Recommended Reading

May 10th, 2010 by zen

“It is time for Pakistan to go in there [North Waziristan] and gut the Taliban and al Qaeda once and for all,” a top US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. “They are hitting us in Afghanistan and are trying to hit us at home, and this has to be stopped. Airstrikes alone won’t solve this problem,” the source said, referring to the attacks carried out by unmanned Predators against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and camps in North Waziristan.

Pundita –U.S. to Pakistan: We’re really, really upset with you this time so we’ll have to give you more money

“There’s going to be enough here to trigger a policy debate,” predicted one senior official with access to U.S. intelligence on Pakistan and involvement in White House discussions about the bombing attempt. …What U.S. intelligence on Pakistan?

Cut to the sound of chirping crickets.

 Foreign Policy (Michael Innes) – COIN confusion

Are COIN and CT “incompatible”? Are the terms “globalized insurgency and counterinsurgency” hopelessly muddled?

Now things not related to Pakistan or Afghanistan or terrorism…… 

Automatic Ballpoint –Reagan, Thatcher, and the ‘Tilt’ 

Falklands si, Malvinas no! 🙂

WIRED (Ryan Singell) – Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative

Yes.

The New Atlantis (Ivan Kenneally) – The Technocratic American University

….The modern university’s mission to promote the rational autonomy of the individual is in tension with its charge to cultivate the virtues necessary for civic life. This conflict, between the rejection of philosophical authority and the concession to the need for moral authority, reflects modernity’s sanguine optimism regarding the coincidence of intellectual and moral virtue. In this respect, both the university and the modern theory out of which it was born take quite literally Socrates’ ironic identification of virtue with knowledge.

Joseph Fouche – Saturday Night’s All Right For Linking

This saves me time of typing “hat tip”.

That’s it!

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  1. Schmedlap:

    May 11th, 2010 at 2:36 pm

    I read Exum’s piece a few days ago, revisited it again yesterday, and find it to be a typical CNAS product. This paper wouldn’t be taken seriously if written by someone at a lesser known institution and would probably earn low marks if handed in by a first year grad student. It ignores the fundamental weaknesses of our problems in Afghanistan, glosses over the biggest challenges, and proposes a vague solution built upon shaky assumptions, dreamed up by someone who seems incapable of thinking in terms of anything other than pop-COIN.

  2. Schmedlap:

    May 11th, 2010 at 2:37 pm

    But, I will add that the graphic design is spiffy, though it makes the PDF kind of jump around when scrolling through the document. Kind of annoying.

  3. zen:

    May 11th, 2010 at 5:36 pm

    Hi Schmedlap,
    .

    Heh. But how do you really feel about it? 😉

    .
    Unfortunately, with any white paper floated to the EOB, the most important strategic variables are a priori off the table with this administration, as well as with the previous one ( Pakistan as state sponsor of Taliban, KSA funding of Taliban, removing Hamid Karzai and getting a decent government in place). The only advice they will consider is how to do what they already want to do in a better, more politically acceptable and/or less costly manner. Exum wrote that kind of paper. We could write something on invading Pakistan or bugging out of Afghanistan or bombing someone into the stone age but it will be DOA as soon as it is published.

  4. tdaxp:

    May 12th, 2010 at 7:29 pm

    It is striking how history is repeating itself here — Karzai is our Chiang Kai-shek: brilliantly adapted to local situations, but hooked into our system while not trusting it. I wonder how it will end.

  5. “….Diminishing U.S. options” « OnParkStreet:

    May 12th, 2010 at 11:47 pm

    […] Pundita via Zen: “U.S. to Pakistan, We’re really, really upset with you this time so we’ll have […]