How can he say this stuff with a straight face?

I apologize for not picking up on this sooner. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University on Monday eclipsed most American coverage of President Bush's speech at the United Nations General Assembly the following day:

This great institution must work for great purposes -- to free people from tyranny and violence, hunger and disease, illiteracy and ignorance, and poverty and despair. Every member of the United Nations must join in this mission of liberation.

First, the mission of the United Nations requires liberating people from tyranny and violence. The first article of the Universal Declaration begins, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." The truth is denied by terrorists and extremists who kill the innocent with the aim of imposing their hateful vision on humanity. The followers of this violent ideology are a threat to civilized people everywhere. All civilized nations must work together to stop them -- by sharing intelligence about their networks, and choking their -- off their finances, and bringing to justice their operatives.

In the long run, the best way to defeat extremists is to defeat their dark ideology with a more hopeful vision -- the vision of liberty that founded this body. The United States salutes the nations that have recently taken strides toward liberty -- including Ukraine and Georgia and Kyrgyzstan and Mauritania and Liberia, Sierra Leone and Morocco. The Palestinian Territories have moderate leaders, mainstream leaders that are working to build free institutions that fight terror, and enforce the law, and respond to the needs of their people. The international community must support these leaders, so that we can advance the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security.

Its too bad the Palestinian people tried to vote those Palestinian leaders out of office a few years ago. Its also too bad that U.S. is doing nothing to prevent Israel from declaring the Gaza Strip an 'enemy entity' and closing it off to everything but humanitarian aid. But I digress. The speech only gets better:

Brave citizens in Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq have made the choice for democracy -- yet the extremists have responded by targeting them for murder. This is not a show of strength -- it is evidence of fear. And the extremists are doing everything in their power to bring down these young democracies. The people of Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq have asked for our help. And every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand with them.

Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship. In Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration. Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear. Basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking, and rape are common. The regime is holding more than 1,000 political prisoners -- including Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party was elected overwhelmingly by the Burmese people in 1990.

The ruling junta remains unyielding, yet the people's desire for freedom is unmistakable. This morning, I'm announcing a series of steps to help bring peaceful change to Burma. The United States will tighten economic sanctions on the leaders of the regime and their financial backers. We will impose an expanded visa ban on those responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights, as well as their family members. We'll continue to support the efforts of humanitarian groups working to alleviate suffering in Burma. And I urge the United Nations and all nations to use their diplomatic and economic leverage to help the Burmese people reclaim their freedom.

In Cuba, the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end. The Cuban people are ready for their freedom. And as that nation enters a period of transition, the United Nations must insist on free speech, free assembly, and ultimately, free and competitive elections.

In Zimbabwe, ordinary citizens suffer under a tyrannical regime. The government has cracked down on peaceful calls for reform, and forced millions to flee their homeland. The behavior of the Mugabe regime is an assault on its people -- and an affront to the principles of the Universal Declaration. The United Nations must insist on change in Harare -- and must insist for the freedom of the people of Zimbabwe.

In Sudan, innocent civilians are suffering repression -- and in the Darfur region, many are losing their lives to genocide. America has responded with tough sanctions against those responsible for the violence. We've provided more than $2 billion in humanitarian and peacekeeping aid. I look forward to attending a Security Council meeting that will focus on Darfur, chaired by the French President. I appreciate France's leadership in helping to stabilize Sudan's neighbors. And the United Nations must answer this challenge to conscience, and live up to its promise to promptly deploy peacekeeping forces to Darfur.

Maybe these words would mean more if they were spoken before we opened an extra-judicial prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. Or before we established secret prisons. Or before the abuses at Abu Ghraib happened. Or before we started torturing people. Or before we enlisted other states to torture on our behalf.

Setting aside the matter of whether all of the above had to happen in order to 'save lives,' does President Bush realize that making speeches like this only hurt America's image abroad? I'll be the first cop to hypocrisy in U.S. foreign policy. It is a dirty business full of questions with no right answers.

But must President Bush use such self-righteous and indignant language in front of the whole world when he knows that is the U.S. is adding more 'War on Terror' skeletons to its closet every day? Why didn't he just talk about poverty or women's rights or some other issue that the U.S. is not actively disrupting. Heck, talk about global warming for all I care.

Just stop embarrassing the country with this hollow talk of freedom. It doesn't fool anyone.

Ron Paul is not crazy

I'm more of a policy wonk, so I don't like to wade too deeply into politics, but I feel the need to defend my fellow libertarian, Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX). He made a seemingly controversial statement in the May 15, 2007 Republican primary debate and Rudy Giuliani scored some cheap points off of it. Conservative blogs are predicting that the statement will cost him his chance at the Republican nomination, which is too bad because the congressman's point was not insigniciant to the U.S. Near East policy debate. In fact, the whole exchange with Giuliani was indicate of an important failure of U.S. strategy:

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

The Congressman's statement about al Qaeda's motivations leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks is only slightly wrong. Ron Paul suggests that our 10-year enforcement of no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq was a motivating factor for al Qaeda when in fact, it was the UN sanctions placed on Iraq. I direct your attention to the August 1996 fatwa issued by Osama bin Laden and published in the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper:

The youths hold you responsible for all of the killings and evictions of the Muslims and the violation of the sanctities, carried out by your Zionist brothers in Lebanon; you openly supplied them with arms and finance. More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanction) imposed on Iraq and its nation. The children of Iraq are our children. You, the USA, together with the Saudi regime are responsible for the shedding of the blood of these innocent children. Due to all of that, what ever treaty you have with our country is now null and void.

Iraq is mentioned again in second fatwa he and Ayman al-Zawahiri published on February 23, 1998:

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

The 9/11 Commission Report even mentions the subject in Chapter 2 "The Foundations of New Terrorism" (split across pages 48 and 49):

The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam's past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources-Islam, history, and the region's political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel.

I am not endorsing Osama bin Laden's view. Nor am I saying that the 9/11 attacks were invited or justified. My point is that when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States, he included his rationale and that rationale obviously appealed to some in the Near East.

It is true that Congressman Paul was inarticulate in making his point, but Rudy Giuliani's dismissive response indicated a foreign policy myopia that could be potentially dangerous for the United States. We may see Osama bin Laden's view as morally wrong, but the 19 hijackers on 9/11 clearly disagreed, so much so that they were willing to sacrifice their lives for it. This tendency to dismiss what it disbelieves will only continue to impose a heavy opportunity cost on U.S. strategy. If Rudy wins the election, we can only hope that he reads some Sun Tzu before moving into the White House. I'm thinking specifically about a passage from the Art of War at the end Chapter 3:

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win hundred times in hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose.

Hey, at least we understand ourselves... right?

Army turns up the rhetoric on FCS

After taking a $800 million hit on its fiscal year 2008 Future Combat Systems (FCS) spending request, the Army is punching back by turning up the rhetoric [Update: The broken link is now fixed. Sorry about that.]:

“The cost in modernizing is first of all a cost in dollars, but failing to modernize is a cost that is sometimes registered in lives,” Lt. Gen. Speakes said today during a roundtable with Pentagon reporters.

“The program is on track,” he said. “We have met our performance standards and we are on the eve of some really great developments that are going to start hitting the Army literally overnight.”

[snip]

The Future Combat Systems also is fielding robots that can save lives. If robots make mistakes in defusing improvised explosive devices and the devices explode, no one dies, Lt. Gen. Speakes said. The robots are in use with units in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The proposed cuts to the program would effectively prevent the development of Future Combat Systems manned ground vehicles. This means Soldiers would operate Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles “indefinitely,” he said.

[snip]

Another concept that would be eliminated is called the Mule. This is a small wheeled vehicle that follows Soldiers carrying supplies, spare parts, ammunition and water. This is on the cusp of testing and would have to stop if the cuts in the system are made, he said. Another unmanned aerial vehicle would also be canceled.

Soldiers would be very negatively affected by these cuts, Speakses concluded.

“We will be doomed to spend the next 20 to 30 years with the existing combat platforms we have today,” he said. “It’s a betrayal of our trust to Americans when we don’t invest in them.”

I thought the Army was above exploiting force protection arguments, but I guess I was wrong. It isn't too surprising though, considering how the Army uses FCS as an all-or-nothing tactic to foist more than a dozen unproven platforms on the American taxpayer.

The phrase I hear the most around my office is "FCS is Army modernization," which implies the Army is actively not preparing a Plan B for its future force. FCS is a Swiss watch and the Army is gambling that the Congress or Secretary of Defense won't try to pare it down out of a fear that even a small change will cause the whole thing to fall apart.

The most galling part of this article is that the Army is threatening to drop the most innovate parts of FCS in response to the budget cuts. Why sacrifice great ideas like the MULE or the Class IV UAV just to save carbon-copy replacements for current platforms, such as the M1 Abrams or M2 Bradley? Shouldn't the Army be more concerned with generating new capabilities than just recapitalizing its fleet of armored vehicles?

The new wisdom of technology on the battlefield is that in the world of guided-weapons warfare, platforms don't matter as much any more. As I've pointed out before, precision-guided munitions have changed the traditional calculus of warfare. Platforms (and unmounted soldiers) can fire munitions farther and with such a degree of accuracy that metrics like rate of fire aren't important anymore. If the XM982 Excalibur makes the M109 Paladin more effective than modern howitzers, why design a new one?

I have one last parting shot for FCS advocates: Since the Army plans to equip the 3-year old Stryker with mortar, reconnaissance, and infantry carrier packages, why do they need the No-Line-of-Sight Mortar, Infantry Carrier Vehicle, and Reconnaissance and Surveillance Vehicle? This seems like a pretty clear duplication of effort.

How to achieve an info war 'reboot'

The Brookings Institution's P.W. Singer wrote an interesting piece for the Think Tank Town column in yesterday's Washington Post:

Winning the war on terrorism depends substantially on winning the war of ideas; unfortunately, by most metrics, the U.S. is getting its clock cleaned. Public polling shows massive anger directed at the U.S. and our credibility at an all time low. In a few short years, the U.S. has gone from being seen as the Cold War beacon of Coca Cola, McDonalds and freedom to the dark "Long War" home of Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act and orange jumpsuits.

The deep and rapid deterioration of America's standing in the world is one of the greatest challenges the United States faces. More than just some lost popularity contest, the erosion of American credibility and leadership alienates our allies and reinforces the recruiting efforts of our foes. We are stocking the "sea" in which our enemies must "swim." It also effectively denies American ideas and policies a fair shake.

[snip]

Since 9-11, the Bush strategy has focused on a repetition of simple messages through controlled channels. But it has proven unrealistic for our complex information age, with our messages getting lost in the global cacophony of ideas. More importantly, the approach fails to account for the framework of interpretation. We focus on the messages we send; but the latest research shows we must equally focus on how people interpret and understand them.

Views have locked in and, unfortunately for America, people around the globe now look at any message from the U.S. government through a lens of doubt. This means even when we think we are saying the right thing, it can backfire; notice how such positive concepts as "democratization" are now largely reinterpreted in the Muslim world to mean "invasion." As the article sums it up, "Present strategic communication efforts by the U.S. and its allies rest on an outdated, 20th century message influence model of communication that is no longer effective in the complex global war of ideas."

Once people have seemingly made up their minds to interpret news and policies in a certain way, the study finds that only two things can change them. The first is receiving varied and complex sources of alternative information that force the individual to ask questions of what they earlier thought was true. As people get more and more information -- importantly from varied sources and leaders that they trust -- the old framework crumbles. A good illustration of this that the Bush administration can understand is how the once-strong levels of support for the Iraq war gradually tumbled over the last year. Early on, any bad news coming from Iraq was interpreted as being unpatriotic or something hyped by the left-wing "mainstream media." But, as the negative news became both continual and varied, with the sources ranging from journalists to retired generals, attitudes shifted even amongst the most fervent of the president's supporters. The lesson here is that U.S. strategic communications needs a similar shift from trying to spin simplistics to wrestling with complex realities. We must engage regional audiences in more than just pithy soundbites designed for Western audiences, but through a web of channels and local leaders that have far more validity than our own.

Singer goes on to suggest that the United States needs to 'reboot' its image by either solving the Arab-Israeli conflict or waiting until a new president enters office in January 2009.

The prospect of both options aren't great. Between the invasion of Iraq, its support for Israel's botched summer 2006 war against Hezbollah, and its general inattention to the issue, the Bush administration does not have the credibility to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. 'Rebooting' with new president isn't very unpalatable either because sitting on one's hands isn't appropriate behavior for a world-leading superpower -- especially when we are the ones who the world often looks to for immediate action.

All is not lost, however, because as Singer points out, image is driven by the expectations of others. Pulling of a miracle in the holy land and putting fresh blood are just two ways of shaking up public expectations with one drastic change. What about a trying a more gradual approach that involves moving on a group of smaller changes?

I'm a left-leaning libertarian, but I am not an ideologue. I don't think the Bush administration's foreign policy has any sinister intent nor do I think that Bush lied in the lead up to the Iraq War. I am very suspicious of the Bush administration's penchant for making simplistic, straw-man arguments. Their cognitive dissonance may look like obstinacy to some, but to those who do not implicitly trust the White House, it looks like they are trying to hide something.

For me, reversing the administration's overly ambiguous policy on torture would go a long way towards an information war reboot. This needs to go much farther than "We don't torture" or "We no longer torture," it must also include:

1. An explicit acknowledgement that the practices now labelled torture were used on certain detainees.

2. A full accounting of the interrogation techniques that were used that are now prohibited.

3. An admission that even though the decision to use torture was made during an extraordinary time of crisis, it was wrong.

I'm willing to accept their rationale for initially resorting to torture in the first year or so of the war on terrorism. Policy-makers are limited by bounded rationality and the immediate post-9/11 period was defined by conditions that only exacerbate those bounds. They were under pressure to quickly devise policy responses to a threat they didn't understand using information that was unfamiliar and difficult to process.

Bad policy decisions were inevitable and some of them resulted in the torture of human beings. It was a mistake and we should apologize for our error in judgement and the undue harm that it caused. That simple message would go far in shaking up international perceptions of the United States.

Update: Retired Marine Generals Charles "Strategic Corporal" Krulak and Joseph Hoar completely agree.

Second Update: In the interest of presenting some balance, the Post's national security blogger William Arkin does not think repudiating torture will matter.

Where's the DOT before MRAP?

I'm really impressed by the quantity and quality of the debate over U.S. Army and Marine Corp plans to purchase and field a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected MRAP vehicle to replaced the venerable HMMWV. MRAP skeptics, including writers on the left and right of the Iraq debate, as well as my contemporary (or should I say 'blogging upperclassman') J. Sigger point out that the benefits offered by the MRAP in Iraq does not outweigh its hefty pricetag:

We're talking about making a multi-billion dollar procurement deal on a system that hasn't been run through any operational tests, to replace a system that cost about a fifth of the armored vehicle, and the military wants to rush production of "low rate initial production" vehicles through five contractors to meet the demand.

Now I know why the politicians will vote for this, because they've got a knee-jerk reaction to any issue that includes the term "protection from IEDs" in the title. But you have to ask, what the hell are the military leaders thinking by rushing these vehicles to the field? "These MVAPs have to work, because... because... if they don't, it's our asses." There's no excuse to short-cutting the operational testing of this vehicle, not when the consequences of failure are so high. My frustration with these kind of decisions is in part fueled by the continued demands by the military leadership to continue modernizing their aging equipment simultaneous with funding the high optempo requirements of the war, while the training and repair infrastructure in the United States continues to crumble.

While MRAP supporters, such as defense tech super-reporters Noah Schachtman and David Axe, acknowledge this issue, but present a set of compelling counterpoints:

Jason has a point. But, just to be clear, it's not like the things have no military track record. Engineers and bomb squads have been riding in 'em for more than a year, now. And they're based closely on South African designs which I understand performed just fine.

Also, let's not fetishize "operational tests" overmuch. After all, the Predator flunked its 2001 operational exam -- even as it was taking out Taliban in Afghanistan.

Still, there's reason to be skeptical. As the Standard notes, "'Eliminating the source' [of IEDs] is indeed the only way to stop the bleeding. MRAP is a stop-gap measure, [albeit] a good one."

While both side present compelling points, I tend to side with the MRAP skeptics for two reasons. First, physics is a hard mistress and she currently favors the insurgents. The competition over ever-improving Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and counter-IED tactics and technology has been a central theme of the struggle between U.S. ground forces and insurgent groups. While both sides have been forced to continually innovate, the marginal utility of technological innovation declines as the operational needs bump up against the laws of physics. It is not even really clear whether an car chasis can be hardened enough to stop an explosively-formed penetrator.

Second, whatever happened to the Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities (DOTMLPF) process? For those unfamiliar with the term, the best description is found in Field Manual 1:

DOTMLPF is a problem-solving construct for assessing current capabilities and managing change. Change is achieved through a continuous cycle of adaptive innovation, experimentation, and experience. Change deliberately executed across DOTMLPF elements enables the Army to improve its capabilities to provide dominant landpower to the joint force.

The elements of DOTMLPF are organized in order of difficult, from easiest to change (doctrine) to most difficult (facilities). One thing that I have noticed about about U.S. operations in Iraq is a tendency to favor material solutions over doctrinal, organizational, and training solutions when a problem crops up on the battlefield. Just compare the $6 billion spent by JIEDDO on counter IED technology versus the years it took to the U.S. Army to role out a new counterinsurgency manual, despite the clear need for one.

Don't get me wrong, the military should replace part of its HMMWV fleet with MRAPs -- but not all of it. The Army will continue to need an medium-weight, all-purpose truck for missions that don't involve driving through a virtual minefield. Thankfully, it seem like the Pentagon is going to pick up just about the right number of MRAPs (15,000-20,000). In the meantime, I have a few radical proposals for doctrinal and organizational changes for the Army should meditate on:

1. If roadside bombs are such a problem for military supply convoys, why not consider sourcing some material locally? Laundry service, water purification and garbage collection, are could be outsources to local firms. The business will help build ties with the community and infuse some much needed cash into the local economy. As units build trusting relationships with the local population, they should consider outsourcing some functions that would involve a mild amount of risk, but employ important parts of the local economy. This would include preparing meals, mending uniforms and manufacturing basic consumables (batteries, non-sensitive spare parts, tires). Heck, if Iraq's oil ministry could get its act together, the U.S. Army's fleet of generators and trucks would be thirsty, high-paying customers.

2. If you can't make armored cars tough enough to resist IEDs then walk, or at least disperse Brigade Combat Teams into the urban environment even more. If Joint Security Stations commanded at the battalion level, some of them subdivide them into company-sized or even platoon-sized posts. The ultimate goal would be to saturate the security districts with small posts that aren't far apart and don't have to move much. Remember the painful lessons of the Kuomintang's early anti-communist campaigns -- insurgencies require space (or base areas). Slow and methodical encirclement is a proven way of starving insurgents of their space.

3. Abandon the idea of 'focused logistics.' The idea of 'tailored supplies' or 'just-in-time' delivery are not compatible with stability operations. When your mission is to provide 24-hour security to a town, you need to be preparing for everything. Building a 'mountain of metal' may be inexpensive or inefficient, but the opportunity cost of failing at your security mission can be even larger.

These ideas may seem risky, but successful stability operations often requires a wholesale abandonment of the military's conventional wisdom about the elements of operations -- like the 'battlefield,' the 'enemy,' and the whole idea of 'operations' itself.

It is March 1940 all over again

According to New York Times's David Sanger and Thom Shanker, the U.S. strategy has travelled back in time to March 1940:

WASHINGTON, May 7 — Every week, a group of experts from agencies around the government — including the C.I.A., the Pentagon, the F.B.I. and the Energy Department — meet to assess Washington’s progress toward solving a grim problem: if a terrorist set off a nuclear bomb in an American city, could the United States determine who detonated it and who provided the nuclear material?

That uncertainty lies at the center of a vigorous, but carefully cloaked, debate within the Bush administration. It focuses on how to refashion the American approach to nuclear deterrence in an attempt to counter the threat posed by terrorists who could obtain bomb-grade uranium or plutonium to make and deliver a weapon.

A previously undisclosed meeting last year of President Bush’s most senior national security advisers was the highest level discussion about how to rewrite the cold war rules. The existing approach to deterrence dates from the time when the nuclear attacks Washington worried about would be launched by missiles and bombers, which can be tracked back to a source by radar, and not carried in backpacks or hidden in cargo containers.

Among the subjects of the meeting last year was whether to issue a warning to all countries around the world that if a nuclear weapon was detonated on American soil and was traced back to any nation’s stockpiles, through nuclear forensics, the United States would hold that country “fully responsible” for the consequences of the explosion. The term “fully responsible” was left deliberately vague so that it would be unclear whether the United States would respond with a retaliatory nuclear attack, or, far more likely, a nonnuclear retaliation, whether military or diplomatic.

History Lesson

For those who were not history majors in college, the idea of nuclear deterrence was first outlined in a March 1940 memorandum written by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls. The original intent of this memorandum was two refute the fissile mass calculations made by Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard in the August 1939 letter they sent to President Roosevelt. Einstein and Szliard had originally asserted that an atomic bomb would require "large mass of uranium" that could be "...carried by boat and exploded in a port..." but "...might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air."

Frisch and Peierls argued that an atomic super bomb as small as 1-5 kilograms would release an explosive force the equivalent of 500-1000 tons of dynamite. They even roughly sketched out what would become gun-type explosive device design first used to build Little Boy. Besides the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Frisch-Peierls memorandum is also famous for the following paragraph:

If one works on the assumption that Germany is, or will be, in the possession of this weapon, it must be realized that no shelters are available that would be effective and that could be used on a large scale. The most effective reply would be a counter-threat with a similar bomb. Therefore it seems to us important to start production as soon and as rapidly as possible, even if it is not intended to use the bomb as a means of attack. Since the separation of the necessary amount of uranium is, in the most favourable circumstances, a matter of several months, it would obviously be too late to start production when such a bomb is known to be in the hands of Germany, and the matter seems, therefore, very urgent.

This thinking would lead to Eisenhower's New Look strategy with its attendant doctrine of massive retaliation first outlined in NSC 162/2. Kennedy replaced massive retaliation with a doctrine of flexible response, which pretty much survived until the end of the Cold War -- despite the occasional debate over counterforce targeting, decapitation strikes, and fail-deadly strategies. Now that the Cold War is over and the U.S. and Russia have reigned in from the brink of precipice, the threat of loose nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism has come to the forefront.

Rewinding the Clock

This Times piece suggests that U.S. strategy against nuclear terrorism is again somewhere between 1940 and 1953 -- scrambling to come up with a way to reliably cope with the threat of nuclear terrorism. It is not surprising that the notoriously pessimistic and lazy Bush administration would look to the well-worn idea of nuclear deterrence as a solution. The problem is that nuclear deterrence is an incredibly abstract concept that is only be applicable in a narrow set of conditions, many of which would not be true in a nuclear terrorism scenario.

Instead of going through all of the major issues, I would like to highlight three that the Bush administration will have tackle before forging the 'New New Look':

1. The decoupling of 'owner' and 'end user' -- Traditional nuclear deterrence is such a simple and universally-applicable concept because the 'owner' and 'end-user' of a nuclear weapons threat is always the same adversary. Nuclear terrorism deterrence must involve a two-level strategy that deters owners from intentionally transferring nuclear weapons, as well as deter the potential for end-user acquisition of nuclear weapons against the will of the owner. This will be especially difficult because the owner and end-user will probably have radically different centers of gravity and vulnerabilities. At the very least, the Bush administration has to solve the problem of targeting a non-state actor guilty of nuclear terrorism within an unwilling (and innocent) host state.

2. Marshaling the resources -- An incident of nuclear terrorism in the United States would undoubtedly have an enormous impact on the American people and the economy. Unlike traditional nuclear deterrence, however, it would not spell the end of the United States as a nation, nor is it as tangibly imminent as thousands of Soviet ICBMs standing ready on a continuous alert. How much will employing a nuclear terrorism deterrence strategy cost, in terms of dollars and diplomatic capital? How much will it cost to extend that strategy to our allies? Do our allies even want to be under such an umbrella? Most importantly, does the actual threat of nuclear terrorism justify the cost of its deterrence strategy and can such a rationale be reliably sold to the American voter?

3. Conquering context -- Like nuclear weapons states, terrorist groups seeking nuclear weapons have different political agendas. They are also willing to risk different degrees of punishment to pull off a nuclear plot. There is also the issue of how to deal with an intentional nuclear weapons transfer conducted by rogue elements of the government (or only part of a split government, i.e. Iran). Is it even possible to craft an abstract idea, such as deterrence, to deal with an incredibly complex issue that depends heavily on the context of each instance of nuclear terrorism

Video Madness - 21 April 2007

Ever wonder just how bad a terrorist attack on a liquefied natural gas could be? The following clips from a TLC show are explosions from a liquid petroleum gas (LPG) plant and an ammonium perchlorate factory:

Two technical points: Early on in the first clip, the narrator mentions 'BLEVEs' (pronounce "blevies"), which is an acronym that stands for boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion. This 1973 disaster in Kingman, Arizona 1978 disaster in Texas City, Texas is what a "worst case scenario" terrorist attack on a LNG terminal would probably look like.[ed. - It is actually the 1978 Texas City BLEVE. I always mix the two up, my bad.]

From the second clip, ammonium perchlorate is the oxidizer used in solid rocket fuel in U.S. rockets, including NASA's solid rocket boosters and later-generation strategic missiles (the Minuteman and Peacekeeper). The largest explosion from the PEPCON fire was an air burst equivalent to about 250 tons of TNT or as this DOD Explosives Safety Board report suggests, the same effect as a 1-kiloton nuclear air burst. Just to give you an idea of how powerful that explosion was, this U.S. Fire Administration report mentions that at seven miles out the explosions cracked glass and blew open doors at Las Vegas's main airport and even buffeted a landing 737.

Whatever dude...

Not only can the nexus of terrorism and WMD score you cheap political points in Congress, you can now use it to support boutique lobbying efforts! I have two questions for the folks at Wakeup Walmart:

1) What about other firms that opposed the 100% cargo container screening amendment? Is Wakeup Walmart ready to take on a larger debate regarding the relative importance of trade versus security in America?

2) How does criticizing Walmart on the grounds of national security further Wakeup Walmart's agenda to unionize Walmart?

This video is about as convincing as the Committee to Bridge the Gap's lobbying effort to build giant steel cribs around all of America's nuclear reactors in order to protect them from airplane strikes.

To balance those videos out, here is a hilarious short called "L33t Haxxors" that was featured on acceptable.tv recently.

How Orwellian is that?

The Opinion section of Friday's Post had a column that really caught my eye:

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

[snip]

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

So let me get this straight. The author was issued a national security letter under a gag order, the national security letter was rescinded before the FBI got the data they wanted, but the gag order remains? Seriously, how Orwellian is that?

Items of Interest

Between writing endless read-aheads, glad-handing foreign military officials or praticing my Japanese in preparation for next week's language exit exam at GWU, I have been pretty busy. Instead of forgetting all of the neat ideas for a blog post that pop into my mind throughout the day, I've taken down to writing brief notes. Here are a few items of interest for my dear readers:

Counterterrorism Policy by Schwarzenegger

Unfortunately, California's governor has not penned his own counterterrorism policy. Yet. A fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution named Thomas Henrikson did in the February/March issue of Policy Review and it looks a lot like something straight out of Commando. His "Security Lessons from the Israeli Trenches" lauds Israel's aggressive, muscular approach to stopping terrorism including some of its more contraversial aspects, such as targeted assassinations, building 'buffer zones' on foreign soil and urban commando raids.

I don't mean to sound like a dove here, but I think the key flaw of Henrikson's thesis is that he measures success by relative body count. His article makes a key error that I think the Israeli security establishment has made since the 1970s, namely the pursuit of short-term survival over ending the attacks in the long-term. Even the Israelis have an excuse for missing this issue because dealing with constant violence along its periphery can be taxing for leaders and bureaucracies.

Henrikson, however, does not have excuse for missing the big picture, which is probably why he is stuck in an Ivory tower for conservative scholars like the Hoover Institution.

Kim Jung Il seyz: "The only thing spinnin' be the rims on my Escalade"

It turns out that the Norks might not have a gas centrifuge-based uranium enrichment program after all. Of course, if you read ArmsControlWonk, you'd know that the Arms Control Association's Paul Kerr was digging up the same info two years ago. This in itself should be nothing new because Kerr has a pretty solid track record for getting inside the mainstream media's OODA loop on nuclear proliferation issues.

Reliable Replacement Warhead contract issued

Yep, its true. One of the most God foresaken politically-driven decisions regarding the critically sensitive area of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is actually going to happen:

The design team from NNSA's Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories was selected to develop the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). NNSA and the national laboratories have determined that this design can be certified without requiring underground nuclear testing.

[Snip]

Teams from NNSA's Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories partnered with Sandia National Laboratories to submit design proposals to the NWC. In late 2006, the NWC evaluated the proposals and determined that the RRW concept was feasible to sustain the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.

"Both teams developed brilliant designs," said D'Agostino. "Because of the superior science across the nuclear weapons complex with assets like supercomputers, and the early design engagement with the production facilities, the laboratories were able to develop designs in nine months that were much more mature than they would have been after two years of work during the Cold War. This is an amazing scientific accomplishment that should not be overlooked."

The two nuclear weapons laboratories both submitted designs that fully met all RRW requirements. However, D'Agostino noted that higher confidence in the ability to certify the Livermore design without underground nuclear testing was the primary reason for its selection. That design was more closely tied to previous underground testing. While one of several factors, it was an especially important one to assure long-term confidence in the reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile.

Several features of the Los Alamos design are highly innovative and will be developed in parallel with the Livermore effort. As they mature, the features may be introduced into the RRW design as it progresses.

Ouch. Talk about a "Dear John" letter for Los Alamos National Laboratories. It originally looked like Congress might buy into two RRWs just to keep both laboratories alive. Then the Bush administration toyed with the idea of a hybrid bomb that would combine technology from Lawrence Livermore's design, which was tested back in the 1980s, and Los Alamos's brand new design. Now it appears that the Bush administration has come to grips with the fact that it can't afford to keep two nuclear weapons laboratories on life support.

The Los Alamos insider's blog LANL: The Corporate Story (successor to LANL: The Real Story) believes that this announcement is the laboratory's death knell. Unless Pete Domineci can defend LANL by slipping a consolation prize into this year's enormous Defense appropriations bill, I think they may be right.

Ahistory is the new history

I definitely suggest reading Seymour Hersh's new article in the New Yorker Magazine. As per usual, Hersh manages to drop little tidbits about the secret goings-on in the Pentagon. White House and Foggy Bottom (now that State has been brought back in from the cold). The U.S. is supporting covert action against Iran and Syria, a Pentagon task force has been pulled together to plan out strikes against Iran's nuclear program, etc.

The most striking thing about Hersh's article is the incredulous manner in which he describes the Bush administration's decision to back friendly Sunni governments in the Near East:

The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

[snip]

The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”

I know Mr. Hersh is a journalist by training, but I figured he might know something about history since he lived through all the juicy parts of the Cold War. The question I would pose to him is this: Since when has U.S. policy in the Near East not involved propping up Sunni governments that share our strategic aims at the expense other U.S. foreign policies and aims?

Since 1979, the U.S. has provided for the security of many of our Sunni allies through a combination of security guarantees, Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and loosened arms export rules under the policy-driven Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.

Even if you take Israel ($2.26 billion) and Egypt's ($1.29) clearly out sized portions out of Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 FMF expenditures ($4.64 billion), four Sunni-led countries of the Near East (Lebanon, Jordon, Oman, and Bahrain), Tunisia and Pakistan comprise over 50% of the remaining $1.09 billion.

Things are pretty much the same on the FMS-side of U.S. policy in the Near East. Each country receiving FMF in the form of grants or loan subsidies spends their money on U.S. arms, in addition to their own (sometimes) generous expenditures. Then the oil-producing Sunni states (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) each drop hundreds of millions annually on U.S. hardware (more than $700 million each in FY2006). When things are all said and done, the Near East (which includes Pakistan) buys more arms from the U.S. government than any other region in the world, including Europe (about $7.7 billion in 2006). (All of my figures from the FY2008 Foreign Operations budget justification, which is surprisingly navigable for being 700 pages)

Hersh's incredulity doesn't stop there, he also picks up on the negative consequences of U.S. policy in the Near East:

“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”

Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down.”

[Snip]

Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

Making Iran out to be the bad guy while downplaying the impact of Sunni extremism? Complicated relationship with Iraq? Toto's hit song "Africa" is at the top of the charts? All that is missing is a handshake like this:

U.S. strategic myopia has once again begun to shift away for complex transnational security issues that require well thought-out, nuanced solutions. It is time to fixate on the handful of international political conflicts that offer opportunities to articulate policies that easy for our Cold War-era government to implement, such as containment, deterrence, coercive diplomacy, sanctions and the Bush administration's favorite, punitive military action.

Look, I'm not saying that Bush administration policy is wrong or that we really have feasible policy given our circumstances. All I would like is for someone besides myself to acknowledge that except for a brief period in 2003, U.S. policy in the Near East hasn't changed much since the late 1980s.

Mr. Hersh, if you really want to know what is at the core of my concerns for America's future in the international community, it is not the Pentagon's plans for action against Iran. It is utter lack of originality and willingness to implement complex policies that require significant political commitment (arms control, regional security integration and diplomatic engagement) that makes me reluctant to bring children into this world.

Osama Who?

Peter Schoomaker, the outgoing Army Chief of Staff, stirred quite a bit of negative attention with following comments (excerpted from today's Post:

FORT WORTH, Feb. 23 -- The Army's highest-ranking officer said Friday that he was unsure whether the U.S. military would capture or kill Osama bin Laden, adding, "I don't know that it's all that important, frankly."

"So we get him, and then what?" asked Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the outgoing Army chief of staff, at a Rotary Club of Fort Worth luncheon. "There's a temporary feeling of goodness, but in the long run, we may make him bigger than he is today.

"He's hiding, and he knows we're looking for him. We know he's not particularly effective. I'm not sure there's that great of a return" on capturing or killing bin Laden.

Schoomaker pointed to the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killings of his sons, Uday and Qusay, and the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as evidence that the capture or death of al-Qaeda's leader would have little effect on threats to the United States.

As student of guerrilla warefare, I can see where the general is coming from. In a culture that venerates martyrdom, the U.S. is like Darth Vader at the end of Star Wars: A New Hope: If we strike Osama down, we may make him more powerful than we could possibly imagine. In a awkward way, keeping Osama confined to the remote mountains of Waziristan for a long enough period of time may do more damage to his organization in the fast-paced world of jihad than a Hellfire-armed Predator drone hovering over the Durand line. (Warning: the Durand Line article in Wikipedia has a clear Afghan slant)

I don't particularly agree with his comparison of Osama to Saddam, his sons, or Zarqawi. Although the deaths of the three Husseins only antagonized Baathists and Iraq's Sunnis, they weren't exactly popular elsewhere in the Near East, especially among the more zealous jihadists. It is also arguable that Zarqawi wouldn't have been as powerful if the U.S. hadn't trumped him up. Remember the blooper reel that came with one of his videos? Doesn't seem consistent with his 'terrorist mastermind' persona.

I'm not making the argument that we should give up or just contain Osama. The U.S. needs to hunt down and kill Osama and his deputy Zawahiri for two simple reasons. First, the U.S. needs to reassure its allies and the Western world that it can still defeat its adversaries. Second and more importantly, the U.S. needs to extract revenge for September 11th.

Somalia as a blueprint? Get real.

Pentagon Sees Move in Somalia as Blueprint
NYT, January 13, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — Military operations in Somalia by American commandos, and the use of the Ethiopian Army as a surrogate force to root out operatives for Al Qaeda in the country, are a blueprint that Pentagon strategists say they hope to use more frequently in counterterrorism missions around the globe.

I can't believe that the Pentagon seriously believes Ethopia's recent offensive in Somalia aimed at expunging the Islamic Courts Union is a viable blueprint for any future counterterrorism missions. What kind of blueprint would that be anyway?

"Let al Qaeda operatives hide in a lawless country for years until they hitch their star to some rising nascent Islamist movement and just hope the new Islamist government tempts fate with a neighboring country friendly to the U.S. willing to invade them before they can establish stable terror camps at attack the West"?

That doesn't exactly sound like a solid plan to me. In fact, I think it didn't pan out very well for the U.S. in Afghanistan before September 11th. How about instead of backing warlords who are so two-faced that they were the one's attacking us a decade ago, why don't we invest more building political stability or backing up transitional governments in weak states?

U.S. military force isn't the ultimate pancea for terrorism and insurgencies. Jobs, political stability and government that is a viable alternative to warlordism and tribalism are. Strategies that minimize long-term diplomatic or political investments in favor of rapid military solutions don't always work. They give the illusion of providing maximum flexibility to the U.S. when all we are reallying doing is just sitting around waiting for a perfect moment to act that may never come.

If you don't agree with me, just look at how far our much heralded combating WMD strategy has gotten us since its inception in 2002. As Gedde Watanabe would say, "Nothing, absolutely nothing."

With language, what you say is what you get

After watching Joe Leibermann and Stephen Hadley bloviate on today's Meet the Press, I started thinking about easily American leaders can mischaracterize Near East politics. I was particularly dumb-struck by how Leibermann so casually conflated the intentions and objectives of al-Qaeda with Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah under the rubric of "radical Islam." (transcript will be avilable here) Group the four together seriously dilutes the discursive meaning of the term and in my opinion, renders it about as useful as the ill-gotten label 'Islamofascism.'

Maybe its the anthropologist in me, but this reflection on the notion of what constitutes 'radical Islam' got me thinking about how communism was characterized during the Cold War. Both communism and radical Islam are described as universalist-revisionist doctrines. In a sense, both ideologies threaten the core of Western European civilization - humanism, Judeo-Christian values and nationalism.

Whereas communism is modern to the point of cold, deterministic atheism, radical Islam is just the opposite. It is frequently characterized as ultra-traditional and anti-modern to the point of being uncivilized.

The only major difference is that the scope of each movement is different. The idealized version of communism vilified in the West was feared because it advocated global revisionism - i.e. pushing the revolution to every corner of the globe.

Contemporary views of radical Islam typically circumscribe its range to a band of territory stretching from northern Africa through the Near East and south Asia to the southeast Asian archipelago. It is interesting to note that the scope of radical Islam preceived in the West is only on the margin of it's territory. I would hazard a guess that radical Islam has become such a threat because it sits on most of the world's energy resources.

It may seem pedantic to talk about the meanings that are loaded on political language, but I'm willing to believe the notion that those meanings hold huge sway over the political choices we make.

I'm afraid that popular misperceptions about the political objectives and sociological dynamics of radical revisionists in the Near East have lead us into another Cold War that will consume American politics for a generation or more (i.e. Generation X and my generation, the MTV generation).

United States Coordinator of Preventing WMD Proliferation, Terrorism, AIDS, Genocide and Smoking

To further explore the mild outrage currently being experience by individuals, such as J. Sigger and myself, I want to highlight the really disturbing portion of H.R. 1. Sections 1241 through 1257 of H.R. 1 create a U.S. Coordinator for the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism and a corresponding commission of the same title. I am distrubed by the notion that our elected representatives believe the resources, expertise and programs required to prevent WMD proliferation and terrorism are even remotely related. Sure, there is that hypothetical nexus between WMD and terrorism that President Bush loves to wax poetic about, but attacking this one point of failure doesn't seem very practical. What about non-WMD terrorism or non-terrorist proliferation? Since my stupid-sense was tingling, I decided to look at the resolution's actual language: SEC. 1241. OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES COORDINATOR FOR THE PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM. (a) Establishment- There is established within the Executive Office of the President an office to be known as the `Office of the United States Coordinator for the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism' (in this subtitle referred to as the `Office'). [snip] (c) Duties- The responsibilities of the Coordinator shall include the following:

(1) Serving as the advisor to the President on all matters relating to the prevention of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation and terrorism. (2) Formulating a comprehensive and well-coordinated United States strategy and policies for preventing WMD proliferation and terrorism, including--

(A) measurable milestones and targets to which departments and agencies can be held accountable;

(B) identification of gaps, duplication, and other inefficiencies in existing activities, initiatives, and programs and the steps necessary to overcome these obstacles;

(C) plans for preserving the nuclear security investment the United States has made in Russia, the former Soviet Union, and other countries;

(D) prioritized plans to accelerate, strengthen, and expand the scope of existing initiatives and programs, which include identification of vulnerable sites and material and the corresponding actions necessary to eliminate such vulnerabilities;

(E) new and innovative initiatives and programs to address emerging challenges and strengthen United States capabilities, including programs to attract and retain top scientists and engineers and strengthen the capabilities of United States national laboratories;

(F) plans to coordinate United States activities, initiatives, and programs relating to the prevention of WMD proliferation and terrorism, including those of the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of State, and Department of Homeland Security, and including the Proliferation Security Initiative, the G-8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism;

(G) plans to strengthen United States commitments to international regimes and significantly improve cooperation with other countries relating to the prevention of WMD proliferation and terrorism, with particular emphasis on work with the international community to develop laws and an international legal regime with universal jurisdiction to enable any state in the world to interdict and prosecute smugglers of WMD material, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission; and

(H) identification of actions necessary to implement the recommendations of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism established under subtitle E of this title.

Does anyone else see a pattern here? Namely, the strategic inclusion of the phase "and terrorism" after the word proliferation? The coordinator is responsible for coordinating all of the federal government's nonproliferation activities and gets to attend some posh G-8 meetings. He or she will even get figure out ways to keep our bored nuclear weapons complex packed full of brains. His or her connection to domestic or international counterterrorism activities, on the other hand, will be nonexistent. The notion of terrorism seems like a window-dressing. The same myopia is applied to the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism: SEC. 1254. RESPONSIBILITIES. (a) In General- The Commission shall address--

(1) the roles, missions, and structure of all relevant government departments, agencies, and other actors, including the Office of the United States Coordinator for the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism established under subtitle D of this title; (2) inter-agency coordination; (3) United States commitments to international regimes and cooperation with other countries; and (4) the threat of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism to the United States and its interests and allies, including the threat posed by black-market networks, and the effectiveness of the responses by the United States and the international community to such threats.

(b) Follow-on Baker-Cutler Report- The Commission shall also reassess, and where necessary update and expand on, the conclusions and recommendations of the report titled `A Report Card on the Department of Energy's Nonproliferation Programs with Russia' of January 2001 (also known as the `Baker-Cutler Report') and implementation of such recommendations. If the government is having so much trouble coordinating its nonproliferation programs and translating the vagaries of its 'combating WMD' mission in action, why not focus this coordinator and commission entirely on nonproliferation issues? Why put unnecessary blinders of 'and terrorism' on an otherwise potentially effacious idea? But then again, maybe I'm just crazy...

Anti-terror hindering asylum cases

The Post has finally picked up on a story that has been brewing for more than three years now. The sweeping and high-handed definitions of terrorism used in legislation passed since Sept. 11th are complicating the asylum process. The Darryl Fears article in today's Post pick out some great examples:

Vager Vang, 63, is one of thousands of ethnic Hmong refugees in the United States who is hoping to gain legal residency with his green-card application. Vang fought in Laos alongside U.S. forces during the Vietnam War and helped rescue an American pilot who was shot down there. But according to some interpretations of the Patriot Act, Vang is a former terrorist who fought against the communist Laotian government. Although his admission that he fought with Americans helped him gain refugee status in the United States in 1999, it may have hindered his green-card application after Sept. 11, 2001. The application has stalled at the Department of Homeland Security, and Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries, the California group that helped him fill it out, is suspicious. [snip] In central Florida, Lam Kim, 47, is fighting deportation. Kim fled Burma after soldiers ransacked her parents' house and found letters from the Chin National Front thanking her for a donation. The organization, which the Bush administration has labeled a terrorist group, is fighting against the Burmese military junta. Kim, who uses a pseudonym, said she gave the money to help the group feed people in her ethnic group. She was jailed for two years after arriving in the United States in 2004, and her asylum request was rejected by an immigration judge. "If I go back to Burma," she said softly over the telephone, "I have to give my life. I am not terrorist. I say it not fair." [snip] A Colombian nurse living in California who declined to give her name said she was abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) outside Bogota and forced to treat one of their soldiers. She fled Colombia with her daughter in 2000 after her life was threatened in a note to her family. Her asylum request was rejected last year. "I had no option," she said. "What will happen if I go back? I will be killed. They look for people. They know when they arrive at the airport. They have names."

Before Sept. 11, 2001, Americans were content to deride terrorism and guerrilla warfare as the dirty affairs of the Third World. It was too complicated and immoral for a morally-just and self-righteous state to even consider (even though we have sponsored our fair share of guerrillas and partisans in the past). Once the dust settled on Sept. 12th, Americans wanted a return to the clean justice and order they had experienced only two days before. Terrorism was removed from its political context, pronounced 'evil' and made the adversary of in a long war. Some Americans ( John Robb for example) haven't forgotten the indelible fact that all political violence, including terrorism, is relative. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. It is a simple as that. I would even go so far as to postulate that the difference between criminal violence and political violence is that the former has an actor and victim, while the latter has an actor, a victim and an intended (third party) audience.