The blame game

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From today’s New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 — President Bush, appearing confident about sustaining support for his Iraq strategy, met at the Pentagon on Friday with the uniformed leaders of the nation’s armed services and then pointedly accused the war’s opponents of politicizing the debate over what to do next.

“The stakes in Iraq are too high and the consequences too grave for our security here at home to allow politics to harm the mission of our men and women in uniform,” Mr. Bush said in a statement after his meeting with the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in a briefing room known as the Tank.

The meeting, which lasted an hour and a half, was among the president’s last Iraq strategy sessions before he leaves for Australia to meet with leaders of Asian and Pacific nations. It came on the eve of a string of reports and hearings that, starting next week, could determine the course of the remaining 16 months of Mr. Bush’s presidency.

Beginning on Tuesday, when Congress returns from its August recess, lawmakers are prepared to debate what to do in Iraq in daily hearings that will culminate on Sept. 10 and Sept. 11 with appearances by the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, and the military commander there, Gen. David H. Petraeus.

Congress has mandated a progress report from the White House before Sept. 15, and Mr. Bush chided lawmakers for calling for a change in policy before hearing the views of the two men who are, as administration officials repeatedly point out, “on the ground in Iraq.”

What’s happening is that Bush & Co are preparing to blame the Democrats for undermining the Iraq venture just when it appeared that it might have turned the corner.

The outlines of the argument are beginning to emerge. Here are the headlines:

  • There is some evidence that the ‘surge’ has worked in Baghdad; and
  • If US forces were given more time and resources, there is a chance that some kind of workable country would have emerged from the mess; but
  • The lily-livered Democrats killed off that possibility, and therefore
  • It was the Democrats who ‘let our boys down’.

    One of the problems we outsiders have is that it’s almost impossible to reach any informed judgement about the current overall position in Iraq. Of course the media reports are bad, but I don’t trust them because we know that Western media cannot operate in 99 per cent of the country.

    For that reason, I found the recent report by Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution very interesting. Here’s their ‘overall assessment’:

    There is a great deal going well in Iraq but, unfortunately, also a great deal going badly. Points of view often heard in Washington, that the war is already lost on the one hand, or bound to be won if we are adequately patient on the other, seem at odds with conditions on the battlefield and throughout the country.

    The greatest progress has been made in providing security to the Iraqi people in those areas currently under direct U.S. military supervision—namely, Baghdad, its outlying areas to north and south (the “Belts”), al-Anbar province in the West, and Ninawah and Salah ad-Din in the North. Overall, we felt that progress in security was actually greater than what we had expected given how recently the increase in troops as well as the change in U.S. and Iraqi strategy and tactics under General David Petraeus had occurred.

    We assessed that national, macro-level economic progress remained marginal, but there was some considerable local economic progress, typically correlated with the presence of a fully-staffed provincial reconstruction team (PRT) or such a team embedded within a military unit (EPRT). We saw effectively no signs of progress in the high-level political discussions meant to effect national reconciliation.

    Current U.S. strategy envisions the provision of greater security making possible local economic and political progress (of which we saw some modest but noteworthy evidence) and strategic-level national reconciliation or accommodation (of which we saw no evidence). Our observations suggest that the Coalition is making progress in accordance with this strategy—although it is very early in the process, there are still very significant hurdles to overcome, and there is no evidence that can prove that this strategy is destined to succeed. Nevertheless, especially given the difficulties of finding a viable alternative strategy (a “Plan B”) for Iraq that would safeguard U.S. interests, we conclude that the progress made so far argues for giving the surge and its attendant military and political strategies more time. However, we caution that the U.S. is not yet irrevocably headed for success in Iraq, so the Administration and the Congress should remain vigilant. The change in course in Iraq has produced enough success to warrant supporting its continuation at least through the remainder of 2007, but progress should be continuously reassessed, especially beginning again in early 2008.

    • Hmmm… Note the way the Brookings guys try to have it both ways. On the one hand,

    “given the difficulties of finding a viable alternative strategy (a “Plan B”) for Iraq that would safeguard U.S. interests, we conclude that the progress made so far argues for giving the surge and its attendant military and political strategies more time.

    [Translation: it’s worth persevering. Indeed we have no option but to persevere.]

    But,

    However, we caution that the U.S. is not yet irrevocably headed for success in Iraq, so the Administration and the Congress should remain vigilant.

    [Translation: we never said it was a sure thing, so don’t blame us for not portraying the downside.]

    Don’t you just love that phrase “the U.S. is not yet irrevocably headed for success in Iraq”?

    Quote of the Day

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    Sometimes I think God put video content guys on the planet to make the music guys look progressive and visionary.

    Analyst Michael Gartenberg, commenting on NBC’s decision to take its stuff away from Apple because Steve Jobs wouldn’t agree to sell their video content at $4.99 a pop (compared to existing price of $1.99)

    The continued implosion of broadcast TV

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    From IBM Press room – 2007-08-22…

    A new IBM online survey of consumer digital media and entertainment habits shows audiences are more in control than ever and increasingly savvy about filtering marketing messages.

    The global findings overwhelmingly suggest personal Internet time rivals TV time. Among consumer respondents, 19 percent stated spending six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, versus nine percent of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing. 66 percent reported viewing between one to four hours of TV per day, versus 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.

    Consumers are seeking consolidated, trustworthy content, recognition and community when it comes to mobile and Internet entertainment. Armed with PC, mobile and interactive content and tools, consumers are vying for control of attention, content and creativity. Despite natural lags among marketers, advertising revenues will follow consumers’ habits.

    To effectively respond to this power shift, IBM sees advertising agencies going beyond traditional creative roles to become brokers of consumer insights; cable companies evolving to home media portals; and broadcasters and publishers racing toward new media formats. Marketers in turn are being forced to experiment and make advertising more compelling, or risk being ignored…

    Blog-hating as a syndrome

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    Lovely Guardian piece by Scott Rosenberg on the strange hostility evoked by blogging in conventional minds…

    From the dawn of blogging it’s been tempting for established professionals to reject blogging as trivial and unreliable. Epitomising this stance most recently is Tom Wolfe – who, in a brief essay accompanying the Wall Street Journal’s blog birthday celebration, dismissed the blogosphere as “a universe of rumours”. To support this charge, he cited an inaccuracy in Wikipedia’s entry about himself. Of course the online encyclopedia is not a blog at all. But critics like Wolfe can’t be bothered making distinctions. He admitted that Wikipedia isn’t “strictly a blog” but claimed it “shares the genre’s characteristics”, and dismissed a universe of blogs on the basis of a single Wikipedia inaccuracy – which was, naturally, immediately corrected. If it’s online, apparently, it’s all the same, and all worthless.

    It’s hard to take Wolfe’s assessment of blogging seriously since he admits that, “weary of narcissistic shrieks and baseless ‘information’,” he doesn’t read them himself. In any case, those who obsessively review their own Wikipedia entries for errors might pause before accusing others of narcissism…

    Hulu, hulu

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    Well, well. News Corp. is getting ready to roll out its putative YouTube killer. Here’s the breathless update from the site:

    The first bit of news we’d like to share is that we have a name: Hulu.

    Why Hulu? Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premier content when, where and how you want it.

    Actually, it’s basically another way of spelling ‘turkey’.

    Note also the cheerful, friendly Terms and Conditions which state, in part,

    You are also strictly prohibited from creating works or materials that derive from or are based on the materials contained in this Site including, without limitation, fonts, icons, link buttons, wallpaper, desktop themes, on-line postcards and greeting cards, unlicensed merchandise and mash-ups, unless you have obtained the prior written consent of Hulu or unless it is expressly permitted by this Site in each instance. This prohibition applies regardless of whether the derivative materials are sold, bartered or given away.

    Andrew Keen’s Best Case

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    David Weinberger has done something really interesting. He’s taken Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur and extracted from it the gist of the case that Keen is trying to make — and then discusses it critically but fairly. This is an interesting departure from the usual mode of public argument — in which people build straw men from wilful misrepresentations of other people’s arguments, and then proceed to destroy their creations.

    There’s also a rather good debate between Andrew Keen and the Guardian‘s Emily Bell — which Keen graciously concedes that Emily won.

    Drudge reported

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    Interesting profile of Matt Drudge by Philip Weiss. Sample:

    The left hates Drudge for good reason; he has helped kill one Democratic presidential aspirant after another and has started in on John Edwards this season. But as Halperin and Harris note, Drudge only gained his power because liberals so dominated traditional media that they disdained the Internet. Now that he’s opened the territory, the left is doing pretty well itself. “There’s a pretty healthy group of left-wing sites online, which tends to balance things, no doubt,” says Donna Brazile. “But Matt is in a class by himself.”

    At times Drudge does sound like a conservative. He hates big government, immigration, and abortion rights. When Jimmy Carter criticized George Bush in the foreign press, Drudge questioned his loyalty. But Drudge’s ideological heart is libertarian, and many of his anti-corporate riffs would stir a left-wing anarchist. Drudge has been highly critical of partnerships between Google and state governments, and he fears corporations. He believes that people in surgery have had chips implanted without their knowledge, that the day will come when the government will “dart” a chip into you without your permission, and that DNA will be collected from spit on the street, “and then they can impose any rule, even against smiling.”

    Republicans can’t count on Drudge. He praises Rosie O’Donnell and Michael Moore for their independence and fight, and seems to despise Giuliani and McCain. “Breitbart is an intellectual, dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and educated. Matt is not a book reader. I think he probably struggles to make right-wing noises,” says one Republican…

    Thanks to the incomparable Arts and Letters Daily for the link.

    A cracking good time

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    From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

    The Australian government spent almost $85 million on a filter to block children’s access to porn on the Net. Tom Wood, a 16-year-old from Melbourne, cracked it in 30 minutes, all the while heaping nationalist scorn on the imported product. “It’s a horrible waste of money,” he said. “They could get a much better filter for a few million dollars made here rather than paying overseas companies for an ineffective one.” The government responded by adding an Australian designed filter. Tom cracked that one in 40 minutes. Communications Minister Helen Coonan said, “The vendor is investigating the matter as a priority.” Young Tom says there are more important concerns about children’s Net safety to deal with anyway. “Filters aren’t addressing the bigger issues anyway,” he said. “Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I’d fix. They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them.” And maybe give them some security tips as well.