertise of a large number and wide variety of authorities. This professional expertise is completely beyond the reach of the average individual. But when there is a hot story, the information and insights are just there for the asking on TV, in the newspaper, and on the Internet.
It's not just al Qaeda operatives who can profit. Smart criminals can as well. This point was brought home to me while watching Fox News over the last two weeks. A serial killer in Kansas has resurfaced to taunt police. As expected, Fox has brought on an array of detectives, profilers, forensic specialists, etc. They were happy to discuss the methods the police now have to track down the killer who has eluded them since the 1970s.
Law enforcement believes that this man is smart and follows the news. It seems more than possible that he learned how better to avoid capture by listening to TV and reading the papers (Fox has not been alone on this.)
As i said, troubling.
Sad
National Review is in favor of defeating Arlen Specter in the GOP primary. Apparently, their desire to slime my troublesome senator has overwhelmed their good sense. Take a look at this article by John Miller. The worst part is the opening.
Long before he became one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate — and the target of Congressman Pat Toomey's GOP primary challenge — Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania demonstrated a knack for notoriety. In 1964, as a member of the Warren Commission, he invented the "single-bullet theory" to explain how Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy. Conspiracy junkies have obsessed over him ever since. (In Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Kevin Costner's character labels Specter "an ambitious junior counselor" behind "one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people.")
What Miller doesn't say is that later forensic analysis has shown that the single bullet theory is almost certainly correct. The same bullet hit Kennedy and Connolly. Gerald Posner put this to bed ten years ago.
And hasn't NR noticed that Oliver Stone is a loon?
Last fall i criticized the History Channel for airing a "documentary" that accused LBJ of killing Kennedy. On Tuesday, they put on an excellent panel discussion by serious historians which shredded the case that "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" presented. They deserve credit for that follow-up.
It is sad that a big media property like THC is more honest than the premier conservative website.
National Review is in favor of defeating Arlen Specter in the GOP primary. Apparently, their desire to slime my troublesome senator has overwhelmed their good sense. Take a look at this article by John Miller. The worst part is the opening.
Long before he became one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate — and the target of Congressman Pat Toomey's GOP primary challenge — Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania demonstrated a knack for notoriety. In 1964, as a member of the Warren Commission, he invented the "single-bullet theory" to explain how Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy. Conspiracy junkies have obsessed over him ever since. (In Oliver Stone's movie JFK, Kevin Costner's character labels Specter "an ambitious junior counselor" behind "one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people.")
What Miller doesn't say is that later forensic analysis has shown that the single bullet theory is almost certainly correct. The same bullet hit Kennedy and Connolly. Gerald Posner put this to bed ten years ago.
And hasn't NR noticed that Oliver Stone is a loon?
Last fall i criticized the History Channel for airing a "documentary" that accused LBJ of killing Kennedy. On Tuesday, they put on an excellent panel discussion by serious historians which shredded the case that "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" presented. They deserve credit for that follow-up.
It is sad that a big media property like THC is more honest than the premier conservative website.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Rice a "Moron"? Have they no shame?
James at Outside the Beltway reports on the shameful treatment of Condoleezza Rice at the hands of some pundits and nano-pundits. It seems they have unearthed a critical review of her first book which was based on her dissertation. From this they conclude that she is not bright enough to be Bush's National Security Advisor. James addresses that fairly conclusively when he writes:
I would note that this particular book was not only picked up by a major academic press but was a revised version of her doctoral dissertation, which was by definition vetted by a panel of subject matter experts. I'm sure there were flaws in it—there always are—but it was almost certainly well researched.
Reviews in academic journals tend to be rather brutal, as they’re usually aimed at showing how clever the reviewer is. This is likely to be even more true when the reviewer is a Czechoslovakian historian reviewing the work of a political scientist studying the Soviet Union.
See also the posts on ProfessorBainbridge, Heretical Ideas, PoliBlog, and Asymmetrical Information
When Peter Paret and Gordon Craig came out with the second edition of
"The Makers of Modern Strategy", they got contributions from a Who's Who of military historians. And who did they choose to write about pre-WWII Soviet doctrine and strategy? Not Kevin Drum or Josef Kalvoda.
Yeah, it was Rice. And this is in 1984-1986 before she served in government and when she was barely into her thirties.
NB: Both Paret and Craig were professors at Stanford and Rice was a young assistant professor there. So if she was a moron, you would think they might have noticed. The fact that they included her contribution shows that they respected her intellect and scholarship.
This is also an interesting article:
Josef Korbel's Enduring Foreign Policy Legacy
Professor Mentored Daughter Albright and Student Rice
By the way, anyone want to compare the scholarly contributions of Rice to Albright? Did we have SoS who was a moron too? Or is that only a question when we are talking about African-American women who work in Republican administrations?
James at Outside the Beltway reports on the shameful treatment of Condoleezza Rice at the hands of some pundits and nano-pundits. It seems they have unearthed a critical review of her first book which was based on her dissertation. From this they conclude that she is not bright enough to be Bush's National Security Advisor. James addresses that fairly conclusively when he writes:
I would note that this particular book was not only picked up by a major academic press but was a revised version of her doctoral dissertation, which was by definition vetted by a panel of subject matter experts. I'm sure there were flaws in it—there always are—but it was almost certainly well researched.
Reviews in academic journals tend to be rather brutal, as they’re usually aimed at showing how clever the reviewer is. This is likely to be even more true when the reviewer is a Czechoslovakian historian reviewing the work of a political scientist studying the Soviet Union.
See also the posts on ProfessorBainbridge, Heretical Ideas, PoliBlog, and Asymmetrical Information
When Peter Paret and Gordon Craig came out with the second edition of
Yeah, it was Rice. And this is in 1984-1986 before she served in government and when she was barely into her thirties.
NB: Both Paret and Craig were professors at Stanford and Rice was a young assistant professor there. So if she was a moron, you would think they might have noticed. The fact that they included her contribution shows that they respected her intellect and scholarship.
This is also an interesting article:
Josef Korbel's Enduring Foreign Policy Legacy
Professor Mentored Daughter Albright and Student Rice
By the way, anyone want to compare the scholarly contributions of Rice to Albright? Did we have SoS who was a moron too? Or is that only a question when we are talking about African-American women who work in Republican administrations?
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Information overload?
Kevin Holtsberry writes:
I wonder at what point you have more information coming in than you can possibly handle. I feel like I am at that point right now. I have never been very good at focusing my interests.
I feel his pain. Between the internet, online booksellers, and magazines, information comes at us in torrents. It really is like trying to drink from a firehose.
But i have come up with a few coping mechanism.
1. The most liberating advice on reading i've seen came from William Casey, who actually wrote a pamphlet called "How to Read a Book" while he was CIA director. According to Joe Persico, Casey counseled, "Never feel you have to read a book through. The author isn't there. He won't feel insulted. "
Casey also recommended that you start by checking the bibliography, notes, and index. That way you can jump right in and see if there is anything good or new inside.
That was liberating because i already read that way and was ashamed at my weakness and lack of discipline. Thanks to Casey, i could embrace my nonlinear reading habits.
2. Think of books as red wine purchased while young. No one expects you to drink all your 2002 vintage before you buy any from 2003. Unread books on the shelves are just like a well-stocked wine cellar. Their time will come.
3. I keep a supply of the little Post-It flags at hand. That way I can easily mark passages i think have merit. It's easy to get back up to speed on an unfinished book when you can quickly review the highlights of what you have read before.
Plus, if you leave them in when you're finished, it makes it easier to refer back to the book even years later.
4. I stopped reading pundits. Sullivan or Kurtz on the war are wastes of time. Ditto Frum on anything, Brooks on most things, Krugman on politics, etc. There are now experts out there who write intelligently on almost anything i might be interested in. When reading about Iraq or the War on Terror, I'd rather read what a former military man writes or the thoughts of a military historian. Michael Barone has forgotten more about American politics and demographics than Brooks and Frum will ever know collectively and that doesn't change if you add Rick Lowry and John Podhoretz to the mix.
Kevin Holtsberry writes:
I wonder at what point you have more information coming in than you can possibly handle. I feel like I am at that point right now. I have never been very good at focusing my interests.
I feel his pain. Between the internet, online booksellers, and magazines, information comes at us in torrents. It really is like trying to drink from a firehose.
But i have come up with a few coping mechanism.
1. The most liberating advice on reading i've seen came from William Casey, who actually wrote a pamphlet called "How to Read a Book" while he was CIA director. According to Joe Persico, Casey counseled, "Never feel you have to read a book through. The author isn't there. He won't feel insulted. "
Casey also recommended that you start by checking the bibliography, notes, and index. That way you can jump right in and see if there is anything good or new inside.
That was liberating because i already read that way and was ashamed at my weakness and lack of discipline. Thanks to Casey, i could embrace my nonlinear reading habits.
2. Think of books as red wine purchased while young. No one expects you to drink all your 2002 vintage before you buy any from 2003. Unread books on the shelves are just like a well-stocked wine cellar. Their time will come.
3. I keep a supply of the little Post-It flags at hand. That way I can easily mark passages i think have merit. It's easy to get back up to speed on an unfinished book when you can quickly review the highlights of what you have read before.
Plus, if you leave them in when you're finished, it makes it easier to refer back to the book even years later.
4. I stopped reading pundits. Sullivan or Kurtz on the war are wastes of time. Ditto Frum on anything, Brooks on most things, Krugman on politics, etc. There are now experts out there who write intelligently on almost anything i might be interested in. When reading about Iraq or the War on Terror, I'd rather read what a former military man writes or the thoughts of a military historian. Michael Barone has forgotten more about American politics and demographics than Brooks and Frum will ever know collectively and that doesn't change if you add Rick Lowry and John Podhoretz to the mix.
Ashcroft's War on Porn
Couple of blogs from the blogroll weigh-in against the conventional wisdom.
Clayton Cramer:
Do I think the government should be running around pursuing softcore pornography that people purchase in hotel rooms and on their cable TV service? No. But the Justice Department does have an obligation to enforce existing obscenity laws. Perhaps those laws don't make sense as written, but if there is this vast sea of support for pornography that Instapundit thinks there is, Ashcroft's enforcement of the laws currently on the books should cause a groundswell of public opposition, right?
****
In some circles, it is very fashionable to be unconcerned about the coarsening effects of pornography on our society, especially on young people, whose concepts of male-female relations are still developing. A steady exposure to any idea will certainly have some influence on the viewer; that's the whole point of political propaganda and commercial advertising.
Justin Katz:
So here's a thought: if the public really is as enamored of smut as Ashcroft's critics believe, why not campaign to change the law? If porn is such an obviously good, or at least neutral, thing, why sidestep the actual issue — involving those six guys and some unknown millions of dollars — by substituting rhetoric about the war? Come out from behind the computer desk and lance the issue head on.
This is so similar to the pro-Jackson/pro-Stern crusade that Jeff Jarvis has been leading since the Super Bowl. So this post from Jessica's Well deserves mention:
Howard Stern hand puppet Jeff Jarvis continues his defense of big media's right to push whatever crap they wish onto the public airwaves.
What say we get together an organized campaign to mail to Mr. Jarvis' home one Playboy, Penthouse, or Hustler every day? I mean, he doesn't have to open his mailbox, does he? If he does he can always not look at what is there. And if he can't be there 24 hours a day to keep his kids from getting at the stuff, well.....I guess a little more supervision is in order at the Jarvis household.
P.S. I am just kidding. Don't anybody do this.
OK it's a joke but it is also a good thought experiment. Why shouldn't Mr. Jarvis be responsible for policing his own mailbox? How exactly is that more arduous than trying to police kid's TV watching?
It seems to me, that it comes down to Jarvis's personal "ick" response. Stern yes, Hustler no. And he expects (rightly) that we should respect that. But he has no respect for those who say no to both.
Couple of blogs from the blogroll weigh-in against the conventional wisdom.
Clayton Cramer:
Do I think the government should be running around pursuing softcore pornography that people purchase in hotel rooms and on their cable TV service? No. But the Justice Department does have an obligation to enforce existing obscenity laws. Perhaps those laws don't make sense as written, but if there is this vast sea of support for pornography that Instapundit thinks there is, Ashcroft's enforcement of the laws currently on the books should cause a groundswell of public opposition, right?
****
In some circles, it is very fashionable to be unconcerned about the coarsening effects of pornography on our society, especially on young people, whose concepts of male-female relations are still developing. A steady exposure to any idea will certainly have some influence on the viewer; that's the whole point of political propaganda and commercial advertising.
Justin Katz:
So here's a thought: if the public really is as enamored of smut as Ashcroft's critics believe, why not campaign to change the law? If porn is such an obviously good, or at least neutral, thing, why sidestep the actual issue — involving those six guys and some unknown millions of dollars — by substituting rhetoric about the war? Come out from behind the computer desk and lance the issue head on.
This is so similar to the pro-Jackson/pro-Stern crusade that Jeff Jarvis has been leading since the Super Bowl. So this post from Jessica's Well deserves mention:
Howard Stern hand puppet Jeff Jarvis continues his defense of big media's right to push whatever crap they wish onto the public airwaves.
What say we get together an organized campaign to mail to Mr. Jarvis' home one Playboy, Penthouse, or Hustler every day? I mean, he doesn't have to open his mailbox, does he? If he does he can always not look at what is there. And if he can't be there 24 hours a day to keep his kids from getting at the stuff, well.....I guess a little more supervision is in order at the Jarvis household.
P.S. I am just kidding. Don't anybody do this.
OK it's a joke but it is also a good thought experiment. Why shouldn't Mr. Jarvis be responsible for policing his own mailbox? How exactly is that more arduous than trying to police kid's TV watching?
It seems to me, that it comes down to Jarvis's personal "ick" response. Stern yes, Hustler no. And he expects (rightly) that we should respect that. But he has no respect for those who say no to both.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
JYB on Sullivan
The JunkYard Blog is out of patience with Andrew Sullivan:
He plays with religion, mostly to denounce any that doesn't agree with his fairly narrow misinterpretations of scripture, and opines here and there on economics, but he basically doesn't know much of consequence about any of that. He certainly doesn't understand warfare or the military. He's just an opinionated guy who happens to write well and knows how to build a viable argument out of thin air. Which is why he's a journalist. What the heck else would he do?
Sullivan's grasp of military issues has always been suspect as discussed here:
Lessons of this War
He is also the sort of blogger i had in mind when i wrote this post:
When Instapundit Speaks (Successful Blogging and the Dangers of Rapid Response)
Even at his moment of glory-- the war on Howell Raines-- Sullivan was a less than reliable reporter.
Can Someone Please Explain
Andrew Sullivan must be smoking crack
The JunkYard Blog is out of patience with Andrew Sullivan:
He plays with religion, mostly to denounce any that doesn't agree with his fairly narrow misinterpretations of scripture, and opines here and there on economics, but he basically doesn't know much of consequence about any of that. He certainly doesn't understand warfare or the military. He's just an opinionated guy who happens to write well and knows how to build a viable argument out of thin air. Which is why he's a journalist. What the heck else would he do?
Sullivan's grasp of military issues has always been suspect as discussed here:
Lessons of this War
He is also the sort of blogger i had in mind when i wrote this post:
When Instapundit Speaks (Successful Blogging and the Dangers of Rapid Response)
Even at his moment of glory-- the war on Howell Raines-- Sullivan was a less than reliable reporter.
Can Someone Please Explain
Andrew Sullivan must be smoking crack
Alanis the Brave
Michael Williams on another celebrity who felt the need to make a statement.
It may be hard to believe, but we're not afraid of you, we just don't like you. We find your nakedness and superfluous cursing to be aesthetically unpleasing. We don't want our kids to grow up to be like you, because absent the publicity machine of the fading music industry you're a pathetic, angst-ridden loser. You've written some music some people like, and that's a nice accomplishment, but it gives you about as much moral authority to pontificate on war, censorship, and politics as Humpty (pronounced with an "umpty").
Michael Williams on another celebrity who felt the need to make a statement.
It may be hard to believe, but we're not afraid of you, we just don't like you. We find your nakedness and superfluous cursing to be aesthetically unpleasing. We don't want our kids to grow up to be like you, because absent the publicity machine of the fading music industry you're a pathetic, angst-ridden loser. You've written some music some people like, and that's a nice accomplishment, but it gives you about as much moral authority to pontificate on war, censorship, and politics as Humpty (pronounced with an "umpty").
Monday, April 05, 2004
"Profilers can aid case, but they won't solve it"
This is a pretty good article on criminal profilers.
Profilers were sure the D.C. sniper was white. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were black.
Profilers thought the Green River killer couldn't hold a steady job. Gary Ridgway worked for 31 years for the same company.
Profiles can be a useful tool in a criminal investigation--particularly one that has hit a dead-end--but shouldn't be so central that investigators ignore other clues, experts say.
And i really liked this part.
Egger, who has written four books on serial murders, said most profilers are either retired FBI agents or psychiatrists or psychologists who have moved into that area and were trained by the FBI.
"Profiling of course has gotten a lot of play because of television and movies," he said.
"Profiler" was a television show in which the main character was a beautiful blond woman who also was psychic.
"It was ridiculous," Egger said.
This is a pretty good article on criminal profilers.
Profilers were sure the D.C. sniper was white. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were black.
Profilers thought the Green River killer couldn't hold a steady job. Gary Ridgway worked for 31 years for the same company.
Profiles can be a useful tool in a criminal investigation--particularly one that has hit a dead-end--but shouldn't be so central that investigators ignore other clues, experts say.
And i really liked this part.
Egger, who has written four books on serial murders, said most profilers are either retired FBI agents or psychiatrists or psychologists who have moved into that area and were trained by the FBI.
"Profiling of course has gotten a lot of play because of television and movies," he said.
"Profiler" was a television show in which the main character was a beautiful blond woman who also was psychic.
"It was ridiculous," Egger said.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Fallujah
These posts at the Belmont Club are among the best i've seen:
Unconquerable Hate
Response at Fallujah
Command Decision
These posts at the Belmont Club are among the best i've seen:
Unconquerable Hate
Response at Fallujah
Command Decision
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Market as God, Pundit as Priest
Clayton Cramer points to this rather odd post on Hollywood and wholesome movies. Cowen "concludes" that there is no market for more family-oriented fare because if there was, Hollywood would make them.
By that reasoning, all cars should still have tailfins and weigh 5,000 pounds. After all, if there was a market for smaller, more Teutonic cars, Detroit would have offered cars like that in 1958.
Markets are efficient information processors, but they are not omniscient. Buyers can only purchase what is presented to them by producers. Since producers are not gifted with perfect foresight, they often miss opportunities. That is why innovators and new entrants can reap high returns. As Clayton M. Christensen shows in The Innovator's Dilemma, established firms usually are locked into existing customers and are blind to the profits to be found in new or underserved segments.
It is not easy to identify new opportunities. That is as true for Hollywood as it is for Wal-Mart. It helps if you have good metrics about customers, buying patterns, product-line profitability, etc. Wal-mart does and that is one reason for their astounding success. Hollywood accounting is notoriously murky. The studio heads may be greedy, but they can't exploit what they cannot see.
Even six months ago no studio thought there was a market for the Passion. That shows a pretty big collective blind spot given that movie's huge box office.
The movie industry is as much a creative community as it is a business. Tom Wolfe has skillfully dissected the "compound mentality" that can infect such communities. Artists begin to care less about what customers want, and worry a great deal about what their peers think. Again, such groupthink (does Cowen think this only happens in government bureaucracies?) can create blind spots.
Cramer's post has more on Hollywood's cluelessness about the state of religious belief in America.
By that reasoning, all cars should still have tailfins and weigh 5,000 pounds. After all, if there was a market for smaller, more Teutonic cars, Detroit would have offered cars like that in 1958.
Markets are efficient information processors, but they are not omniscient. Buyers can only purchase what is presented to them by producers. Since producers are not gifted with perfect foresight, they often miss opportunities. That is why innovators and new entrants can reap high returns. As Clayton M. Christensen shows in The Innovator's Dilemma, established firms usually are locked into existing customers and are blind to the profits to be found in new or underserved segments.
It is not easy to identify new opportunities. That is as true for Hollywood as it is for Wal-Mart. It helps if you have good metrics about customers, buying patterns, product-line profitability, etc. Wal-mart does and that is one reason for their astounding success. Hollywood accounting is notoriously murky. The studio heads may be greedy, but they can't exploit what they cannot see.
Even six months ago no studio thought there was a market for the Passion. That shows a pretty big collective blind spot given that movie's huge box office.
The movie industry is as much a creative community as it is a business. Tom Wolfe has skillfully dissected the "compound mentality" that can infect such communities. Artists begin to care less about what customers want, and worry a great deal about what their peers think. Again, such groupthink (does Cowen think this only happens in government bureaucracies?) can create blind spots.
Cramer's post has more on Hollywood's cluelessness about the state of religious belief in America.
More Brooks, Red/Blue, etc.
This time in The New Republic.
This, as should by now be apparent, is an exceedingly lame and tedious exercise. It misses the broader point that Brooks does tend to be a little careless, and that he takes frequent liberties with his descriptions. But you see where I'm headed: Issenberg is guilty of the exact same thing--ignoring the broader point that Brooks is basically right.
This time in The New Republic.
This, as should by now be apparent, is an exceedingly lame and tedious exercise. It misses the broader point that Brooks does tend to be a little careless, and that he takes frequent liberties with his descriptions. But you see where I'm headed: Issenberg is guilty of the exact same thing--ignoring the broader point that Brooks is basically right.
Not a Good Sign
U.S. Civilians Mutilated in Iraq Attack
Some witnesses said the insurgents had planned Wednesday's ambush in advance. Esam Yassin, 22, who sells biscuits and soft drinks at a small shop on Highway 10, said owners of businesses along the four-lane road were warned Wednesday morning to stay away from the area because of an impending clash with the Americans.
The attack occurred in a commercial district that is normally busy. But on Wednesday, Yassin said, the morning streets were nearly devoid of their normal pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
Yassin said insurgents were circulating this message: "We will be waiting here for them and a big battle will happen. So we don't want civilians to be around."
U.S. Civilians Mutilated in Iraq Attack
Some witnesses said the insurgents had planned Wednesday's ambush in advance. Esam Yassin, 22, who sells biscuits and soft drinks at a small shop on Highway 10, said owners of businesses along the four-lane road were warned Wednesday morning to stay away from the area because of an impending clash with the Americans.
The attack occurred in a commercial district that is normally busy. But on Wednesday, Yassin said, the morning streets were nearly devoid of their normal pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
Yassin said insurgents were circulating this message: "We will be waiting here for them and a big battle will happen. So we don't want civilians to be around."
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Red/Blue Redux
I see that everyone who is anyone is blogging about Sasha Issenberg's "refutation" of David Brooks's "One Nation, Slightly Divisible".
It seems a lot like breaking two butterflies on the wheel. It's hard to believe that anyone takes Brooks's heavily embellished stereotypes as serious reporting. Issenberg finds it easy to demolish some of his factual assertions, yet at other times s/he handles the data clumsily. (E.g. statewide data does not necessarily tell us anything about a specific county.) Neither reporter did a very good job of reporting when it came to the big question-- how different are red and blue America?
As an aside-- it would be interesting if a magazine like The Atlantic did a reverse Brooks. Send a "Red America writer" to do a red/blue comparison.
I see that everyone who is anyone is blogging about Sasha Issenberg's "refutation" of David Brooks's "One Nation, Slightly Divisible".
It seems a lot like breaking two butterflies on the wheel. It's hard to believe that anyone takes Brooks's heavily embellished stereotypes as serious reporting. Issenberg finds it easy to demolish some of his factual assertions, yet at other times s/he handles the data clumsily. (E.g. statewide data does not necessarily tell us anything about a specific county.) Neither reporter did a very good job of reporting when it came to the big question-- how different are red and blue America?
As an aside-- it would be interesting if a magazine like The Atlantic did a reverse Brooks. Send a "Red America writer" to do a red/blue comparison.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Military Schools and Business Education
Michael Howard has suggested that the military profession is not only physically demanding, but is also the most intellectually demanding:
We must remember as well, that war does not just test the knowledge of generals. On the individual level it tests character as well. Equally important is the premium war places on how well officers work together. Modern military studies have emphasized the importance of tempo during combat operations. The German victories in 1940 owed everything to their ability to read, rethink, and readjust faster than the French. This same factor helps to account for the overwhelming nature of the US victories in Iraq.
The military education system is designed with these challenges in mind. That makes it an interesting subject in its own right. But, here i want to compare it to corporate education. Some of the salient points:
1. There is a lot of it. The generals we see on TV have been to civilian graduate schools, specialized branch schools, and the Army War College. These are full-time positions where officers attend classes for months or even a full year.
This is in stark contrast to corporate life where executive education is heavily front-loaded. Usually the average manager has completed 75% or more of their formal business education before they join the corporation.
2. Key parts of the military's system are in-house; they shape the curriculum, especially at the highest levels.
Corporate education is usually outsourced and generic. The MBA and other executive education programs are usually offered by colleges. In-house, customized programs are most often seen at lower-level training programs for the rank-and-file.
3. Performance at military schools is a factor in promotion decisions. Both Eisenhower and Marshall finished first in their class at Leavenworth which helped marked them for eventual high command. Patton, Bradley, and Mark Clark all had outstanding records at mid-career schools.
Academic performance counts at the entry-level in corporations. But usually only there. Few mid-career executives find themselves in classes where they are graded and where the grades count toward promotion.
4. Military school faculties include officers who are marked for high command. Adm. Raymond Spruance, the victory at Midway, served two tours at the Naval War College in the 1930s. In the two years prior to Pearl Harbor, two of the nine men who would command US field armies were teaching at the Army War College. This is after the war in Europe had started and during an immense expansion of the US military.
Again, this is a key difference from the typical business model. High flyers do not spend a year or two in the training department as a step toward the CEO post.
5. The military school system is not just a means of pushing information and procedures down into the ranks. They also serve as centers for the creation of intellectual capital. In the 1930s the Naval War College helped create and refine the carrier doctrine the USN used in the Pacific War. In the 1980s, John Lehman created Strategic Studies Groups at the NWC. As he described them, "This elite group of midgrade officers, navy and marine, is selected from the fleet to spend a year working on strategy. Each year a new SSG is formed, and changing perspectives help to keep the strategy from solidifying into dogma."
****
There is no corporation that invests as heavily in education as do the armed services. For all the talk about the importance of intellectual capital, the private sector, as a whole, approaches education it in a haphazard fashion and spends comparatively little. At the same time, it is telling that the large corporation which is famous for its education system--GE-- is also one of the most successful big companies in history.
It is also telling that one of the last strategic reassessments of the Welch era-- the rejection of the "#1 or #2 in every market" requirement-- had its genesis in a remark made by a colonel at the Army War College.
UPDATE: James Joyner comments here.
See Part II here.
Michael Howard has suggested that the military profession is not only physically demanding, but is also the most intellectually demanding:
There are two great difficulties with which the professional soldier, sailor or airman has to contend in equipping himself as a commander. First, his profession is almost unique in that he may have to exercise it only once in a lifetime, if indeed that often. It is as if a surgeon had to practise throughout his life on dummies for one real operation; or a barrister appeared only once or twice in court towards the close of his career; or a professional swimmer had to spend his life practising on dry land for an Olympic championship on which the fortunes of his entire nation depended. Second, the complex problem of running an army at all is liable to occupy hi mind and skill so completely that it is very easy to forget what it is being run for. The difficulties encountered in the administration, discipline, maintenance and supply of an organization the size of a fair-sized town are enough to occupy the senior officer to the exclusion of any thinking about his real business: the conduct of war. It is not surprising that there has often been a high proportion of failures among senior commanders at the beginning of any war. These unfortunate men may take too long to adjust themselves to reality, through lack of hard preliminary thinking about what war would really be like, or they may have had their minds so far shaped by a lifetime of pure administration that they have ceased to for all practical purposes to be soldiers.
Michael Howard, "The Uses and Abuses of Military History," 1962
We must remember as well, that war does not just test the knowledge of generals. On the individual level it tests character as well. Equally important is the premium war places on how well officers work together. Modern military studies have emphasized the importance of tempo during combat operations. The German victories in 1940 owed everything to their ability to read, rethink, and readjust faster than the French. This same factor helps to account for the overwhelming nature of the US victories in Iraq.
The military education system is designed with these challenges in mind. That makes it an interesting subject in its own right. But, here i want to compare it to corporate education. Some of the salient points:
1. There is a lot of it. The generals we see on TV have been to civilian graduate schools, specialized branch schools, and the Army War College. These are full-time positions where officers attend classes for months or even a full year.
This is in stark contrast to corporate life where executive education is heavily front-loaded. Usually the average manager has completed 75% or more of their formal business education before they join the corporation.
2. Key parts of the military's system are in-house; they shape the curriculum, especially at the highest levels.
Corporate education is usually outsourced and generic. The MBA and other executive education programs are usually offered by colleges. In-house, customized programs are most often seen at lower-level training programs for the rank-and-file.
3. Performance at military schools is a factor in promotion decisions. Both Eisenhower and Marshall finished first in their class at Leavenworth which helped marked them for eventual high command. Patton, Bradley, and Mark Clark all had outstanding records at mid-career schools.
Academic performance counts at the entry-level in corporations. But usually only there. Few mid-career executives find themselves in classes where they are graded and where the grades count toward promotion.
4. Military school faculties include officers who are marked for high command. Adm. Raymond Spruance, the victory at Midway, served two tours at the Naval War College in the 1930s. In the two years prior to Pearl Harbor, two of the nine men who would command US field armies were teaching at the Army War College. This is after the war in Europe had started and during an immense expansion of the US military.
Again, this is a key difference from the typical business model. High flyers do not spend a year or two in the training department as a step toward the CEO post.
5. The military school system is not just a means of pushing information and procedures down into the ranks. They also serve as centers for the creation of intellectual capital. In the 1930s the Naval War College helped create and refine the carrier doctrine the USN used in the Pacific War. In the 1980s, John Lehman created Strategic Studies Groups at the NWC. As he described them, "This elite group of midgrade officers, navy and marine, is selected from the fleet to spend a year working on strategy. Each year a new SSG is formed, and changing perspectives help to keep the strategy from solidifying into dogma."
****
There is no corporation that invests as heavily in education as do the armed services. For all the talk about the importance of intellectual capital, the private sector, as a whole, approaches education it in a haphazard fashion and spends comparatively little. At the same time, it is telling that the large corporation which is famous for its education system--GE-- is also one of the most successful big companies in history.
It is also telling that one of the last strategic reassessments of the Welch era-- the rejection of the "#1 or #2 in every market" requirement-- had its genesis in a remark made by a colonel at the Army War College.
UPDATE: James Joyner comments here.
See Part II here.
Corporate Blogging
This article from Fast Company takes a look at how some companies are using blogs internally.
At Verizon, Paul Perry, a director in the company's eServices division, started a blog to keep up with news about competitors. Using a news aggregator, a popular blog-world tool that grabs and assembles syndicated "feeds" of content from Web sites and other blogs, people in his group can quickly post news they find on those feeds to the internal blog. DaimlerChrysler employs Web log software at a few of its U.S. plants; managers discuss problems and keep a record of their solutions. And American Airlines, where only 20% of the company's highly mobile workforce has corporate email, is considering blogs as a way to give employees more channels to management.
The Hartford Financial Services Group is already finding success using blogs in one of its mobile groups. A team of 40 field technology managers, who serve as links between The Hartford's network of insurance agents and the home office, set up a blog in August. They use it to share information about e-commerce features and solutions to technology problems. Before, email and voice mail sufficed, but email threads would die, and there was no way to search past shared information. "We don't get a chance to talk with each other as often as we'd like," says Steve Grebner, one of The Hartford's field managers, who thinks of the blog a little like a town square. "To me, it's like there's 14--or 40--brains out there, and you might as well tap into that knowledge base."
See also, this from last year.
This article from Fast Company takes a look at how some companies are using blogs internally.
At Verizon, Paul Perry, a director in the company's eServices division, started a blog to keep up with news about competitors. Using a news aggregator, a popular blog-world tool that grabs and assembles syndicated "feeds" of content from Web sites and other blogs, people in his group can quickly post news they find on those feeds to the internal blog. DaimlerChrysler employs Web log software at a few of its U.S. plants; managers discuss problems and keep a record of their solutions. And American Airlines, where only 20% of the company's highly mobile workforce has corporate email, is considering blogs as a way to give employees more channels to management.
The Hartford Financial Services Group is already finding success using blogs in one of its mobile groups. A team of 40 field technology managers, who serve as links between The Hartford's network of insurance agents and the home office, set up a blog in August. They use it to share information about e-commerce features and solutions to technology problems. Before, email and voice mail sufficed, but email threads would die, and there was no way to search past shared information. "We don't get a chance to talk with each other as often as we'd like," says Steve Grebner, one of The Hartford's field managers, who thinks of the blog a little like a town square. "To me, it's like there's 14--or 40--brains out there, and you might as well tap into that knowledge base."
See also, this from last year.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Maybe the Frontier Did Matter
If you think about it, the 2004 election shows that the United States is an oligarchy with a closed political system that offers only a narrow range of choices. Consider-- John Kerry and George Bush are both sons of prominent and wealthy New England families. Both attended Yale. Both are members of the same elite secret society (Skull and Bones).
Yet, for all of that, they seem to be two very different sorts of men. In part, this is a tribute to the infinite variety of the human beast. But if i had to get more specific i'd summarize the difference in one word-- Texas.
Those things that make Bush the anti-Kerry-- from his religiosity to his democratic manner-- come from west Texas, not Boston or New Haven.
For a over a century the Northeast has been caught between powerful gravitational fields. Across the Atlantic was Europe-- refined, intellectual, exquisite Europe. To the west lay, well, the West-- crude, boisterous, and democratic.
During the primary campaign this was thrown into stark relief. Kerry, Dean, et. al. condemned Bush as an out of control cowboy who alienated Europe. Cowboy bad, France good. They thought this was a powerful critique.
Rich, Harvard-educated Theodore Roosevelt went west to the Dakotas as a young, dandified widower. After a stint as a cowboy, lawman, and hunter, he returned to New York as the embryonic TR. It was TR who became a war hero, a beloved president, and finally, a mythic, towering figure. His biographers agree that his later political career would have been impossible but for his time out West.
Henry James took the opposite path. He left America behind to live in England.
Edmund Morris notes that James's "preference for English society and English literature drove Roosevelt to near frenzy." TR considered James a "miserable little snob." He wrote with disdain of "the undersized man of letters, who flees his country because he, with his delicate, effeminate sensitiveness, finds the conditions of life on this side of the water crude and raw."
James, for his part, judged Roosevelt "the mere monstrous embodiment of unprecedented and resounding Noise" and "a dangerous and ominous jingo."
John Kerry had no need to become an expatriate. Over the last century Massachusetts has become very congenial for the sensitive and exquisite. But there is still that patrician disdain for how we do things out here in fly-over country (still so crude and raw). Most of all, there is that craving for European modes and European approval.
If you think about it, the 2004 election shows that the United States is an oligarchy with a closed political system that offers only a narrow range of choices. Consider-- John Kerry and George Bush are both sons of prominent and wealthy New England families. Both attended Yale. Both are members of the same elite secret society (Skull and Bones).
Yet, for all of that, they seem to be two very different sorts of men. In part, this is a tribute to the infinite variety of the human beast. But if i had to get more specific i'd summarize the difference in one word-- Texas.
Those things that make Bush the anti-Kerry-- from his religiosity to his democratic manner-- come from west Texas, not Boston or New Haven.
For a over a century the Northeast has been caught between powerful gravitational fields. Across the Atlantic was Europe-- refined, intellectual, exquisite Europe. To the west lay, well, the West-- crude, boisterous, and democratic.
During the primary campaign this was thrown into stark relief. Kerry, Dean, et. al. condemned Bush as an out of control cowboy who alienated Europe. Cowboy bad, France good. They thought this was a powerful critique.
Rich, Harvard-educated Theodore Roosevelt went west to the Dakotas as a young, dandified widower. After a stint as a cowboy, lawman, and hunter, he returned to New York as the embryonic TR. It was TR who became a war hero, a beloved president, and finally, a mythic, towering figure. His biographers agree that his later political career would have been impossible but for his time out West.
Henry James took the opposite path. He left America behind to live in England.
Edmund Morris notes that James's "preference for English society and English literature drove Roosevelt to near frenzy." TR considered James a "miserable little snob." He wrote with disdain of "the undersized man of letters, who flees his country because he, with his delicate, effeminate sensitiveness, finds the conditions of life on this side of the water crude and raw."
James, for his part, judged Roosevelt "the mere monstrous embodiment of unprecedented and resounding Noise" and "a dangerous and ominous jingo."
John Kerry had no need to become an expatriate. Over the last century Massachusetts has become very congenial for the sensitive and exquisite. But there is still that patrician disdain for how we do things out here in fly-over country (still so crude and raw). Most of all, there is that craving for European modes and European approval.
Saturday, March 27, 2004
The BBQ Test
During the 1952 election, political reporters Stewart and Joseph Alsop hit upon a key test for predicting presidential elections: Which candidate would voters prefer to have over to their house for a cook-out?
By this measure, how can Bush lose? It's easy to picture GWB eating a burger and playing catch with the kids. But Kerry? You almost expect him to ask for a knife and fork to eat his drumstick.
And let's not even discuss how the wives would fare.
During the 1952 election, political reporters Stewart and Joseph Alsop hit upon a key test for predicting presidential elections: Which candidate would voters prefer to have over to their house for a cook-out?
By this measure, how can Bush lose? It's easy to picture GWB eating a burger and playing catch with the kids. But Kerry? You almost expect him to ask for a knife and fork to eat his drumstick.
And let's not even discuss how the wives would fare.
Friday, March 26, 2004
The A-List
This is one of the best books i've ever read on business strategy and corporate planning. Maybe the best.
I'd say more but i wrote a review of it for Strategy and Leadership. I'll wait until that appears and then link to it.
This is one of the best books i've ever read on business strategy and corporate planning. Maybe the best.
I'd say more but i wrote a review of it for Strategy and Leadership. I'll wait until that appears and then link to it.
They're Just Thugs
Jeff Soyer watches The Sopranos on DVD. He is not amused.
Yes, it's a great show to follow. Great acting, plots, etc. But... But, but, but, but, folks, these Mafia dudes, organized crime types, whatever you want to call them, are terrible people. Yeah, you can feel for Tony but in the end, they are nothing but thugs.
I have to agree. It may be good television, but it really goes to a lot of work in order to make the ugly more admirable.
UPDATE: Scott Chaffin weighs in here.
Jeff Soyer watches The Sopranos on DVD. He is not amused.
Yes, it's a great show to follow. Great acting, plots, etc. But... But, but, but, but, folks, these Mafia dudes, organized crime types, whatever you want to call them, are terrible people. Yeah, you can feel for Tony but in the end, they are nothing but thugs.
I have to agree. It may be good television, but it really goes to a lot of work in order to make the ugly more admirable.
UPDATE: Scott Chaffin weighs in here.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Historical Footnote
I ran across a table that summarized US naval losses in WWII. What struck me was that the US lost only two battleships in the course of the war, compared to four fleet carriers and one light carrier. Both of the battleships lost were sunk in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. All of the carriers were sunk during combat operations when they were at full alert and prepared.
The image of the battlewagon as a pathetically vulnerable dinosaur really is based on the losses of four ships in the first month of the Allied-Japanese War. In addition to the American losses at Pearl, Britain lost the Prince of Wales and the Repulse when Japanese plains attacked them during the Malay/Singapore operation. After that, Allied battlewagons held up very well.
Part of that is due to the fact that carriers became the prime target during air attacks and the BBs were not subject to the same risks. However, the battleships did fight surface actions in the Solomons and Philippines and were remarkably resilience. We also have to recognize that it proved astonishingly difficult for US planes to sink Japanese battleships: it took 10 torpedoes and 6 bombs to sink the Yamato.
I ran across a table that summarized US naval losses in WWII. What struck me was that the US lost only two battleships in the course of the war, compared to four fleet carriers and one light carrier. Both of the battleships lost were sunk in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. All of the carriers were sunk during combat operations when they were at full alert and prepared.
The image of the battlewagon as a pathetically vulnerable dinosaur really is based on the losses of four ships in the first month of the Allied-Japanese War. In addition to the American losses at Pearl, Britain lost the Prince of Wales and the Repulse when Japanese plains attacked them during the Malay/Singapore operation. After that, Allied battlewagons held up very well.
Part of that is due to the fact that carriers became the prime target during air attacks and the BBs were not subject to the same risks. However, the battleships did fight surface actions in the Solomons and Philippines and were remarkably resilience. We also have to recognize that it proved astonishingly difficult for US planes to sink Japanese battleships: it took 10 torpedoes and 6 bombs to sink the Yamato.
Monday, March 22, 2004
Zero Defects and Branding Services
Frozen North (permlink not working, look for 18 March) discusses the role of quality in the marketing of services. He is quite right to emphasize that the customer service experience is a critical component of the brand image and that service firms err if they ignore it in favor of advertising and PR.
The long-term problem is that CS quality isn't a sustainable point of differentiation. Your competitors can copy your zero-defect call center. At that point, bad service hurts your brand, but good service doesn't help: customers perceive it as par for the course.
Good service, then, is a necessary, but not sufficient factor in branding success. The firm needs something else to claim a premium position. Strategic management requires that leadership keep its eye on two goals at once: the short-term objective of zero defects and the long-term goal of being distinctive in a way that is meaningful to customers. It is a mistake to believe that the latter will flow automatically from the former.
Frozen North (permlink not working, look for 18 March) discusses the role of quality in the marketing of services. He is quite right to emphasize that the customer service experience is a critical component of the brand image and that service firms err if they ignore it in favor of advertising and PR.
The long-term problem is that CS quality isn't a sustainable point of differentiation. Your competitors can copy your zero-defect call center. At that point, bad service hurts your brand, but good service doesn't help: customers perceive it as par for the course.
Good service, then, is a necessary, but not sufficient factor in branding success. The firm needs something else to claim a premium position. Strategic management requires that leadership keep its eye on two goals at once: the short-term objective of zero defects and the long-term goal of being distinctive in a way that is meaningful to customers. It is a mistake to believe that the latter will flow automatically from the former.
Missouri: It Really is the Heart of It All
The current Atlantic sets out to find the state that comes closest to being a microcosm of the whole US. It turns out that Missouri is a surprisingly good fit based on a host of economic, demographic, political and cultural measures.
It is worth noting that John Ashcroft was a very successful politician in Missouri.
The current Atlantic sets out to find the state that comes closest to being a microcosm of the whole US. It turns out that Missouri is a surprisingly good fit based on a host of economic, demographic, political and cultural measures.
It is worth noting that John Ashcroft was a very successful politician in Missouri.
Carnival of the Capitalists: March 22, 2004
The latest edition of the best biz/econ blogging is here.
The latest edition of the best biz/econ blogging is here.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Still Neo, I Guess: The Case for War One Year Later
I started blogging a year ago, just before the invasion of Iraq. One of my first posts laid out what i saw as the case for the war. Looking at it today, i believe that the case remains surprisingly solid.
(I claim no special insight or brilliance on this matter: my post was just one non-warblogger's assessment of the arguments being made in 2002-3003.)
Several points stand out. The case for war did not argue that Saddam's WMDs were an "imminent threat" or that he was involved in the 9-11 attacks. Instead, it argued that he was trying to get WMDs, that containment/sanctions/deterrence were beset with problems of their own, and that waiting was worse than acting. Nothing i've read in the past year refutes that assessment.
Nor has the Iraq war brought the war against al Qaeda to a halt as some claimed it would. We are still rolling up cells and neutralizing their leadership.
The evidence that has come to light since the fall of Saddam bolsters the claim that the UN and France had corrupt motives for opposing the war.
I have to admit that i am surprised that we have not found evidence of WMDs. The intelligence failure is a legitimate cause for concern.
Although i did not include it, i had hoped that a decisive military victory would provide geopolitical leverage against other outlaw regimes. I don't believe that this has been borne out. Certainly Libya's conciliatory moves have been a positive. But that has to be balanced against the difficulties of the occupation and the failure to kill or capture Saddam in the early days of the war.
I started blogging a year ago, just before the invasion of Iraq. One of my first posts laid out what i saw as the case for the war. Looking at it today, i believe that the case remains surprisingly solid.
(I claim no special insight or brilliance on this matter: my post was just one non-warblogger's assessment of the arguments being made in 2002-3003.)
Several points stand out. The case for war did not argue that Saddam's WMDs were an "imminent threat" or that he was involved in the 9-11 attacks. Instead, it argued that he was trying to get WMDs, that containment/sanctions/deterrence were beset with problems of their own, and that waiting was worse than acting. Nothing i've read in the past year refutes that assessment.
Nor has the Iraq war brought the war against al Qaeda to a halt as some claimed it would. We are still rolling up cells and neutralizing their leadership.
The evidence that has come to light since the fall of Saddam bolsters the claim that the UN and France had corrupt motives for opposing the war.
I have to admit that i am surprised that we have not found evidence of WMDs. The intelligence failure is a legitimate cause for concern.
Although i did not include it, i had hoped that a decisive military victory would provide geopolitical leverage against other outlaw regimes. I don't believe that this has been borne out. Certainly Libya's conciliatory moves have been a positive. But that has to be balanced against the difficulties of the occupation and the failure to kill or capture Saddam in the early days of the war.
Friday, March 19, 2004
"Iraq: Intelligence, Facts, and Fantasies"
Here is a recent speech by one of the best US Senators. Kyl isn't one of those guys who show up on cable shows four times a week. And he is not much of a screamer and shouter. He's just a thoughtful, serious senator.
Senator Kennedy began his presentation by calling on CIA Director George Tenet to use his upcoming testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee to state whether "he feels that the White House altered the facts, or misused the intelligence." If Director Tenet believed that, Senator Kennedy said, then Tenet "should say so, and say it plainly." As we all know now, Senator Kennedy on Tuesday asked Director Tenet whether he believed the administration had misrepresented the facts to justify the war. Tenet answered: "No, sir, I don't."
Here is a recent speech by one of the best US Senators. Kyl isn't one of those guys who show up on cable shows four times a week. And he is not much of a screamer and shouter. He's just a thoughtful, serious senator.
Senator Kennedy began his presentation by calling on CIA Director George Tenet to use his upcoming testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee to state whether "he feels that the White House altered the facts, or misused the intelligence." If Director Tenet believed that, Senator Kennedy said, then Tenet "should say so, and say it plainly." As we all know now, Senator Kennedy on Tuesday asked Director Tenet whether he believed the administration had misrepresented the facts to justify the war. Tenet answered: "No, sir, I don't."
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Words Almost Fail Me
Here is a writer on a German website worrying that the Passion will increase anti-Semitism
Opinion: The Crux of Gibson's Crucifixion
Not in Germany, you know, but among those lesser peoples to the East
Christian anti-Semitism is far from being surmounted in Eastern Europe in particular. In parts of Poland and Hungary, for example, the hate of Jews as "murderers of God" is still quite alive.
Here is a writer on a German website worrying that the Passion will increase anti-Semitism
Opinion: The Crux of Gibson's Crucifixion
Not in Germany, you know, but among those lesser peoples to the East
Christian anti-Semitism is far from being surmounted in Eastern Europe in particular. In parts of Poland and Hungary, for example, the hate of Jews as "murderers of God" is still quite alive.
Many ways to play this game
Jane Galt asks:
Did the Spanish elections incentivize terror?
Is it also fair to ask if loudly asserting that al Qaeda won in Spain encourages them to bomb other allies?
Jane Galt asks:
Did the Spanish elections incentivize terror?
Is it also fair to ask if loudly asserting that al Qaeda won in Spain encourages them to bomb other allies?
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
More Spain
Justin Katz takes me to task for my post on Spain, democracy, and warbloggers. He is always worth reading so check out his post.
My disgust with the reactions i cited is rooted in the quick condemnation aimed at the Spanish electorate by people who know almost nothing about what happened. Maybe Spain wants to capitulate to bin Laden, maybe they don't. All we do know, today, is that the new Spanish government wants out of Iraq. That alone is not conclusive evidence of appeasement. (Maybe they believe that Iraq is now the wrong war at the wrong time to quote a famous American general who was also derided as an appeaser).
If Spain refuses to share intelligence on al Qaeda with the US or if they allow terrorist groups to set-up camp in Madrid, then they deserve to be condemned as cowards and opportunists. But where is the evidence they intend to do anything of the sort?
Great Britain and the US are allies. That relationship survives no matter what party is in power. The Atlantic alliance was not broken when Tony Blair defeated John Major. It survived the election of a Republican in 2000. Allies have a shared interest which transcends domestic politics.
Empires, in contrast, take sides in the domestic elections of their satellites. They care about internal matters. Too many warbloggers betray a deep-seated imperial impulse. (I don't mean Justin, but those like Simon, Jarvis, Sullivan, and their commentators). They demand a rigid ideological conformity from our partners in the war against terror.
Today they praise Poland as a brave and steadfast ally. A week from now they could just as easily condemn it as a nation of anti-Semitic religious fanatics and collaborators in the Holocaust. All it will take is a headline in the New York Times to set them off. The idea of not spouting off never occurs to them.
See also this post at Dean' blog.
Justin Katz takes me to task for my post on Spain, democracy, and warbloggers. He is always worth reading so check out his post.
My disgust with the reactions i cited is rooted in the quick condemnation aimed at the Spanish electorate by people who know almost nothing about what happened. Maybe Spain wants to capitulate to bin Laden, maybe they don't. All we do know, today, is that the new Spanish government wants out of Iraq. That alone is not conclusive evidence of appeasement. (Maybe they believe that Iraq is now the wrong war at the wrong time to quote a famous American general who was also derided as an appeaser).
If Spain refuses to share intelligence on al Qaeda with the US or if they allow terrorist groups to set-up camp in Madrid, then they deserve to be condemned as cowards and opportunists. But where is the evidence they intend to do anything of the sort?
Great Britain and the US are allies. That relationship survives no matter what party is in power. The Atlantic alliance was not broken when Tony Blair defeated John Major. It survived the election of a Republican in 2000. Allies have a shared interest which transcends domestic politics.
Empires, in contrast, take sides in the domestic elections of their satellites. They care about internal matters. Too many warbloggers betray a deep-seated imperial impulse. (I don't mean Justin, but those like Simon, Jarvis, Sullivan, and their commentators). They demand a rigid ideological conformity from our partners in the war against terror.
Today they praise Poland as a brave and steadfast ally. A week from now they could just as easily condemn it as a nation of anti-Semitic religious fanatics and collaborators in the Holocaust. All it will take is a headline in the New York Times to set them off. The idea of not spouting off never occurs to them.
See also this post at Dean' blog.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
An Example of the "Youth Premium"
In syndication, "Friends" has an audience of 7.32 million. "Wheel of Fortune" pulls in 13.38 million viewers. Yet a 30 second national spot on Friends costs $221,567 and only $82,950 on "Wheel". Advertisers believe that the average "Friends" watcher is worth almost five times as much as a "Wheel" fan.
Given this large gap, one might suppose that this differential is backed up by reams of data and analysis. But, instead, it rests on little more than the belief that young people are easier to persuade than older people. (Not that anyone has a lot of evidence for that, either.)
In syndication, "Friends" has an audience of 7.32 million. "Wheel of Fortune" pulls in 13.38 million viewers. Yet a 30 second national spot on Friends costs $221,567 and only $82,950 on "Wheel". Advertisers believe that the average "Friends" watcher is worth almost five times as much as a "Wheel" fan.
Given this large gap, one might suppose that this differential is backed up by reams of data and analysis. But, instead, it rests on little more than the belief that young people are easier to persuade than older people. (Not that anyone has a lot of evidence for that, either.)
Spain, or The Ugly American Blogger
I don't know if Spain just capitulated to bin Laden. Interpreting election results is a pretty complex business and instant analysis is just so much hot air.
But that doesn't stop big name bloggers and their commentators. Check out Roger Simon, Jeff Jarvis, the Corner, and the Inkwell.
This reaction is funny in so many ways. I thought warbloggers were in favor of democracy. But it turns out that they only like elections when their side wins. They seem to confuse allies with satellites.
The Spanish voters are cowards because they have deserted the Bush coalition in Iraq. Yet, Jeff Jarvis has been looking for an excuse to jump off the Bush bandwagon here at home because the FCC is being mean to Howard Stern. That, apparently, is a matter of principle not a failure of courage.
In October 2000 Al Qaeda attacked the US Cole. A few weeks, the Democrats lost the White House. Did we "capitulate" to terrorism by electing Bush?
FWIW, i'm puzzled by the former Spanish PM's insistence on blaming ETA for the Madrid atrocity when the evidence pointed Islamic terrorists. Maybe he was playing a little politics with the attack and got burned at the ballot box for it.
This post over at Volokh makes a lot more sense than those noted above.
As does this one at the evangelical outpost.
I don't know if Spain just capitulated to bin Laden. Interpreting election results is a pretty complex business and instant analysis is just so much hot air.
But that doesn't stop big name bloggers and their commentators. Check out Roger Simon, Jeff Jarvis, the Corner, and the Inkwell.
This reaction is funny in so many ways. I thought warbloggers were in favor of democracy. But it turns out that they only like elections when their side wins. They seem to confuse allies with satellites.
The Spanish voters are cowards because they have deserted the Bush coalition in Iraq. Yet, Jeff Jarvis has been looking for an excuse to jump off the Bush bandwagon here at home because the FCC is being mean to Howard Stern. That, apparently, is a matter of principle not a failure of courage.
In October 2000 Al Qaeda attacked the US Cole. A few weeks, the Democrats lost the White House. Did we "capitulate" to terrorism by electing Bush?
FWIW, i'm puzzled by the former Spanish PM's insistence on blaming ETA for the Madrid atrocity when the evidence pointed Islamic terrorists. Maybe he was playing a little politics with the attack and got burned at the ballot box for it.
This post over at Volokh makes a lot more sense than those noted above.
As does this one at the evangelical outpost.
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