Month: July 2007

Do Not Underestimate the Power of the Dark Side

by

by publius While we’re all waiting for the big spectrum auction decision to come down, a quick word on Google. As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been skeptical to say the least of Google’s chances of success here (i.e., their ability to win spectrum and enter the wireless market). Well, this column pretty … Read more

Special Operations In Kurdistan

by

by hilzoy

Robert Novak in the Washington Post:

“The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. High-level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.

While detailed operational plans are necessarily concealed, the broad outlines have been presented to select members of Congress as required by law. U.S. Special Forces are to work with the Turkish army to suppress the Kurds’ guerrilla campaign. The Bush administration is trying to prevent another front from opening in Iraq, which would have disastrous consequences. But this gamble risks major exposure and failure. (…)

The dormant Turkish Kurd guerrilla fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) came to life. By June, the Turkish government was demonstrating its concern by lobbing artillery shells across the border. Ankara began protesting, to both Washington and Baghdad, that the PKK was using northern Iraq as a base for guerrilla operations. On July 11, in Washington, Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy became the first Turkish official to assert publicly that Iraqi Kurds have claims on Turkish territory. On July 20, just two days before his successful reelection, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a military incursion into Iraq against the Kurds. Last Wednesday, Murat Karayilan, head of the PKK political council, predicted that “the Turkish Army will attack southern Kurdistan.”

Turkey has a well-trained, well-equipped army of 250,000 near the border, facing some 4,000 PKK fighters hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq. But significant cross-border operations surely would bring to the PKK’s side the military forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the best U.S. ally in Iraq. What is Washington to do in the dilemma of two friends battling each other on an unwanted new front in Iraq?

The surprising answer was given in secret briefings on Capitol Hill last week by Eric S. Edelman, a former aide to Vice President Cheney who is now undersecretary of defense for policy. Edelman, a Foreign Service officer who once was U.S. ambassador to Turkey, revealed to lawmakers plans for a covert operation of U.S. Special Forces to help the Turks neutralize the PKK. They would behead the guerrilla organization by helping Turkey get rid of PKK leaders that they have targeted for years.”

It is unclear exactly what this plan involves. Novak’s article, if it can be believed, says that our Special Forces would work with “the Turkish Army”, which suggests a Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. But he also says that the goal would be “to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq”, which suggests that we might be planning instead to work with Turkish special forces (or whatever the Turkish equivalent is.)

I will discuss this below the fold.

Read more

Spectrum Auction Decision — The Trailer

by

by publius It appears that the FCC’s spectrum auction decision is coming out tomorrow. Here’s a brief preview of some things to consider. I’ll obviously have more to say after the decision comes down. First, some of the most important industry issues that the Commission will formally decide tomorrow aren’t getting much attention. Open access … Read more

I Don’t Know Whether To Laugh Or Cry

by

by hilzoy Robin Wright in the Washington Post: “After three decades of festering tensions, the United States and Iran are now facing off in a full-fledged cold war. When the first Cold War began, in 1946, Winston Churchill famously spoke of an Iron Curtain that had divided Europe. As Cold War II begins half a … Read more

Printing Money

by

by hilzoy When I was little, I used to sit with my parents every evening and watch the news (or ‘Huntley-Brinkley’, as we called the news back then.) One night, probably in 1968, someone said something about Lyndon Johnson trying to pay for the war in Vietnam not by raising taxes but by printing money. … Read more

Sunday Psychic Cat Blogging

by

by hilzoy From the NEJM, the story of Oscar, a cat who lives in the dementia ward of a nursing home, and seems to be able to predict when its residents will die: “Oscar takes no notice of the woman and leaps up onto the bed. He surveys Mrs. T. She is clearly in the … Read more

Noted Without Further Comment

by

by publius From Deborah Howell, Ombudsman [!] for the Post: I admit to both wincing at and being fascinated by the [infamous boobies] column. I had a lot of questions that the column didn’t answer: Did Clinton have a bad-blouse day, or did she want to wear something a bit provocative? Was this a wardrobe … Read more

In the Name of the Bipartisanship

by

by publius

I’ll second Jim Henley’s view of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s paean to bipartisanship. But snark aside, there are also serious issues here. Before getting to them though, it’s important to look beyond the DC Matrix and to remember the old adage – “Everything in Washington Happens for a Reason.” Slaughter’s op-ed probably isn’t intended to persuade anyone. It’s more likely an attempt to build bipartisan street cred for a high-level position in a future Democratic administration.

But even taking her argument at face value, it’s seriously flawed and symptomatic of far larger errors in thinking (errors the progressive blogosphere has been pointing out since its inception). Most obviously, bipartisanship is not an end unto itself. It’s a means to the end of better policy. “Better” doesn’t mean perfect — it just means better than the status quo. The underlying assumption of pleas for bipartisanship is that excessive partisanship results either in flawed policies or (more often) an inability to pass better ones.

The “bipartisanship first” crowd is guilty of at least one of two errors, both of which I’ll describe after the jump.

Read more

The Clinton/Obama Fight

by

by hilzoy

Now that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has entered its fifth day, I thought I’d say something about it. The video of the part of the YouTube Debate at issue — about meeting with the heads of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and Syria — is here; a transcript of the debate is here. (The relevant bit is about 2/3 of the way down.) I’ve put a longer version of what I think actually happened at the end of this post; my brief summary is: Obama said he would be “willing to” meet with five unpleasant heads of state without preconditions; Hillary Clinton acted as though he had promised or committed himself to doing so, which he hadn’t; the next day, she called that supposed commitment “irresponsible and frankly naive”, which it wasn’t.

As best I can tell, Clinton was trying to take what Obama had said and make it fit a storyline about his inexperience; Obama then proceeded to take what she had said and use it to reinforce his own storyline, about the importance of judgment and the need for change. Reporters and pundits on both sides seemed to think that Clinton was right, but the American people disagree.

Basically, I agree with Ezra:

“As far as I can tell, the actual dispute here stems from a central ambiguity, followed by some opportunism. I heard that question and assumed it was asking whether, in contrast to the Bush administration, you would open negotiations, and possibly have meetings, with the heads of countries like Iran. I’m pretty sure that’s how Obama understood it. But Hillary heard that, saw an opening, and pounced. And Obama, being a smart politician, didn’t back down, and has instead used the spat to tie her rhetoric to Bush’s rhetoric, with which it shares some similarities.”

However, I also think — and as far as I can tell, he doesn’t — that there is a substantive difference between the two, concerning the question: do you see negotiations as something that should be used as necessary, and regarded as a useful but neutral instrument, or do you regard them as having to be justified in some way, and/or used only when certain conditions preconditions are met? On this one, I’m with Obama. I say why below the fold.

Read more

I Say Uncle

by

by publius Sometimes you only need to read the first sentence of a Powerline post to know you’ve read enough. John Hinderaker begins his “Is This a Coup? If Not, What Is It?” post with: The Democrats’ unconstitutional usurpation of power continues: Despite the tantalizing colon, there’s no reason to go on. Only darkness and … Read more