Afghanistan

This is the final post of my "Counterinsurgency" series.  See http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2012/03/counterinsurgency.html for the base post and http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2012/03/iraq.html for my post on Iraq.  Finally, I have argued elsewhere (http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2011/06/pakistan.html) that Afghanistan is really about Pakistan.  For the purposes of this post I am going to mostly ignore what I said about Pakistan being the key to Afghanistan and just treat Afghanistan as a stand alone proposition.  I will, however, analyze it from the perspective of what I said about Counterinsurgency.

Afghanistan has a much longer history than Iraq.  I am not familiar with most of its history but I believe its modern borders were set by the British in the 1800's.  However, I believe that unlike with the case of Iraq, these borders conformed roughly to its traditional ones.  So it is not a "created" country like Iraq.  As is usually true, with Afghanistan "geography is destiny".  In this case, the two key features are that it is landlocked and that it represents a key crossroads for commerce and invasions.  So people have been fighting over Afghanistan for a long time and Afghanis have been repelling foreigners, including apparently the British, for a long time.

I will start my analysis in roughly 1980.  the country was experiencing what was characterized at the time as a high level of chaos.  The Russians (called "Soviets" at the time) installed a puppet government.  President Carter and later President Regan sensed an opportunity.  They funded an insurgency to help drive the Russians out.  If you want to know more about this I recommend "Charlie Wilson's War".  The book by George Crile is excellent and goes into a lot of detail about the goings on.  The movie with Tim Hanks is fun but far less informative.  The plan worked.  The Russians were kicked out.  Many credit this event for the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire centered in Russia.  And, from the U.S. point of view, the whole thing was incredibly cheap.  The cost was a billion or so dollars and no U.S. casualties with the possible exception of a few CIA types.  It was considered a big success at the time but not so much now.

After the Russians left the U.S. abruptly cut of funds and Afghanistan descended into chaos.  Eventually the Taliban rose and took over the government.  They provided a safe haven for Al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attack.  The U.S. invaded Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to kick Al Qaeda out.  And we have been there ever since, 11 years and counting at this point.

It is argued that it was a big mistake for the U.S. to cut things off after the Russians left.  But I argue otherwise.  When we started funding the Afghan insurgency we told everyone we had no designs on Afghanistan.  "We just want to kick the Russians out".  The U.S. had a poor track record with respect to meddling in the affairs of other countries so getting the locals to believe this was critical to the success of the whole program.  The U.S. made one other critical decision.  The U.S. took no direct role in the program.  We provided money and other support. But the actual operation was run by the Pakistanis though their intelligence organization, the ISI.  I contend that if the U.S. had taken a more direct role the whole operation would have been a failure.  Instead the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and others were willing to co-operate with us.  This led to an inexpensive and successful operation.  It should have come as a surprise to no one when the flow of U.S. funds was abruptly cut off as soon as the Russians left.

When the U.S. turned the money spigot off the Pakistanis saw their chance.  The U.S. position during the operation was "we'll fund anyone who will fight the Russians".  It was the ISI who actually picked which Afghani groups got support.  For their own internal reasons they picked the people who eventually became the Taliban.  After the U.S. involvement ended the ISI continued to work with the Taliban. With the money, guns, and other support the ISI supplied the Taliban had no trouble winning control of the entire country.  This left the Pakistanis exactly where they wanted to be.  They were in control of their client state of Afghanistan.  Things would have gone along swimmingly for them if the whole Al Qaeda 9/11 thing had not happened.

The U.S. under the Bush Administration was stupid to take their eye off the Al Qaeda ball.  But the Pakistanis were stupid to let their clients, the Taliban, get in bed with Al Qaeda.  But both of them did.  So now the U.S. is involved in a land war in Asia.  It is also said that the U.S. was stupid in how it conducted itself in Afghanistan after the Taliban were easily routed.  I was right that the U.S. acted correctly at the end of the 1980 war. But the situation with the current war is far different than the situation was then.  The Taliban has never broken with Al Qaeda.  It is obvious that a stable anti-Al Qaeda government was needed in Afghanistan to avoid another 9/11.  So this time around the U.S. needed to remain heavily involved in Afghanistan after combat operations ended.  But the Bush Administration felt that things would magically take care of themselves so it was free to go start a war in Iraq.

In the 1980 war the U.S. essentially picked the Pakistanis and the ISI.  This turned out to be a good pick in the short run and a bad pick in the long run.  In the present war the U.S. picked Hamid Karzai.  This too looked like a good pick in the short run because he was instrumental in routing the Taliban.  But in the long run it has not turned out well.  Mr. al-Maliki has shown that he does want Iraq to be a success and that he does want his government's control to encompass the whole country (possibly excepting the Kurd controlled areas).  Mr. Karzai seems primarily interested in maintaining his power base in Kabul and in using graft and corruption to keep the gravy train operating for himself and his friends.

The Taliban were unpopular when they were running the country.  They are still unpopular.  If I apply my "willing and able" rule then the general population of Afghanistan would be more than willing to rat out the Taliban.  But there is a serious problem with the "able" part of the rule.  Unlike in Iraq, the U.S. quickly handed the reigns of power over to the locals.  So theoretically there has been someone familiar with the local language and culture to rat the Taliban out to.  But for many Afghanis this possibility is still theoretical.  There is no effective "Karzai government" in large parts of the country.  This leaves locals pretty much on their own.

The U.S. military has been active in various parts of the country at various times.  But for many years it did not attempt to hook up with local and district authorities.  I believe that it is now devoting more efforts to direct contact with the locals.  But the main effort was and still is directed toward "Kabulization", that is working primarily through the central government in Kabul.  The Kabul government has turned out to be a weak reed.  And few troupes have significant language skills or cultural familiarity so communication is often poor.  And a large non-military effort by the U.S. has never been put into place.

Afghanistan has a lot going against it.  I think that in the early days Afghanis were happy to see us because we liberated them from the Taliban.  But the Taliban were replaced by graft and corruption in Kabul and a vacuum in the rest of the country.  Meanwhile, Pakistan continued to support the Taliban and provide them with a safe haven.  They didn't even sweep up the Al Qaeda remnants in Pakistan.  It is not surprising that an insurgency quickly arose in Afghanistan.

I have argued elsewhere that the appropriate response to an insurgency is an effective government that provides an effective police, judicial, and prison system.  That effective government is still missing in large parts of Afghanistan.  The situation boils down to how likely it is that this effective government will show up any time soon.

Iraq was saved by the Sunni Awakening.  The parts of the country not governed by the al-Maliki administration were effectively governed either by the Kurds or the Sunnis.  The Kurds had an effective government all along.  When the Sunnis decided to flip from the insurgent side to the government side the entire country of Iraq came under the control of effective government and things have settled down quite a bit since.  However, I see no group that is willing or able to play the role of "Sunni Awakening" in Afghanistan.

There are three main groups in Iraq.  There are many more in Afghanistan.  Iraq has suffered to some extent from meddling by its neighbors, especially Iran.  But there is a lot of animosity between Iraq and Iran so Iran's meddling is less effective than it would otherwise be.  In Afghanistan there is also a lot of meddling by its neighbors.  There is no equivalent to the animosity of the Iraq/Iran relationship in the Afghanistan/Pakistan relationship.  Quite the opposite.  The Afghanis are grateful for the help Pakistan provided in driving the Russians out.  So Pakistani meddling is likely to continue at a high level.

Finally, Iraq has Oil.  Afghanistan does not.  What this means is that there is a basis around which to build an Iraqi economy.  With Afghanistan it is hard to see how to get it on to a sound economic footing.  The GDP of Afghanistan is listed as $17 billion.  This number is inflated by the vast amounts of money the U.S. is pouring in to support the war.  Most of the economic activity in the country is war related.  If the U.S. involvement goes away as a result of a winding down by the U.S. it is hard to see much left with the exception of the Opium business.  So where will an Afghan government get the money to support police, courts, and prisons?  I'm stumped.

We have been at it for 11 years.  It can be argued that the Bush period was badly run.  But progress under Obama also seems limited to me.  I think politics in Afghanistan will combine with politics in the U.S. to result in a nearly complete U.S. withdrawal by the end of  2014, if not sooner.  Given the poisonous political climate in the U.S. (here I am referring solely to the unpopularity of the war) I can't see significant financial aid (e.g. tens of billions of dollars per year) continuing much after the troupes leave.  So I see Afghanistan coming to a bad end.

There are those who argue for "another ten years" in Afghanistan.  I don't see any possibility of that.  There is very little evidence that we could fix Afghanistan in those ten years given the situation on the ground today in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  So many will argue that a continued commitment would be "pouring good money after bad".  I can't imagine a counter-argument to this position.  This leaves the "if we leave - we lose" argument.  I don't think there is any stomach for spending a lot of money and manpower solely to avoid having to acknowledge that we have lost.

So things look ugly.  How do we deal with this?  The first thing to remember is what our strategic goal is.  The sole strategic interest we have is preventing another 9/11 attack from Afghanistan.  I think we can do that without having a significant military presence in the country.  We do it by threats.  We threaten not to invade again (no one would believe this threat) but to rain destruction down from the skies using unmanned drones and/or cruise missiles if we see Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization setting up shop in Afghanistan.  This destruction would be aimed at the organs of power in Afghanistan.  I think this would work and it would cost very little even if we had to make good our threat.

Then there's Pakistan.  Pakistan has been playing power politics since it was created in 1948.  It has always been able to find a sponsor, usually the U.S., that was interested in using Pakistan to balance against someone else.  But Pakistan is pretty much out of sponsors.  If we abandon them then where do they go?  Apparently they have already approached China and gotten turned down for any significant amount of monetary aid.  And all of their neighbors except Afghanistan are mad at them.  So if we cut off the money spigot to Pakistan I think they are in real trouble.  If we did then I think Pakistan would be forced to confront the many problems it has.  Pakistan is betting that we won't cut them off because they are a nuclear power.  I think we should call their bluff.  But we can't do that until we are out of Afghanistan.  If we are out of both Pakistan and Afghanistan then I think the situation will eventually get a lot better for us.  That at least, is the "happy talk" scenario.

Iraq

I recently posted on Counterinsurgency (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2012/03/counterinsurgency.html).  In that post I promised to have more to say on Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is the Iraq post.  I actually wrote an Iraq oriented document on counterinsurgency a few years ago but did not publish it.  The counterinsurgency post was based on that document.  I removed most of the Iraq specific content of that document while editing it to make the counterinsurgency post.  This document is an expanded version of the Iraq content I removed.

Iraq is not an old country.  It was created in the post World War I era.  Its construction was based on the British perspective on how the area should be organized with little consideration for and no input from the locals.  As a result the population of Iraq consists of three discordant segments:  The Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds.  For most of Iraq's history no one much cared that these groups did not actually get along that well.  During Iraq's recent history Iraq was governed by Saddam Hussein.  Saddam ruled through the Baath party and was a Sunni.  He was able to suppress the political aspirations of the Kurds and the Shia.  He governed by using standard Secret Police tactics.  He was effective enough at governing to prosecute a long and painful war against Iran, a much larger and more powerful neighboring country.  He used the standard tactic of ginning up fear of an external enemy to maintain his power.  For a long time the external enemy was Iran but in his later years he shifted to using the West in general and the U.S. in particular as the bogeyman.

In 1990 in a miscalculation Saddam invaded Kuwait, a small weak country with a lot of oil.  This precipitated the first Gulf War.  Actual combat operations lasted 100 hours.  The U.S. led coalition had little trouble dealing with the extensive Iraqi military, which was organized along traditional lines.  The war, and particularly the "softening up" process that preceded actual combat operations severely damaged both Iraqi military and industrial capability.  Various post war strategies could have been employed.  But the one selected left Saddam enough maneuvering room to retain power.  The first component was to let Iraqi forces retreat from Kuwait as long as they abandoned all heavy equipment.  This left the Iraqi military intact from a personnel point of view but left it under equipped.  The second component was a "no fly" zone.  All fixed wing military craft were to stay on the ground.  Limited use of rotary (helicopter) craft was allowed.  The third component was to abandon indigenous opposition (Shia in the South, Kurds in the North) to their fate, even though these factions had been encouraged to revolt in the run up to combat operations.  Saddam was able to marshall enough military power to put down both of these revolts.  This allowed Saddam to retain the support of the military.  This was combined with long standing Secret Police activities that were unaffected by any of the wars (e.g. Iran, Kuwait).  The Secret Police had successfully weakened opposition enough to render them ineffective without large scale support from outside.  With this support lacking Saddam continued in power.

But Saddam was greatly weakened.  The economy was in poor shape.  The two wars had drained resources from the economy.  His military capacity was much reduced.  In short, his ability to actually do anything was modest.  But Saddam had maintained a reputation for fearsomeness for a long time.  He decided to continue this strategy.  But where in the past this reputation was backed with actual capability that was no longer possible.  But he gambled that he could run a giant bluff.  He would talk like could still deliver.  So he claimed that his military was resuscitated.  He claimed that he had revitalized nuclear and chemical capabilities he had once had.  He gambled that outside powers would not be able to gather enough reliable intelligence to contradict him.  His Secret Police operation was still as formidable as always.  They were generally successful in combating HUMINT (spies on the ground).  For whatever reason SIGINT (spy satellites, photo reconnaissance, etc.) were either unable to detect his lies or weren't believed.  One contributing factor was certainly that the George W. Bush administration really wanted to invade Iraq.

So based on "WMD" that didn't exist, a nuclear program that didn't exist, chemical/biological programs that didn't exist, HUMINT provided by Ahmed Chalabi's organization that turned out to be a pack of lies, and links to al-Qaeda that did not exist, the U.S. initiated a second Gulf War.  Again the Iraqi military was dispatched with little trouble.  This time the country was completely occupied.

So where are we with respect to the thesis advanced in my counterinsurgency piece?  First, the history of Iraq gives ample reason for the indigenous population to view the central government as illegitimate.  But for many years there was no counterinsurgency.  Why?  Because Saddam deployed the first counterinsurgency strategy.  He created an extensive Secret Police operation.  And it was successful.  There were no successful insurgencies mounted from within Iraq.  From time to time the Kurds became a serious problem.  There he bolstered his Secret Police tactics with military tactics.  He bombed the Kurds with poison gas killing large numbers of them.  This cooled things down enough so that he could go back to standard Secret Police tactics.



If the second Gulf War had actually been over when President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" then I would not be writing this piece.  But within months of the end of the standard military component of what is now in the U.S. called the Iraq War an insurgency began operating.  They mostly used the standard "blend in with the general population" strategy to make themselves hard to find.  The U.S. did make two significant contributions to making them effective, particularly in the early phases.  The U.S. disbanded the Iraqi army.  This created a large group of young males with no job prospects (the economy was in shambles) and military training.  We also did not secure the many Iraqi military ammo dumps.  The insurgents were able to carry off large amounts of small arms, explosives, and other equipment that could be very effectively used against us.

There has been a lot of debate as to what the Bush plan for the post war period was.  Nothing was published before the end of the war and whatever the plan was it was so badly implemented that it is hard to discern what was intended but bungled versus what happened that was unintended.   The only thing we know for sure is that the transition to an Iraqi run government we liked was supposed to be short.  Plans called for a total withdrawal for all U.S. troupes within a few months.  Also, the number of U.S. troupes used initially was enough to defeat the Iraqi military but not to occupy and run the country for an extended post war period.  My theory is that the U.S. government believed that Chalabi, who was close to the Bush Administration, would be warmly received by the Iraqi general public.  This would allow him to quickly form a government that was broadly supported by the Iraqi public and move on to governing with a minimum of fuss.  This, in turn, would allow the U.S. to make a quick exit.

This did not happen.  When Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate who had been living abroad for many years, returned to Iraq the initial reaction by Iraqis was "who is this person?"  This was quickly followed by "whoever he is, we don't like him and we don't trust him".  Chalabi has never garnered substantial support within Iraq.  If I am right that that was "plan A" then the problem was that there was no "plan B" to fall back on once it became apparent that "plan A" was not working.  Not only was there no one to quickly hand over control of the government to, there was now an insurgency.

This caused the Bush people to make it up as they went.  They also consistently underestimated the difficulty and cost, both in terms of money and in terms of the number of troupes.  Iraq was consistently under resourced.  There was also another problem.  The Bush Administration strongly believed in outsourcing.  So large contracts were written to firms with close ties to the administration for key components of what strategy there was.  These companies' first priority was to make a lot of money, which they did.  The Bush people performed almost no oversight so there was lots of waste, fraud, and inefficiency.  What little there was of a strategy was poorly implemented and thus got poor results.

The early stages of the Iraq post war period was when I developed my "willing and able" test.  It proved itself, unfortunately.  In the early days I am convinced that there were many Iraqis who did see us as liberators who had released the country from the oppression of the Saddam regime.  So these people were more than willing to "drop a dime on" (e.g. rat out) the insurgents.  The problem they had was there was no one on the other end.  All of the power resided with the U.S., usually our military.  But the phones weren't working.  And if they worked there was no one on the other end who spoke the local language.  So it was literally impossible to drop a dime.  Later Iraqis became discouraged as the security situation deteriorated and became unwilling to drop a dime.  Whatever trust the Iraqis had that the U.S. would do the right thing, that they could tell the good guys from the bad guys, evaporated.  We now had both a "willing" and an "able" problem.  It is no surprise that things got worse.

After the U.S. 2004 election a general review was undertaken by several groups.  The general conclusion of pretty much all of them was that there was no reason to put good money in after bad.  Instead we should wind things up and leave.  This did not sound like "victory" to George W. Bush.  So he searched far and wide for someone who put forth a strategy that led to something that could be called "victory".  This led him to General Petraeus.  Petraeus had become an expert in counterinsurgency.  He literally wrote the book on the subject for the U.S. military.  His "Counterinsurgency Field Manual" is available on line.  It is Army publication "FM 3-24" and USMC publication "MCWP 3-33.5".  I found it recently on the web at http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/coin/repository/FM_3-24.pdf.  It is an excellent document.  Its only weakness is that it is written from the perspective of and for the use of military personnel.  As such, it assumes that there is a large civilian oriented nation building effort going on into which the military will be slotted.  So it focuses on military issues in that context and does not take the broader view of everything that needs to be done.  But if you read between the lines you can get a good idea of what the overall process needs to accomplish.

And the U.S. took a military-centric approach to the problem with a much smaller civilian component.  Without admitting that we were now in the business of nation building we started trying to nation build in Iraq.  Most of the effort was undertaken by the military.  It should have failed dramatically but it did not.  The reason was that Petraeus's timing turned out to be perfect.  Concurrent with the shift in policy by the U.S. was a shift in thinking by the Sunni Iraqis.  We had the "Sunni Awakening".  A large group of important Sunnis decided they were better off working with the U.S. rather than opposing us.  As the Sunnis formed the backbone of the insurgency this immediately reduced it in size and effectiveness.  The shift to the Petraeus approach was critical because it positioned the U.S. to be a willing partner when these Iraqis approached us.  After than things started going much better for the U.S.

Then another good thing happened.  Nouri al-Maliki turned out to be more competent that most people, including myself, expected.  In March 2008 he started "the battle of Basra", an all-Iraqi effort.  Although not a complete victory it convinced everyone that the al-Maliki government was for real.  Al-Maliki continued to gain more control and separate himself from the U.S.  At the end of 2008 he was able to negotiate a timeline for the removal of all U.S. forces.  The deadline in that plan (the end of 2011) was ultimately met.  So Iraq gradually transitioned from a country effectively run by the U.S. to an independent country run more or less effectively by the Iraqis.  In short, the transition to a legitimate government in Iraq was successfully completed.

In my opinion the most critical reason for this transition was the Sunni Awakening.  This took most of the steam out of the insurgency as local support dried up to a great extent.  But the shift to the Petraeus strategy and al-Maliki becoming an effective leader of an Iraqi based government were also critical.

So critical elements of my analysis are vindicated.  The key factor in defeating an insurgency is to create a functioning government that can deliver services, particularly security services to the populace.  The al-Maliki government's ability to fill that role, successfully in the eyes of Iraqis, was critical.  That government also successfully repositioned itself as a "local" government, not a puppet of the U.S.

Is the insurgency in Iraq completely dead?  No!  And many see rough sailing for Iraq.  The tension between the Sunnis, the Shia, and the Kurds continues.  Sectarian violence continues.  But I see most of the violence in Iraq stemming from Sunni/Shiite/Kurd tension.  I think Iraqis see it the same way.  So the violence stems primarily from sectarian tensions and not from an insurgency.  So I see this violence as manageable.  I am optimistic about the future of Iraq.  Will it be a peaceful and stable country like your typical European country?  Not any time soon.  But I think the Iraqis will manage to muddle their way to an accommodation somehow.

This will be helped by oil.  Iraq has vast reserves and terrible infrastructure.  There is a lot of money to be made, particularly at current oil prices of over $100/barrel, if Iraq's oil fields can be properly developed.  It is important to reach a revenue sharing deal among the factions.  I think that is possible.  Once that is done then it is a simple matter of investing in improved infrastructure.  This can easily be funded out of oil revenue so cost is not an impediment.  And if a deal can be done then there will be a lot of money to share around.  I think that money can be used effectively to smooth out the rough spots between the factions.  It will not be pretty but it will work.

Counterinsurgency

We have just ended our direct military involvement in Iraq.  We have a plan to wind down our involvement in Afghanistan.  Neither has gone well.  To understand why it is necessary to understand how insurgencies work.

My introduction to the subject came with the war in Vietnam.  At that point insurgencies were called Guerrilla wars and everyone, professional and amateur alike were confused.  This was understandable at the time.  In 1832 Carl Von Clausewitz wrote the greatest single book on military tactics called "On War".  He had little or nothing to say about how to fight and win a Guerrilla War.  If the acknowledged master was clueless then what chance did the rest of us stand?

Unfortunately, Vietnam turned out to be the first in a long string of Guerrilla wars.  In the intervening period I have come to understand how Guerrilla Wars work and, more importantly, how to win them.  This did not seem that great an achievement to me.  But judging from the rhetoric that surrounds Iraq/Afghanistan (and Vietnam) to this day the subject is still a mystery to most.  Fortunately, only a few easily understandable key ideas are necessary to understand the subject.

Guerrilla wars are not primarily military problems.  They are political problems with a substantial military component.

Guerrilla armies are not strong.  They are weak.  If you placed a conventional army and a guerrilla army of roughly the same size in a dessert and let them fight it out, the conventional army would win easily.  The problem for a conventional army is not how to beat the guerrillas.  It is to find the Guerrillas.  Guerrillas are adept at hiding themselves.  If they weren’t then they would be wiped out quickly.  So the problem is not to come up with some military strategy to defeat the guerrillas.  The problem is to come up with a strategy to find them.  If conventional military strategies or technology worked for finding guerrillas we would have been done long ago.  But they don’t.

We only have a Guerrilla problem where we have a government that has a legitimacy problem

Where do Guerrillas hide?  There are only two types of places.  They can hide in extremely rugged terrain like mountains (Afghanistan) or jungles (Vietnam).  Essentially what we have is land that is not really controlled by the government the land is nominally a part of.  By going into the wilderness the Guerrillas are safe from the government because the government, for whatever reason, is not capable of controlling all of its territory.  If you can not control all of your own territory are you truly the legitimate government of all your territory?

More commonly guerrillas hide among the populace of the country.  In Vietnam there was a lot of talk about black pajamas.  In Afghanistan the costume is different but the problem is the same.  If you look at a bunch of Afghanis, you can’t tell the Guerrillas from the regular citizens.  Now this is not a problem in countries with a legitimate government.  This is because the general populace knows who the insurgents are.  The problem is that they don’t pass the information on to the government.  Why?  Because they do not trust the government?  I call this distrust of the government by its own citizens a legitimacy issue.  A significant part of the population sees its own government as being illegitimate, as not deserving of the citizen’s support and trust.

The key to fighting Guerrillas is street level intelligence

As indicated above, guerrilla armies are weak, not strong.  They are also typically divided up into many small cells.  This is critical to their survival where they are opposing a much larger more powerful enemy.  Cells are isolated so that if one is captured only a tiny part of the guerrilla resource is lost.  And there is little or no path from the small unit to other and larger units.  This is the Guerrilla’s strength.  But it is also his weakness.

A single cell has an insignificant amount of military power at its disposal.  If you can find it you can easily take it out.  This is not a military problem.  It is a police problem.  And the key to success is finding the cell.  How do you find the cell?  The answer is street level intelligence.  You can’t find a particular cell by examining satellite photos or by flying reconnaissance sorties.  Tapping overseas phone calls using the NSA is not going to work.  You need someone on the ground who knows the players in a specific small neighborhood.  They will know who the good guys and the bad guys are, if the bad guys come from that neighborhood.  They will know who the strangers are if the bad guy comes from somewhere else.  Identifying the bad guys, who they are and where they are is the whole game.  The rest is easy.

Winning a Guerrilla war – the first way

There are actually two ways to win a Guerrilla war.  First I will discuss the Saddam way.  It could also be called the Stalin way or it could be named after a number of others.  It has been used successfully over and over.  So it’s known to be a proven winner.

As indicated above the secret of success is street level intelligence.  One way to get this street level intelligence is to install a large, pervasive Secret Police organization.  With the Secret Police everywhere, there is a local operative for each neighborhood.    Once he has identified a bad guy, he calls in the goons, the bad guys are picked up and taken care of.  Do this enough times in enough neighborhoods and eventually there are no more bad guys left and your Guerrilla problem is solved.

Of course you also need to make sure you actually control all of your territory.  If your secret police are not up to the task then you may need to supplement them with police, paramilitary and regular military.  But what needs to be done and how to do it is not a secret.  It is just a matter of having the will and having the resources.

Winning a Guerrilla War – the second way

This way is much harder to pull off.  The British pulled it off in Malaysia in the late ‘50s.  There are other successes but there are also many failures.  The U.S. effort in Vietnam is an obvious example of a failure.  Many other examples of failure come easily to mind.  The second way is to fix the government, to turn it from illegitimate to legitimate in the eyes of its population.  This is hard to do.  Boiled down to its essentials this business of changing an illegitimate government into a legitimate one is what counterinsurgency entails.

It is much easier to envision what a success looks like after it has been achieved.  Here the populace trusts the government and the government is competent and capable.  If there are bad guys in a neighborhood then the people in the neighborhood know who they are.  If there are strangers, again the local people know who they are.  So a member of the neighborhood contacts the local police.  The police investigate and conclude the complaint is legitimate.  They pick up the bad guys and the criminal justice system takes care of them.

A competent and capable government will have the will and resources to take control and keep control of all of its territory.  So the bad guys will have nowhere to hide.

Politics, Politics, Politics

We have seen that by itself, the military can’t win a Guerrilla war.  But they can lose one.  If the military resources available to the government are weak enough or incompetent enough it may be possible for the Guerrillas to win a military victory.  If the Guerrillas can sow enough chaos and discord for long enough the populace will give up completely on the government.  The military can help hold things together for long enough to give one of the winning strategies time to be implemented.  But the winning strategies are essentially political and not military.  So the military’s role is important but not paramount.

Politics, however, is paramount.  Even someone like Saddam must at some point gather enough political power to be able to implement his Secret Police solution.  It is possible at least in some cases for some period of time to impose a Saddam type solution from the outside.  But as the Soviet experience in Eastern Europe showed, Saddam type solutions imposed from outside have a way of not lasting as long as people think they will.

And there is the competence issue.  Even a Saddam type solution requires a certain amount of skill.  And it’s political skill.  The government must be able to impose some combination of fear and acquiescence on the populace to remain in power.  This is actually harder than it looks from outside.  The Shah of Iran was eventually overthrown, in spite of his large and effective Secret Police organization.  In those later years he failed to display sufficient skill at garnering enough fear or acquiescence.

And the second solution is vastly more difficult to pull off.  I know of no example where it has been pulled off solely from the outside.  You must have competent insiders in charge.  Certainly outside assistance can be helpful.  But highly competent insiders with little or no help from the outside stand a much higher chance of success than incompetent insiders with tremendous help from the outside.

The second solution – it’s all in the details

To see why let’s take a harder look at what must be done.  The reason there is an insurgency in the first place is because the government is not doing its job.  It needs to field a police force.  If there is no local cop there is no local cop to “rat on a rat” to.  The populace has to have faith that the police are fair and competent.  If you think they are all crooks or that they are in the pocket of someone else are you going to take the risk of dealing with them?  They might just decide that you are the problem, not the bad guy.

The police must be backed up with a trustworthy court system.  You want to be confident that when the cop you trust turns over the bad guy over to the court system then the court system can be trusted to do the right thing.  You don’t want to bad guy to be able to buy his way out of trouble whether with money or influence.  You also want to have some confidence that if you get involved with the court system you will not just arbitrarily be tossed into a hole and forgotten about even if you are manifestly innocent.  Finally, the courts need to be backed up with a trustworthy prison system.

These specific questions must be asked in the environment of the general question of how competent and effective the government as a whole is.  If the government as a whole is rife with corruption and incompetence then people are far less likely to trust the justice system.  Also an ineffective government will often lack resources because the local economy is in poor shape.  So it may not be capable of controlling all of its territory.  An incompetent government may also fail to deliver needed services like power, water, sewage, streets, etc., engendering more distrust.

To implement the second solution we must fix what’s wrong and there is usually a lot wrong.  People must be put in charge of the government who are both competent and honest.  They must be competent in the machinery of government, in the delivering of services.  They must also be competent in a purely political sense.  They are going to tell the people “Trust me.  Things are bad now but we are going to fix them.  You won’t see progress for a while but later they will get better”.  This is a lot to ask.  So you need people with the communications skills and the charisma to pull this off.

I can’t prove that the new people need to be honest.  But what they are trying to pull off is extremely difficult.  My belief is that if people see their leaders lining their pockets or handing out favors to their friends they will quickly lose faith in their leaders.  And I believe faith in the new leaders is critical to success.

Success factors

The lesson to be learned from the second half of the twentieth century is the strength of nationalism.  Time after time someone who was less competent or less honest was able to defeat someone who was more honest and competent by saying “I’m one of us.  He’s one of them.”  People want desperately to be led by one of their own.  The British ran reasonably competent and effective governments in many countries all around the world.  In many cases these governments were replaced by less competent and less honest locals.  Even after the local populace had experienced the incompetence of the government run by locals there is no case where a populace wanted to go back to British rule.  An Afghan government with a U.S. face is a recipe for disaster.  And local perceptions are critical.  The reality is far less important.

Street level intelligence is critical.  If the U.S. military is handling security then it is critical that the local people trust and be able to communicate with the average U.S. soldier.  Yet U.S. soldiers have no language training and no cultural training.  And the military tends to move units in and out of the country or around within the country.  I make take months for a unit to develop a communications channel with the local people and build up some level of trust.  Just when this is starting to produce some results the unit is moved or withdrawn and the process must be started all over.  And how well are the Afghanis doing as we hand this function over to them?  They have the advantage of speaking the language and knowing the culture.

Government services are critical.  I think everyone knows how badly things are going with security.  But what about power, sewage, the mails, the justice system, any of the services traditionally provided by government?  Unfortunately, there is a coherent pattern that extends across all government services and the news is bad.  Finally, what is the state of the economy?  There is no functioning economy in Afghanistan.  If you are a good Afghani business man how would you rate your chances of starting or maintaining a successful business in Afghanistan?

The simple test

The U.S. has not gone with the Secret Police option in either Iraq nor Afghanistan.  In this "second way" environment all of the above can be boiled down to a simple test.  I call it the “willing and able” test.  As I have shown above, the key to defeating the Insurgency is getting locals to rat on a rat.  The effectiveness of our rat on a rat program can be broken down into two stages.  Once an Afghani has identified a rat how willing is he to rat him out?  If he fears for his safety or doesn’t trust the government to respond effectively he is likely to be unwilling.  Now let’s assume our Afghani is willing, how able is he to do so?  Someone must be within reach that he can communicate with to receive the information about the rat.  That’s it.

I will be making a separate post applying this perspective to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Game Change

"Game Change" is the title of a book.  It is also the title of a movie that aired recently on HBO.  The movie is based on sections of the book.  I have not read the book nor seen the movie.  So what expertise do I bring to the subject?  I lived through the events as they happened.  The book "Game Change" covers many subjects.  The movie restricts itself to Sara Palin, her selection and her activities associated with the 2008 Presidential campaign.  Most people consider the movie critical to Sara Palin.  I am not a fan of Ms. Palin.  But, from what I have heard, I believe much of the criticism of Ms. Palin the movie has resurrected is misguided.  Here is what I consider the principal and most appropriate criticism of Ms. Palin.

I think even Ms. Palin would agree that when she was initially selected she lacked some of the background and expertise that she should have.  I think that's true but it is not the key criticism I have of her.  To understand why, I would like to compare Ms. Palin to Harry S. Truman, our Thirty-Third President.  I and many others think Mr. Truman was a truly great President.  Yet his background and experience prior to assuming office were in many ways just as inadequate as Ms. Palin's.

Harry S. Truman was born in 1884 and became President in 1945 when President Roosevelt died in office.  Prior to becoming President Mr. Truman had no college education.  He was the product of the Missouri public school system.  He served in the U.S. Army during World War I for roughly a year as an Artillery Captain.  After that he had an undistinguished business carrier.  His political opponents characterized him as "a failed haberdasher", which was reasonably accurate.  He became a U.S. Senator in 1935 and continued to serve until he became Vice President in 1945.  He was generally considered a journeyman rather than a star as a Senator.  He was best known for investigating waste and corruption in government contracts.  He was not considered a heavyweight in domestic policies, economics, or foreign policy during this period.  Like Ms. Palin, this is not the resume we normally associate with a Vice President or President.

Compared to Mr. Truman, Ms. Palin's resume doesn't look too bad.  Unlike Truman, she is a college graduate.  She got a Bachelor of Sciences (4 year) degree from the University of Idaho.  Ms. Palin has not served in the military.  But she did become the Governor of the State of Alaska.  A case can be made that either person's credentials are superior to the other.  Ms. Palin, for instance, garnered "executive" experience as Governor.  By most standards neither was sufficiently qualified based on their formal credentials.  But based on the Truman example, coming into the job without the appropriate formal credentials is not, by itself, a sufficient reason to disqualify a person.  So I believe it is unfair to criticize Ms. Palin based solely on her thin resume.

Mr. Truman was only Vice President for a short period of time.  And he served in the time before the modern Vice Presidential era.  The modern era is best characterized by Dick Cheney.  He was a very active member of the George W. Bush administration.  John Nance Garner, who held the office before Truman did, characterized the job of Vice President as "not worth a warm bucket of piss".  This was because at that time the Vice President did not play an active role in the administration.  He was not briefed on issues.  He did not attend important policy meetings.  He was given a small staff and generally ignored.  Every once in a while he would attend a funeral or give a speech but that was it.  So Mr. Truman did not get much on the job training during his stint as Vice President.  When Roosevelt died, Truman was so out of the loop he did not even know of the existence of the Manhattan Project, the effort to build an Atomic Bomb.

So how did Mr. Truman go from "failed haberdasher" to a respected and admired President of the United States?  As we have seen, it was not by any formal process like getting a degree at a prestigious university, becoming known as an expert on various areas of importance as a U.S. Senator, or even becoming a member of the inside circle of the Roosevelt Administration.  What Mr. Truman did was informal but effective nevertheless.  He proceeded to educate himself.  He was a voracious reader all his life.  He was a heavy consumer of biographies and other serious works on a variety of subjects.  While he was President and probably well before that, Truman made heavy use of the staff and resources of the Library of Congress.  He would identify a subject that he felt he need to know more about.  He would then contact the staff of the Library of Congress and ask them to send him some good books on the subject.  He would then carefully read them.  He also as President asked for and received extensive briefings on subjects of importance.  When he first became President he was keenly aware of how much he didn't know.  But he set out as quickly as he could to learn enough to make informed decisions on the many and critical issues that came before him.



Senator McCain was a more traditional candidate.  He had a degree from a military academy, several years of military experience, and many years experience as a high profile Senator.  Over the years he had built up a knowledge about most of the issues likely to come before a President.  In spite of how well prepared he was before he started running I'm sure he supplemented his knowledge with briefing books and tutorials before and during the campaign.

Ms. Palin had not seriously considered running for President or Vice President until at most a few weeks before she was picked.  So she had no reason to study up in advance on many of these issues.  So it was to be expected that at the time of her selection the depth of her knowledge on many important issues was inadequate.  So it is inappropriate to criticize Ms. Palin's depth of knowledge on these issues at the time she was picked.

It is also important to note that Ms. Palin brought important skills with her.  She was extremely charismatic and a great public speaker.  She also had strong retail politician skills.  She could quickly impress people at small events and in one on one situations where she came off as very warm and friendly.  So she had great star appeal.  And that's important to the success of a candidate.  But it is also important that candidates also be knowledgeable on the issues of the day.

The standard "briefing books" and tutorials were prepared for Ms. Palin.  Apparently the movie makes it very clear that fairly early in the process Ms. Palin rejected this approach.  It was reported in the media late in the campaign that this was so.  What I do know from personal experience is how Ms. Palin comported herself in public at that time and what level of expertise she demonstrated.  My observations are consistent with the idea that she did not feel it was important to become knowledgeable on the issues of the day.  The 2008 campaign is now more than three years in the past.  Ms. Palin she has to this day not remedied her knowledge deficit.  Apparently it's not her style.  And I think it is completely appropriate then and now to criticize her for her unwillingness to address her knowledge deficit.

It was bad but not a "show stopper" for her knowledge level to be deficient when she first joined the ticket.  But it was incumbent on her to remedy this deficit as quickly as possible.  And it was critically important for her to believe that remedying this knowledge deficit was necessary in order for her to become qualified to hold the office she aspired to.  If we compare President Truman to Governor Palin we see that Mr. Truman was acutely aware of the deficiencies in his knowledge.  He moved quickly and effectively to repair these deficiencies.  This gave him the foundation to make careful and thoughtful decisions concerning the issues of the day.  You can not make careful and thoughtful decisions based on ignorance.  So Ms. Palin utterly fails the "Truman test".

Mr. Truman had more than his share of troubles with the press.  So he would have been sympathetic to a candidate dealing with a "gotcha question", a question like "have you stopped beating your wife".  Ms. Palin was famously involved in a "gotcha question" (as characterized by Ms. Palin) event during this period.  Katie Couric asked her what periodicals she regularly read.  I want to explore whether this actually was a "gotcha question".

Let's start with what presumably would be the politically correct answer:  "The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist".  These would be politically correct because they represent some of the most respected media in the world, particularly with respect to political issues.  I don't know whether Ms. Palin considered making this answer.  Certainly if she had it might not have ranked as highly credible.  And I doubt she actually regularly read these publications so follow up questions might have been problematic.  But was it really important for her to make the politically correct answer?  I think not.

As a good conservative, she could have said "The National Journal, The Washington Times, and The Anchorage Daily News (her local paper)".  This would have been a completely appropriate answer.  Except, again I don't know if she actually read those publications either.  If she didn't then again follow up questions might have been problematic.  But there's more.  Let's say she picked a list of the most politically inappropriate publications, say "Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Guns & Ammo".  I think had she listed these publications, and assuming she actually read them, this answer would have worked for her.  In the same way that men "read Playboy for the articles" I think women can claim to "read Cosmo for the articles".  If nothing else it would have supported her "down home" persona.

The problem for Ms. Palin is that I suspect she actually does not read anything routinely.  So she really was stuck for an answer.  Because not reading anything is truly more politically incorrect than my "reading Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Gus & Ammo" list.  And I think Ms. Palin knew that.  And that's my point.  There are many political epithets out there.  One four letter word that I particularly dislike as an epithet is "wonk".  What is a wonk?  A wonk is someone who knows what they are talking about.  And for a large segment of the public, our media, and our political class, "wonk" is an epithet because knowing what you are talking about is a bad thing.  I think Ms. Palin worked hard at not being a wonk and making sure her supporters knew she was not a wonk.

A core belief of mine is that ignorance leads to bad decisions and that knowledge leads to better decisions.  I suppose it is possible to make a good decision out of ignorance but I believe it is far more likely that ignorance leads to bad decisions.  In my universe being a wonk is a good thing even if I disagree with the wonk.  So ultimately Katie Couric's question was a gotcha question.  But not because Katie intended it to be a gotcha question.  I think she intended it to be a softball question.  But it turned out to shed light on Ms. Palin as a person and so it "got" her.

Finally, I want to come to something that Steve Schmidt, the staffer most responsible for going with Palin has highlighted several times.  Picking their running mate is perhaps the most important public decision a candidate does during the campaign.  So it can be very illuminating.  And it turned out to be very illuminating that John McCain picked Sara Palin.  McCain was a fighter pilot in Vietnam.  Fighter Pilots are not known for their deep thinking.  Instead they are known for their ability to make decisions quickly and under pressure.  They are also risk takers.  These attributes are important to a successful "fighter jock".  It's just you and, if you are in a pickle, the best thing to do might be to make a risky decision, a "game changer".

But if a fighter pilot screws up he is risking only himself and his plane.  Presidents play for much higher stakes.  And the consequences of getting it wrong are much higher:  thousands of lives, the state of the economy, trillions of dollars, even war and peace can be on the line.  A president is confronted with very few snap decisions.  What is usually required is a thoughtful approach that takes into account multiple conflicting interests.  Slow and careful are usually the best approach.  And if a snap decision is required it is either in the context of events that have been playing out for a long time and have finally reached a predictable climax or it is the result of a major mistake abruptly coming home to roost.

John McCain demonstrated in his Sara Palin decision that he still has a "fighter jock" mind set.  He was willing to risk everything because he had gotten in a pickle.  It looked like if he didn't make a "game changer" decision he would lose the election.  So he did what a fighter jock would do.  He went with his gut based on a 5 day vetting process that produced a person that in her current state was manifestly unqualified to be Vice President.  He bet, wrongly, that she could be whipped into Vice President ready condition before the inauguration.  This would have been a chancy bet if Ms. Palin had been willing to go along with the program.  It turned out the bet stood no chance at all because Ms. Palin refused to go along.  And what this shows is that not only was Sara Palin unqualified to be Vice President but that John McCain was unqualified to be President.  He was not thoughtful enough and too willing to go "all in" to be acceptable as a President.

Rachel from cardholder services

A couple of years ago I answered my phone.  A chipper voice came on and said "Hi!  I'm Rachel from Cardholder Services".  By the time she got this far I had decided two things.  First, this was a robocall.  Second, this was a scam.  I was right in both instances.  Rachel went on to assure me that there was nothing wrong with my account but if I pressed "one" she could lower my interest rate.  Thus began a relationship that continues to this day.

I have tried numerous tactics to get Rachel to stop harassing me.  At first I hung up the phone.  Then I pressed "one" and politely asked to never be called again.  Then I pressed "one" and rudely asked never to be called again.  At some point I was given an option "three" that supposedly would cause the calls to stop.  I selected option "three" several times.  The calls did not stop.  I did an Internet search on "Rachel from cardholder services".  I got millions of hits, most of them from 2009.  No one had found a successful strategy for getting Rachel to stop.

Some  people had run down names, addresses, and phone numbers for the people behind Rachel.  The FTC had supposedly shut down these operations (at least one in Florida and one in Arizona).  But the calls keep coming.  A number of the posts were from "troubleshooter" people associated with newspapers or TV stations.  They were unsuccessful.  A couple of tech savvy people had apparently run down identity information on the people behind Rachel.  But none of this has stopped nor, as far as I can tell, even slowed these people down.

This is a scam.  If you go along you will be asked for your credit card number and your social security number.  One of the tip offs that this was a scam was that they don't know the name of the bank that issued your credit card.  And the two pieces of information you least want to give people who are at a minimum unethical are your credit card number and your social security number.  But if you ware stupid enough to do this you will be offered a credit card for a different company with a low "teaser" rate.  I'm sure the rate goes up quickly to one that is higher than your current rate.  That's how they make their money, from kick backs from the company that issues your new credit card.  They may also get money from selling your old credit card number and social security number to crooks.  I don't know that they do this but I wouldn't be surprised.

Now theoretically what you should do is file a complaint with the FTC.  You can do this at www.ftc.gov.  But the form asks you the name and phone number of the company you are complaining about.  You will NOT be able to get this information from the person who answers the phone on behalf of Rachel.  So the complaint is pretty much useless.  If it was useful Rachel would have been shut down years ago.  Also the FTC makes you jump through hoops before you can even fill out the form.  The FTC has been rendered pretty much toothless by the "get the government off your back" crowd.  So that doesn't work either.  In spite of all this, I twice filed complaints with the FTC about Rachel.

The FTC run "Do Not Call" list is also supposed to provide some protection from Rachel.  I have been on the "Do Not Call" list almost since the day it was created.  It doesn't work very well.  I also get repeated robocalls from a company that offers to clean my ducts.  For whatever reason, I have not gone after them as hard as I have tried to go after Rachel.  Then there are the various calls from other businesses (rare), charitable solicitations (more often and exempted, I believe, from the "Do Not Call" law), and pollsters (very frequently since it is politics season and also, exempted, I believe).  I also saw something on the web about a Credit Card exemption in the "Do Not Call" law.  I am not sure this is correct.  If it is, it shouldn't be there but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.  So "Do Not Call" doesn't stop Rachel.

I don't have caller ID on my phone.  It is an extra charge that I don't see why I should have to pay.  But I understand that if you do have caller ID you either get a "blocked" (bad enough) or a fake number.  Apparently the Rachel people have the technology that allows them to substitute a different number on the caller ID display.  This is one of the many ways they hide their identity.  So caller ID doesn't work either.

If you press "one" you are eventually connected to a live person.  Most of the time when you contact a company and get through to a live person you get a call center employee.  I have a lot of sympathy for call center employees in general.  The job doesn't pay very well and usually comes with no benefits at all.  Generally these employees are polite and will try to be helpful.  Unfortunately they work in a straight jacket of rules that guarantee they have almost no power.  They are not responsible for the defective product or bad service you received but all they are allowed to do is "take the information".  And many times they are paid more if they can keep calls short.  So they can't even stay on the line while you vent.  All in all, most call center employees are involved in a thankless job.  They know it and would trade up in a minute to a better job if they could get one.  But especially in this economy that is hard to do.  So that's the story with call center employees in general.

But it is NOT the story with Rachel people.  Usually they cut me off as soon as they figure out that I am not going to fall for the scam.  Lately I have started being abusive as nothing else has worked. And on two occasions they have retaliated.  In the first case after I abused one of them I got a call a few minutes later.  In talking to the person I was eventually able to figure out the the Rachel person had given out my number to someone who had called in and told them I would take care of them.  And then today I got my morning Rachel call.  I abused the person who came on the line.  Then I got a call again from Rachel an hour or so later.  In this case the Rachel people are in on the scam so don't feel you are under any obligation to be nice to anyone you get through to on a Rachel call.  They are NOT the usual innocent call center employee just trying to get by.

Then there is the question of whether the Rachel operation is legal under current law.  I believe the answer is no.  They are engaged in deceptive practices.  They are required by law to disclose the name and location of the company they represent.  They won't do that.  They are also involved in "bait and switch".  That is, if you don't listen closely they give the impression that they represent your current credit card company.  But they don't.  They claim they can "reduce the interest rate on your current credit card".  They can't.  They can switch you to a different credit card that may have a lower rate for a short time.  But they can't change anything about your current credit card.  They don't even know what your current credit card is unless you tell them.  They know very little about you.  They are doing what is called a "cold call".  They then try to extract information from you that they have no right to.

So what do they know about you?  They know your phone number.  They called it.  And there are various "white pages" services on the Internet that will supply a name and address to go with your phone number.  So they know your name (or at least the name of the person owning the phone number) and your address.  They will try to use that information to get credit card, social security, and whatever additional information out of you they can.  Don't give it to them.

There are various law enforcement agencies that are supposed to shut this kind of thing down.  I have alluded to the toothlessness of the lead Federal agency, the FTC, on this manner.  The lead state agency is the Attorney General's office.  Florida and Arizona are notorious for being "business friendly" states.  For about 100 years Florida has been known as the home of some of the most outrageous real estate scams in the country.  Arizona has seen more than its share of scams (Google "Keating 5" for a good example).  It's real estate market is one of the worst in the country in part due to a long standing pattern of "pro growth" real estate regulation.  So it is not surprising to find that they are identified with Rachel.  As for the other states, it is very hard for a state agency to deal with this kind of cross state problem.

Finally, lets not let the phone companies off the hook.  Their lobbyists have been very effective at making sure the laws, both at the federal and state level are pretty toothless.  800 service is not the moneymaker it used to be.  But 800 use represents a revenue stream that is still valuable and profitable to the phone companies.  It would be nice if consumers could block this kind of thing.  But the phone companies listen to the 800 companies and the congress listens to the phone company lobbyists.  If you surveyed consumers they would have preferred the "Do Not Call": law to have fewer exemptions and for the penalties to be harsher.  But congress works for lobbyists not voters.

So what is to be done.  If you are not one of Rachel's victims, count your lucky stars.  If you are, feel free to heap as much abuse on the Rachel operator as your creativity can come up with.  This is a business that only is profitable if costs are low.  The time you spend with an actual person is the most expensive part of the operation.  So spend as much time with them (without buying anything or giving out any information) as you can.  If the Rachel call center costs go up without an increase in sales the whole operation becomes less profitable and might get shut down.  And feel free to abuse the operators in any way your imagination can come up with and your conscience permits.  They are not the usual innocents.  They are in on it.  They are knowingly working for a criminal enterprise.  Their income, such as it is, comes from crime.  They are criminals and should be treated as such.  I do have another idea.  But it is pretty harsh.  I don't want to go there if I don't have to.

Eastwood Superbowl Commercial

I have a Tivo so I normally don't watch commercials.  And I'm not much of a football fan so I don't watch many games.  But I have been using the Superbowl as an excuse to visit my sister for years.  And you have to watch the commercials.  In fact, many people claim the commercials are the reason they watch the game.  And the Eastwood commercial has generated a lot of talk, justifiably so.  It's a great commercial.  Like most things, context is important.

I remember watching the game a year ago when this commercial came on:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc  It just blew me away.  This is not a typical commercial.  Most commercials bang you over the head with the product they are selling.  Since this commercial is for Chrysler you would expect to see a bunch of pictures of Chrysler cars.  They are in there but what's really being sold is the City of Detroit.  So what's going on?  Chrysler is not even the biggest car company in Detroit.  Well, Chrysler is now owned by Fiat, an Italian company.  I'm sure they are worried about being seen as a bad old foreign company that has taken over a true blue "Made in America" company.  So this add is an attempt to generate some good will as a counter.

And Detroit has fallen on really hard times.  An attempt by someone, any one, to buck up its spirits is a good thing.  Detroit used to have a lot of money.  So it has some really interesting architecture.  I was happy to see that showcased.  And it's just a damn good add by any measure.  I don't know that I expected Chrysler to do something similar at the Superbowl this year.  But the commercial they did last year has stuck with me even though I only saw it the one time.

So there I am watching the game this year and this commercial (http://www.5min.com/Video/Chrysler---Clint-Eastwood---Super-Bowl-Commercial-517263677) comes on.  My first question was "Is that Clint Eastwood?".  It didn't take long for me to figure out that it was.  And by that time I am completely sucked into the add.  And as the add evolved I started seeing the parallels to the add from a year ago.  So I confidently announced that it was a Chrysler add as the others watching with me were confused.  There are some Chrysler logos at the end of the add.  And, if you are really good you can identify the vehicles shown in the add as all being Chrysler products.  But it's not obvious.  You see the front wheel of a vehicle for a few seconds.  I assumed was a Jeep but that's just because by this time I had figured out that it was a Chrysler add.  And like the add from a year ago, I really liked it.  But I figured it was just an add.  I didn't think there was any reason that it would blow up to be a big political thing.  Silly me.  Everything is now political.

The next day Carl Rove and other GOP types are all over the air waves opining that it was some kind of Obama or Democratic plot.  Really?  Clint Eastwood has been well known for decades for being a rock ribbed Republican.  He is no fool so he isn't going to be conned into doing something he doesn't want to.  He is rich enough and famous enough he doesn't need the paycheck or the publicity.  He has since indicated that he stands by the content of the commercial and that he donated the money to charity.  So what about the contents of the commercial?

When I saw it I saw it as an expansion of the theme from a year ago.  The older commercial focused on Detroit.  I felt that the new commercial expanded its scope to encompass the whole country.  I thought the "half time" idea was great. The idea is that it is half time in the big game. The first half has not gone so well.  But with the right adjustments we can win the second half and the game.  I think this is a good analogy and a good idea.  But it interferes with the GOP narrative that whatever Obama says or does is wrong.  So any idea that he has done something right in the past or might do something right in the future (the second half) has to be batted down immediately and vigorously.

I didn't find any of the sentiments expressed in the commercial noticeably different than what you can hear spouted in any number of Clint Eastwood westerns or cop movies.  And it's not just Clint.  You can hear the same kind of thing in John Wayne westerns and hundreds of other movies churned out by Hollywood in the last 75 years.  It is all standard "hero" stuff.

I was particularly struck by one thing Eastwood said, however.  "This country can't be knocked out with one punch.  We get right back up and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines".  I have been waiting for this sentiment to be expressed for over ten years.  My profoundest thanks to Mr. Eastwood for finally doing it.



So 9/11 was a jab at best.  And what did we do?  Did we get right back up.  No! Instead we have spent years whimpering on the floor afraid of our shadow like the whiny guy in westerns that we hate because he is such a wuss.  The media had a lot to do with this.  They hyped the event like it was Armageddon.  It wasn't.  They told us over and over that we should "be afraid - be very afraid".  They did not permit anyone to be heard that might have voiced a contrary opinion.  One reason for this was that it happened in New york City, a major media market.  But it wasn't just the media.  President Bush did a terrible job of leadership in this trying time.

He encouraged over reaction.  I was in favor of Afghanistan but it was obvious to me that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.  We put in all those stupid "security" restrictions on airports.  We threw all of our privacy away and built up a domestic spying system that is far beyond anything that has been done before.  And its all secret so no one knows what it is doing besides costing tens of billions of dollars per year, more per year than the value of all the property destroyed on 9/11.  He also accused anyone who disagreed with him of being unpatriotic.  9/11 was a terrorist act.  It was designed to spread terror.  Thanks to the media and the Bush administration it succeeded beyond Bin Laden's wildest expectation.

And consider this, what if we had really gone after Bin Laden at Tora Bora?  We could have killed or captured him less than a year after 9/11.  But for Bush he was not that important.  It was more important to start the buildup for the Iraq war.  Instead we got him ten years and hundreds of billion dollars later.  The death of Bin Laden has finally brought a measure of closure to 9/11.  We are finally "getting right back up".  And our engines are now roaring.  General Motors is again the largest car company in the world.

And what about Eastwood himself?  Many still think of him as Dirty Harry.  But who is he really?  Looking at the modern Eastwood I note two movies he has made recently.  In "Gran Torino" his character starts out as a classic "Dirty Harry" type redneck.  By the end he has befriended and is protecting some Hmong immigrants from Cambodia.  This is contrary to the current rabid anti-immigrant stance of the Republican party.  He also did a movie called "Letters from Iwo Jima".  This is a sympathetic portrait of the famous World War II battle for the island of Iwo Jima that is told from the Japanese point of view.  All red blooded true blue all Americans know that this event can only be told in the most heroic terms and exclusively from the American point of view.

Both of these movies and many others indicate that Eastwood's thinking is more subtle and sophisticated than many would have believed possible.  One way to look at "Gran Torino" is as a standard "stalwart hero takes good but downtrodden folk under his wing and defends them from the big bad guys".  And similar things can be said about "Letters from Iwo Jima".  There was great heroism demonstrated on Iwo Jima by American soldiers.  And I subscribe to the "the Japanese were the bad guys and behaved barbarically" school of thought.  But that does not mean that there weren't good people doing heroic things on their side.

So maybe there is more to Eastwood that people think.  But let's pretend that we have the "new - enlightened" Eastwood as opposed to the "old - Dirty Harry" Eastwood.  Does that idea stand up?  Well it turns out that there is more to Eastwood than most people think even back then.  The same year Eastwood did "Dirty Harry" (1971) he also did something called "Play Misty for Me".  Misty is characterized as a "psychological thriller", which sounds generally "Dirty Harry"-like.  But many would also characterize the move as "arty".

It gets worse for the "Dirty Harry" scenario.  Let's just stick with the "Dirty Harry" movies and look at the second movie in the series "Magnum Force" (1973).  It has a suitably macho title.  But the movie is about vigilantism.  There is a secret group of cops that are taking the law into their hands and dealing out justice to bad guys.  Sound's like Harry's kind of thing.  But in the movie Harry is opposed to vigilante justice and takes his fellow cops down.  So Dirty "let's stop molly coddling the bad guys" Harry himself ends up coming down on the side of due process and all that sort of "soft on crime" thing.  Harry is not as Dirty as people think.

Finally, let me go back to the original "Dirty Harry".  At it's core it is a standard "lone wolf battles the bad guys" movie.  And a typical feature of these types of movies is that the lone wolf is up against not only the bad guys but the system.  Either the bad guys are the system or the system is corrupt or incompetent.  The justification for why the system opposes the hero differs from movie to movie but its almost always there.  Viewed in this manner  "Dirty Harry" is cut from a pretty normal bolt of cloth.  So what caused all the uproar?

Eastwood, when he was publicizing the movie, stirred things up by saying something along the lines that the criminal justice system seemed tilted in favor of protecting the rights of the accused and against protecting victims.  This view is what cemented the connection between the movie and conservatives.  But in my opinion the events depicted in the movie do not support Eastwood's contention.  Harry spends all his time chasing the bad guy and no time doing anything particularly victim oriented.  This is what cops, good and bad, do in movies.  How is Harry's behavior any different than a hundred cops in a hundred cop shows?  So there is really nothing different going on with the action.  The bad guy is bad.  Harry is picked on.  Harry gets the bad guy in the end.

There is a "law and order" subtext to the movie.  But my conclusion is that if Harry and his associates were better cops they would have got the bad guy much sooner.  There is a big "stake out" scene early in the movie.  If the cops had done this competently they would have caught the bad guy then.  And generally standard police procedure properly done would have caught the bad guy as quickly or more quickly as Harry's supposedly superior "bend the rules" methods.  But if the bad guy had been caught early there would not have been a movie.  And much of the plot is driven by the needs of making an exciting and visually interesting film.  And Eastwood's remarks generated buzz, which generated ticket sales, which made Eastwood and the studio happy.  So Eastwood's remarks were a smart move all around.

It says a lot about the current state of the union that this commercial has generated so much talk.  I do not think that was the intention of Chrysler, Mr. Eastwood, or anyone else involved in it.  They were just trying to make a dramatic and effective feel good commercial.  I think Chrysler intended to reinforce and broaden the statement they made with the first commercial, which was uniformly lauded.  I think Mr. Eastwood was happy to come on board and the sentiments expressed in the commercial are consistent with his beliefs.

I think everyone involved with the making of the commercial was surprised with the political reaction.  I think they thought they had done work they could be proud of and would have welcomed a positive critical reaction.  But I think they all thought they were engaged in a nonpolitical endeavor.  Since the controversy has erupted Mr. Eastwood has indicated that he has no objection to anyone, Democrat, Republican, or whatever, making use of the commercial's contents.  I don't think there is anything objectionable in the commercial to a traditional conservative like Mr. Eastwood.  But the Republican party has strayed so far from traditional conservative values that they see the sentiments expressed in the commercial as a threat to them and an attack on their beliefs.  Initially liberals asked themselves what the fuss was about.  Now they are happy to embrace the sentiments Mr. Eastwood has so eloquently expressed.