Arms and influence

Inside the Saudi kingdom

IN THE NEWS
One of the blogs I read regularly is The Religious Policeman, an acerbic insider's view of Saudi Arabia. Since the Saudis are involved in nearly everything that's giving Americans a lot of sleepless nights, from funding madrassas to determining global oil production, it's obviously important to keep on top of what's happening in that country.

Thankfully, the Internet is making it easier to penetrate the veil of secrecy and obfuscation that normally covers the internal politics of Saudi Arabia. (Our own press is to blame for our desert of information about the Saudis, too. Since not many reporters have can speak Arabic, know how to deal with the Saudis, and are determined to get the hard-to-research stories out of the kingdom, we don't hear nearly enough in the mainstream press about Saudi Arabia.) The Religious Policeman--written with a Bierce-like acid wit and candor--is also a joy to read.

The author of The Religious Policeman has been arguing for some time that a civil war is brewing in Saudi Arabia, and may already have started. The Khobar attack is part of that insurgency, aimed at toppling the House of Saud. You may not have heard a lot of key facts about the Khobar attack, including (1) many of the terrorists escaped, and (2) the Saudi "raid" was probably a fraud, staged for the cameras after the terrorists were already gone.

There are loads of other questions about Saudi Arabia, such as whether they've peaked in oil production, that are worth pursuing. As I said, I recommend The Religious Policeman as one starting place.

Free companies free from prosecution

IN THE NEWS
Sometimes, the news can be truly baffling: Case in point is this article about the CPA's push to keep "contractors" in a legal limbo. We're really discussing mercenaries, of course, since "cooks and bottle washers" are clearly not the issue.

Perhaps this issue was the 27th item on the agenda for a recent meeting among a senior group of decision-makers: interim prime minister Ayad Allawi; CPA chief Paul Bremer; his deputy, David Gompert; and Lt. General Paul Sanchez. The fact that the US government was pushing this proposal, among this group of people, this early into the discussion with the interim Iraqi government, is startling.

The CPA wants to keep companies like CACI, Titan, and Blackwater from being subject to either US military justice or Iraqi law. In other words, the ubiquitous, infamous mercenaries and contract interrogators featured prominently in the most depressing news of the last several weeks would operate effectively outside any law whatsoever.

Why this issue, and why now? You'd be hard-pressed to find a hotter button to push with both the Iraqi and US public than torture. Some of these firms are, of course, the ones who were involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad airport facility, and other detention centers. These companies are rightly concerned about what the new Iraqi government will do with the them after the "transfer of sovereignty" (whatever that means at this point). Which means, of course, before this meeting with Allawi, Bremer and Sanchez undoubtedly had another set of meetings with CACI et al. about these concerns.

The Rumsfeldian fetish for privatization wasn't the start of the US military's dependence on companies like Blackwater, but it certainly shifted this trend into high gear. In Iraq specifically, there are insufficient troops in theater for the variety of missions the US and coalition forces face. The Bush Administration's fallback plan, of course, is further privatization of military and intelligence functions.

That trend does not automatically mean, however, that mercenaries should be outside the law. According to James Davies in his book, Fortune's Warriors, the dividing line between mercenaries and outlaw bands is lawfulness: respect for the Geneva Conventions, other international restrictions on combatants, and whatever US laws should apply. Mercenaries can and should operate under the rule of law, according to Davies, someone who works in the "private security services" field.

If this is an effort to protect Titan and CACI from legal action, it's pretty maladroit. It's also counterproductive: at this point, the US government needs to demonstrate clearly that it's keeping the mercenaries on a far tighter leash. Instead, Bremer and Sanchez are doing the opposite, at the worst possible time.

Our dependence on mercenaries may be new to us, but mercenaries are nothing new in the history of warfare. They're notorious for their unreliability, retreating or switching sides when the price is right. They're equally notorious for the destruction they've created in conflicts like the Thirty Years War.

If the "global electronic village" had more visibility into the day-to-day activities of CACI, Titan, Blackwater, and similar companies, we all might be a bit less nervous. However, these companies have been operating behind a curtain of secrecy since their arrival in Iraq, and the CPA has been yanking the curtain back in place in the few cases where the press has tried to take a peek at what they're doing.

We're long overdue for a full accounting of mercenary operations in Iraq. We're losing political ground every day that we keep coddling these companies. The lines of accountability, operationally and legally, need to be very, very clear and very, very strong. Which makes today's news about the Bremer/Sanchez/Allawi meeting extremely baffling.

POSTSCRIPT:

I actually forgot an important point in this post. Shame on me.

This incident deepens the Iraqis' cynicism about our invasion. Once the original cassus belli--Baathist WMD programs and support for terrorists--proved to be fictions, the one noble justification left for the invasion was liberating the Iraqis. (There are other, more Realpolitik arguments you could make, so for the moment, I'm just talking about the morally stirring rationales.) The first new nation, the avatar of constitutional democracy and the rule of law, the superpower with a human face, was intervening to save the Iraqis from one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. The supporters of the war are right on that point: Hussein needed to fall, along with anyone who tried to take his place as the head of a murderous autocracy. (How and when, of course, are the subject of much debate.)

Unfortunately, the United States looks like it dropped its moral compass in the Tigris and has yet to fish it out again. The indefinite detention and torture of Iraqi suspects, many of whom are clearly innocent of aiding the insurgents; the bloody siege of Fallujah; the under-the-table arrangements to ensure US dominance of key sectors of the Iraqi economy; the inability to distinguish between anti-occupation insurgents and anti-American terrorists; the bizarre disinterest in the complexities of Iraqi politics, and the importance of getting serious about the new Iraqi constitution; the cynical cronyism of US support for Chalabi and his family--all of these incidents, and more, made us look like we don't believe in the words we're mouthing about democracy and justice.

Now, at the 11th hour, right before we hand over sovereignty, just when the skeptics are waiting to see that this handover is something more than just a PR event...

Bremer and Sanchez are working hard to keep mercenaries from being subject to any law whatsoever.

Baffling. Dismaying. Outrageous.

Iran, nukes, and leverage

IN THE NEWS
The Washington Post carried this article yesterday about Iranian intransigence with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Aside from the IAEA's grumblings, similar unhappy noises are coming from the same European governments who had previously been praising Iran for its willingness to work with the Agency. At issue are magnets than can be used for enrichment uranium, acquired during a confidence-building period when Iran was supposed to be shutting down its enrichment program.

How does Iran get away with it? All the great powers (China included, to some degree) want Iran's nuclear program shut down. The armies of the United States and Britain are parked next door in Iraq. Even before the Iraq invasion, the US Navy and Air Force have been poised to strike, if needed at Iranian targets, if needed. So how hard can it be to get the Iranians to play along?

Very hard, apparently. If you're read some earlier posts in this blog on leverage vs. hard power, you'll understand why. If you look at just the US-Iranian relationship for a moment, ever since the hostage crisis--in fact, while the Shah was still in power--Iran has always had more than we wanted than vice-verrsa. Today, the Iranians have the ability to...

• Shut down their nuclear program.


• Reduce or cut off support to terrorist groups, including ones operating in Iraq against Coalition forces.


• Influence the swirling Shi'ite politics in Iraq.


• Adjust their rhetoric against the Saudi regime during a very sensitive time for the royal family.


• Influence world oil prices.

And we have...Not a lot of cards to play. The Iranians know that we can barely hold ground in Iraq, so any threats of invading Iran are hollow. So, too, are any naval or air strikes, which can't be effectively sustained to the degree that the NATO maintained its successful air campaign against Serbia. In other words, our hard power has bought us little with the Iranians--but it has supplied Iranian-supported groups like Ansar al-Islam with handy American targets.

Of course, our hard power is also working against us politically in Iran. The Iranian regime didn't "get the message" from our invasion of Iraq; instead, the theocracy took a very sharp turn to the right (as defined in Iranian terms). Among other ways the noose of oppression is tightening, the Guardian Council removed 2400 reformist candidates from the ballot in this year's parliamentary elections. While this crackdown started almost immediately after the reformists' 2000 electoral victories, it has accelerated since the US drumbeat for war and the invasion of Iraq. Not surprisingly, the mullahs, already afraid of what the reformists represented, are now fighting hard to resist foreign pressures that might threaten their control.

The Iranians may reverse themselves. Their public stubbornness may be temporary, a negotiating ploy to get something from one of the involved parties (the Europeans, the Americans, or the IAEA). Whatever the outcome, this incident highlights, yet again, the limits of our own hard power, and the reasons we shouldn't rely on it too much.

The initiative

THEORY
A subtle but important strategic dynamic is the initiative. Except under the rarest of circumstances, you’re usually enjoying an enormous advantage when you can control the place, time, and nature of conflict. You want to act, and force the other side to react. The longer you can maintain the initiative, the better. (The rare circumstance, by the way, is the nuclear game of chicken, in which one side deliberately cedes control of the situation to force the other side to blink. See Schelling’s Arms and Influence for details.)

To go back to the blitzkrieg example, the shock of “lightning warfare” had everything to do with Germany’s power to control the initiative at the operational level. Maneuverability, flexibility, and communications made it possible for the Germans—often numerically inferior, even on the attack—to disorient, disrupt, and ultimately defeat their French, Belgian, and Polish opponents. The successes of the early campaigns in North Africa and the Soviet Union also depended on the way blitzkrieg gave the Germans the operational initiative. In both the North African and Russian campaigns, however, the Germans ran out of the resources (men, tanks, fuel, etc.) needed to maintain earlier “tempos” of operations. German losses at Stalingrad and Kursk, therefore, took the initiative out of their hands and placed it into the Soviets’. In North Africa, the supply of fuel, spare parts, and replacements across the Mediterranean was never enough to keep up with the Afrika Korps’ needs. As dazzling as Rommel’s successes were, they weren’t enough to decisively end the North African campaign before time ran out.

In the two types of asymmetric strategy that are constant topics on this blog, guerrilla warfare and terrorism, the initiative is all-important. Wherever guerrillas are fighting, they usually are at a distinct numerical disadvantage. To make matters worse, their supplies are meager, their weapons less advanced, and their access to external forms of support are often smaller. The one key advantage they do have, however, is the ability to hide in the population or in remote locations, wait until an opportune moment, and then carry out a raid, sabotage mission, or other operation designed for some political effect. Sometimes, these are dramatic moments, like the Tet Offensive. Normally, however, each small operation is part of the steady drip, drip, drip that erodes the political and military base of the enemy regime. Given their even smaller numbers, terrorists also depend on their ability to avoid their enemy’s crosshairs, staying in hiding or on the move until the time ripens for a bombing, kidnapping, or other attack. (This is the major reason why, as I’ve discussed earlier, there can’t always be a “ticking bomb” of an imminent terrorist attack about to happen. Terrorists can’t possibly afford the exposure; instead, they normally wait until they’re sure of success—which depends on the survival of the terrorist organization, if not individual suicide bombers.)

Modern guerrilla warfare and terrorism both depend on maintaining the initiative, not just on the battlefield, but in the media. During the 1980s, Reagan Administration officials and their contra allies were constantly upstaged by the surprisingly more media-savvy, camera-friendly Sandinistas. On one key front, American and world public opinion, the Sandinista commandantes like Daniel Ortega, Ernesto Cardenal, and Miguel d’Escoto constantly outflanked their enemies. The initiative in the highly political “war of the flea” sometimes depends on controlling the terms of the political debate inside and outside the country as much as the terms of battle.

Since I was a teen, I’ve been a big aficionado of wargames. I started in junior high school playing the classic Avalon Hill games—Panzerblitz, Squad Leader, The Russian Campaign, and the like. I don’t harbor any illusions that wargames are 100% perfect simulations of warfare—they can’t be. What they can do, however, is highlight important parts of the story of a conflict, just as a narrative history, a political science study, or this blog can shine a light here or there on important points.

One thing I’ve always noticed is how poorly wargames depict the initiative. The classic wargames, with their “you go-I go” heritage of how each player takes his turn, can’t possibly depict the fluid nature of the initiative. Sometimes they can, either in explicit ways, or cleverly implicit ones. Games like Turning Point: Stalingrad and Breakout: Normandy actually have an initiative chit that one side or the other keeps until used. Once you decide to use some special advantage that the initiative confers, such as the option to re-roll a die if you don’t like the result, you hand the chit and its potential advantages to the other player. This game mechanic makes an interesting point, but it isn’t the same as, say, a well-designed simulation of WWII on the Eastern Front, in which you can feel the German initiative slip away as the supply lines grow too long, the partisan attacks too frequent, your own losses too heavy, and the balance of forces tilting too far in the direction of the ever-regenerating Soviet Army.

Still, if you’re not familiar with wargames or military history enough to appreciate the importance of the initiative, watch a good football game for signs of it in operation. During key points in a game, one side clearly has the advantage in an ineffable way. Everything else is the same—the players, the field, the game—but clearly, the team with the initiative is, for the time being, “stealing a march” from the other side. The initiative is powerful enough in the game of football, in which events on the field are tightly constrained by the rules and the referees. In warfare, where there are no such constraints, the ability to pick the time, location, and type of conflict is vastly more important.

PRACTICE
In 2003, the Bush Administration had an ambitious strategy for how to re-take the initiative in its theater strategy for the Middle East. Long the source of economic and security headaches, from world oil prices to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the 9/11 attacks heightened the direct threat to US security that also emanated from this fractious, dangerous, but nonetheless vital region. The invasion of Iraq, therefore, was an effort to upset the game board of Middle Eastern politics, upsetting old assumptions, creating new opportunities, and perhaps ending old, intractable problems.

This is the argument that a good friend of mine once made in defense of the Iraq invasion. In theory, I also think the idea had merit. (If only it had been the argument the Bush Administration had made at the time, instead of deliberately misleading the US public about weapons of mass destruction.) Given how critical this blog has been of the Bush Administration, you might be surprised to hear me praise this idea. The Middle East had become the proverbial Gordian knot, and perhaps it was time for an Alexander-like, creatively direct approach to unraveling it. It’s hard to see years of patient diplomacy to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unravel without asking, Have we missed all the options? Is there something we overlooked? Is it time to take bigger risks? It’s annoying to see Saddam Hussein thumb his nose at the United States, continuing to claim (justifiably, I think) a substantial victory merely by surviving. It’s frightening to see radical Islamist movements on the march, more often than not with Saudi Wahabbist support, without being alarmed. Perhaps, then, it was time to seize the initiative.

A bold move, yes, but an incredibly risky one. Risks like these are often worth taking, however. Frederick the Great did, and succeeded in fundamentally re-aligning the alliances that governed the European balance of power in his day. Napoleon did, and almost succeeded at creating a French continental hegemony. However, the riskier the gambit, the more you need to study the odds, plan for contingencies, summon everything and everyone you can in your cause before you roll the dice. Not only will you reduce the risk of rolling craps, but you cushion your losses if you do.

That’s what made the Bush Administration’s otherwise laudable attempt at seizing the initiative a grand failure. The Administration did not carefully study the pros and cons, the opportunities and risks. Not only did it brush aside (and alienate) its traditional allies, but it also paved over the advice from its very own experts in the executive branch. (See the sad history of the Future of Iraq project for a good example.) Like an eight year old playing his first game of Risk, the Bush Administration scooped up its forces, dropped them on the map, rolled the dice, and then childishly refused to admit that its strategy wasn’t well thought through.

Sometimes, a game isn’t totally lost. Another player might take over someone’s position, look at the board with fresh eyes, and extricate that side from what had looked like certain defeat. Or, perhaps, the original player might realize his mistakes, and act with the candor and self-criticism needed to dig out of the hole he made for himself. What won’t work, of course, is another childish display of petulance, in which, against all objective measures, the player claims that, in fact, he’s really winning the game. In chess, if someone refuses to admit checkmate, you know never to play with that person again. It’s just a game. War is not.

Original sin and the Constitution

IN THE NEWS
The ongoing discussion of the Department of Defense "torture memo" leaked to The Wall Street Journal confirms fears I've expressed earlier on this blog. If there is an original sin, a fundamental mistake, a central corruption whose stain has spread into other areas, it was the Republicans willingness--and in many cases, eagerness--to ignore the Constitution's clear requirements on warmaking. Most fundamentally, if we are in the midst of a major war, we should have a declaration of war. Otherwise, we have no way of knowing whom we're fighting, why, and when we're done. The "spreading stain" this refusal to honor this part of the Constitution is the ongoing corruption of the rule of law in general. If you're willing to ignore something as fundamental as the requirement to declare war, what other parts of the Constitution, or laws that spring from it, are you willing to break?

As I argued earlier, the Cold War distorted our sense of how the Constitution should work. A uniquely dangerous situation existed, in which the very existence of the nation could end in hours or minutes, that required some creative thinking about how best to handle that risk. The fear was the chain of events that could be set into motion by a declaration of war. If the United States became involved in a regional conflict...And if the Soviets also became involved...And the United States "planted the flag" by declaring war against the Soviets' ally...And if the Soviets then felt that we had de facto declared war on them...The escalation spiral could easily end in nuclear annihilation. Compromises like The War Powers Act were supposed to be temporary measures, however, designed to give Congress some echo of its formal constitutional role without the unintended calamity that a declaration of war could trigger. Congress still retained other explicit Constitutional controls over warmaking, such as the federal pursestrings and treaty ratification. Even if wars weren't declared between 1945 and 1989, the Cold War still respected the Constitutional sharing of powers in all other ways.

If that respect for the Constitution persevered at a time when billions of people could die in minutes, it certainly should exist now. (As frightening as nuclear terrorism might be, it hasn't happened yet, and there are no "ticking bombs.") Since the nuclear escalation spiral no longer exists, the US government should formally declare war in major conflicts without even questioning the necessity of using that Constitutional instrument. However, I fear, the Cold War lasted long enough that American political culture became far too deformed about warmaking, so that the idea of declaring war is now itself unthinkable.

Declarations of war are vital tools. They tell us whom we're fighting, why were expending our blood and treasure, and when we think we're done. Congress has the power to declare war (an explicit check on the risks of a military dictatorship), as well as other powers it can (and should) exercise during the beginning, duration, and conclusion of a war. On occasion, this system can be messy, but the Framers felt quite strongly that it would simultaneously manufacture the best decisions possible (especially given the number of self-correcting mechanisms) and preserve liberty.

There is no Presidentprinzip like the nasty fiction described in The Memo. The White House does not have privileges; it has shared powers. It does not, therefore, have any privilege, on its own, to decide what really threatens us, how much, for how long, and how many Constitutional articles, laws, and treaties it needs to suspend along the way. It cannot do all this in secret, concealing from both the public and Congress vital information about our enemies. Nor does it have the privilege to hide the information needed to judge how well we're doing at defeating them. (Excessive secrecy usually hides incompetence or corruption, not vital national interests.)

The Memo is another manifestation of the original sin I've described here. The fact that no one in the Bush Administration or the Congressional Republican leadership has indisputably and loudly condemned it, is deeply disturbing.

Now an Amazon affiliate

IN THE NEWS
Well, I decided to take the plunge and become an Amazon affiliate. I don't do this blog for money, but I do recommend a heckuva lot of books. If you click on the links in the Need to read list to the left, you'll be contributing to the tiny coffers of Arms and influence when you buy the book. I've already been linking books to Amazon.com whenever I cite them, so I might as well get the occasional credit--especially since I spend no small sum at Amazon.com myself.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any books you buy.

To boldly analogize...

IN THE NEWS
In calmer times, historical analogies usually aren't very controversial things. During times like these, however, people can sometimes be a bit prickly about which parallels you choose to draw between current and past events. People can get so defensive, in fact, they attack the whole idea of drawing analogies at all.

We've all heard the analogies between the Iraq war and the Vietnam War, World War II, the Lebanese Civil War, and other conflicts. Usually, someone with their back up already will say something like, "Look, there's no way Iraq is like Vietnam. Where are the triple-canopy jungles? The safe havens in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam? The substantial support from other superpowers? You're talking crazy talk."

Obviously, no event is completely analogous to another event. Analogies can easily be misplaced. But how do you know you have a good historical analogy?

The best place to start is John Stuart Mill, one of my favorite philosophers (see On Liberty) and someone very interested in this analogy issue. Mill said that you could identify a good comparison in one of two ways:

• The method of agreement. If you are looking at examples that are completely unalike except in one way, that characteristic A always accompanies characteristic B, then there's some fundamental connection between A and B. If you look at all the wars in history, for example, and you find that (A) commanders who had simple operational plans (B) had drastically higher rates of success, then you can say that there's a connection between operational simplicity and the odds of victory.


• The method of difference. If you compare things that are completely alike, except for one set of characteristics that vary in some consistent way (as A changes, B changes), then you have a connection between A and B. You might look, for example, at all the Afghan wars involving foreign powers--the 19th century British occupation, the 20th century Soviet invasion, the 21st century US invasion--and look for some patterns. Same location, same ethnic groups, and in the last two cases, even some of the same people. However, if you find that, all other things being equal, (A) a greater focus on training and equipping local Afghan forces (B) produces better results against insurgents, then you might have a relationship between A and B.

It's tough to find cases that are completely alike, or completely unalike, but you do your best. I think that the people who pooh-pooh an anlogy because they don't like the message are in a state of historical denial. You can pick apart the analogy, you can argue over the conclusion, but you can't say that analogies don't make any sense at all.

The Vietnam analogy was something that used to really get people's dander up. It doesn't seem to have that effect now. I'm not sure if it's just the passage of time or the post-Desert Storm bolstering of our confidence in US military power, but the Vietnam specter has lost some of its frightfulness. Today, of course, you see parallels between Vietnam and Iraq all over the place (click here, here, and here for some quick examples). Sure, there are no triple-canopy jungles in Iraq, but that's a detail, as we've seen, that matters only at certain levels of strategy. Jungle and desert warfare have different rules at the operational and tactical levels, to be sure. That doesn't change US grand strategy, theater strategy, or technical considerations. Nor does the terrain necessarily change some basic principles of counterinsurgency at the operational or tactical levels.

Go ahead and be bold in making historical parallels. Use analogies, but use them wisely. Just don't let anyone tell you that you can't make analogies at all. If that's the case, every life-threatening situation in which we find ourselves will be brand new, and we'll have no past experience to help us through it. That's a far more frightening prospect than admitting, perhaps, that we've found ourselves in a quagmire again.

Shock and awe about the DoD memo

IN THE NEWS
Wow. Reading the Department of Defense memo leaked to the Wall Street Journal, I'm suddenly reminded about the importance of primary sources. If you're serious about a subject, go straight to the original documents. Don't trust a filtered perspective on them.

How does this principle apply to the DoD memo? After reading the portions that are available, it's actually worse than I thought it would be. I expected the excerpts in today's news articles and blogs to be the juiciest bits. I was wrong.

For example, this quote is fairly alarming:

Third, many legal authorities include the requirement that the defender must reasonably believe that lawful violence is "imminent" before he can use force in his defense. It would be a mistake, however, to equate imminence necessarily with timing--that an attack is immediately about to occur. Rather, as the Model Penal Code explains, what is essential is that the defensive response must be "immediately necessary."

Here it is: the attempted pollution of US law with the Bush Administration's odious notion of preemptive war. And it gets worse:

As DOJ has made clear in opinions involving the war on al Qaida, the nation's right to self-defense has been triggered by the events of September 11. If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaida terrorist network. In that case, DOJ believes that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions. This national and international version of the right to self-defense could supplement and bolster the government defendant's right.

In other words, simply by invoking the talismanic power of 9/11, someone in the military, the CIA, or other arm of the US government could break the law while interrogating someone he thought might have information about al Qaida. The state of nature in the international system is now codified in US law, according to this line of reasoning. Now, I'm no rosy-cheeked innocent--I know what people in the US military and intelligence services have done in the name of national security. However, when they overstepped the law, they also expected to be prosecuted, if caught. (And the echo chamber between the DOJ and the DOD must be pretty loud to drown out the obvious rebuttals to this line of reasoning.)

Who deserves harsh treatment during interrogation? Anyone designated as a possible al Qaida informant. Unfortunately, the burden of proof, according to this memo, is on the prisoner, if he claims he's not connected to a terrorist group. "Non-resident aliens" already are assumed to lack Fifth Amendment protections. Far worse, though is the memo's argument that the Eigth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment apply only to convicted prisoners. The accused al Qaida sympathizers at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, in a darkly Kafkan twist, have fewer rights for being detained than if they had been tried and convicted. If you're not depressed already, then read the section where the memo's author takes great pains to assert how subjective the definitions of cruel and unusual can be--to the point of nearly arguing them out of existence.

The memo once again conflates the nation at war with the individual interrogator in a later discussion of the use of force against prisoners. Since the authorities who run a jail have the right to use force to quell riots and otherwise maintain order, "it follows a fortiori that the interest of the United States here--obtaining information vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens--can be no less valid." The interrogator isn't a representative of the United States, bound by US law; the interrogator is the United States, whose duty to itself is to use whatever nasty, brutish, and short interrogation techniques needed to get quick results.

Since other writers have spoken eloquently and at length already about the memo's preposterous argument that the President can "set aside" laws when deemed necessary, I won't repeat the same arguments here. Suffice it to say, I don't want to live in a country where any part of the government has this kind of license. It's exactly the kind of situation the Framers, in defining the messy system of overlapping powers, wanted to avoid. No Constitutional check against tyranny is possible if, on the word of someone in the executive branch, US forces can capture suspects, detain them in a secret location for an indefinite amount of time, refuse their demands to have access to lawyers, not bring them to trial, and then torture them for information you think they might have. If, in the process, you break US laws and violate treaties and conventions to which the United States is a signatory, you can always claim you didn't know it was a crime, you got a free pass from the President, or the national right of self-defense made you do it.

I'm not a lawyer, but I have had a life-long interest in Constitutional law. This memo isn't a shining example of American legal scholarship. I'm just speculating here, so please take the next statement with a grain of salt. In this memo, I don't hear the voice of someone genuinely struggling with complex Constitutional and moral issues. It sounds more like someone giving some superior the arguments he or she wanted to hear.

Terrorism by the numbers

IN THE NEWS
Anyone who has read this blog regularly knows that I'm a numbers guy. (See here for a recent example.) Sure, you have to be humble about statistics when the sample number is small, the data hard to acquire, or the measures somewhat subjective. However, you still do your best to collect information about terrorist incidents and look for whatever patterns they might suggest.

The most basic statistic, of course, is how many terrorist incident occur each year. In an embarassing reversal, the US Department of State has re-issued its report on terrorism in 2003, adjusting the number of incidents upwards--"perhaps to its highest level in 20 years." The stated reason for the error, an early printing deadline that prevented a full accounting, sounds pretty unconvincing. Still, lacking evidence, I won't contclude that the Bush Administration was cooking the numbers. Unfortunately, by its own behavior, it has left itself open to these suspicions.

The numbers matter. I've heard people try to deflect criticism of the Bush Administration by arguing that, in an election year, during a war, it's inappropriate to question how well we're doing in that war. (Again, we're talking about the war on terrorists, which isn't the same as the war on terror, or the war on terrorism. Definitions matter as much as numbers, since they determine exactly what you're going to measure.)

Of course, an election year is exactly the time to be asking for an accounting of the Bush Administration's progress--particularly since it has received extraordinary legal and Constitutional license in the name of national security. How many terrorist incidents happened? How many did we prevent? How exactly did we prevent them? How do our efforts compare with those of other countries, fighting their own battles with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups? Has, in the end, the Bush Administration done a good job?

These are democratically necessary questions. We need these measures of success now, not at some unspecified time when the Bush Administration's counterterrorism campaign is relegated to the history books. If the approach isn't working, the electorate can then demand corrections.

There's some good news in the report, by the way. The number of minor terrorist incidents has dropped. I'd speculate that's the result of (1) more aggressive intelligence gathering, plus (2) joint US-local campaigns to contain small or geographically isolated groups like the FARC in Colombia, Aby Sayyaf in the Philippines, or the motley groups in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia. Working with the governments of these countries, the United States has helped reduce the risk of, say, American tourists being snatched by a small terrorist group looking for global publicity.

What hasn't stopped, obviously, are the major incidents. Several years ago, RAND counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman pointed out that the average number of casualties in terrorist attacks was on the rise. Terrorists learn, and they have to adjust to what their enemies are doing. Over time, groups like al Qaeda have discovered that innocent bystanders are easier to kill than government leaders. They've also learned that the level of horror increases with the number of casualties, making the 9/11 attacks and the Madrid bombings the very definition of what they hope to achieve.

How well is the Bush Administration doing to prevent these major incidents? Take a look at the numbers.

Where's Bruce?

IN THE NEWS
One of the questions I've had since 9/11 is, Where are the serious counterterrorism experts? In the mainstream media, I've heard or read interviews with all shapes and sizes of generals, pundits, and other instant experts. Our public debate about counterterrorism has been dominated with amateur speculation. If I want to learn something useful about counterterrorism, I might call someone at the RAND Corporation like Bruce Hoffman, who has dedicated his career to studying the subject.

I can't explain why the press has done such a poor job of consulting the experts (a problem mirrored in the Bush Administration, too). However, Bruce Hoffman has surfaced with an excellent article in The Atlantic Monthly. Finally. (Not his fault, I'm sure.)