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Via Salon comes word of a scathing report (warning: long pdf) by a Pentagon advisory task force on strategic communication. Acccording to the Salon article, the Task Force, which was convened by the Department of Defense, “had unfettered access, denied to journalists, to the inner workings of the national security apparatus, and interviewed scores of officials. The mission was not to find fault, but to suggest constructive improvements. There was no intent to contribute to public debate, much less political controversy; the report was written only for internal consumption.” They also had access to a lot of data on public opinion in the Middle East.

Strategic communication is, basically, how we get our message out to the world, specifically (for this report) the Islamic world. This topic is obviously important: if we want to fight terrorism, we need to undercut sympathy for terrorist groups in the Islamic world, both in order to deny those groups recruits and to minimize the number of people who are willing to support them or turn a blind eye to their activities. To the extent that we convey a clear and attractive message to the Islamic world, we undercut support for terrorist groups that aim to harm us; to the extent that we are hated, we provide support for them. The report is very critical of administration efforts to communicate its message to the Islamic world, not only because they have been ineffective but because they lack “sustained Presidential direction, effective interagency coordination, optimal private sector partnerships, and adequate resources. Tactical message coordination does not equate with strategic planning and evaluation. Personal commitment by top leaders has not been matched by needed changes in the organizations they lead or in a dysfunctional interagency process.”

The report also argues that our problems in getting our message across to the Islamic world “are consequences of factors other than failure to implement communications strategies. Interests collide. Leadership counts. Policies matter. Mistakes dismay our friends and provide enemies with unintentional assistance.” This is an obvious, though important, point: while people sometimes talk as though it’s possible to spin anything, public relations are always made much easier when you are actually doing good and valuable things for your target audience, or at least not harming or humiliating them in obvious and visible ways.

In particular, the report’s authors argue that a large part of the problem is that we have too often thought of the war on terror as though it were a new Cold War.

“But this is no Cold War. We call it a war on terrorism ― but Muslims in contrast see a history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration. This is not simply a religious revival, however, but also a renewal of the Muslim World itself. And it has taken form through many variant movements, both moderate and militant, with many millions of adherents ― of which radical fighters are only a small part. Moreover, these movements for restoration also represent, in their variant visions, the reality of multiple identities within Islam. If there is one overarching goal they share, it is the overthrow of what Islamists call the “apostate” regimes: the tyrannies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, and the Gulf states. They are the main target of the broader Islamist movement, as well as the actual fighter groups. The United States finds itself in the strategically awkward — and potentially dangerous — situation of being the longstanding prop and alliance partner of these authoritarian regimes. Without the U.S. these regimes could not survive. Thus the U.S. has strongly taken sides in a desperate struggle that is both broadly cast for all Muslims and country-specific. This is the larger strategic context, and it is acutely uncomfortable: U.S. policies and actions are increasingly seen by the overwhelming majority of Muslims as a threat to the survival of Islam itself. Three recent polls of Muslims show an overwhelming conviction that the U.S. seeks to “dominate” and “weaken” the Muslim World. Not only is every American initiative and commitment in the Muslim World enmeshed in the larger dynamic of intra-Islamic hostilities — but Americans have inserted themselves into this intra-Islamic struggle in ways that have made us an enemy to most Muslims. Therefore, in stark contrast to the Cold War, the United States today is not seeking to contain a threatening state/empire, but rather seeking to convert a broad movement within Islamic civilization to accept the value structure of Western Modernity — an agenda hidden within the official rubric of a “War on Terrorism.”

But if the strategic situation is wholly unlike the Cold War, our response nonetheless has tended to imitate the routines and bureaucratic responses and mindset that so characterized that era. In terms of strategic communication especially, the Cold War emphasized:

• Dissemination of information to “huddled masses yearning to be free.” Today we reflexively compare Muslim “masses” to those oppressed under Soviet rule. This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies — except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends.

• An enduringly stable propaganda environment. The Cold War was a status quo setting that emphasized routine message-packaging — and whose essential objective was the most efficient enactment of the routine. In contrast the situation in Islam today is highly dynamic, and likely to move decisively in one direction or another. The U.S. urgently needs to think in terms of promoting actual positive change.

• An acceptance of authoritarian regimes as long as they were anti-communist. This could be glossed over in our message of freedom and democracy because it was the main adversary only that truly mattered. Today, however, the perception of intimate U.S. support of tyrannies in the Muslim World is perhaps the critical vulnerability in American strategy. It strongly undercuts our message, while strongly promoting that of the enemy.”

Moreover …

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The arguments against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) are many, but most are idealistic. The arguments in favor of drilling for oil in ANWR are many, but most are practical or economic (not always the same thing). Having suffered defeat in the Senate last time around, the Bush Adminstration now feels safe to announce it’s renewing efforts to open up for drilling the area represented by Section 1002 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. I say "safe," because we heard little to nothing about this during the campaign. But the campaign is over, and Bush never said he’d drop the matter, so it’s no surprise. The only mystery at this point is how much of his new found political capital he’ll spend to see this happen.

Strongest among the arguments against drilling are the effects it could have on the environment there. Those anxious to take the oil argue that "We have the technology to develop oil without harming the environment and wildlife." But they don’t argue that they’ll use that technology. In fact, there are precedents to suggest that once they have the go ahead, the Bush administration will let industry drop their green facades.

But the question for me has never been how greenly the oil can be extracted, but rather how much integrity the concept of a National Wildlife Refuge has for the people of the United States. Pro-drilling enthusiasts like to argue that "The debate in Congress today centers solely on this small section [1.9 million acres]; the remaining 17.5 million acres of ANWR lie in the protected enclave that cannot be developed." Or they faithlessly argue that section 1002 is not pristine (the it’s-ugly-so-why-do-you-care argument). This argument is particularly disengenous though, because those offering it surely understand that any impact on section 1002 (which includes the shoreline) has been determined as very likely to have significant effects on the rest of ANWR, which even the Heritage Foundation admits is America’s "last true wilderness, a hallowed place, and a pristine environmental area."

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It toils not, neither does it spin; and yet I say unto you, even Solomon in all his glory did not have nearly this much money. The deficit for FY2004 was about $412,553,000,000 (pdf). The debt is now (Sunday) $7,429,946,398,746.85, or a bit over $22,200 for every man, woman and child in the United States. (This is low, since we hit the debt ceiling recently, and rather than raise it right before the elections, we have been using money from the federal pension funds to pay our bills.) Since George W. Bush took office, the debt has grown by a third (the Times article just cited says 40%, but the government figures seem to indicate a lower number.)

That’s a lot of money. A lot of money. Moreover, our fiscal situation is about to get worse: the baby boom generation will be retiring soon, Social Security will stop providing us with a surplus to loot every year, and Medicare costs are going through the roof; in combination, these facts are shortly going to put a lot of pressure on our federal budget. But rather than face this problem and try to prepare for it by paying down existing debt, President Bush enacted tax cuts that have saddled us with nearly two trillion dollars in additional debt. It’s the tax cuts, more than any other factor, that drive the deficit: when you consider the change from surplus to deficit over the last four years, three times more of it is due to drops in revenue than to increases in spending, including spending on defense, homeland security, and Iraq. And while some of these revenue losses reflect the deficit, more are due to the tax cuts. If the tax cuts are made permanent, they will contribute significantly more to the national debt over the next 75 years than Social Security and Medicare combined. (cite; see table 1.)

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Do Tom Coburn and Alan Keyes have some kind of bet to see which one can sound nuttier?? If so, Coburn may be defying the odds and pulling into the lead.

The campaigns of U.S. Senate candidates Democrat Brad Carson and Republican Tom Coburn exchanged sharp remarks Monday over an August comment Coburn made about “rampant” lesbianism in southeastern Oklahoma schools.

At an Aug. 31 town hall meeting, Coburn said: “You know, John Burkeen is our rep down here in the southeast area. He lives in Coalgate and travels out of Atoka.

“He was telling me lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now, think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that’s happened to us?”

School officials were confused:

Southeastern Oklahoma educators said they were mystified by Coburn’s August comments.

Joe McCulley, the school superintendent in Coalgate, chuckled when asked about the remark.

“I think he’s spreading rumors. He knows something I don’t know. We have not identified anything like that. We have not had to deal with any issues on that subject — ever,” McCulley said.

Hugo Superintendent Dwight Davidson also was puzzled by the remark.

“Going on six years, I have never heard of one incident of that nature,” he said.

The Carson campaign released the videotape, so there’s not much possibility that he was misquoted. Coburn’s spokesman said the remarks were, you guessed it, “taken out of context.”

I do wonder what the question was.

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I thought this discussion on the nature of heroism was worth a link or seven.

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We are a nation of immigrants. You all know this. Most of us had to write an essay about it at some point in elementary school, unless we could get out of it by having our mom bake a loaf of Irish Soda bread or whichever other recipe to honor our heritage.

If the House version of the 9/11 bill becomes law, we will have no right to say it. I’ve focused heavily on the sections legalizing extraordinary rendition, but the awful things is, they are probably not even the worst part of Hastert’s bill. In terms of innocent people sent to torture and death, some of the other anti-immigration provisions would probably do more harm. The ACLU summarizes them here:

Attack on Habeas Corpus (Section 3006) – The House bill would eliminate judicial review of some immigration deportation orders under the ancient “Great Writ” of habeas corpus by channeling virtually all immigration cases to the federal courts of appeals, where appeals in some cases are barred.

Traditionally available to any person, citizen or non-citizen, in the United States as a “safety valve” that allows one final appeal to challenge extreme injustices by the authorities, habeas review would be barred in certain cases involving, for instance:

–Challenges to removal where the deportee is likely to be tortured upon return.
–Attorney malpractice or incompetence.
–Virtually all cases of the unlawful use of “expedited removal,” which allows immigration officials to summarily deport certain non-citizens, including many who are already in the country, if they believe, for instance, that their documents are invalid. Practically, the change could mean that a refugee from the genocide in Sudan who arrives without proper documentation could be sent back without any hearing….

Deportation Before Final Appeal (Section 3009) – The bill would set an extraordinarily high bar for courts to meet before granting “stays” of deportation, even while a deportee’s appeal is pending. Effectively, this section will render those appeals moot in many cases, because the non-citizen will have already been deported.

Deportation to Countries Without a Functioning Government (Section 3033) – The consent of a government to accept a person being deported there is a basic principle in international law. To do otherwise would subject many deportees to extreme human rights violations, torture and even death. The House bill would remove that requirement, allowing the government to deport a person to any country that does not “physically” resist his or her entry….

Asylum Claims Made More Difficult (Section 3007) — Currently, asylum seekers need only show they face persecution based in part on race, religion, nationality or membership in a certain social group. The current law would require one of these criteria to be the “central motive” behind the persecution. This is a significantly higher burden to meet for any asylum claimant who will suffer persecution based on a mixture of these factors, or who will suffer harm that is related, but not directly so, to one of these factors (for instance, an opposition party politician who faces arrest on trumped-up charges).

The section would also allow a judge to require asylum seekers to “corroborate” their claim of persecution, and lowers the ability of other courts to overturn a denial of asylum based on the ruling judge’s demand for corroboration. This is a significantly higher hurdle for asylum seekers, who often lack any ability to prove their claim through anything save their own testimony (imagine, again, a hypothetical Christian refugee who escapes Darfur only by the skin of her teeth). Not surprisingly, asylum-seekers have difficulty obtaining corroborating documents from the very government that is persecuting them.

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Juan Cole makes a compelling case that bin Laden (or AQ, if you think he’s dead) is further along in his long-term goals than the US in this conflict, and that the US has unwittingly helped him get there. Best bits:

Al-Qaeda has succeeded in several of its main goals. It had been trying to convince Muslims that the United States wanted to invade Muslim lands, humiliate Muslim men, and rape Muslim women. Most Muslims found this charge hard to accept. The Bush administration’s Iraq invasion, along with the Abu Ghuraib prison torture scandal, was perceived by many Muslims to validate Bin Laden’s wisdom and foresightedness.

After the Iraq War, Bin Laden is more popular than George W. Bush even in a significantly secular Muslim country such as Turkey. This is a bizarre finding, a weird turn of events. Turks didn’t start out with such an attitude. It grew up in reaction against US policies.

It remains to be seen whether the US will be forced out of Iraq the way it was forced out of Iran in 1979. If so, as al-Zawahiri says, that will be a huge victory. A recent opinion poll did find that over 80 percent of Iraqis want an Islamic state. If Iraq goes Islamist, that will be the biggest victory the movement has had since the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. An Islamist Iraq might well be able ultimately to form a joint state with Syria, starting the process of the formation of the Islamic superstate of which Bin Laden dreams.

If the Muslim world can find a way to combine the sophisticated intellectuals and engineers of Damascus and Cairo with the oil wealth of the Persian Gulf, it could well emerge as a 21st century superpower.

Bin Laden’s dream of a united Muslim state under a revived caliphate may well be impossible to accomplish. But with the secular Baath gone, it could be one step closer to reality. If you add to the equation the generalized hatred for US policies (both against the Palestinians and in Iraq) among Muslims, that is a major step forward for al-Qaeda. In Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda has emerged as a dissident political party. Before it had just been a small group of Bin Laden’s personal acolytes in Afghanistan and a handful of other countries.

Although the United States and its Pakistani ally have captured significant numbers of al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a whole new generation of angry young Muslim men has been produced. Al-Qaeda has moved from being a concrete cell-based terrorist organization to being an ideal and a model, for small local groups in Casablanca, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and elsewhere.

The US is not winning the war on terror. Al-Qaeda also has by no means won. But across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished more of its goals than the US has of its.

Invading Iraq is still seen by many folks as having always been a necessary part of the conflict (I refuse to call it a “war on terror” any more). I didn’t see it before the invasion and now see it even less. At least before the conflict, I suspected Bush had a better plan to win the peace in Iraq than he obviously had.

I continue to be convinced the invasion of Iraq was a long-standing Neocon plan with no connection to terrorism before 9/11 and nothing but rhetoric connecting it to terrorism after 9/11…until, of course, we screwed things up so royally. Now, ironically, it’s totally connected to terrorism, just not in a way that serves our best interests.

merci Ondine

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From the New York Times:

“The F.B.I. is investigating a Pentagon official on suspicion of passing secrets to Israel, according to government officials.

The espionage investigation has focused on an official who works in the office of Douglas Feith, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, officials who have been briefed about the investigation said on Friday. The F.B.I. has gathered evidence that the Pentagon official passed classified policy documents to officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a major pro-Israeli lobbying group, who in turn provided the information to Israeli intelligence, the officials said.

The bureau has evidence that the Pentagon official has provided the Israelis with a sensitive report about American policy toward Iran, along with other materials, according to the officials.”

The Israeli Embassy and AIPAC deny the allegations.

The story gets more interesting, though.

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