James Fallows

James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May. More

James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

 
Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.

Who Says We Never Hear Any Good News About Journalism?

Beijing is all aflutter over the liang hui, or 两会, right now. These are the simultaneous dual meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. It'a all very exciting: Security goes up, Internet goes down, many inspiring speeches and news reports to reflect upon. Plus this journalistic tradition that I mentioned last year:

PeoplesDaily.png

In a time of transition for journalism all around the world, it's reassuring to know that some of the old ways endure. Here's the People's Daily today:

PeopleDaily2013.png


Plus another shot of the same young reporter (shown in an entire slide show but identified throughout only as "beautiful journalist") catching up on the latest news via social media:

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I may head down to the Twin Meetings area in Tiananmen later today in hopes of inspiring a followup: "Battered but Distinguished-looking Journalist of a Certain Age Reports on CPPCC." China, land of dreams.

False Equivalence: The Pictorial Version

From a reader in Seattle, the front page of the Seattle Times on Saturday:

SeattleTimes.png

It's way late here in China, and the Internet is so hobbled* that I have to try a new VPN ruse every three or four minutes, and in the circumstances I can't stand to go through the whole demonstration of why this approach should be considered false equivalence. OK, the barebones version:
  • Obama's latest budget offers are more "Republican" -- tougher on spending cuts, lighter on tax increases -- than what were venerated recently as centrist plans;
  • the GOP leadership has been open about its preference to have a showdown rather than a deal;
  • Obama has already conceded certain points that had been vaunted as game-changers, without any change in the game;
  • and the narrative is, "nobody budged." 
So it begins. As inspirational sequester-era reading, I offer you this selection from California Crackup, the very good book by Joe Mathews and Mark Paul about how filibuster-style, permanent-emergency politics made it nearly impossible for the nation's biggest and richest state to do public business. See if this passage, written several years ago, reminds you of anything in the news these days:
In most budget fights, the Republicans -- holding more than one-third of the seats in one or both legislative chambers, so enough to block a budget or revenue increase -- would make their support contingent on a list of demands. Many involved either cutting taxes or boosting spending for their own constituents -- even in times when the budget was out of balance ....

This form of hostage-taking became the norm. As long as the minority party could remain cohesive, the strategy would work. The legislative majority felt the burden of governing the state. But the minority could delay the most basic task of the legislature -- passing a budget - without being held responsible....

This two-thirds system, as it hardened, obscured responsibility and prevented political accountability. In a majority-vote system, the Democrats would have been accountable for the state's budget problems.... But in a two-thirds system, no one could fairly say that a budget belonged to one party or the other... [It] was a license for irresponsibility and inaction.
Gee, it would be a shame if we were to have this problem on the national level** .
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** "To be sure" differences of detail: In its most dysfunctional period, the California legislature required a two-thirds majority to pass budgets, as opposed to the 60-vote threshold that chronic filibustering has made the norm in the U.S. Senate. Also, thanks to redistricting, the GOP of course currently holds a majority in the U.S. House even though Democratic candidates received more votes than Republican ones nationwide. But overall the party's identity and strategy now are clearly those of an empowered blocking-group minority, rather than of a governing majority.

GmailFail.png* I argued in my book that the intentional hamstringing of the Internet was a more-than-trivial handicap for China as it aspires to be a first-tier power in research, advanced technology, culture. At least at the moment in Beijing, it's incredibly onerous to use (see right and below). 

The United States should be embarrassed about its stupid "sequester." China should be embarrassed about this stupid lobotomization of its connections with the world. More when I can find a better-functioning VPN (including scores of messages on the "liberal hawk" front). 

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On Threat Inflation and Liberal Hawks

In response to a post yesterday, arguing that it's time for another look at the fateful decision ten years ago to invade Iraq, these reader messages.

1. Threat inflation. I said that nearly all the major official "threats" of the modern era proved in retrospect to have been hyped. Missile gap, Tonkin Gulf, WMD, etc. Reader JA immediately replied, "You left out terrorism." And reader AS wrote:
It's true that we came close to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. But according to a well documented article in the Atlantic [plus others],  the missiles themselves were an inflated threat, i.e., according to US generals at the time did not materially hurt US security and could easily be traded, as they eventually secretly were, for US missiles in Turkey.
Again, reflect on this. Virtually all of the danger-to-the-nation warnings we've received in modern history prove to have been false, or overblown and hyped. Also, from MM in Massachusetts:
We're in heated agreement about the danger of threat inflation  and the Cuban Missile crisis in particular. Building on that notion, Able Archer 83 was another incident not in the public discussion (as much) but was a terrifying moment in history: a moment where two nuclear giants almost had it out over little more than a lack of communication.

2. The 'bomb Iran' resolution. I mentioned the efforts of Senators Lindsey Graham, Robert Menendez, et al to promote a Congressional resolution backing the government of Israel on whatever it decides to do about Iran. YR and others pointed me to the text of the resolution, which includes this sentence:
Nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization for the use of force or a declaration of war.
Noted. On the other hand, and for the record, here is what the parts of the resolution just before that say:
Congress ... (7) declares that the United States has a vital national interest in, and unshakeable unbreakable commitment to, ensuring the existence, survival, and security of the State of Israel, and reaffirms United States support for Israel's right to self-defense; and
(8) urges that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.

3. Liberal hawks. On accountability for people's views ten years ago, I said that unlike the architects of Vietnam, those who urged the U.S. toward war in Iraq had largely escaped reckonings about their views. A reader in Nebraska writes:
I might argue that Tony Blair has been held more accountable than most U.S. politicians - at least in his home country.
From reader DG in Texas:
At the time, the propaganda machine made anyone opposed to the war "unpatriotic" - unfortunate way to limit free speech.  It is now too hard to even discuss because of the damage to our young generation - remembering how we treated Viet Nam Vets.  The whole thing is just too sad to think about.
And from CJ :
One suggestion (not exactly original to me -- I believe Timothy Noah of Slate made this point previously [JF note: for instance here] re: accountability: not only are the people who got Iraq wrong treated as wise men, but those who got Iraq right (with the highly notable exception of President Obama) remain marginalized as too radical or (as Paul Krugman said today) as "hippies". Why aren't people like former Senator Graham [Robert Graham of Florida] called upon more in the places where public opinion is shaped?

Good question. Finally, from Alan Thomas, who says he is proud to be known as a liberal hawk:
Ten years ago I was profiled in a WaPo piece, by Linton Weeks, on ordinary Americans who supported the war; I filled the role of token leftist:
An avowed leftist, Alan Thomas, 33, doesn't like Bush, but he believes in the war. "I don't support the president. I'm skeptical about his sincerity in wanting democracy in Iraq. But I feel he's committed to it," Thomas says.

Thomas works the night shift in a group home for mainstreamed developmentally disabled adults in Kirksville, Mo. He's the son of college professors. He and his wife, Kate, 27, live in an apartment and drive a 1989 Chevrolet van. They have two mutts rescued from the humane society. They also run a small shop that sells things they think are cool, such as bumper stickers that read "Bush/Cheney: America's Second Choice."

"I'm sympathetic with the plight of the Kurds and the Iraqi people," Thomas says. "And I'm disappointed in, and embarrassed by, the left."

Asked if he voted for Bush, he laughs. "No, no way. Never."

Though Thomas enthusiastically supports the war, he says he'll reevaluate his position after the regime change. "If Bush tries to install a puppet dictator or if there are human rights violations, I'll be decrying it as loudly as anyone else on the left," he says...

The United States, Thomas says, "should clean up the world. We have the power.  I'm kind of a weirdo. It's wrong for us to sit on our hands and not do anything."
I for one still stand by everything I said.  But then, I never advocated for the war based on the WMD argument anyway, and acknowledged at the time (though Weeks didn't use those quotes) that it was a thin pretext used to sell it to the public and the U.N.  Honestly, although my personal motive had to do with human rights (and notice that Weeks did print my caveat that anticipated the possibility of something like Abu Ghraib), I think just the assassination attempt on Bush 41 is plenty all by itself--what kind of country are we if we let another country's leader pull something like that with impunity?

I have trouble understanding why you think it's so obvious now that the liberal hawks were wrong.  Maybe circa 2006 it looked that way, but aren't Iraqis better off today than they would be if Saddam (or his sons) still had a grip on power?
To answer the questions in the final paragraph: let's assume that many Iraqis may indeed be better off. For Americans that's not the relevant fact. After all, many people in Cuba, North Korea, etc might be better off if the U.S. invaded there too.

The question I am asking is whether this was a sane investment of American lives, money, national focus and attention, and international reputation. I argued before the war and soon after that it wasn't, and I think time has strengthened rather than weakened that case. Still, I respect an "idealistic hawk" willing to speak up for his views -- rather than, like many who were making similar points ten years ago, pretending this never really occurred.
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PS If you are in Beijing on Sunday evening, March 3, see you at the Capital M Literary Festival, with Jorge Guajardo. Details here.

From a Young Man About to Be Sequestered

Someone now working for an executive-branch department writes:
As a government employee who will almost certainly be furloughed in the coming months, I have followed the sequester with a sort of horrid fascination.  Not that it is any more or less horridly fascinating than any of our other "crises" in recent times, but the sequester hammers a few points home very well.

First, our public policy discussion has become too wonkish, by being entirely focused on measurable outcomes at the expense of all others.  (Another example: the health care debate, the vast majority of which was about costs instead of the moral imperative of universal health care).  Yes, the sequester will have an economic cost and is a dumb way to reduce the deficit, but the government is not just a contributor to our GDP or a balance sheet.  On the contrary, many of the government's functions -- like keeping us safe, providing justice (hopefully), and researching disease -- cannot be encapsulated by economic impact.  I'm sure the Democrats are emphasizing the economic impact of the sequester in order to make all Americans feel like they have a stake in its outcome.  But that is not what the government, perhaps the sole major institution in this country whose only mission is to serve the public, is about.

Second, the media could cure us of political polarization and instantly bring about bipartisanship if they stopped playing the false equivalence game.  If the GOP's refusal to compromise was labeled as it actually is, they might pay a political price and be willing to cut a deal.  But by blaming both sides equally even though President Obama is offering a balanced solution, the media have severely curtailed whatever political incentive there is for cutting a deal.  After all, if the Democrats are blamed for not compromising even when they have made all the concessions, why on earth should the Republicans ever concede anything?

Blaming both sides for lack of compromise when one side has refused to make any concessions is like punishing all athletes when only some take steroids.  If everyone is getting punished no matter what, why not break the rules and hit some home runs?
I don't agree that a different media tone would "instantly bring about bipartisanship," and probably the writer doesn't even think that himself. But it's certainly true that the current media approach effectively rewards stone-walling, filibustering, brinkmanship, and so on, by not calling them out as pernicious and destructive techniques. 

As We Near the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War

Here is something other than The Sequester to think about at the beginning of March:

This month marks ten years since the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq. In my view this was the biggest strategic error by the United States since at least the end of World War II and perhaps over a much longer period. Vietnam was costlier and more damaging, but also more understandable. As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a "war of choice" whose costs we are still paying. 

FiftyFirst.jpeg
My reasons for bringing this up:

1) Reckoning. Anyone now age 30 or above should probably reflect on what he or she got right and wrong ten years ago. 
 
I feel I was right in arguing, six months before the war in "The Fifty-First State," that invading Iraq would bring on a slew of complications and ramifications that would take at least a decade to unwind.
 
I feel not "wrong" but regretful for having resigned myself even by that point to the certainty that war was coming. We know, now, that within a few days of the 9/11 attacks many members of the Bush Administration had resolved to "go to the source," in Iraq. Here at the magazine, it was because of our resigned certainty about the war that Cullen Murphy, then serving as editor, encouraged me in early 2002 to begin an examination of what invading and occupying Iraq would mean. The resulting article was in our November, 2002 issue; we put it on line in late August in hopes of influencing the debate.

My article didn't come out and say as bluntly as it could have: we are about to make a terrible mistake we will regret and should avoid. Instead I couched the argument as cautionary advice. We know this is coming, and when it does, the results are going to be costly, damaging, and self-defeating. So we should prepare and try to diminish the worst effects (for Iraq and for us). This form of argument reflected my conclusion that the wheels were turning and that there was no way to stop them. Analytically, that was correct: Tony Blair or Colin Powell might conceivably have slowed the momentum, if either of them had turned anti-war in time, but few other people could have. Still, I'd feel better now if I had pushed the argument even harder at the time.

For the record, Michael Kelly, who had been editor of the magazine and was a passionate advocate of the need for war, allowed us to undertake this project and put it on the cover even though he disagreed. Soon thereafter he was in Iraq, as an embedded reporter with the 3rd Infantry Division; in an incredible tragedy he was killed during the invasion's early phase.

2) Accountability. For a decade or more after the Vietnam war, the people who had guided the U.S. to disaster decently shrank from the public stage. Robert McNamara did worthy penance at the World Bank. Rusk, Rostow, Westmoreland were not declaiming on what the U.S. should and should not do.

After Iraq, there has been a weird amnesty and amnesia about people's misjudgment on the most consequential decision of our times. Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 primary race largely because she had been "wrong" on Iraq and Barack Obama had been "right." But Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer, Rice, McCain, Abrams, and others including the pro-war press claque are still offering their judgments unfazed. In his post-presidential reticence George W. Bush has been an honorable exception. 

I don't say these people should never again weigh in. But there should be an asterisk on their views, like the fine print about side effects in pharmaceutical ads. 

3) Honor. Say this for Al Gore: He was forthright, he was early, and he was right about Iraq.

4) Liberal hawks. Say this about the "liberal hawk" faction of 2002-2003: unlike, say, Peter Beinart, not enough of them have reckoned with what they got wrong then, and how hard many of them were pushing the "justice" and "duty" to invade, not to mention its feasibility. It would be good to hear from more of them, ten years on.

5) Threat inflation. As I think about this war and others the U.S. has contemplated or entered during my conscious life, I realize how strong is the recurrent pattern of threat inflation. Exactly once in the post-WW II era has the real threat been more ominous than officially portrayed. That was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world really came within moments of nuclear destruction.

Otherwise: the "missile gap." The Gulf of Tonkin. The overall scale of the Soviet menace. Iraq. In each case, the public soberly received official warnings about the imminent threat. In cold retrospect, those warnings were wrong -- or contrived, or overblown, or misperceived. Official claims about the evils of these systems were many times justified. Claims about imminent threats were most of the times hyped.

Which brings me to:

6) Iran. Most of the people now warning stridently about the threat from Iran warned stridently about Iraq ten years ago. That doesn't prove they are wrong this time too. But it's a factor to be weighed. Most of the technical warnings we are getting about Iran's capabilities are like those we got about Saddam's. That doesn't prove they are wrong again. But it's a factor.

Purportedly authoritative inside reports, replete with technical details about "yellowcake" or aluminum tubes, had an outsized role in convincing people of the threat from Iraq. We wish now that more people had looked harder at those claims. If you'd like to see someone looking hard at similar technical claims about Iran, please check out the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, where Youssaf Butt argues that the latest warnings mean less than they seem. Also from the Bulletin, a previous debunking, and a proposal for a negotiated endgame with Iran.

Again: like most of humanity, I can't judge these nuclear-technology arguments myself. But the long history of crying-wolf hyped warnings, in some cases by the same people now most  alarmist about Iran, puts a major burden of proof on those claiming imminent peril.
 
7) Clarity. I said earlier that I regretted not being more direct and blatant in saying: Don't go into Iraq. For more than eight years, I've tried to argue very directly that a preemptive military strike on Iran would be an enormous mistake on all levels for either Israel or the United States. Strategically it could only cement-in Iranian hostility for the long run. Tactically every professional soldier -- Israeli, American, or otherwise -- who has examined the practicalities of such a mission has warned that it would be folly. 

Lest the soldiers seem too gloomy, several U.S. Senators are working on a resolution committing the U.S. to lend its military and diplomatic support if PM Netanyahu decides, against the advice of most of his own military establishment, to attack. It would be bad enough if Netanyahu got his own country into this bind; there is no precedent for the U.S. delegating to any ally the decision to commit our troops to an attack. It would be different from NATO-style treaty obligations for mutual defense.

There is more ahead about Israeli, Iranian, and American negotiating strategies, but this is enough for now. It's also as much as I can manage before recovering from the flight from DC to Beijing.

When I Get Bored With Flying Airplanes

I may try flying a board. I have to say that this looks extremely dangerous but even more extremely fun.


Getting on a "real" airplane now for the 14-hour haul to Beijing. For a reminder of Beijing's and China's most unignorable challenge, see this report and these recent shots, from Sinocism and Business Insider.

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I will try to get a few dispatches composed en route. If you're going to either the Beijing or the Shanghai literary festivals this next week, see you there. 

Let's Talk Beer

Because it often seems that the American beer scene offers the only reliable supply of "hey, things really are getting better" news. [And please see update below.]

Dateline Houston: 
I was a big fan of Houston when I was based in Austin many years ago, and I like it even better now. Back during one of the oil crashes of the 1980s I wrote an Atlantic piece making the case for Houston as America-in-miniature: adaptable, optimistic and future-minded, unmannered in all senses of the term, full of and shaped by immigrants. (I'm not providing a link because it was in one of the 80s-era issues we don't yet have on line.) I make this point because I think prevailing East Coast and West Coast opinions have not fully caught up with the idea of Houston's hipness, ambition, and charm. Two signs of progress: Forbes made a case last year that Houston was "America's coolest city," in other than the literal thermal sense; and the WSJ paid its respects to Houston's verve and style earlier this month.

But even I was surprised to find that Houston -- which I had long associated with Lone Star, Pearl, Texas Pride , and similar fare -- is now another of our craftbrew capitals. The view out my hotel window not long ago:

Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for HoustonBeer.jpg

These were all really good. Before you ask: yes, this was a morning shot; I waited a decent interval to try them in the evenings once I got back home.


Dateline Utah, plus Delaware, Germany, and Pennsylvania:

Or at least Utah's handiwork as seen from our house in DC. Here's the lineup on a winter afternoon, with IDs below:

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What you're seeing, working from the center outward:
  • In the middle, two of the new "special IPA glasses" jointly designed by Dogfish Head of Delaware, Sierra Nevada of California, and Spiegelau of Germany. Their ambition is to be "the go-to glass to amplify and balance even the hoppiest of IPAs... [and] change the way you experience hop-forward beers." The glass on the left is empty, the better to show off its cute little shark/dogfish logo. The one on the right is ready for use, filled with the Hop Notch beer I'm about to mention. The glasses are $9 apiece plus shipping from the Dogfish Head online store, and I will say that this latest IPA tasted very good therein.

  • Next out from the center, two offerings from Uinta, in Salt Lake City. Hop Notch, on the right, is by my reckoning a really wonderful IPA. You don't have to believe me: the Alström brothers at Beer Advocate gave it a "world class" ranking. The Wyld Pale Ale is good too.

  • On the outside, two tried and true favorites: Hop Devil IPA, and Headwaters Pale Ale, both from the Victory brewing company of Downington, Pa.


Dateline DC:
Dan Fromson, an Atlantic alum, has the enviable assignment of being the WaPo's beer writer. (Plus some other duties.) Here is one of his recent reports on the craft brew renaissance right here in Dysfunction City.


Back to Utah again: 
Just because it's cheering, here is a sample of the other beers from Utah featured on the Uinta site.

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That is all.

UPDATE Actually it's not! I forgot to mention that Uinta Brewery says it is 100% wind-powered. From the company's page (emphasis in original):
Uinta Brewing Company (UBC) became 100% wind powered in 2001. The first company to be 100% wind powered in the State of Utah, Uinta has worked cooperatively as a Visionary with Pacificor's Blue Sky Program to promote the use of wind power to commercial and residential users throughout the state. Blue Sky Pilsner was named in honor of wind power. In 2011, Uinta installed solar-electric paneling on the brewery's roof, allowing up to 30KW of electrical power to be generated for Uinta's beer production--roughly 15% of the brewery's power usage. Uinta is currently 15% Solar and 85% Wind Powered.

Out of Afghanistan: William Polk Answers a Critic

In response the three-part series on Afghanistan by William R. Polk -- parts one, two, and three --  a reader who served as a U.S. military officer during the Iraq-Afghanistan era sends this complaint:
The end of that was ... sort of disappointing.  It's not that I disagree with anything Mr. Polk wrote, it's just that it's not clear to me he's very far from consensus opinion and, damn, this stuff is harder to do than I think his essay implies.  I mean, I guess I'd like to hear Mr. Polk flesh out how to do Taliban inclusion if he'd care to. 

My major objections to what he's saying is that as far as I can tell, the administration has been trying through all kinds of back channels to quietly negotiate with the Taliban.  They're coy about it, but that's to be expected, no?  That's so they can always tell the Taliban, hey man, we could walk away (even if we couldn't).  But it seems like negotiation with the Taliban has been going on on a back burner at varying levels of intensity back even into the end of the Bush administration.

It also seems like there's a hell of a problem coming from the fact that we just don't know a lot about internal command-and-control of the Taliban (understandably or else we might do better at whuppin' em).  That's why, as I recall, we got strung along by a Taliban "negotiator" who wasn't empowered to negotiate.  I don't think the Taliban care to give us a lot of insight into their organization, either.  Maybe Karzai or someone can get that, if we're not at the table?  I'd like to hear how Mr. Polk wants to identify a partner who's empowered to do anything and how to ensure that there's "Taliban" consensus for whatever we negotiate.

Lastly I think there's a damn hard regional problem, of course, that really ought to be in those last two sections of Mr. Polk's, but it isn't there.  Look, the Taliban in Pakistan have happily launched two really nasty attacks on Pakistani Army installations, and so the Pakistani Army isn't really happy with those guys at all, except for those parts of that Army which think there's somehow a discrete Afghan Taliban which functions as a cat's paw.  One way or another there's another powerful force at the table trying to position the Talibs and they haven't settled on their objectives yet (weirdly, "Pakistan" shows up nowhere in that whole second installment.)  That matters! 

When we negotiate with the Taliban and Pakistan isn't at the table, Pakistan makes trouble.  When Pakistan is at the table, Karzai makes trouble.  Omitted from Mr. Polk's list of objectives is that we need to quiet cross-border mischief (in both directions), no?  So I think this problem becomes a lot more, "look here, let me explain it all clearly to you" when you neglect the regional issues, and it gets pretty much intractable when you remember them.  But I'd like to hear his try at it.
I sent this note to Polk, at his home in France. It is not every day that you hear views on current policy from people who can say, "as I suggested to Walt Rostow about Vietnam..." But for the record here is his response:
I am grateful to  [this reader] for his thoughtful remarks on my draft policy paper and will here reply to a few of the points he makes.
 
The first and perhaps most significant issue is how to get the Taliban "to the table,"  that is to negotiate.
 
In my experience in negotiating ceasefires, I have found several common characteristics of the process.   The first is evaluation of what the other side offers.
 
I am not privy to what may have been communicated to the Taliban privately, but what appears to have reached them surely falls far short of what they would virtually have to demand.  At the low end, it is to surrender and accept what they would regard as a humiliating outcome of their insurgency; at the upper end, it would be to accept a fragile and largely ceremonial position in a government dominated by the current regime.  If I were a Talib, I would certainly not regard either the low end or the high end as acceptable.  To accept would almost certainly fracture their already-diffuse movement and probably lead to the assassination of the current leaders.
 
The second characteristic is that each side is constantly evaluating the other.  So the "window of opportunity" is shifting.  What was possible a few years ago is likely to be much more difficult today.

Again, if I were a Talib, I would doubt that the Karzai regime would or even could deliver on a deal to end the war.  Put simply, too much money is being made for anyone from Karzai on down to stop.    

More »

Paleolithic Origins of False Equivalence, Starring James Carville

For anyone with the slightest interest in modern politics, the full two-minutes-plus of this clip from The War Room will be an irresistibly rewarding glimpse back at life two decades ago. But the 20-second soliloquy by James Carville that starts around time 1:40 shows the bright thread of false-equivalence thinking that runs from that time to our own.
 


"We say 50 + 50 is 104, they say 50 + 50 is 104,000, and the press will say, 'Well both of 'em are stretching the numbers a little bit.' "

Thanks to reader RM.
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Bonus update for math/coding folks in the audience. A reader in Corvallis, Oregon writes:

A previous reader said:
"I often feel that the true expression is:
    "Democrats: 1+1 = 4
    "Republicans: 1+1 = 12
    "Press: 1+1= 10, probably, though some experts disagree."
In this case, the press is correct. They are just using "sophisticated' language to prove their superiority.

"There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't."

False Equivalence: The Master Class

False equivalence. My heart sinks, as does yours, at the mere sight of these words. But just when I was ready to post a picture of a great new beer -- from Utah! -- plus some interesting/alarming Chinese news, I made the mistake of reading the lead editorial in the Washington Post today. Oh boy. I realize it would be false equivalence of its own rococo triple-backflip variety to avoid mentioning the most classic case yet. I'll try to move through it quickly.

Reminder about the concept: The essence of the false-equivalence mindset is the reflexive assumption that "reality" is halfway between whatever two contending sides assert. Maybe that reflects early immersion in the Goldilocks saga. ("This one is too big. That one is too small. This one is just right!") Maybe it's a holdover from the age of Walter Cronkite. Perhaps it's the D.C. worthy-person's mantra, familiar from conferences and talk shows, that "partisans on both sides" are the main threat to progress. Whatever. We see it all around us now.

Reminder about the realities, as we enter another crisis over taxes and budgets:
  • The Washington Post's analysts, plus anyone who has looked at a budget, point out that the Obama Administration's budget proposals involve less in tax increases, and more in spending cuts, than what previously seemed perfectly "centrist" proposals. That is, what the administration is now proposing is what most centrist-minded people would have endorsed as a "reasonable compromise" two or three years ago;
  • Reporters from the Post, and from everywhere else, make clear that much of the GOP leadership and rank-and-file want the sequester to occur and are simply not interested in a last-minute compromise;
  • It's not from the Post, but a new profile of Eric Cantor, by Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker, makes clear what many had suspected. During the insane-at-the-time-and-worse-in-retrospect debt ceiling crisis nearly two years ago, Cantor intentionally talked Speaker John Boehner out of accepting a compromise with the Obama Administration, because Cantor wanted to preserve this as a campaign issue. Smoking-gun quote from Lizza:
    "In June of 2011, the President and the Speaker began working toward a Grand Bargain of major tax increases and spending cuts to address the government's long-term budget deficits. Until late June, Boehner had managed to keep these talks secret from Cantor. On July 21st, Boehner paused in his discussions with Obama to talk to Cantor and outline the proposed deal. As Obama waited by the phone for a response from the Speaker, Cantor struck. Cantor told me that it was a "fair assessment" that he talked Boehner out of accepting Obama's deal. He said he told Boehner that it would be better, instead, to take the issues of taxes and spending to the voters and "have it out" with the Democrats in the election. Why give Obama an enormous political victory, and potentially help him win reëlection, when they might be able to negotiate a more favorable deal with a new Republican President? Boehner told Obama there was no deal. Instead of a Grand Bargain, Cantor and the House Republicans made a grand bet."
  • Even the Post's own editorial today admits, in a "details, details" tone, that the administration has offered compromises on the crucial points, and the GOP hardliners have not.
In short the facts before us are:
    - an administration that has gone some distance toward "the center";
    - a Republican opposition many of whose members still hold the absolutist position that taxes cannot go up at all;
    - a hidden-from-no-one opposition strategy that embraces crises, shutdowns, and sequesters rather than wanting to avert them. Look again at the Lizza/Cantor quote: Obama and the Republicans could have had a "Grand Compromise" deal, but Republican hotheads wanted a fight for the sake of fighting.

That's the landscape. And what is the Post's editorial conclusion? You guessed it! The president is to blame, for not "leading" the way to a compromise. Representative passages:

Sequester offers President Obama a time to lead

... In the petty arguments over this self-inflicted wound, there are merits, or demerits, on both sides. The Republicans are right when they say that the sequester was Mr. Obama's idea, in the summer of 2011, and that he agreed to a deal that was all spending cuts, no tax hikes. He is correct that he hoped the sequester would never go into effect but would be replaced by a 10-year bargain that would raise revenue and slow the growth of entitlement costs. He is correct, too, on the larger point: Such a deal is what's needed, and the Republicans are wrong to resist further revenue hikes.

But if that's what's needed, why is Mr. Obama not leading the way to a solution? 
The same passage, annotated:
In the petty ["petty" is a dismissive signal that these are immature squabbles, petulance rather than anything really at stake] arguments over this self-inflicted wound, there are merits, or demerits, on both sides. [If you had a macro key for the last half of this sentence, you too could write false-equivalence editorials.] The Republicans are right when they say that the sequester was Mr. Obama's idea [a claim that (a) doesn't matter and (b) has been debunked in the Post], in the summer of 2011, and that he agreed to a deal that was all spending cuts, no tax hikes [not a "deal" but a poison-pill threat designed to force an agreement]. He is correct that he hoped the sequester would never go into effect but would be replaced by a 10-year bargain that would raise revenue and slow the growth of entitlement costs. He is correct, too, on the larger point: Such a deal is what's needed, and the Republicans are wrong to resist further revenue hikes. [He's right on the merits, they're right on a technicality -- but, hey, these things even out.

But if that's what's needed, why is Mr. Obama not leading the way to a solution? [What?? And how, exactly, is he supposed to change the dynamic and incentives on the other side?]
Not enough false equivalence for you? The editorial ends strong:
Most Republicans in Congress have been utterly irresponsible in this debate. They pretend that they could balance the budget without more revenue, an arithmetical impossibility, and they have failed to put forward realistic, near-term entitlement reforms. But we take little comfort in Mr. Obama's being less irresponsible. [!!!!] He is the president; his party colleagues are increasingly intransigent on entitlement reform; and it will be his -- and their -- progressive goals that suffer most if the nation continues on its current path.
Back to beer very soon, for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, a variety of suggested improvements for the terse definition of false equivalence shown recently. Here's the original:

Thumbnail image for FalseEquiv.png

From a reader in Manhattan:
I often feel that the true expression is:
Democrats: 1+1 = 4
Republicans: 1+1 = 12
Press: 1+1= 10, probably, though some experts disagree.
And from another reader:
Democrats: 1 + 1 = 3 (multiplier effect)
Republicans: 1 - 1 = 3 (trickle down)
Media: 1 = 0
__
On this same phenomenon from Greg Sargent at the WaPo.

Involving the Taliban in Afghanistan Solution: William R. Polk, Part 3

William R. Polk's first installment in this series, about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, is here; the second, about Afghan realities constraining U.S. options, is here. This is the third and last for now, an analysis of the least-bad way for the U.S. to manage its extrication from Afghanistan. For completeness, his 1958 article on "Lessons of Iraq" is here. The points below follow "Point I. Basic Facts" from earlier today:


By William R. Polk

II. The Essential Objectives of the Afghan People and The World Community:

The fundamental objective shared by the Afghans and foreigners is a peaceful and secure country, able and willing to manage its own affairs and to act as an independent member of the world community;

This objective is brought into sharp focus by the insistence of the member nations of the NATO alliance that Afghanistan, under any government, prohibit the use of its territory or other facilities for acts of terrorism or subversion in member countries and their allies.  This, after all, was the justification for the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2003.  This is the second objective;

The third objective is particularly important for, but not necessarily understood by,  Americans.  It is not only to eliminate or cut down on the vast expenditures of money (much of it borrowed) and human resources (much of it wasted in battle or used in unproductive ways) but also to avoid a "blowback" by the warping or degradation of their institutions, comity and laws caused by fear, apparent necessity for drastic action and excessive concern with "security;"

The fourth objective of the member nations of the NATO alliance and particularly of the United States is to end or at least diminish the costs to them of the war. Member nations of the NATO alliance are already acting to accomplish for themselves this objective.   Afghans generally do not share it:  the Taliban movement, fractured though it may be, is determined regardless of  cost to induce the foreigners to leave and to reestablish something like the regime that was destroyed by the American invasion.  The Karzai government wavers between the NATO/ American and the Taliban objectives.  In principle, it seeks total independence but its power brokers (aided and abetted by influential outside participants) are making vast amounts of money off the occupation and are in no hurry to end it.   That is to say, there is a small but significant area of agreement on the objectives but not on timing, on the means to achieve them and on whom will control the action.


III. Objectives Desired By The Afghan People and The World Community:

Although, in current conditions they have not uniformly or vigorously articulated it, we may assume that a desired objective of all the Afghan people is a more adequate standard of living with both an improved diet and an enhanced level of health as well as a level of education that will enable to achieve and sustain a strong economy;

Both the majority of the Afghan people and concerned foreign powers desire a level of stability sufficient to prevent civil strife and invite further foreign intervention;

Member countries of the NATO alliance as well as China and Russia would like for Afghanistan to take a place suitable to its capacities in legal world trade.  Specifically, they would like to profit from Afghanistan's mineral resources, to make use of its routes of trade and to get its help in interdicting the drug trade;

Since some aspects of Afghan society, notably the position and role of women, appear to outsiders as ugly and "medieval," they would like to foster the "evolution" of the society along contemporary Western lines.  This objective is not widely shared in the country today although, briefly in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the policy of the then Afghan government and was approved by a wide swath of urban society.  Under conditions of peace and independence, especially if these are brought about through negotiations, it is likely gradually to re-emerge.

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Getting Out of Afghanistan: William R. Polk, Part 2

William R. Polk is a long-time scholar and analyst of U.S. foreign policy who published an Atlantic article called "The Lessons of Iraq" back in 1958. Two days ago, I posted the first part of his long assessment of the options now available for the United States in Afghanistan. That part dealt with the Soviet failure in Afghanistan and what lessons it might hold.

In parts two and three, Polk turns to American policy options. This installment, number two, sets out some of the basic but often-forgotten realities of Afghanistan. In the final part, which will be ready later today, Polk examines the trade-offs for America and Afghanistan and recommends a course of action.
 
Toward a Feasible Afghan  Policy
By William R. Polk


    Too much of what we read in reports and analyses on Afghanistan is based on wishful thinking. It is late, but not too late, to move toward an affordable and sustainable policy.  To arrive at such a policy, we must begin by considering historical, geographical, ethnic and economic realities on the ground rather than merely focusing on what the Afghans, the Americans and other nations desire.   

I The Basic Facts

Afghanistan has a surface area of 6.5 thousand square kilometers (about the size of Texas or the combination of France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Denmark) of which 85% to 90% is mountainous and/or desert.  The central massif, broken by deep valleys, rises to a maximum height of nearly 8 thousand meters and much of the south and west is sand, rock or salty marsh. Thus, the economically "usable" Afghanistan is comparable to just Florida or the combination of Belgium and The Netherlands. The country has few known natural resources. Energy has been particularly lacking.  Water power is hampered by erosion, causing generators to disintegrate and storage lakes to fill with sediment.  Both oil and coal have been found but have only begun to be developed.  Timber is in very short supply, with forests covering less than 5% of the surface; much of the earlier forest areas have been denuded (destroyed by war or cut for fuel).   Ground water almost everywhere, except in the far north,  is unavailable while rain falls heavily and creates often devastating floods  in March-April.  Other floods come when snow melts in mid summer.  These times are inappropriate for most agriculture; so Afghanistan cannot feed itself.  The  reality is that Afghanistan is and will remain a poor country.

The population has risen over the last half century, from perhaps 10 million in 1962, when I first went there, to 31-33 million in 2012.  Today,  over half of the Afghanis are below the age of 18, so a major upsurge of population can be anticipated in the years ahead.  Before the Soviet invasion and occupation, the population was at least 80% rural:  most Afghans were settled peasant farmers, living in some 22,000 villages, but perhaps 1 in each 8 or 9 was a nomad.  Religiously, about 5-6 people in each 10 are Sunni Muslims and somewhat more than 3-4 in 10 are Shia Muslims.  Ethnically, the population is divided into at least two dozen communities of which the Pushtuns (aka Pathans) (4 in each 10), the Tajiks (3 in each 10) and the Hazaras (1-2 in each 10) are the largest.  These groups speak off-shoots of the Indo-European family of languages, mainly Dari, a dialect of Farsi (Persian).  Smaller Turkish and Mongol groups speak languages in the Ural-Altaic (or East Asian) family while other, even smaller,  communities speak languages in the Semitic family of languages.  Thus, Afghanistan is culturally, socially and politically diverse.

While, the diversity of the country is evident, it is important not to exaggerate its effects.  The inhabitants of the cities, towns and villages share shaping influences of means of earning their livings, religious belief and practice and historical experience.   The best known traditional code of life is the Pushtunwali of the Pushtuns,  but similar "social contracts" are  echoed in the other communities;  Islam in Afghanistan, like Christianity in Europe and America, is divided, but overall there is an intense loyalty to it;  and the experience of nearly all Afghans, shaped by generations of warfare, set them apart, they fervently believe, from all foreigners.  At minimum, the Afghans have a unity in their difference from others.

Thumbnail image for US_Army_ethnolinguistic_map_of_Afghanistan_--_circa_2001-09.jpg
 
source:

Throughout history, central governments have functioned only intermittently and in sharply limited spheres except in the few cities.  Effective government is traditionally primarily a function of village communities: each village runs its own affairs under its own leaders; its inhabitants were economically virtually autarkic, making most of their clothing and tools and eating their own produce. 

 This lack of national cohesion thwarted the Russians during their occupation: they won almost every battle and occupied at one time or another virtually every inch of the country, and through their civic action programs they actually pacified many of the villages, but they could never find or create an organization with which to make peace. Baldly put, no one could surrender the rest. Thus, over the decade of their involvement, the Russians lost about 15,000 soldiers - and the war. When they gave up and left, the Afghans resumed their traditional way of life, what might be called "the Afghan way."

"The Afghan way" is today manifested in three aspects of government:

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Suddenly My Financial Problems Are Over

From the inbox -- actually, my wife's email inbox. Fortunately we live in a community-property state.

From: <datdave@centurylink.net>
Date: Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:38 AM
Subject: MGH
To: Dxxx

The Microsoft is glad to pronounce you as the lucky winner of Eight crores Thirty Four lahks and Thirty Two Thousand INR,send us the following details for claims.

Sex:
Full Address:
Full Name:
Age:
Telephone Number:

Thank you.
Dave Robinson.
To be precise, we live in a taxation-without-representation District rather than a state of any sort, and here the marital-property principle is called "equitable distribution" rather than community property. Either way, I'm looking forward to my share of the loot, knowing that one crore is equal to ten million rupees, which in turn is worth about $200,000. 

Bonus background point: Why would anyone bother sending out something this pidgin-implausible? Quora offers some hypotheses, starting with:
  •     To filter out smart users who would immediately recognize the scam, thus ensuring that only the most gullible users respond.
  •     To read in a way that an American with money might imagine a Nigerian would write (for the multimillion dollar transfer scams)
  •     To get past spam filters
  •     To fool the victim into believing the scammer is not very sophisticated and can be tricked by the victim

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False Equivalence in One Tweet

This is nicely done.

FalseEquiv.png

To anticipate 99 percent of incoming hostile mail and online trollery: the point of this distillation is not what it says about the two political parties. You can reverse them if you want -- although in the struggle over "the sequester," I think it's right as is. The real point is what this says about the predicament and habits of the press. 

> 140-character version here.

Will We Learn Anything from Afghanistan? William R. Polk, Part 1

PolkPhoto.jpegWilliam R. Polk's first appearance as an Atlantic author came 55 years ago. While Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, while Americans were absorbing the impact of the launch of Sputnik, while the showdown over integrating Little Rock Central High School continued, he wrote an article for us in 1958 called [yes] "The Lessons of Iraq." You can read it here and note how much of the analysis still applies.

In the years since then Polk has been a scholar and diplomat concentrating mainly on Middle Eastern affairs. Three years ago he made a return visit here to report on his latest trip to Afghanistan.

Now he has written a two-part essay on what Americans should take from their past ten-plus years of combat in Afghanistan. Through all these decades, a central theme in Polk's writing has been the crucial importance of recognizing and learning from strategic mistakes -- but also the seeming impossibility of doing so. This first of his dispatches concentrates on the lessons of the Soviet Union's struggles in Afghanistan. This one is about 3500 words long, or the scale of a medium-sized Atlantic story. I turn the stage over to William R. Polk.
____

Introduction:
  President Obama intends to "wind down" the Afghan war over the next years and to leave only a training mission there.   He inherited from President Bush and has continued, even enlarged, the American expenditures -- thousands of casualties, hundreds of thousands of wounded and a trillion dollars.   The experience has been, or should have been, as Kipling wrote of another war, "no end of a lesson."  Yet, I wonder, has it really been a lesson, and have we heeded it?  Might we do the same things again?

    As I have ruminated for years over these questions, which may be nearly vital for our country and our beliefs, I have reached the conclusion that we do not see or understand the similarities of events; rather we think of each venture as unique.  What happened in Vietnam has no relevance to what happened in Iraq.  After all, the  two countries are far apart, speak different languages and...well you know the rest....

    Fortunately, most of the current wars appear to be over even though they have left us with huge burdens.  But, as we survey what may be the prospect of new burdens, do our leaders connect the past to the present and the future?  I find little evidence to suggest that they do.

    Perhaps, I have thought, this is partly because of our rotation of leadership.  The new leaders are sure that they can do better what the former leaders did badly.  It is also, I think, because our memories are weak and our attention spans are short.    Perhaps we really don't care.  Or all the above.

    Here, I am trying to do two things, hence two papers I lay before you:  the one is that by looking not only at our involvement in the current war, Afghanistan, but also looking at what the Soviet Union did and tried to do there, I can single out a few things that should command attention even of our leaders.  The other, addressed in my second paper is,  given what we know and what we have experienced, what now makes sense for us to do.

________

What the Russians did in Afghanistan And What We Can Learn From It.
By William R. Polk

I have long been a student of Afghan affairs.  I first went there in 1962 when I was a Member of the Policy Planning Council.  During that visit, I made a 2,000 mile trip around the country during which I managed to talk with dozens of village elders, government officials and the diplomats and advisers from all the main states.  The result was a policy paper I presented to the Secretary of State's policy committee.

    The main argument in my paper was that the wisest policy for America was a modest and discrete involvement designed to help the Afghans manage their own affairs.  To accomplish this goal,  I proposed various ventures in education, health and infrastructure.  

    Above all, I proposed, America should avoid actions that were likely to restart the "Great Game,"  the competition for control of Afghanistan between Imperial Russia and the then British-dominated South Asia.  Neither we, nor the by-then Soviet Russians, nor the by-then independent South Asians - and certainly not the Afghans - would gain.   What the British called a "Forward Policy" had long since proven wasteful, sterile and self-defeating.  Its modern version, proclaimed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was likely to repeat in Afghanistan what he and his brother Allan were already doing in Iran:  ultimately nullifying attempts, slow and weak as they were, toward increased national capacity and improvement of life.

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On the Atlantic's Scientology Ad (and Aftermath)

I agree with (my former Atlantic colleague) Andrew Sullivan that the bright new age of "sponsored" online content creates all kinds of challenges for publications, readers, and even advertisers.

But his chronology today on his site, about the Atlantic's policy on these ads, is off in an understandable but significant way. You can read his sequence of "quotes for the day" here. For the record, the actual sequence was this:

Miscavige.jpg- On January 14, the Atlantic ran an unfortunate "sponsored content" / advertorial from the Church of Scientology lauding its leader David Miscavige (right), which is no longer available on line.

- Later that same day, the magazine pulled the ad and ran a statement that began "we screwed up."

- The next day, I posted an item (following one from Ta-Nehisi Coates) saying that the ad had been a mistake of both concept and execution. I also said, echoing the official statement, that we were starting a review of our ad policies in light of everything that was in flux in the online age.

- A few days later, in a morale-boosting internal email never meant for general circulation, the Atlantic's president Scott Havens said that ad had been a mistake of execution only. That note was immediately (and inevitably) leaked, and was widely and mistakenly taken as the result of the promised ad-policy review. In fact the review had barely started. Scott Havens was just trying to be nice to people on our staff.

- Havens's email is the one that Andrew has posted, juxtaposed with mine, to suggest disagreement in the ranks.

- The actual revised advertising policy, which is different from that internal email, is now available. If you're interested, here it is, the official "Advertising Guideline" memo that the magazine's business staff has produced in the wake of the Scientology flap. Two points of particular relevance to the discussion Andrew and Ben Smith of Buzzfeed have kicked off:
  • The Atlantic will not allow any relationship with an advertiser to compromise The Atlantic's editorial integrity.
  • All advertising content must be clearly distinguishable from editorial content. To that end, The Atlantic will label an advertisement with the word "Advertisement" when, in its opinion, this is necessary to make clear the distinction between editorial material and advertising.
I realize that Andrew Sullivan misunderstood, rather than misconstrued or misrepresented, the sequence of views on the Atlantic's site. All publications are trying to figure out how to stay afloat, and how to keep their honor and principles while doing so. I admire the new model Andrew has set up for his site. We're trying our best here too.

False Equivalence: The Ur-Text

I hope that the on-line conversation this afternoon, between David Brooks of the NYT and Ezra Klein of the WaPo, is captured and stored in a time-capsule somewhere. People can look at it years from now as an unusually crystalline exposition of different media perspectives on politics and policy during the Obama era. 

BrooksKlein.pngWhat I've been calling the "false equivalence" outlook is one whose starting point on most issues is: "Enough of the posturing and blame game from both sides. Until we reach the true ideal of a New Centrist Party to bring us together, we have to rely on the President to put out sensible centrist plans. And if there's no agreement, our starting-point assumption is that he hasn't been forthcomingly reasonable enough."

The other outlook, which for lack of a better term just now I'll call "journalistic realism," instead says: "Yes, of course, over the years both sides have gone through 'righter' and 'wronger' phases; democracies finally move forward by compromise; and presidents have more power and therefore more responsibility for finding consensus than anyone else. But just at the moment one side is saying 2+2=4, and the other is saying 2+2=5, and the '4' people are right."

I'll let you match contender and perspective yourself. Here's a sample:
Brooks: In my ideal world, the Obama administration would do something Clintonesque: They'd govern from the center; they'd have a budget policy that looked a lot more like what Robert Rubin would describe, and if the Republicans rejected that, moderates like me would say that's awful, the White House really did come out with a centrist plan.

Klein: But I've read Robert Rubin's tax plan. He wants $1.8 trillion in new revenues. The White House, these days, is down to $1.2 trillion. I'm with Rubin on this one, but given our two political parties, the White House's offer seems more centrist. And you see this a lot. People say the White House should do something centrist like Simpson-Bowles, even though their plan has less in tax hikes and less in defense cuts. So it often seems like a no-win for them.
I know, like, and respect both of the discussants, and I think each of them has done us a service with this exchange -- Klein in having the initiative to propose the discussion and Brooks in having the menschy-ness to agree. It is worth close examination. I look forward to further reflections by both writers in their columns and (seriously) thank them for this start.

Book Tip: 'The Insurgents'

Insurgents.jpgIn the new issue of the American Prospect, available online now (but subscribe!), I have a long review of Fred Kaplan's book The Insurgents

Short version: this is a good and important book that you should read.

Medium version: see the review itself.

Full version: check out the book.

Here is a sample of the argument:
Kaplan describes how the COIN [counter-insurgency] approach eventually "succeeded" in Iraq, by which he means that it bought enough stability to allow American forces to withdraw in something other than outright retreat. In Afghanistan it has failed even that modest test; indeed, Kaplan argues, the comparative successes in Iraq lured the U.S military, especially [Gen. Stanley] McChrystal, into attempting the impossible in Afghanistan. The government in Kabul was even more corrupt and less legitimate than the one in Baghdad; Afghanistan had a far weaker tradition of centralized control of any sort than what Saddam Hussein, for better and worse, had brought to Iraq. Kaplan summarizes Australian strategist David Kilcullen on the paradox that doomed U.S. efforts in Afghanistan:
Reduced to a syllogism, his argument went like this: we shouldn't engage in counterinsurgency unless the government we're helping is effective and legitimate; a government that needs foreign help to fight an insurgency generally isn't effective or legitimate; therefore, we generally shouldn't engage in counterinsurgency.
It was a return, 40 years later, to one of the main lessons of Vietnam. By the end of America's war there, our military had gotten much better at a kind of war that it realized it was better off choosing not to fight.
Also:
Explaining ideas through biography is so attractive an approach as often to seem this era's cliché in magazine and book writing. Of course, authors from the time of Herodotus onward have understood the explanatory power of biography, but I date its modern popularity and occasional overuse to the influence of David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest and Robert Caro's The Power Broker, both in the early 1970s, followed by Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie in the 1980s.

The Insurgents stands out as a particularly effective and legitimate use of this approach, and one whose clarity and drama should extend its audience far beyond the normal defense-policy crowd.

False Equivalence: It's Worse Than We Think

Mike Lofgren, long-time Republican Senate staffer and author of The Party Is Over, says that both Jonathan Chait and I went too easy on the Washington Post editorial that presented an "all sides are to blame! please stop the posturing!" perspective on the sequestration stand-off. He writes:
It's worth pointing out that the partisan positions on deficit reduction which the Washington Post refuses to acknowledge are even worse than the mere binary choice of some spending cuts and some increased revenue versus all spending cuts and no increased revenue. As more than one House-passed "sequester avoidance bill" in the previous Congress has made clear, it is not just that the GOP wants all deficit reduction to be accomplished by spending cuts alone. It is that the GOP would prefer all deficit reduction to be borne by domestic spending alone through exempting the Pentagon. That is even more stark, don't you think?
 
An intriguing side note of this issue is Panetta's, the Joint Chiefs' and other Pentagon officials' wolf-crying to the effect that reducing the Pentagon budget from $600 billion to $550 billion "invites aggression" or leaves the US "vulnerable to coercion." Given the current partisan dynamic in Washington that I described in the previous paragraph, which party are Obama's own appointees objectively aiding?
And from another reader:
I understand the core of your false equivalence jihad.  But you are stretching it here.  Your use of "DC centrist" position as a benchmark means you are anchoring "truth" to political insider argument.  I happen to agree with  that position on this issue, but a wide range of approaches are very reasonable in this discussion.  There has been some tax increase, and some spending reductions since the base-line everyone quotes.  It is completely fair to debate whether or not the "DC centrist" position is in fact correct, and it is wrong to assume that a group that is farther from that position is "wrong." There is a reason economics is called the dismal science; unfortunately it often describes the effectiveness of predictions by economists (yes, I know that is not really the genesis of the saying).
 
We are in pretty unique economic times.  Out of the crisis.  In a recovery, which is very slow and uneven.  Profits and the stock market are up, unemployment seems stuck at 8%.  Small business are selling out in number you would not expect in a recovery. The federal government's share of the economy, and its debt level, are both at high points for most of the century.  Debate ranging from "it should be all taxes" to "it should all be spending cuts" is, unfortunately, all worth exploring.  Even if  neither extreme answer could win politically, it does not preclude a reasoned discussion on both points.  False equivalence exists, but let's not use it just because something is outside of opinion consensus.  Let's use it when it is outside of facts.  After all, there was a time that a strong consensus existed that the sun orbited the earth.
Fair points. But Chait anticipated them in his original item. Of course you could argue for a range of responses to fiscal problems: spending cuts only, tax cuts only, a mixture of the two, even no response at all. 

That's not what is happening here. The Post's editorial page clearly favors the mixed approach, which Chait labels "D.C. centrism." But when only one of the parties embraces that view, the Post appears to feels awkward saying so, lest it seem partisan. Instead it strikes a "false equivalent" stance of saying everyone is to blame for a big mess. That's why the subhead on Chait's item was "People Who Agree With Obama But Have to Pretend Otherwise."

For a clarifying comparison: I'm not a big fan of the WSJ's ed-page operation, but I would never accuse them of false equivalence. Same with Fox News.

About That Chinese Carbon Tax

Guomao.jpg-jpgI mentioned yesterday that while the Chinese hacking story was, deservedly, getting headlines, the Chinese government's decision to impose a kind of carbon tax could be the more important long-term news.

There's a very good assessment by former Atlantic guest blogger Ella Chou at Dance to the Revolution of what this new policy will and will not mean for China and everyone else. Here are your talking points for the next time this topic comes up at a dinner party:
  • Environmental carnage of all sorts is a truly major emergency in China, both in the short term [Beijing at right] and as a potential limit on the country's development;

  • Chinese emissions are a problem not just for its own people but also for the world. It has now overtaken the U.S. as the biggest carbon emitter; most of the coal that is burned anywhere on Earth is burned in China.

  • Contrary to what you might think, China's economy is relatively less efficient, and more polluting, than those of rich countries. It takes more energy to heat and cool the standard Chinese building than one in Europe or the US; Chinese farmers use more water, fertilizer, and pesticide per unit of output than is typical even with mechanized farming in the US; Chinese factories put out more air and water pollution per dollar of production than rich-country counterparts. On a per capita basis, the Chinese economy uses less energy than America's. On a per dollar (or per RMB) basis, it uses more. Simplest way to remember this point: China's economy is nowhere near as large as America's now, but it puts out more emissions.

  • China's pollution problems are a subset of the larger structural challenge for the Chinese economy -- in a way that is well explained at Dance to the Revolution. For more than thirty years price controls have been set to speed/subsidize the growth of huge export-manufacturing industries, and to increase farm output. Thus all these things have been kept artificially cheap: coal and gasoline; fertilizer, pesticide, water; plus financing itself, and use of the environment as a free good. Because they're cheap, companies and farmers have of course used these things freely and often wastefully.

  • Everyone in the Chinese economic world knows that the country is not going to move out of cheap-workhouse status, toward the realm of "real" rich-country corporate power and prosperity, unless (among other changes) it begins removing these price distortions. So that's the significance of a modest carbon tax, beyond its limited immediate environmental effect. It's part of the effort to "rebalance" the Chinese economy by removing some of its most distorting factors. 

Bonus diplomatic-leverage point: Chinese officials have long used U.S. inaction on climate and carbon-tax issues as a rationalization for not taking steps of their own. On average, we're still quite a poor country, the spokesmen would say. If the rich U.S. can't "afford" to deal with emissions, how could we? Now the country is taking this carbon-tax step for reasons of its own reasons -- as a way to deal with pollution and as another step in un-distorting the economy. But as a bonus it gets talking points to prod the US to do its part.

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