Friday, December 17, 2010

Fred Kaplan on why we're not winning in Afghanistan

Six times in the course of five pages, the report's authors note that, unless Pakistan does a better job of controlling its borders—the western tribal areas, where Taliban leaders find safe haven and move reinforcements and supplies into Afghanistan and back again—the U.S. military successes of recent months are for naught.

For instance, on Page 1, the report defines "our ultimate end state" as "the eventual strategic defeat of al-Qaida in the region," but it adds that this "will require the sustained denial of the group's safe haven in the tribal areas of western Pakistan."

On Page 3: The "denial of extremist safe havens will require greater cooperation with Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan."

On Page 5: "Consolidating those gains [made in the fight against the Afghan Taliban] will require that we make more progress with Pakistan to eliminate sanctuaries for violent extremist networks."

Those italics (all mine) make the point: Clearing the safe havens in Pakistan is not just an important ingredient in achieving our strategic objectives in Afghanistan; it is a requirement. Without it, all other successes are merely tactical and, even then, probably short-lived ("fragile and reversible," as the report puts it).

You know what's awesome about North Korea?

Great propaganda rhetoric:

Meanwhile, North Korea’s official news agency assailed a plan by the South Korean military to stage a live-fire artillery exercise from Yeonpyeong Island, perhaps as early as Saturday.

The latest inter-Korean crisis erupted three weeks ago with an artillery barrage from the North that targeted Yeonpyeong and killed four South Koreans.

“The puppet warmongers are contemplating staging madcap naval firing exercises,” said the news agency, K.C.N.A., which also called the new South Korean defense minister “a war maniac keen to ignite a war” and “a puppy knowing no fear of a tiger.”

It's like Snidely Whiplash is in charge of North Korea's PR.

This is why Obama's failure to speedily nominate judges is so damning

I'm hoping for the moment when a federal judge picked by a Democratic president strikes down the health-care law. Or when a Republican-appointed judge upholds it.

Either way. Because the current lineup of decisions, in which two Democratic-nominated judges have ruled in favor of the law, one Republican against, is not healthy for the judiciary or the democratic process.

It is facile to think of judges as umpires robotically calling balls and strikes. But it is also dangerous to think of judges as players on a particular team, still wearing uniforms under their robes.

Ruth Marcus is right that partisanship in the judiciary probably isn't great for democracy. But right now, that's the way the game is played. President Obama has been taking his time making nominations to the federal judiciary; the results are plain to see, and will continue to be.

It's like Charles Krauthammer has forgotten about Ralph Nader

Despite this, some on the right are gloating that Obama had been maneuvered into forfeiting his liberal base. Nonsense. He will never lose his base. Where do they go? Liberals will never have a president as ideologically kindred - and they know it. For the left, Obama is as good as it gets in a country that is barely 20 percent liberal.

It's possible that Krauthammer is being intentionally forgetful here, but a few liberals -- not a lot, but enough to make a difference -- cast their votes for Ralph Nader in 2000. Not because they thought he'd be president, but because they didn't think it mattered if a Democrat or Republican held office. The presidency of George W. Bush heightened the contradictions between the two major parties in ways that have given plenty of former Naderites pause since then, but there are plenty of liberals whose disgust with a centrist Democrat might cause them to A) abandon politics altogether for a cycle or two, or B) find the new Nader, or a lefty equivalent of Ron Paul. (Dennis Kucinich, I'm NOT looking at you.) The idea wouldn't be to win the presidency right away, but to begin building a serious, viable third party that could offer voters an alternative. I'm not saying it would be successful, but there *is* someplace for liberal voters to go.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

The other reason Philadelphia is so walkable...

...is because it HAS to be, because nobody here knows how to drive with just a light dusting of snow. 

The State Department doesn't want its diplomats to know what every other diplomat in the world will know about American diplomacy

The Air Force may not want its personnel reading the WikiLeaks leaks on military computers, but the State Department has just made it clear that it doesn't want its personnel reading them on any computers. In a Wednesday memo to employees of the Consular Affairs-Passport division of the State Department, officials reminded their underlings that "unauthorized disclosure of classified documents in the media does not mean that the documents have been disclassified," and "accordingly, PPT employees shall not access any classified documents, including the 'Wikileaks documents,' during business hours or on their personal time."

Stupid.

ObamaCare and the individual mandate

Ben and I wrestle with the lawsuit against the health reform bill in our Scripps Howard column this week. My take:

Let's be clear: Conservatives didn't think the individual mandate was unconstitutional in the 1990s -- when the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with the idea, then pitched it as an alternative to President Bill Clinton's health proposals. No Tea Partiers shouted about "tyranny" just a few years ago, when GOP Gov. Mitt Romney made the requirement a centerpiece of Massachusetts' health law.

While some conservatives sincerely see the mandate as an intolerable infringement upon American freedom, it's not unreasonable to think the GOP is cynically moving the goalposts in its never-ending opposition to Democratic policy ideas -- even if those ideas were originally Republican.

The irony: The mandate was an effort to leave health insurance in the hands of private industry and avoid a true government takeover of the health care system.

During the 2009 debate, after all, many Republicans agreed reform should include a rule that insurance companies couldn't deny coverage to customers with pre-existing conditions. But that left open the likelihood people would wait to get sick before buying insurance -- saddling companies with the costs of sick patients without enough healthy customers to help pay the way. That would've driven the companies into bankruptcy and, in all likelihood, triggered the rise of a government-run "socialized" health insurance system.

So there are good policy reasons for the individual mandate. But as a political matter, many liberals recognize that the mandate is a particularly ugly way to make the sausage of health insurance reform -- more likely to trigger protests against the bill rather than make Americans grateful for the welfare state.

There less-burdensome ways to replace the individual mandate. Insurers could offer financial incentives for early sign-up and penalties for late arrivals, the way parts of Medicare work now. Other, market-friendly ideas abound. But never fear: Republicans would certainly oppose those ideas, too. They always do.

 

Stubborn desperation

Oh man, this describes my post-2008 journalism career: If I have stubbornly proceeded in the face of discouragement, that is not from confid...