Obama

Quote from Obama that is causing some consternation:

“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,” Obama said.

This is clearly not put well, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. Our over-reliance on air power leads to a lot of civilians getting killed and is not very effective in really protecting people from the insurgents. If this was his point then I think it was an important and correct one.

I think it is also a little dated and perhaps slightly disingenuous.

It is dated because the whole strategy of the surge is precisely to start doing proper counter insurgency, putting boots on the ground and protecting people. It is disingenuous because it is the democrats who to a large extent have dictated or at least encouraged a policy of stand off bombing instead of proper counter insurgency. Perhaps the most unfortunate, or at least extreme example of this, was during the Clinton administration's bombing of Kosovo. It is very hard to provide protection from guys going house to house raping and slitting throats with jet airplanes, but it is mmore politically palatable.

There is, to change subjects, a way in which Clinton's policy got it right. The main effect of the bombing campaign was not its direct effect on the insurgents but on their masters in Serbia. They didn't make any pretense of effecting to invade and occupy Serbia but they did pressure them through a very effective bombing campaign. At that time no one thought that a bombing campaign implied invading and occupying a country. Now, when we talk about holding Iran accountable for the actions of its proxies people hysterically assume we are going to invade. Why assume that? Iran is if anything even more vulnerable to pressure from the air.

Realism

There are lots of things one might call the belief that talking to Kim Il Jung or Assad will lead to their realizing that we have a common stake in reducing violence and bringing about a democratic Iraq. “Realistic” is hardly one of them. And yet it is now received wisdom among the elite that somehow talking to these people will make them come around.

If realism means anything it would seem to be the acceptance that other countries may not have your best interests at heart.

If you accept that you have conflicting interests you are in a bargaining situation, and the only real question is what costs and what benefits you can offer the other side for acceding to your wishes.

It is possible that there are some messages that have to be delivered in person, but the thing about imposing future costs is that they are usually costly to the nation imposing them as well as the nation imposed upon. In that case it might well be that agreeing to talks, particularly when the world is demanding it, might deliver exactly the wrong message. It might bespeak and unwillingness to bear up under international criticism, criticism that will surely be sharper in the face of delivering real costs—such as, say, a military strike—than they are in the case of simply not agreeing to sit down one on one with someone.

It may do more than send an unfortunate signal, it may send an unintended benefit. By sitting down to talk one on one with your adversary you are confering upon him a certain amount of legitimacy. By seeking another agreement you are in part letting him off the hook for trashing the last one.

Hitler's generals were said to have relaxed their opposition to his aggressive stance against France and Great Britain after Chamberlain agreed to direct talks with the Furher. Nothing increases a leaders stature like shaking hands with aonther world leader for the camera. American Presidents routinely go abroad to repair thier stature with the domestic public; it is a commonplace of political punditry that interacting with a foreign leader, any foreign leader, increases the president's domestic standing.

If it works for the leader of the free world when he meets leaders with far less power than he, imagine the effect on the standing of the leaders of lesser powers when they are seen on TV back home being greeted by the leader of the free world as an equal.

Hezbollah's blunder

Hezbollah is apparently calling for a cease fire. What a blunder. Don't they know that the ineffectual Israeli bombing campaign is just creating more recruits for there organization in the long run? Don't they read Robert Pape? The New York Times?

Quote of the Day from President of Iran (whose name I still cannot spell

Courtesey of Hugh Hewitt:

"Today, the Iranian people is the owner of nuclear technology. Those who want to talk with our people should know what people they are talking to. If some believe they can keep talking to the Iranian people in the language of threats and aggressiveness, they should know that they are making a bitter mistake. If they have not realized this by now, they soon will, but then it will be too late. Then they will realize that they are facing a vigilant, proud people."

Good thing they are not interested using that nuclear stuff for weapons.