What She Said

The essay is a little rambly since it's structured as a review of a bunch of books, at least one of which seems to have been a bit off-topic, but Samantha Power sure is smart.

Comments

I found her response to Asad profoundly weak. I can see the case that under a Sam Power administration, one can draw clearer lines of intentionality among bombings that cause mass civilian death. I don't see why we should assume that's always true, certainly under the Bush administration I don't see it.

That gets at the weakness of Power's article, to me. The ultimate objective still seemed to be "securing American power against The Terrorists." She talked about how we divide and conquer, but in the end it's about effective counterinsurgency. The US is only going to secure some level of peace in the middle east with massive political endeavors, and spending many pages talking about good counterinsurgency seemed to me to obfuscate the point.

Power seems to me to be about halfway stuck within the neocon paradigm of military actions and interventions. I like her work better than 95% of popular work on the subject, but I hope that Matt's book will offer a more robust shift in elite thinking.

Posted by DivGuy | July 28, 2007 12:42 PM

I also wish she'd been a little more blunt about the upshot of the counterinsurgency manual w.r.t. Iraq. She notes that it insists on a minimum of 20 counterinsurgents / 1000 population, but really needed to follow this up with the reminder that this implies the Army's own field manual declares Iraq unwinnable, unless we intend to "surge" up to 530k people in there. Sigh. This isn't news, obviously, but repetition helps.

Posted by X. Trapnel | July 28, 2007 2:41 PM

"The US is only going to secure some level of peace in the middle east with massive political endeavors"

That "massive political endeavor" is only politically possible under a military/intelligence cover. The "necessity of coordination with beefed-up civilian agencies, which are needed to take on reconstruction and development tasks." will simply not be funded;“More people play in Army bands than serve in the U.S. foreign service,” she {Sewall writes.

The new counter-insurgency manual; if used to slap around the JCS and MI establishment, should make a radical reorganization of the military and a radical redefinition of its missions plausible. The missions should not be the defense of Taiwan and prevention of a tank attack in the Fulga Gap, but
"The fundamental premise of the manual is that the key to successful counterinsurgency is protecting civilians"

The military should be about peace-creating and peace-keeping, not blowing shit up real good. It should be for instance, I would contend, a higher priority in Iraq to get electricity to Baghdad than killing insurgents and car bomb factories. Two hours of power a day in summer is more destructive of our aims, for a broader section of the populace, than the market explosions.

All MY is gonna get, if his "Iraq was a horrible idea from the start" is at best a smaller techno-military and very little funding for diplomatic and constructive projects. Which will lead inevitably, since there will be more wars, to the kind of brutish counter-productive response we see in Iraq. Or much much worse. Eli Lake's armies of torturers and assassins, spreading bad will in the back-alleys of the world.

We need divisions of engineers, doctors, translators, diplomats. They need to be in uniform to get funded. Like the Roman Army built the aqueducts and baths, we need Sgts and squads running wire and transformers in Iraq.

Posted by bob mcmanus | July 28, 2007 2:42 PM

"Army's own field manual declares Iraq unwinnable, unless we intend to "surge" up to 530k people in there."

America is at what, less than 65% employed? Subtracting the young and old and infirm, I am sure we could come up with a couple million to volunteer for Iraq. Opening up jobs at home, increasing wages and labour bargaining power.

They would not be combat soldiers. Ask for 10,000 electrical workers, and a thousand security guards or just warm bodies with old M16s to protect them. Multiply by a hundred other needed skills.

With the right political leadership and rhetoric, I think it still could be done. Pay for it with a return to 1955 marginal rates.

Posted by bob mcmanus | July 28, 2007 2:56 PM