The "war on terror": Branding vs. policy

Glenn Greenwald reacts to the Obama administration's forecast that the "war on terror" will last for another decade or two:

........the "war on terror" cannot and will not end on its own for two reasons: (1) it is designed by its very terms to be permanent, incapable of ending, since the war itself ironically ensures that there will never come a time when people stop wanting to bring violence back to the US (the operational definition of "terrorism"), and (2) the nation's most powerful political and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation. Whatever else is true, it is now beyond doubt that ending this war is the last thing on the mind of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and those who work at the highest levels of his administration. Is there any way they can make that clearer beyond declaring that it will continue for "at least" another 10-20 years?

A couple of quick thought.
The Bush administration's "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT) was renamed simply the "War on Terrorism" by the Obama administration. However the United States has  been actively seeking to degrade the ability of groups designated as "terrorist entities" since the 1970s.  There was never anything new in the US trying to debilitate "terrorist" groups. What has determined the American policy response has been the:

• the international system
• the relative threat posed by so called terrorists
• the technological means available

Announcing a policy, giving it a headline name-preferably something pithy-- is part of a marketing strategy. It is designed to win public support, focus the bureaucracy, obtain funding; and any supporting legislative changes from congress. The character of US policy from 9/11 to now has been enabled by: America's dominant position in the international system; the absence of any competing near term threats and the emergence of technologies such as missile enable drones. Indeed had the Clinton administration been able to send armed drones into Afghanistan rather than ship based cruise missiles to kill Osama bin Laden it surely would have done so. The methods in place today will likely continue even after the branding of the current policy is forgotten and the talk of the day is of some new dangerous threat. As for the "powerful political and economic factions" that reap benefits from current policy, well yes, there are factions that reap benefits from all aspects of US foreign and domestic policy. Any policy should be evaluated according to the same criteria: does it succeed in achieving its aim; and is there a lower cost option available. 

What happened to the pollsters in BC?

Eric Grenier from threehundredeight.com  reflects on how badly he and his colleagues performed both at his site and in the Globe and Mail. 

From his own site Grenier writes:

I have to admit that my confidence in the quality of that information - polling - has been profoundly shaken. Alberta was an aberration, and there was some good reason as to why it occurred (which I now have doubts about). Quebec was only a minor flub, which can be attributed in part to superior Liberal organization (or can it?). But this is a complete disaster. There is no reason why this should have happened, which leads me to believe that the reason it happened is because the pollsters did a bad job.

An aberration, a minor flub and a disaster. Do three data points make a trend? Something is clearly amiss in Canadian polling. Why does it matter? That's hard to know. To the extent that polling drives the news and affects voter turnout and decisions about who to vote for -among those who cast their votes strategically-one could argue that the polls themselves can impact the result. A second point would be that the policy agenda is itself to some extent shaped by polling these days. Polling has become for better or worse a means by which voters communicate with politicians and parties.

Obama's IRS vs. Harper's CRA

Wonkblog has an FAQ regarding the recent scandal that implicated the IRS over targeting presumably conservative groups.  My question: How is this any different that Harper government's own , announced policy? The 2012 budget allocated $8 millon to the CRA to ensure that registered charities were not overstepping the bounds in their political advocacy.  At the time it was alleged that this would be focused on the activities of environmental non-profits with charitable status. According to one such group:

"It's very difficult to do a surgical intervention silencing specific charities or sectors within the broader charitable community without doing damage to organizations that might be more aligned with the government's perspective on social or environmental initiatives," said Ross McMillan of Tides Canada.

 "I do think it's very likely ... that the government is really looking at environmental charities, and looking for ways to limit the effectiveness of those charities as they try and stimulate discussion and public discourse around major public-policy developments relating to resource extraction and the like."

 The obvious point to make is that in Canada the policy was announced, politically neutral in theory and open for debate and scrutiny. In the US it appears that this decision was made by civil servants without the administration's approval. The offensive aspect --and therefore most politically damaging--was that the policy did not come under any public scrutiny and debate. In short , it appears to be an effort to undermine the political process itself and in a manner that might benefit the administration.

Kenneth Waltz has died

Waltz was probably the most influential scholar of International Relations in the past 50 years.
Dan Nexon has a tribute and Steve Walt a former student and protege of Waltz's shares his memories here. 
When I first read Man, the State, and War -Walt'z dissertation- just after I graduated, I was shocked to discover how much of the basic framework of IR came from one book.

Alex Ferguson and political leadership

Simon Jenkins warns against inferring lessons from the recently retired coaching legend:

Government is the toughest job on the planet, its leadership the most intractable. Practitioners usually come to it with little experience, and are seldom given enough time to make mistakes and correct them. Their matches are infinitely complex, their fans raucous, intolerant and ubiquitous. We can all thrill to the successful tyrant. But tyranny is best kept to the touchline.

When I think about politics and Sir Alex in relation to politics, the man who first comes to mind is Lyndon Johnson. As Robert Caro has documented in his magisterial biography of Johnson, he was tyrannical, crude and cruel--perhaps sadistic-- pragmatic -even cynical-and corrupt. However Johnson was probably the most effective parliamentarian in American political history and after Franklin Roosevelt the president with the greatest progressive record: the voting rights act, the civil rights act, and health care for the elderly and indigent.

The United States Air Force has a sensitivity problem

Spencer Ackerman has gotten hold of a brochure the air force has published advising personnel on sexual assault:

“It may be advisable to submit [rather] than resist,” reads the brochure (.pdf), issued to airmen at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, where nearly 10,000 military and civilian personnel are assigned. “You have to make this decision based on circumstances. Be especially careful if the attacker has a weapon.”

Intervening in Syrian: Reconciling means and aims

Jenifer Walsh writes contrasting Israel's willingness to bomb targets in Syria with American inaction:

The key difference between Israel as an external party, and the U.S. as an external party, is that the latter does not yet see the violence and instability in Syria as a vital threat to its security. Yes, it sees the potential for regional instability that comes with the crumbling of the Syrian state. And yes, it sees the strain being felt by its ally, Jordan (where Syrian refugee camps now constitute more than 10 per cent of the Jordanian population). But these facts alone do not (yet) outweigh the counter-arguments that predict negative repercussions from U.S. military intervention.

Let me present an alternative view. Israel has a strategic objective vis-a-vis Hezbollah. It does not want Hezbollah to gain access to weapons that can cause large scale destruction and the loss of civilian life in Israel proper. The tactical aim of destroying convoys that maybe shipping these kinds of weapons to Israel corresponds directly to the strategic aim. Conversely we do not know what the strategic aim of the United States is, not because they haven't told us but because they've publicly stated many aims. If we take a cessation of violence as the overriding strategic aim then how does the tactical aim of intercepting and destruction Syrian military aircraft help bring about the end of violence? It must be supported by a series of other tactical measures on the political side to presumably lead to ceasefire and transition to an interim regime. The sheer complexity of these measures imply a higher chance of failure without any clear sense of what the benefits would be. The Israeli action is certainly not risk-free but it is the kind of operation in which the means available the dangers and the payoffs can readily be assessed and made intelligible to policymakers.  It is difficult to motivate anyone toward taking any action when we cannot make clear how the specific step we are asking them to take will lead clearly toward the desired destination.