Dominic Tierney's Army of Nation Builders

As I mentioned before, I'm reading Dominic Tierney's "How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires and the American Way of War.” Today, Tierney has an op-ed in the New York Times, expanding on one of the book's central themes: That our military should be better constructed for nation-building missions because that's what the Founding Fathers intended:

American troops also helped to survey and map the West. In the most famous expedition, from 1804 to 1806, Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Second Lt. William Clark led a party of nearly 30 men, including three sergeants and 22 enlisted soldiers, to the Pacific Ocean. The United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, or “topogs,” became a major locus of American science, collecting flora, fauna and geological specimens, and publishing their findings in prestigious journals.

This is interesting stuff, but there's a huge difference between the Army of 1804 and the Army of 2010: Today's Army does most of its work abroad. Without getting into the injustices done to American Indians, the job of the Army of 1804 wasn't nation-building as a general task: It was building our nation, tasked with leading and defending white settlers in the long westward expansion across the American continent. The Army of today isn't really tasked with nation-building, either, when you think about it: It's charged with nation re-building. Some of the skills involved may be virtually identical, despite the passage of time, but the strategic purposes are different enough as to make the comparison an uneasy fit.

And of course, I say all that while attempting to get Tierney on the podcast. Hope it works!

Philly Police: The Beating of Bernard

Ronnie Polaneczky:

"'They screamed at him multiple times to get his hands behind his back, get on the ground,' recalls Landgren. 'The man cowered. He never spoke. I told them, 'Officer, he doesn't understand you! Please, he's mentally ill!' They kept screaming. It seemed to make him more agitated.

'One of the officers could only get one cuff on the man. He said, 'OK, that's it, you f---er,' and hit him hard with a billy club. The man fell and covered his face with his hands. Then all three officers were on him.

'He was curled in a ball. They pulled his hands from his face and maced him multiple times. They Tasered him over and over. He was like a cornered animal.'"

The police are silent about their view of things. Interestingly, the police report cites Bernard for "aggravated assault" on an officer ... even though nobody else saw such a thing.

Which takes me back to something I meant to write about a week ago. The Daily News ran a feature story about a crisis-intervention program that is training Philadelphia officers to distinguish between criminal behavior and mental illness that requires help -- the better not to end up Tasering or abusing somebody who isn't really in full control of their actions. Great idea! There's only one problem: Only 800 cops out of a force of 6,500 have received the training. And not nearly all of them will get it:

Ultimately, Healy said, 25 to 30 percent of patrol cops will receive the training.

There are no plans to make the training mandatory, Healy said, because police brass believe that the training is more effective when it's offered voluntarily.

I'm not sure what to make of this: Two-thirds of Philly police officers think it's ok to blow off training that can help them serve their community better? (One in 10 police encounters involve someone with mental illness.) Police brass are conceding that most of their force would rather use billy clubs and Tasers than deal in a nuanced way with a nuanced situation? It's good that the training is being offered to officers who want it; the fact that not all officers are getting it is troubling.

And even with the training, it's important to realize that encounters like Bernard's, above, will probably still happen from time-to-time. But maybe it doesn't have to happen as often as it does.

GM Posts $2 billion Profit

AP: "DETROIT - Strong profits on new cars and trucks helped General Motors Co. earn $2 billion in the third quarter, enhancing the company's appeal as it nears next week's initial public stock offering."

I grudgingly supported the automaker bailout, and I'm glad I did so. Letting GM sink wouldn't have just ended that company -- it would've taken thousands of jobs, not just from GM but from the company's suppliers. The trickle-down effect of that would've been disastrous for a fragile economy. Critics like to point out that the UAW got a pretty sweet deal out of this -- and, sure, it absolutely did. The deal was messier than most people would like. But it worked. And as bad as the economy is, it would've been worse if the Bush and Obama administrations had sit back and watched it happen. All of us are better off as a result.

More About Slate's Fake Domestic Abuse Story

Media Matters is on it. Apparently the one guy Slate scared up to provide an anecdote on behalf of the trend is, well ... you judge:

What the article doesn't tell you: Sampson runs a "Consulting and Investigations" firm whose clientele consists of people who say they were "victimized not only by cold and calculating foreign national brides, but by the 'system' itself." In other words, he makes money by helping men prove that their spouses are faking domestic abuse. Sampson has also signed affidavits used by Orly Taitz in her birther lawsuits seeking to prove that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president.

I should be surprised that Slate, which so vigorously points out bogus trend stories in other outlets, somehow fell prey to the same kind of loose-end reporting exemplified here. It can happen to all of us, I guess. But I do hope that Slate's media critic, Jack Shafer, addresses the issue. Or that somebody there does.

Afghanistan Quagmire Watch

Ugh:

"The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-emphasize President Barack Obama's pledge that he'd begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and military officials have told McClatchy."

That should eventually put an end to Al Qaeda's attacks from Yemen, right?

Dana Milbank Doesn't Think Bill O'Reilly Is Funny

And I completely agree. After all, if there's an expert on what's not funny, Milbank would have to be it.

Atheism: As Annoying as Religion, But Without All The God

It's annoying that atheists don't realize that one of the benefits of life free from religion should be life free from evangelization,but that's clearly not the case. The even funnier part of the New York Times story about the atheist advertising holiday campaigns is the revelation that the atheists are now splitting up into congregations:

"That is one reason for the multiple campaigns: the groups are competing with one another to gain market share, said Mark Silk, founding director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, which is also at Trinity College.

“There’s a competitive environment for ‘no religion,’ and they’re grabbing for all the constituents they can get,” Mr. Silk said."

South Park got there first.

Andrew Sullivan on the Republicans and Obama

Uh-huh:

"If a black Republican president had come in, helped turn around the banking and auto industries (at a small profit!), insured millions through the private sector while cutting Medicare, overseen a sharp decline in illegal immigration, ramped up the war in Afghanistan, reinstituted pay-as-you go in the Congress, set up a debt commission to offer hard choices for future debt reduction, and seen private sector job growth outstrip the public sector's in a slow but dogged recovery, somehow I don't think that Republican would be regarded as a socialist."

Given the Clinton nostalgia we've seen from some quarters of the right in recent years, I predict that Obama's presidency will be seen as "the good old days" by Republicans in about 15 years.

* My Andrew Sullivan boycott remains in effect. Stuff still bubbles up to me, though, and I'm not going to pretend I don't see it.

Harold Meyerson: Hire Pelosi

Co-sign:

"Yet she remains the Democrat most capable of forging a unified opposition to Republican attempts to undercut key programs such as Social Security and Medicaid, and her record demonstrates that she is the Democrats' most effective fighter for the interests of ordinary Americans. That's not the perception, alas, but it's the reality - which Democrats ignore at their peril."

It is intriguing to me that the loudest voices against Pelosi returning as minority leader have been Republicans like Eric Cantor. He's free to express his opinion, but he might not be offering Democrats the most unbiased advice. Pelosi continues to strike me as a singularly effective leader for Democrats within Congress. I think she should keep the job.

Bolton, Yoo: Did Voters Go To the Polls With Nuclear Policy in Mind?

Clearly, the election results mean conservative Republicans should get their way on everything. But serious question: Did voters go to the polls with America's nuclear policy in mind? Because that's what John Yoo* and John Bolton want you to believe:

"THE sweeping Democratic midterm losses last week raise serious questions for President Obama and a lame-duck Congress. Voters want government brought closer to the vision the framers outlined in the Constitution, and the first test could be the fate of the flawed New Start arms control treaty, which was signed by President Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia last spring but awaits ratification. The Senate should heed the will of the voters and either reject the treaty or amend it so that it doesn’t weaken our national defense."

Of course, one could argue that by leaving the Senate in Democratic hands -- even with a diminished majority -- that the Senate would be pursuing the will of the voters by pursuing Democratic priorities that are within the Senate's purview. Treaty approval, of course, falls under that purview.

More to the point, though, I'd love to see any evidence that the "will of the voters" was being expressed on nuclear policy. If you look at the GOP-leaning Rasmussen Reports poll taken just before the election, national security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rank among the bottom three of the 10 "most important" issues to voters. I'm not saying that voters don't or shouldn't care about nuclear policy; I'm just saying we have little reason to believe that was part of the message they were trying to send. Casually invoking "the will of the voters" without any foundation is cynical to the point of false.

* You know my beliefs about John Yoo. I hate that the Times is giving him space as a respected commentator on the issues.

My New iPad: First Impressions

I bought a new iPad yesterday -- the 3G, 16 GB variety -- and after 24 hours, it's safe to say I'm in love. Three first impressions:

* FLIPBOARD IS THE FUTURE: Have you seen this app? It take links your Facebook and Twitter friends post, and turn them into a magazine. The video explains better than I can:



This is such a marvel of design and functionality that, frankly, going back to run-of-the-mill Facebook and Twitter apps seems a little disappointing. This app alone makes the cost of the iPad seem worth it.

* IT'S AN EXCELLENT E-READER: My long angst over whether to buy an e-reader is over. I read three chapters in a new book yesterday, using the Kindle application on the iPad. I suspect that this will be the primary way I read non-fiction, information-consuming books from now on. (The Luddite lover in me would like to say I'll stick with paper for novels and similar leisure reading, but I suspect I'm fooling myself on that score.)

* BUT IT'S BEST FOR CONSUMING: I haven't fully tested the New York Times and Washington Post applications on the iPad yet. Why? Because when I read the news, I want to be prepared to blog it immediately. (The Blogger extension for the Chrome browser on my regular computer has actually been a pretty marvelous tool in that regard.) The iPad isn't quite as handy when it comes to me reprocessing information and spitting it back out into the world. Which is why my morning headlines scan will probably continue to take place on the computer.

* BONUS THOUGHT: The iPhone, a cherished device in my pocket for two years now, seems a bit diminished. Instead of seeming a vital piece of technology, it now seems to augment a technology ecology in which my iPad is closer to center stage. If I want to read Instapaper or the headlines, I'll probably use the big iPad instead of the phone. The joke I -- and everybody else -- made when the iPad came out is that it's a big iPhone. That's not true. The iPhone is a small iPad.

Actually, We Undercounted Philadelphia Police Corruption

Correction of the day!:

"_ Tuesday's Daily News erroneously reported that police Inspector Daniel Castro was the 14th city police officer charged with crimes since 2009. In fact, Castro is the 15th officer to face criminal charges since October 2009."

Why the Daily News Is An Essential Philadelphia Institution

It tackles the dearth of public potties in the Italian Market. You won't find that in the Inquirer!

About American Exceptionalism, and Footnotes

I'm a couple of chapters into Dominic Tierney's "How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War" when I stumble onto this factoid:

"But since the nineteenth century, no country has engaged in the mass killing of civilians on as many separate occasions as the United States."

Yikes! Luckily, there's an explanatory footnote:

"Between 1816 and 2003, the United States was responsible for five out of the eighteen cases in which one country intentionally or indiscriminately killed more than fifty thousand enemy civiliansin interstate war. Prussia/Germany was responsible for three episodes of mass killing, and Britain and Russia were responsible for two each. Data from Downes, Targeting Civilians in War, 44-47."

I don't have Downes' book at the ready, but the numbers indicate to me that such incidents were in the United States' "big wars," and there's pretty much universal agreement that the country was justified in entering most of those wars. (World War I being a possible exception, and we won't even get into the debates over the Civil War.)

Which brings me back around to yesterday's discussion of Jonah Goldberg and American exceptionalism. I suspect that American exceptionalism blinds us to these kinds of facts, frankly, so that we see ourselves as likely to be "greeted as liberators" instead of as a force that brought (or unleashed) bombs and death into a country. It's possible to be both, actually, but we don't think hard enough about the second part of the equation. A little less of the exceptionalist attitude would be helpful in such cases, actually.

A Cure For Bullying?

There are probably limits to this approach, because some people are just jerks. Still, this approach to reducing bullying is intriguing:

"Here’s how it works: Roots arranges monthly class visits by a mother and her baby (who must be between two and four months old at the beginning of the school year). Each month, for nine months, a trained instructor guides a classroom using a standard curriculum that involves three 40-minute visits – a pre-visit, a baby visit, and a post-visit. The program runs from kindergarten to seventh grade. During the baby visits, the children sit around the baby and mother (sometimes it’s a father) on a green blanket (which represents new life and nature) and they try to understand the baby’s feelings. The instructor helps by labeling them. “It’s a launch pad for them to understand their own feelings and the feelings of others,” explains Gordon. “It carries over to the rest of class.”"

Larry Mendte: Ed Rendell for President?

I don't know what to make of a disgraced newsman who goes from committing felonies a felonny against co-workers to making stuff up. But will Ed Rendell mount a primary challenge against Obama? No. Ed Rendell likes to win. He plays the odds carefully. And the odds against a successful primary challenge to an incumbent president -- well, those are pretty steep. No reason not to speculate, though!

Does Philly's Stop-and-Frisk Policy Actually Fight Crime?

Elmer Smith at the Daily News gets to the heart of the matter:

"The city keeps records on the number of people who are stopped in what it calls pedestrian investigations. But nobody at the Police Department could tell me how many of those stops included pat-downs or how many, if any, gun or drug confiscations to credit to the practice."

There are a couple of reasons you might not keep records on how much crime a crime-fighting practice actually fights. One is that you don't want to know the results. The other is that you're too lazy to care. Which is why Mayor Nutter's defense of the program seems suspect:

"This is part of a larger crime-fighting strategy. We've put more officers on the street; we have taken away about 4,000 to 5,000 guns every year for the last three years. Homicides and [serious] crimes are down."

But, what, if anything, does stop-and-frisk have to do with that? If the practice is not being monitored, how can we be sure how fair or effective it has been?

Philly is now defending a lawsuit from the ACLU because the practice disparately targets minorities. The city might be in a better position to defend itself if it could demonstrate the practice mitigates crime -- that is, after all, the best defense available for constitutionally suspect practices. But City Hall can't make that demonstration; why should we believe it's worth the cost?

UPDATE: It's stop-and-frisk day! The Daily News editorial is here; the Inky editorial is here.

Jonah Goldberg and American Exceptionalism

There's something about Jonah Goldberg's column about lefties who bash American exceptionalism that seems to be missing the point, almost deliberately so. Goldberg seems to think that liberals who are reluctant to join the chest-pounding parade wish for America to become a little more European, a little more socialist:

The notion that America has its own way of doing things separate and distinct from Europe has been one of the greatest impediments to Europeanizing America's political and economic institutions.

Ultimately, it's not that liberals don't believe in American exceptionalism so much as they believe it is holding America back, which might explain why they're lashing out at the people who want to keep it exceptional. But that too is nothing new. 'The Coolidge myth has been created by amazingly skillful propaganda,' editorialized the Nation in 1924 about the unfathomable popularity of Calvin Coolidge. 'The American people dearly love to be fooled.'

I don't buy this, at least not totally. Certainly, the two columns that Goldberg cites -- Michael Kinsley in Politico and Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast -- don't try to make that case. (Hell, the point of Beinart's column is that Keynesianism is now dead in the United States.) I think Kinsley gets closer to the root of my own problem with the idea of American exceptionalism with this paragraph:

The notion that America and Americans are special, among all the peoples of the earth, is sometimes called “American exceptionalism.” Because of our long history of democracy and freedom, or because we have a special mission to spread these values (or at least to remain a shining example of them), or because of our wealth, or because of our military strength, our nuclear arsenal, our wide-open spaces, our pragmatism, our idealism, or just because, the rules don’t apply to us. There are man-made rules like, “You can’t start a war without the permission of the United Nations Security Council.” We’ve gotten away with quite a bit of bending or breaking of that kind of rule. This may have given us the impression that we could ignore the other kind of rules —the ones that are imposed by reality and therefore are self-enforcing. These are rules such as, “You can’t have good ice cream without fat” or “You can’t borrow increasing amounts of money indefinitely and never pay it back, because people will eventually stop lending it to you.” No country is special enough to escape these rules.

Right. In keeping with Kinsley, my problem with the notion of American exceptionalism, as frequently practiced, isn't (despite Goldberg's allegation) that it holds America back -- but that it doesn't hold America back enough. Beinart's recent book, "The Icarus Syndrome," and Fred Kaplan's "Daydream Believers" both document how American leaders, particularly hawks, have tended to believe that America is so exceptional that the rules of warfighting don't apply to us. The results of that way of thinking, embodied in folks like Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld, have been disastrous for the United States.

There are other ways that the embrace of American exceptionalism hurts our society, I think, but we can get into that later. The problem with Goldberg's column, of course, is that it responds to arguments that weren't made, all so that he can conclude by sniffing at "the sophisticates who chortle at the idea that there's anything especially good about America." It is -- like the attitude of American exceptionalism often is -- lazy, easy, and fails to address the real arguments and real problems that we face.

Barbara Bush's Miscarriage

Salon:

"In the weirdest news item of the day, the New York Post reveals that when George W. Bush was a teenager, his mother, Barbara, showed him her miscarried fetus in a jar. 'There's no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life,' he tells Matt Lauer in an interview that will air tonight. This bizarre anecdote may make Barbara sound like a pro-life extremist who used scare tactics to sway her son's views of abortion, but what the Post doesn't mention is that the former first lady eventually became pro-choice."

You know, I think it's probably wrong to frame this in terms of the abortion politics when what this story is is really, really freakin' weird. A miscarriage, after all, isn't a choice -- but keeping the fetus afterward surely is. So much of the George W. Bush biography has been written as an Oedipal need to show up his accomplished father. But is it possible we're missing out on the real story here? What if Barbara Bush is really closer to being Angela Lansbury in "The Manchurian Candidate" -- and the key to understanding everything, in a really weird and dark and twisted way? Somewhere, an aspiring political novelist is writing an outline....

How Much Does Sarah Palin Know About Monetary Policy?

There's always a danger in underestimating one's political rivals. Successive generations of Democrats ridiculed the intelligence of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, only be defeated by them time and again. So I don't want to make the mistake of thinking Sarah Palin is dumb. Still, there's a real "the lady doth protest too much" quality to this Wall Street Journal op-ed:

"The former Alaskan Governor showed sound political and economic instincts by inveighing forcefully against the Federal Reserve's latest round of quantitative easing. According to the prepared text of remarks that she released to National Review online, Mrs. Palin also exhibited a more sophisticated knowledge of monetary policy than any major Republican this side of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan."

Wait. Really?

The Journal adds: "Misguided monetary policy can ruin an Administration as thoroughly as higher taxes and destructive regulation, and the new GOP majority in the House and especially the next GOP President need to be alert to the dangers. Mrs. Palin is way ahead of her potential Presidential competitors on this policy point, and she shows a talent for putting a technical subject in language that average Americans can understand."

To be fair, I'm not certain that deep knowledge of particular subjects matters in a potential president so much as their ability to get a good team around them, and to process and synthesize new information effectively. And it's possible that Palin has been deeply, deeply disserved by her "I read all the papers" reputation.

But the Journal is trying to sell Palin as one of the smartest Republicans around. It's a picture at odds with, well, just about everything on the public record about Palin. Somebody's lying.