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FABIUS MAXIMUS ON IRAQ

DNI’s Fabius Maximus has a wry piece up, “Situation Report on the Expedition to Iraq “. The dry title belies a somewhat swiftian comparison of the Bush administration policy in Iraq with the classic seven stages of grief. Unfortunately, unlike Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal,
Fabius has posited criticisms that are not merely satirical.

“As many 4GW experts forecast, the western nations’ (largely US and UK) Expedition to Iraq was doomed before it began. As such the Kubler-Ross “Death and Dying” process offers the best metaphor for our conduct of the war. 1/

America’s elites remained for a long period in Denial, and then moved into Anger. 2/ They directed their anger at anybody other then themselves: Bush/Hitler, Leftist traitors, “Neville Chamberlain’s” in the Democratic Party, Al Qaeda, various elements of the Iraq people, and Iran. There have been, of course, few mea culpa’s from our leaders, Democrat or Republican.”

While we can differ on details, I am more or less in agreement with Fabius that America’s elite, both Left and Right, have failed the people and the soldiers in Iraq with their uncertainty, fecklessness, paralysis and addiction to self-absorbed partisanship. America needs a new elite, the old one has lost heart, nerve and to a certain extent -their head. They lack the will to prosecute the war on terror and the skill to execute it well. I’m not sure we’ll see great improvement in statesmanship either until the Boomers start yielding their place to GenX’ers.

Fabius has not yet posted his recommendations but I have two observations on the second part of his article where he criticizes the remaining options left to salvage the situation in Iraq ( Fabius presumes it not to be worth salvaging and counsels that defeat be accepted).

Fabius is correct that withdrawing to the desert helps nothing except to delay the inevitable. He’s right. It’s a form of avoiding choosing sides in a multi-ethnic and sectarian civil war, which will neither prevent the civil war nor do us much good. One potential solution is to forswear supposed neutrality, which no Iraqi believes of us anyway, and put our weight behind the likely winners so they win faster and with less ultimate bloodshed ( this is relative and bloodshed will happen regardless. The question now is: How much ?).

Another choice is to opt for what Fabius derides, an alliance with a Kurdish client state that comes to an agreement with Ankara, so that at least there is a zone of stability and civil peace in one section of old Iraq. As far as ” stable platforms” are concerned, Kurdistan need not be West Germany circa 1985, just be non-anarchic and open to connectivity to the West.

Is this a perfect solution ? No, not in my view. Are Barzani and Talabani the reincarnations of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams ? No. But they aren’t Saddam Hussein or Pol Pot either and seem to grasp Kurdistan’s delicate geopolitical position and need of American support. Reasonable, if self-interested, partners who command disciplined fighting forces. Can anything similar be found among Shiites or Sunnis ?

What the Kurds represent is only a realistic opportunity to hedge against total disaster and the U.S. should take it with their eyes wide open. Kurdistan also fits the size of the forces we have committed while Iraq as a whole does not. Having thrown away every strategic opportunity that emerged in Iraq in the aftermath of Saddam’s overthrow, policy makers need to adjust their sights now toward accomplishing minimalist goals.

ADDENDUM:

Discuss Fabius’ article at The Small Wars Council

MILTON FRIEDMAN, R.I.P

“There were Giants in the Earth in those days”

Professor Milton Friedman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, the father of monetarism and easily one of most influential economists of the twentieth century, passed away today of heart failure at the age of 94.

An ardent and lifelong exponent of free markets and individualism, Freidman never lost his intellectual curiousity or his willingness to reexamine his ideas about markets and the state and critically review his own prior arguments. Friedman’s ideas provided the intellectual power behind a sigificant part of the modern conservative movement and continue to influence the culture to this day. His seminal work, Capitalism and Freedom, sits alongside The Road to Serfdom, Atlas Shrugged, The Conservative Mind and Conscience of a Conservative in the pantheon of books that gave rise to the generation of activists who made up the New Right and rode to power with Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Rest in peace, Dr. Friedman.

ATTENTION SCARCITY

I had about three items that I promised some blogfriends to get up tonight and I failed on two of them. As I really need to get some sleep ( I get up about 5 a.m.) they must carry over to the next evening. I’m beat.

MAINSTREAMING THE GOSPEL OF RESILIENCE

As noted by Dr. Barnett, Stephen DeAngelis of ERMB, Enterra Solutions and now a co-founder ( with Oak Ridge National Labratory) of the Institute for Advanced Technologies in Global Resilience, has been named one of Esquire Magazine’s “Best and Brightest”. Steve has been made the subject of a feature article “The Age of Resilience” by Brian Mockenhaupt, who has lucidly explained Steve and Enterra’s mission:. An excerpt:

“Squirreled away in an office building a half hour outside Philadelphia, Enterra’s small staff of tech whizzes and programmers is breathing life into Resilience Net. They huddle around computers writing language that translates regulations, laws, and accepted business practices into automated rule sets—if A and B, then C. These rules, which might tell a busi¬ness how to order new parts or com¬ply with the Patriot Act, are amassed in virtual libraries as algorithms. The system can think and react, much the way your antivirus software detects a threat, sends in a report, and brings back a patch to fix the problem while it inoculates other systems. The rules decide what information needs to be analyzed and shared, then how to disseminate it to the right people. If a law changes, new rules are added to the library and the system updates and learns. Now the organization can act with minimal human involvement, and as new sensors, databases, or analysis techniques are developed, the overall network grows in strength. With different groups using the same rules library, translating information into code every¬one can understand, communication is streamlined. This is how you connect the dots.
But Enterra’s creature needs skin and bones, and Oak Ridge has the scientists. The laboratory was a key play¬er in building the first atomic bombs, which is fitting, because DeAngelis sees the new institute as another Manhattan Project, a group of disparate players com¬ing together to solve a special problem. Oak Ridge is well suited to the role. After the lab lost the spigot of cash that flowed during the cold war, it devoted itself to increasing American competitiveness, teaming with private enterprises to devel¬op new technologies. Companies working with Oak Ridge draw on a deep and unique resource pool—cutting-edge and hugely ex¬pensive facilities, some of the best minds in the country, and co operative agreements with top university research departments. Give Oak Ridge a problem and it can probably solve it. Its $1.4 billion spallation neutron source can peer inside materials and map their atoms. Its electron microscopes can see to a ten millionth of a millimeter. And its banks of supercomputers can apply Enterra’s rules to a million scenarios and spit out solutions while there’s still time to act.”

(A personal aside; having been through Fermilab’s nuclear particle accelerator lab on a couple of occasions as a guest of Dr. Von, I found the description of Oak Ridge’s facilities and partnership with Enterra to be darned interesting)

Steve too had some remarks on his blog where he added some information to the Esquire article:

“As the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute, I have started recruiting some of the world’s best minds and will continue that effort. Some of those brilliant individuals undoubtedly would like to know exactly what the relationships are between Enterra and the Institute. In order to fully understand that relationship, you have to understand the relationships between the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, UT-Battelle, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, and the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies. I’m going to give you just a brief version of those relationships.

ResilienceNet is an intelligent, rules-based sense, think, and act application that enables decision support and secure information sharing based on real-time data sources such as SensorNet. SensorNet is an ORNL research program that addresses technical challenges associated with real-time sensor systems for national security and other large applications. ORNL and Enterra Solutions are collaborating to enable advanced ResilienceNet applications to interface with SensorNet interoperability standards. These tools will create an automated sense, think, and act capability in response to Chemical, Nuclear, Biological, Cyber and Explosive threats that should make existing nuclear emergency response capabilities even more effective“

The important aspect of the Esquire piece, aside from the nice honorific element, is that it will help take the concept of ” resiliency” out of the esoteric realm of defense intellectuals, network theorists and adolescent psychologists and inject it into the world of mainstream journalism and political discourse. Making organizations, networks, institutions and America itself more resilient requires tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of decisions by local and midstream deciders.

“Opting for resilience” is non-obvious from a short-term balance sheet perspective. It requires some education and diffusion of knowledge throught the culture so that the resiliency becomes a standard ” option in play” when entrepreneurs, agencies and communities are planning for the future. As it stands, in most public debates, the benefits of building resiliency is usually understood only by engineers who usually prove less persuasive before political bodies than do bean-counters or self-aggrandizing special interest voices.

( A second personal aside: in a fit of civic idealism, I once served for a number of years on a planning commission for a midwestern municipality; a commission that had unusually broad powers over economic development. As a rule, engineers do not win arguments with lawyers when the judges are laymen, unless the engineer can point – in bold colors – to the imminent disaster some proposed course of action will cause. Hypothetical but reasonable probabilities are a concept that is totally lost on the general public)

Steve has a company. Enterra is not in the business of losing money. But in preaching the gospel of resilience, Steve is also working toward the public good. A public that must live in a world that increasingly resembles an ecology as much as an economy – a dynamic, complex, adaptive system whose evolution appears to be acclerating even as it’s internal ” brakes” and ” circuit-breakers” are being eliminated. Resiliency cannot be done by an American GOSPLAN, it is something that people will choose if they understand the advantages.

When the next Hurricaine Katrina or a biological 9/11 hits, America will discover that resiliency is not an option.

ADDENDUM:

Dan of tdaxp – “Web 3.0“

Asia Logistics Wrap – “Semantic Web for the Supply Chain“

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE

As I was drawn into some annoying, time-wasting, online nonsense earlier today, I thought it might be amusing to highlight that experience with a link to Flame Warrior. A lighthearted look for anyone who has dealt with roving bands of trolls.

Hat tip to Prometheus6 who brought it to my attention a while back.