Lessons From Bush's War On Terrorism

Thomas Barnett writes:

Looking at the United States from the outside in, these are the primary lessons the world should take away from America's "global war on terrorism" under Bush-Cheney.

Potential state-based adversaries should take little comfort from the U.S. government's record in Afghanistan and Iraq, primarily because its military has proven itself capable of learning how to better shape postwar outcomes - its Achilles' heel since World War II. Worse, for them, that learning curve has kept its casualty levels low enough to call into question the long-held assumption that America has the patience only for short wars.

Continue reading.

I also suggest checking out the latest postings at Barnett's blog and pre-ordering a copy of his latest book, Great Powers: America and the World After Bush, which comes out on Feb. 5.

I'll be reading and blogging about Great Powers soon after it becomes available.

Forty Years Of Reason

Reason magazine recently put out its 40th anniversary issue:



Though I've never subscribed to the print edition, Reason's online edition and blog are two of the most cherished feeds in my reading list. The magazine's libertarian voice is an excellent counterweight to the vulgar liberal or conservative biases present in many ideologically slanted publications.

You can read the entire December issue for free here.

D-(eye) On Arts

Though we've long included a link to our sister blog, D-(eye) on Arts, on our site, I just wanted to take a moment to give it a little special attention. This could be because I've started posting there as well and am a shameless self-promoter. Or it could be a purely altruistic gesture towards the wonderful arts and culture staff. Yeah, let's go with that second option.

Anyway, check it out. Doing so will let you know what this picture is all about:



Enjoy!

My Current Reading List

Day by day my loathing of the mainstream media and fear of its insidiously vapid influence on American discourse grows like a snowball rolling down a hill. It's gotten to the point where I can barely open most publications without experiencing feelings of extreme disgust at how shallowly or even stupidly most important issues are treated.

Despite how difficult the utter meltdown in the traditional print media might make it for me to find the kind of job I'd really like to have after I graduate, I am deeply thankful for the industry's ongoing collapse. If newspapers that suck as much as many of them do were doing well financially, I would be much more depressed.

Anyway, enough negativity. There's a lot of excellent reporting and commentary going on these days and I follow many such excellent sources religiously. And so should you. So here's my complete reading list (pretty much everything I'm currently subscribed to in Google Reader)--check some of them out:

Towleroad - a multi-topic blog aimed primarily at gay men

Bleeding Heartland - a liberal blog focusing on Iowa politics

Blogging Heads - a diverse set of writers and thinkers engage in thoughtful conversations

Boing Boing - a wide variety of technology, media, and associated issues coverage

Cafe Hayek - a conservative libertarian blog

Cato @ Liberty - the libertarian Cato Institute's blog

Century of the Common Iowan - another Iowa-based liberal blog

Fastforward - a discussion of new media's impact on media businesses

Glenn Greenwald - excellent legal and political commentary on the degeneration of American democracy

Official Google Blog - Google's main corporate blog

Iowa Independent - great online-only Iowa newspaper/blog hybrid

Global Guerrillas - commentary on how technology is destabilizing traditional nation states

Climate Progress - serious, science-focused discussion of climate change problems and solutions

Overcoming Bias - unique discussion of bias issues in the social science, especially surrounding skepticism of the possibility of a technological singularity

The Agitator - coverage of how the drug war and the militarization of police are destroying civil liberties in America

Kurzweil Accelerating-Intelligence News - Ray Kurzweil's collected news stories about developments he thinks are leading to a technological singularity

Hit & Run - Reason magazine's blog

Reason Magazine Online - full articles from the libertarian publication

Responsible Nanotechnology - discussions of the promises and perils of trends in the field of nanotechnology

The Savage Lovecast - Dan Savage's weekly sex-advice podcast

Slashdot - "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

Slog - The Stranger's (a Seattle alternative weekly) group blog

Enterprise Resilience Management Blog - how businesses and governments can best cope with globalization and its challenges

TED Talks - videos of presentations from the annual technology, entertainment, and design conference

Thomas P.M. Barnett's Blog - discussion of military affairs in the age of globalization

Urban Prankster - experiments in post-modern art, often involving flash mobs

The Fly Bottle - Will Wilkinson's blog on libertarian issues and ideas

Wired Magazine - some of the most colorful technology reporting available

Wired: Danger Room - Wired's military blog

Wired: Threat Level - Wired's electronic security and rights blog

And, as I've written numerous times before, if you're interested in a compilation of the articles from all of these sources that I find the most important and/or edifying, check out my news site: http://tinyurl.com/christopherpatton

How to Get Out (and Stay Out) of Iraq

Thomas Barnett lays out the best strategy for leaving Iraq such that we are least likely to ever feel pressured to return:

With American combat troops now slated to depart Iraq by 2011, our intervention moves into its final phase, with the crucial goal being the expansion of economic opportunity for ordinary citizens.

Our - and Iraq's - success here will determine the likelihood of our military's return down the road under less favorable circumstances.

Much is made of Iraq's seeming unwillingness to spend its oil profits on infrastructure, the assumption being that Baghdad is milking American taxpayers. Let me offer another explanation: Iraq lacks sufficient "counterparty" capacity to negotiate, conclude and manage the necessary deals with the outside world.

He goes on to argue that helping Iraq develop that ability over the next two years is key to the success of our withdrawal.

Barnett's new book, in which he lays out his vision for America's role in the world after George Bush's ignoble rule ends, comes out early next year.

More Questions Regarding the Anthrax Case

Glenn Greenwald continues to ask the questions the mainstream media fails to even consider in their coverage of the largely-ignored anthrax attack mystery:

The more that is revealed about the FBI's still largely-secret case against Bruce Ivins, the more doubts that are raised about whether their accusations are true. A particularly vivid episode illustrating how shoddy the FBI's case seems to be occurred in the last several days.

Ever since the FBI accused Bruce Ivins of being the sole anthrax attacker, one of the most glaring of the many deficiencies in the FBI's case is the complete lack of evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, placing Ivins at the New Jersey mailboxes (the proverbial "scene of the crime") on either of the two dates on which the anthrax letters were sent.

Read the whole post here--we can't let this get swept under the rug.

Recommended Reading/Multimedia

Anyone interested in the scientific and political aspects of climate change should definitely keep up with Climate Progress. On the scientific side of things, one post today discussed how increasing energy efficiency is currently by far the best "source" of cheap power. And in the political sphere, another post notes the enormous increase in campaign donations from the oil and gas industries John McCain has seen since changing his previous position and coming out in favor of offshore drilling.

Likewise, anyone interested in thoughtful insider analysis of American military policy should always pay attention to what Thomas Barnett has to say. In the current installment of his weekly column, he lays out the reality of the military situation the next American president will inherit:

...by consuming so much of America's military force during these seven long years of nonstop, high tempo, high rotation action, the Bush administration basically condemned its successor to what will probably be an additional seven lean years of military operations.

Whether it's simply winding down Afghanistan and/or Iraq and "replenishing the force," or shifting dollars from operations and maintenance funds to cover a plethora of Cold War "programs of record" that the Bush Administration has refused to scale back, the next administration has been handed a veritable train wreck in terms of future budgetary crises. Something will have to give.

What does that mean for the next president? It means ingenuity and inventiveness will be at a premium, because our incoming president's grand strategy is necessarily one of realigning America's trajectory to that of a world being transformed by the simultaneous rise of numerous great powers.

Continuing in my attempt to point to examples of the mainstream media doing an excellent job whenever I think they are, I'm happy to note that ABC has finally picked up on the horrible, tragic case of Rachel Hoffman, who was brutally murdered when a poorly planned police sting went terribly wrong.

However, an area where most journalists don't seem to have caught on yet is how technology is rapidly dissolving our traditional notions of privacy. For one thing, Google continues to take pictures for its maps service that are likely to reveal all sorts of formerly hidden things. Furthermore, cameras and robots are getting so small and efficient that an insect-sized flying machine is now capable of capturing video. Though this prototype can't staff aloft very long, that is sure to change in the near future. This puts a whole new meaning behind the age-old wish to be a fly on the wall in a secret meeting.

Another powerful technology that is likely to impact society's notions of privacy is quantum computing. Quantum computers are just now reaching a point where they're advanced enough to be commercially useful. When their full potential is realized in coming years, current data encryption techniques will become trivially easy to circumvent.

Finally, the most recent edition of the Free Will series of Blogginheads.tv diavlogs focuses on the fascinating philosophical question of the nature and origin of human morality.

As always, go here to see more items I find interesting online.

Recommended Reading

I've already burned myself out on politics for the day, so this post is all about technology.

Soon, rather than watching some content on our televisions and some on our computers, we'll be able to stream high-definition video to any screen in our homes.

Not long after that we'll all also be able to stream live video from our cellphones directly onto the Internet.

And eventually we'll all be able to generated high-quality computer animation in real time and mix that in with real video, unleashing virtually unlimited possibilities for the budding independent television journalist in all of us. Forget the satellite trucks, production studios, and broadcast towers--all one will need will be a cellphone, a laptop, and an Internet connection.

Moving a bit further out into the future, humanoid robots will become cheap enough for everyone to afford. I can't wait to get one to do my housework and provide whatever other services need providing.

But hopefully the servant robots don't rebel and team up with the automated spy blimps and other more dangerous flying drones which will likely soon fill the skies. Hopefully.

For more information on the promises and perils of emerging technologies, check the rest of the stuff I post to my shared items page.

Recommended Reading

Our own print edition's commentary on Steve King's recent behavior wasn't the only such piece published today. Iowa Independent also drew attention to some recent remarks they considered to be inappropriate.

But regardless of how anyone feels about King, I'm certainly glad I live in Iowa rather than in Turkey. It's not as though my homosexuality is immediately apparent to everyone I meet, but I certainly don't make any effort to hide it--and I've never felt threatened in Iowa City. However, given this chilling account out of Istanbul, I can't say I'd act the same way if I lived there.

Continuing on with the depressing news, more questions are being raised about the reliability of DNA-matching databases. This really ought to remind us that we always need to be careful about integrating new technologies into our criminal justice system before we're completely sure of their reliability.

In somewhat confusing news, the Iraqi government seems to be pretty confident foreign combat troops will be able to be out of the country by some time in 2010--but this is after Iraq's prime minister first made a similar comment before seemingly back-tracking on the issue. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out in both the American and Iraqi elections.

Retreating to the realm of techno-optimism, which is one of my favorite safe havens, I'm happy to pass along data suggesting that 25 percent of the people on Earth will be online by 2012. Hopefully, computer translation will be good enough by that point to tear down the language barrier that has divided humanity for so long.

Finally, if you're not looking forward to all the typing and clicking you'll have to do to in the future if your job requires you to work primarily online, I have some good news. Technology that literally allows computers to read people's minds is already here and improving rapidly. Keyboards and mice may well go the way of the floppy drive sooner than most people imagine.

Recommended Reading

If anyone wonders how I keep track of all these diverse websites I link to, I use Google Reader. It's very easy to use and basically lets you pull in information from multiple sources and compile it into your own personalized newspaper. Give it a try if you're sick of letting other people decide which articles you should see.

I'll begin with an article discussing the future of the Washington Post. It quotes Microsoft's Steve Ballmer as saying that no one will read paper newspapers anymore in ten years. Though it may take a bit longer than that, it will happen eventually. Start thinking about how that affects you if have any plans to make your living as a journalist. In an economic system like we have in America, it's your job to figure out how to make money doing what you like. So stop fretting and get to it.

In the international sphere, Glenn Greenwald calls American elites on how they seem to hold other countries to quite different standards than ourselves:

If there were a powerful nation (besides the U.S.) that had a leading foreign policy analyst unapologetically justifying the brutal destruction of another country by explaining that its citizens needed to "Suck On This," and had a leading presidential candidate who sung songs about dropping bombs on the U.S. and who told jokes about killing Americans (while his leading ally demands that that country attack even more countries), we would be subjected to an endless array of Op-Eds from Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer condemning them and demanding that "meaningful action" be taken against such a "rogue nation." And Tom Friedman would be righteously and darkly insisting that such a country be "compelled to change its behavior."

Moving on to American politics, Marc Ambinder provides some interesting analysis of how Obama has managed his campaign, which is a refreshing change from all the nonsense that passes for political reporting in most publications.

Also in good political journalism, Radley Balko asks some excellent questions of John McCain.

Thinking of longer-term issues, John Robb ponders how communities can use disruptive new technologies to protect themselves.

As always, for more links, go here.

Recommended Reading

Though I recently expressed excitement at the prospect of electronic parking meters in San Francisco because they would allow people to pay with their smart phones, I recognize how careful we have to be when using computer systems to control vital infrastructure. The difficulties of protecting such technology from outside attack is difficult, but keeping an eye on those who are supposed to be managing it is equally important. Another story from San Francisco illustrates this point quite well:

Terry Childs, 43, is accused of locking out the city from its FiberWAN network containing city e-mails, payroll, police records and information on jail inmates. He was arrested Sunday after refusing to hand over passwords to the Wide Area Network system he is accused of taking control of.

Thus, as we rightly go about using technology to make our lives more efficient, we also need to make sure we maintain security and accountability in the use of these new technologies.

But not all problems necessarily require new technologies to solve them. How can people get around now that gas is so expensive? Perhaps by going the decidedly low-tech route of using one's own two feet. As I've long supposed, higher gas prices may actually be helping us fight our national obesity epidemic:

Keeping gas in the family truckster is slimming more than wallets these days and could have Americans tightening their belts -- literally. According to Charles Courtemanche, an assistant economics professor at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, rising fuel prices are the ultimate crash diet for a nation that grew fat on cheap gas.

Courtemanche says a $1 increase in the price of gasoline could cut the obesity rate by 10 percent, saving 16,000 lives and $17 billion in health care costs each year. He makes the case in "A Silver Lining? The Connection Between Gasoline Prices and Obesity," his doctoral dissertation in health economics. The paper, currently being peer-reviewed, can be summed up in the simple idea that people walk more, bike more and dine out less when gas prices rise.

In other news relating to increasing transportation costs, some engineers are advocating growing food within major cities:

What if "eating local" in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food?

Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zucchini-in-the-sky visions a reality. Despommier's pet project is the "vertical farm," a concept he created in 1999 with graduate students in his class on medical ecology, the study of how the environment and human health interact.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Finally, Reason's Matt Welch encourages everyone to take a deep breath and realize that people have been selling papers by proclaiming the coming apocalypse for quite some time--and of course they've been wrong thus far and will likely continue to be:

For the record, as someone who both predicted the dollar collapse and believed fervently in the Y2K bug, I think that things will continue to get worse, especially as the housing mess continues to unwind (not soon enough for renters like me and Paul Thornton!) and entitlements continue to swell larger than Al Gore's neck. But I can't help wonder if that's more about a juvenile fondness for train wrecks than a sober assessment of an economy that, despite its many flaws, has consistently outpaced the doomsayers for what, a quarter century now?

For more interesting links, click here.

Recommended Reading

Putting the nerdy technology stuff up front this time, Tesla Motors is now selling its bad-ass electric cars, the American military is deploying chemical-sniffing robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, and scientists have developed a device capable of sequencing individual DNA strands.

On a decidedly less impressive note, our government's terrorist watch list now apparently has a million names on it, many of them common enough to snag all sorts of random people and inconvenience them without accomplishing anything. And in another government-related fiasco, it turns out that most of what the Texas authorities told the press about the FLDS kids they took away from their parents is completely false.

On a more optimistic note, things seem to be going pretty well up in Iraqi Kurdistan:

Some of the wildcatters in the Kurdistan region have already struck oil and the KRG expects that it will have arrangements in place to start exporting oil by the end of next year (perhaps as much as a quarter of a million barrels a day). Blessed with natural resources, a governmental leadership structure that is evolutionary and visionary, a stable security environment, and developing rule of law, I'm confident that region's economy will become successful and diverse.

And what would we do without our daily insights from our favorite wackos over at Westboro Baptist Church?

If Tony Snow could have the one desire he holds at this moment – after getting a drop of cool water on his tongue – he would come to his own funeral and warn every disobedient dolt in attendance, or watching it all on the TV, to OBEY GOD AND NOT COME TO THAT AWFUL PLACE. Tony Snow is in exquisite torment at this hour; all his fruits indicate that this is true. And if there’s even a slight chance that he has an eternal sentence in hell – where the smoke of his torment will ascend up day and night, the worm will eat on him that never dies every day, and he will gnaw his tongue for pain every day, and he will experience destruction (the kind that doesn’t annihilate you, just torments you) every day from the very presence of the God who he ignored through his entire life – DON’T LIVE LIKE HIM!

If you like the above links, you can see more on my shared items page.

Recommended Reading

In international news, global development and security expert Thomas P.M. Barnett discusses his concern that Israel may bomb Iran before the American presidential election later this year:

Looming behind the most crucial dynamics is the possible presidency of Barack Obama, suggesting that war may become inevitable due to the fear of peace. After eight years of Bush-Cheney, such is the state of our world.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency has been a disaster for the Iranian people. Despite all the oil wealth, inflation is raging, and the economy goes nowhere. Add in a stunning birth dearth, the world's worst brain drain, plus Iranian prostitutes headlining European brothels, and this is clearly a society in a death spiral.

With restless students chanting in public for Ahmadinejad's death, little wonder the man pines for a splendid little war.

The Sunday Times also reports on the looming possibility of Israeli air strikes against Iran. (Via Sullivan.)

On the domestic front, electronic rights activist Cory Doctorow expresses enthusiasm over efforts to fight against the new FISA bill in court:

Yee-HAW! EFF, the ACLU and others are suing the government -- in multiple suits! -- over the new spy bill that "legalizes" warrantless bulk surveillance and immunizes the telcos from civil prosecution for their past bad deeds in cooperating with the President in wiretapping the whole nation.

Zooming in yet further to Iowa, Bleeding Heartland updates us on Rob Hubler's uphill battle against incumbent Representative Steve King.

On the Christopher-thinks-technology-can-solve-all-our-problems front, it looks like Internet-ready electronic parking meters may soon allow us to pay with our smart phones instead of digging around in our pockets for change. (Via Slashdot.)

However, not everyone might be quite ready to adopt such new-fangled techmology.

More opportunities for reading over my shoulder abound on my shared items page.

Recommended Reading

This is the first in what I plan to make a daily series of posts where I link to some of the most interesting things I find online. Enjoy!

Glenn Greenwald, a fierce advocate of civil liberties and Salon.com writer, argues the United States is abandoning the rule of law at a frightening rate, through both torture and illegal wiretapping.

However, Orin Kerr argues on The Volokh Conspiracy, a prominent law blog, that the FISA bill Congress just passed isn't as bad as many are making it out to be.

And the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan also sees a major distinction between wiretapping and torture.

To end on a lighter (higher?) note, I'll bring your attention to Reason's coverage of a marijuana decriminalization initiative in Massachusetts.

If you'd like to read more interesting things I find online, go here. I update that page almost constantly.