The 'Shock and Awe' doctrine

It is instructive to compare the number of people killed on either side after the Israeli attack on Hamas (in bold below) that took place some hours back.

Reason for the Israeli attack on Hamas (from the NY Times):

The air attack came after days of warnings by Israeli officials that Israel would retaliate for intense rocket and mortar fire against Israeli towns and villages by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. On Wednesday alone, more than 60 rockets and mortars were fired, some reaching further than previously. While the Hamas rockets are meant to be deadly, and several houses and a factory were hit, sowing widespread panic, no Israelis were killed or seriously injured in the recent attacks.

Meanwhile over in Gaza after the Israeli response: (from CNN and the NY Times):

Israeli aircraft launched air attacks across Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 155 people, including the Hamas police chief and other officials, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources. Palestinian medical sources said 250 people were wounded in the air raid in Gaza. At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, scores of dead bodies were laid out in front of the morgue waiting for family members to identify them. Many were dismembered. Inside the hospital, relatives carried a five-month old baby who had suffered a serious head wound from shrapnel. Overwhelmed, the hospital staff seemed unable to offer help. At the Gaza City police station, at least 15 traffic police who had been training in a courtyard were killed on the spot. Tamer Kahrouf, 24, a civilian who had been working on a construction site in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, said he saw his two brothers and uncle killed before his eyes when the Israeli planes bombed a security post nearby.

On a curious spectacle of ‘flying shoes’ in mainstream television

As a couple of size 10 shoes sailed ungracefully over the head of leader of the free world, I took some time out to read parts of a report that chronicles the events that have led unto the colossal failure in the reconstruction of Iraq. One might think that after five years there, reconstruction might be progressing at a fast clip and infrastructural development proceeding smoothly. The report manages to convey something far from that line of thought. The report lays bare a continuous string of flawed decision making and points to the single factor that might be responsible for the quagmire that we are in now: Miscalculation. Pure and simple miscalculation.

A colossal miscalculation of what the United States would face after the shock and awe of the initial firebombing campaign was complete. Miscalculations that seemed to have spawned countless trial and error governance experiments executed on the fly to fix mistakes even as scores of innocent civilians were mowed down by roving Sunni/Shia death squads. To borrow from the science of project management, when one conceives of a project without a coherent project plan or roadmap, one is forced to adapt to the 'whack a mole' approach to running the same. Just as soon as a problem pops up, the response to tackling the problem turns out to be tactical, imprecise, short sighted and novel in every instance.

The ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ nature of the invasion did not account for any strategic thinking with respect to the larger picture at hand – that Iraq was a country full of living, breathing people just like you and me. Instead, the focus on removing Saddam and the elaborate framework that he had built to syncretize power so consumed the war planners that governance of the country and its people were relegated to being nothing but afterthoughts. Afterthoughts that have come to haunt us in the form of flying shoes sailing unceremoniously on mainstream television. In many ways, one hopes that the fiasco in Iraq will serve as a constant and present reminder towards large nations to think twice, breathe deeply and weigh options before starting to meddle in places where they have little idea of local mores, customs, sects or culture.

The following incident featuring the creator of the phrase 'known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns' vividly illustrates the sheer ignorance with which a senior strategist like the United States Defense Secretary went into Iraq.

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.
“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.
“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.
“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”
In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

An American soldier watches President Bush's televised apology for Abu Ghraib. Iraq 2004. Photo by Ashley Gilbertson. From here.

Nettlesome numbers

Even if numbers bore most people, it is important to get ones head around some of the taxpayer money wasted by the quagmire in Iraq.

A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that Iraq will generate $86 billion this year from oil revenues.

The box on the left shows the amounts allocated in the budgets for stabilization, electricity, security and water resource development in Iraq. It is indeed striking that while similar amounts were allocated (~$30 billion) by both Iraq and America, we have managed to spend 70% of our taxpayer money on Iraqi infrastructural development while Iraq (who is already flush with $86 billion this year from oil revenues) has spent only a little over 10% of its own money. Why are we even financing their reconstruction when they have the money to do this?

A final bit of sobering news is that the Iraq war is costing approximately 12 billion taxpayer dollars a month according to Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Image from the today's New York Times newspaper.

On Powell for Obama

Today the media is drunk on the fact that Gen. Colin Powell has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama's candidacy for the presidency of the U.S. I am not sure if this is that much of a big deal.

Here was one man who could single handedly have prevented the Iraq fiasco. Here was one man who could have asked tougher questions to his boss and his direct reports before he lied to the United Nations (full transcript here) about the State of Iraq amassing WMDs. I remember watching that speech and actually believing him. I had a funny feeling that a highly decorated military man would not stand up in front of the United Nations and spew lies. At the end of that speech, I was thinking that it might be the right move after all - Iraq and Saddam Hussein must indeed be stopped in their tracks.

I also remember a feeling of betrayal that swept across the nation when it was conclusively proved that all the talk of finding stockpiles of yellow cake uranium, WMDs and chemical weapons turned out to be a complete fabrication. Remember vividly…
I am not so sure if this endorsement is such a big deal especially when Sen. Barack Obama actually voted against going to war in Iraq.

Detail from a painting by Winslow Homer (1836 - 1910), 'Sounding Reveille', oil on canvas, 13" X 19", 1865 (image from a Christie's book)

On yesterday's debate

If yesterday's debate was a contest on who could appear folksier, homely and cutesy then Gov. Sarah Palin hit the ball out of the park. Of course, that is not what debates that help us choose leaders for our nation are about - or is it? With nowhere to go but upwards, she did not have a meltdown that most predicted. In fact, she came off as very articulate, very clear and lucid on every answer - except that her responses were not really answers to the questions posed. She managed to go off tangent to just about any and every question asked of her on policy, healthcare, Iraq and domestic affairs. She also relied on this strange circular logic where on the one hand she said that Sen. McCain will enforce strict governmental oversight while in a retort right after said that government is the problem and needs to get out of the way… One cannot have it both ways!
When did expectations sink so low that when reactions the next day are 'Thank god she did not embarrass us' became the standard to judge vice presidential candidates?

Sen. Biden on the other hand was fairly calm and collected with his answers. His answers were more direct and to the point and he managed to produce pertinent answers to questions asked of him. In particular, I was shocked by the following factoid ‘we have spent more money -- we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country’. I have not fact checked this, but if true is simply an astounding example of misguided leadership. Of course, expectations that his answers would be long winded, empty and airy were not fulfilled. Here again we breathed a sigh of relief and said, ‘Thank god, he did not shame the campaign with his gaffes’. Of course, he was definitely, very definitely more Presidential of the two and handily won the debate.

In our fervent prayers that candidates scrape by and not embarrass themselves, we are lowering the bar for ourselves in general and for the country at large.

In keeping with her style, Palinesque moments that had a 'Kouric interview' feel to them abounded - some of them here:

• “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be all, end all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet” – magnetic poetry alert.
• “The reason we don't read about Afghanistan anymore in the paper, it's succeeded.” – the last I checked there was a growing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan slowing winding its way into Pakistan.
• “As we discuss ANWR there, at least we can agree to disagree on that one. I will keep pushing him on ANWR” – I have no idea what she meant here…

Full transcript here.

History as Mirror

The following is an outline of a war that was fought in 490 BC.

A great power sets its sights on a smaller, strange, and faraway land—an easy target, or so it would seem. Led first by a father and then, a decade later, by his son, this great power invades the lesser country twice. The father, so people say, is a bland and bureaucratic man, far more temperate than the son; and, indeed, it is the second invasion that will seize the imagination of history for many years to come. For although it is far larger and more aggressive than the first, it leads to unexpected disaster. Many commentators ascribe this disaster to the flawed decisions of the son: a man whose bluster competes with, or perhaps covers for, a certain hollowness at the center; a leader who is at once hobbled by personal demons (among which, it seems, is an Oedipal conflict) and given to grandiose gestures, who at best seems incapable of comprehending, and at worst is simply incurious about, how different or foreign his enemy really is. Although he himself is unscathed by the disaster he has wreaked, the fortunes and the reputation of the country he rules are seriously damaged. A great power has stumbled badly, against all expectations.

Cambyses Kills the Apis, Illustration