Month: June 2010

The only right response:

Police raided the home and office of the recently retired archbishop of Belgium on Thursday, carrying off documents and a personal computer as part of an investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests, officials said. Police and prosecutors would not say whether former Archbishop Godfried Danneels was suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person. The raids followed recent statements to police "that are related to the sexual abuse of children within the church," said Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office.

Eli Lehrer imagines that the Democrats may do better than expected in November.

A reader writes:

The blogger you linked to missed the more noteworthy story, which is that all of North Korea actually watched the match you mentioned live on television.  This unprecedented event was likely inspired by the team's fairly good performance against Brazil in the previous game, which they only lost by one goal – a "victory" for them in the same way that a tie against the UK was a victory for the US team.

This is actually quite an amazing story. For a nation that is used to having all of its news censored, and only hearing good stories about the country and the dear leader, to be watching as its team gets wiped out by Portugal 7-0 is a rare dose of reality.

And maybe they miscalculated the risk: North Korea had a much better showing the last time they played Portugal.

Greg Sargent reads Palin's toxicity levels.

The best media joke in quite a while:

Watching straight guys adopt the steroid look perfected by gays in the early 2000s is one of life's guiltier pleasures.

Was I too harsh? It behooves me, I think, to note that the way in which Obama facilitated this military dispatch was pitch-perfect: classy, presidential, resolute. It also behooves me to note that many things can happen in war and politics and that if Petraeus is seen to manifestly fail in Afghanistan – and retrospectively to have failed to leave Iraq in one piece as well – then things might shift dramatically. One reader offers this meep-meep hypothesis:

Maybe the McChrystal fiasco was a gift to Obama.  He installs Petraeus, blunts GOP National Security attacks during the midterms, then in a "Nixon to China" moment in 2011, announces that Petraeus — God of the military — believes we've done all we can do, that Karzai's corrupt government has to stand or fall on its own and switches the strategy to Biden's — drone and special ops attacks on terrorists, leaving nation-building to the Afghans.  That policy will have much more credibility if it comes with Petraeus' imprimatur than it would have with McChrystal's.

Well, we can hope. And look, I do not want to sound churlish. There were no good options in Afghanistan. I believe, as I believed in Iraq, that speedy withdrawal was the better option than surging and staying to save face. But I am not omniscient. I did not foresee the drop in violence in Iraq – although I did foresee the failure of the surge to achieve political reconciliation. From the beginning of Obama's massive gamble in Afghanistan, I have hoped for the best and would still love to be proven wrong. But I also have to give my best judgment now. That judgment is that this is a disaster waiting to unfold. And that sending young men into battle when the plan is this cockamamie is morally dubious in the extreme.

Union, Ohio, 7.25 pm

A military reader writes:

You say that Petraeus's strategy of COIN is misplaced in Afghanistan because it's missing certain components. I would say that you understate the case. COIN isn't merely the wrong strategy in Afghanistan. It is, in scientific parlance, "not even wrong." It's the sort of wrongness that doesn't even bring you closer to understanding what the right move is. 

As a contrast, Operation Market Garden was the wrong move. It needed more troops, more armor, more logistical support, etc. It was an excellent try, though, and it nearly succeeded in taking the Rhein.

By contrast, to say "we're going to pursue a strategy of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan" makes about as much sense as "We're going to pursue a strategy of de-Nazification in Afghanistan." It's a non-sequitur. I mean, for goodness sakes, an insurgency is a campaign to overthrow, reduce the reach of, delegitimize, or destabilize a local government. There is no government in Afghanistan to be an 'insurgent' against, merely a collection of warlords, drug barons, and theocratic gangsters of whom the Taliban and the Kabul Mayor Karzai are merely two of the most notable.

You can't have a "counterinsurgency" in a country that doesn't have an insurgency, and you can't have an insurgency in a country that doesn't have a government to begin with.

COIN in Afghanistan? What next, building a GOTV operation in Mogadishu? Striving to become an Admiral in the Swiss Imperial Navy? Writing a book on the mating habits of the North American Snipe? It's a non-sequitur!

Having said that, I'll likely be deploying in February, and will do my darnedest to fulfill the mission my commanding officer assigns me, even if I think that his playbook is about as relevant to Afghanistan as would be "The Art of French Cooking." And you can bet I won't be mouthing off about my CO's particular merits to the newsies who occasionally pass by.