Kevin Sullivan

The Ramadi Model

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

This encouraging piece in today’s Times Online arguably shows us how a sustained military presence in Iraq could work.  The case study, one expected to be a cornerstone in General Petraeus’s report next month, is the Ramadi success story:

Ramadi’s transformation is breathtaking. Shortly before I arrived last November masked al-Qaeda fighters had brazenly marched through the city centre, pronouncing it the capital of a new Islamic caliphate. The US military was still having to fight its way into the city through a gauntlet of snipers, rocket-propelled grenades, suicide car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Fifty US soldiers had been killed in the previous five months alone. I spent 24 hours huddled inside Eagles Nest, a tiny COP overlooking the derelict football stadium, listening to gunfire, explosions and the thump of mortars. The city was a ruin, with no water, electricity or functioning government. Those of its 400,000 terrified inhabitants who had not fled cowered indoors as fighting raged around them.

Today Ramadi is scarcely recognisable. Scores of shattered buildings testify to the fury of past battles, but those who fled the violence are now returning. Pedestrians, cars and motorbike rickshaws throng the streets. More than 700 shops and businesses have reopened. Restaurants stay open late into the evening. People sit outside smoking hookahs, listening to music, wearing shorts – practices that al-Qaeda banned. Women walk around with uncovered faces. Children wave at US Humvees. Eagles’ Nest, a heavily fortified warren of commandeered houses, is abandoned and the stadium hosts football matches.

“Al-Qaeda is gone. Everybody is happy,” said Mohammed Ramadan, 38, a stallholder in the souk who witnessed four executions. “It was fear, pure fear. Nobody wanted to help them but you had to do what they told you.”

…

We have an Iraqi saying: ‘If you’re bitten by a snake you’re scared of the smallest insect’. We’re not going to let that snake back any more,” said Ali Sami, 39, another stallholder who recently returned home after fleeing to Baghdad. Ramadi has gone from war zone to building site. US soldiers have become the nation-builders so derided by Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary. They are training Ramadi’s 7,000 new policemen (a year ago it had 200) and helping the Iraqis to rebuild their broken city.

They have set up 12 district councils and a city council. They have created 19,000 day labour jobs, paying locals $7 (£3.47) an hour to clear rubble, remove acres of garbage, repair cratered roads, paint shop fronts and replace underground pipes destroyed by IEDs. They have restored electricity, water, rubbish collections and a rudimentary bus service. They are erecting 1,000 solar-powered street lamps. The hospital – commandeered by al-Qaeda – and the fire station are back up and running. Criminal courts will reopen next month. So will Ramadi’s ceramics factory, one of its few real employers. Gunfire has become a sound of celebration.

The city council and US military broadcast daily progress reports, introduced by the national anthem and English football results, from giant loudspeakers above 19 police stations.

The 6,000 US soldiers are now dubbed “friendly forces”, and most are bemused by their new civil role. “I want to fight al-Qaeda, but f*** it – this is victory,” said Corporal Patrick Marzillo from Chicago.

F*** it is right.  This is a great story, although one likely to be picked apart and dismissed by the neo-progressives and other skeptics.

But this is a great victory for the American military, and a fine example of how a decentralized, people-focused form of nation building can be effective in Iraq.  General Petraeus has literally re-written the book on American counter-insurgency, and there can be no doubt that providing services, aiding in the creation of jobs and making sure that basic infrastructure needs like water and energy are available will be key.

It’s still an uphill battle.  The DoD and GAO are debating the results of the so-called surge, calling them “mixed” to say the least.  But in the case of Ramadi, you have a city that just one year ago was overrun by terrorists and insurgents.  These groups implemented a “Taliban-like” regime over the city, and publicly executed those who disregarded their regulations.

These Iraqi citizens are rejecting such repression.  They have lived under it for years.  Their parents, and their parent’s parents, have lived under it for years.  They have had enough.

We must give the surge more time.  This isn’t a popular position, and it will only get you shouted down and smeared by many on the far left.  Regardless, we need to give this general more time to win a winnable war.

(Cross posted at The Van Der Galien Gazette)

Blaming the Buyer

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Blogs Too Bourgeois?

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Howdy.

New post for you to check out at RCP: Is Blogging Too Bourgeois?

Check it out…thanks!

A Moratorium on Bad Analogies

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Ok, so can we maybe reach a bargain here?

If we can agree that President Bush is an idiot for comparing Iraq to Vietnam, can we please not compare the possibility of American withdrawal to The American Civil War?

Matthew Yglesias has done just that, in addition to drawing a parallel with the Lebanese Civil War.  His reasoning goes as follows:

To say that our current policy is working and needs just ten more years to stabilize Iraq is lunacy — just leaving stands a perfectly good chance of working just as quickly at radically lower cost.

…

By a similar token, the American Civil War ended fewer than ten years after James Buchanan’s blunders. Ten years isn’t just longer than America has political will to sustain, it’s genuinely too long. Policies that work accomplish their goals faster than that, something that’s supposed to unfold at the speed Petraeus is talking about isn’t working at all.

“Policies that work accomplish their goals faster than that”?  This is absurd.  I would love to talk about the Korean War, and the gradual decline of Communism and other wonderful foreign policy analogies that disprove such a comment.  But NO.  No more.

As for Matthew’s examples, the Civil War comparison is just silly.  We had a central government.  We had the foundation for a liberal and democratic society already established, which is why secession from the union was bad.  The Nullification Crisis had already established this.  This was Lincoln’s rally cry, and he was right.  The Constitution was on his side.

The Lebanese example is equally bad.  The reason being is that you could flip it on its head, and use it as a reason to stay in Iraq.  The Cairo Accord forced Lebanon to allow a terrorist organization to operate within their own borders, so that said terrorist organization could attack Israel by proxy.  This “civil” war was in fact fueled in many ways by foreign elements, much the way Iraq has been exacerbated by Saudis, Iranians and other foreign fighters.

So please…let’s just stop.  Rich does a nice job of handling the “Spanish Civil War” comparison.  Bravo!

I know it’s tempting to look back.  I am guilty as charged.  But I think we’ve all gotten a little bit carried away trying to prove our own points via historical context.  I will not do this again in the future, unless I can lay out a very detailed analysis to substantiate the comparison.  Since I don’t have the attention span, nor the desire to do so, the entire enterprise is highly unlikely.

You’re probably better off.

(Cross posted at The Van Der Galien Gazette)

Good Stuff

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Blog posts

If you weren’t already aware, Megan McArdle recently began blogging for the The Atlantic, and has already jumped right into the fray, raising great points on health care reform, animal cruelty and wonky tax policy stuff.

Very good stuff, and a refreshing voice for the blogosphere.  Check it out.   

A.B.C.

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Blog posts

The Cult of Progress

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

I won’t attempt to expound much upon Michael’s excellent post on the neo-progressive purge being cooked up over at Open Left.  It’s a must read, and I think an important discussion to be had.  What I find rather interesting however are the kinds of responses this post has garnered.  Some have asked why it’s only the Democrats who get criticized for this, since party discipline has in fact always been enforced through primaries and other such tactics.  FDR demanded strict party discipline from Congress, and would threaten to run a New Dealer in the primary of any Democrat (particularly southern Democrats) who refused to fall in line.  We have clearly seen this happen over and over again, so why is it such a shock now?

Cernig raises this question in a post today, and argues that those of us who are concerned about Stoller, Kos, et al. should pay more attention to the Republicans and their coercive party compulsion:

The ludicrous nature of the basic thesis is that a few people who are famous within their own small pool but utterly unknown to the world at large and who have no established political power base among the movers and shakers are going to mount an ideological purge of the Democratic Party. Never mind that people like Kos and Stoller, who I have to say I think often suffer from an over-inflated “wannabe” attitude about their own importance, are viewed as little more than a new source of money and free activist labor by the real movers and shakers (as just another “union”, if you like).

The argument is Kos Derangement Syndrome at its very worst – and also includes an element of hypocrisy by decrying totalitarianism in a small and relatively powerless element of Democratic Party internal politics while at the same time ignoring Republican totalitarian message discipline and attacks on heretics which stem from the very top of the power pyramid. Which is the most serious attack on democracy, exactly?

I can’t speak for Michael, or anyone else here at the Gazette for that matter.  But as a Democratic voter, and a proud Liberal, I can say with relative certainty that I welcome a cannibilized Republican Party.  If they wish to eat their own and implode, well I am all for it.  What they do to ruin their party isn’t really my business, and quite frankly, should be encouraged.  All the easier to defeat them.

However, when I choose between Coke or Pepsi, I don’t enjoy being told that I can only drink diet (pardon the Carvillian analogy).  This is ultimately a debate over ideas, and whether or not the Democratic Party will remain a place for those who reside from the center to the Left.  The problem with Cernig’s argument is that it is always a small group of people who do these things, if I may paraphrase and tweak Margaret Mead.  If their ideas were truly respected and embraced by the majority, than little “Bush Dog” antics such as this wouldn’t be necessary.  The dissenting opinions would be marginalized, and wonderful “progress” would ensue.  Ironically, it has been the self-proclaimed progressives who have suffer under these party purges in the past.  Now the shoe is on the other foot, and they seem to want their pound of proverbial flesh.

Cernig calls it “Kos Derangement Syndrome”.  Was it “KDS” when Mark Warner lavished the Netroots with a party and chocolate fountain at last year’s YearlyKos?  Was it “KDS” when all of the major Democratic presidential nominees decided to attend YearlyKos ‘07, while not a single one attended the annual DLC conference?  “Just another union”?  Unions have had a direct policy sway over the Democratic Party for decades.  Referring to Kos & Co. in this fashion may be a unintentional compliment on Cernig’s part.  Money and manpower is all elected officials ever really want (aside from your vote), so how does that dismiss the political efficacy of the Netroots in any way?  They have learned that your ideas don’t necessarily need to be popular, or even sensible, as long as you can mobilize money and manpower.  This is why they are relevant, and this is why a debate over Liberalism is probably a pretty darn good idea.         

But I think the Kos’ and the Stollers of the world have long given up on a debate over ideas.  They are primarily focused on electoral strategy and discipline, foregoing any discussion about what constitutes as actual progress.  G.K. Chesterton once remarked that “progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.”  The Cult of Progress forbids any such talk, and demands only discipline and groupthink.

In the grand scheme, is it a small bunch that is attempting this party takeover?  Sure.  But it’s the small bunches that often scare me the most. 

(Cross posted at The Van der Galien Gazette)

Re: Muslim Reformation

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Please Note: This post has been cross-posted from The Van Der Galien Gazette, and was in response to a post there.

I meant to reply earlier to Michael’s post from this morning on the perils of Islamic reformation.  In response to this WaPo piece by Diana Muir, Michael had the following to add:

Those who say that the reformation brought science and progress are, thus argues Mrs. Muir mistaken: as Ed Morrissey explains – it was the Enlightenment which accomplished that, not the reformation.

When we look at the above quotes, and read Muir’s article, one thing becomes clear: the reformation is already going on in the Islamic world. In fact, it is one of the main causes for the present Islamic violence.

What the Islamic world needs, both convincingly explain, is not a reformation, but an enlightenment.

This is, by the way, what most European experts such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali say as well. They talk about the need for an Enlightenment: Ayaan often said “give us our own Voltaire!” She did not say “give us our own Luther!”

And for a good reason.

Maybe this is all semantical, but I think this argument is backwards.  Yes, the Protestant Reformation was bloody, but as Michael notes above, we’re already seeing the results of sectarian disdain and religious division in the Muslim world.

Also, I think some are missing the point when people talk about the concept of “reformation.”  It wasn’t necessarily Luther’s literalism that changed the world, but rather, the use of the printing press and the “Gutenberg Revolution” that changed the face of Christianity.  For the first time, Christians could actually read the Bible in their native language, and not have their faith dictated to them by a monolithic Church.  This conflict, which led to blood and violence for many reasons, was mainly about access and the democratization of the faith.  Protestantism promoted the literal word, because it had been assumed that Christianity had lost its way at the hands of Rome.

The dissemination of print led to the devolution of control over time.  The reason this parallel doesn’t have a nice fit is that the notion of a distinct “Church and State” is a very Judeo-Christian one.  The “Church” is the product of a movement once outside of government.  This distinction has never truly been made in Islam, which can be seen even today throughout much of the Middle East.

So, I think reform is the right idea.  There are already plenty of moderate and “enlightened” Muslims around the world, and the Qur’an already promotes concepts of independence and enlightenment, such as Ijtihad.  There are mystical sects of Islam, such as Sufism, that buck much of the conventional orthodoxy.

The problem is that the extremists control the state power, in addition to the means to disseminate the teachings of the religion (see Saudi Arabia).  Wahhabism is a fairly recent and modern bastardization of a faith that has already produced science, art and culture.  We’ve seen enlightenment and silent moderatism, but what Islam needs today is reform.  Or as Irshad Manji puts it:

“Moderate Muslims denounce terror that’s committed in the name of Islam but they deny that religion has anything to do with it.  Reform-minded Muslims denounce terror that’s committed in the name of Islam and acknowledge that our religion is used to inspire it.”

RealClearBlogs: 2.0

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Part of the reason I have ignored this blog, aside from contributing to The Van Der Galien Gazette, is that I’ve been helping to make the blog coverage page at RCP bigger and better.  Real Clear Blogs now has an actual blog component, as well as a roundup of the best debates, discussions and featured posts from around the blogosphere.

So please, check it out, and give us your thoughts and suggestions.  Gracias!

Goings On, etc.

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Pardon the silence here on my blog.  I promise to be a more diligent blogger in the future, I swear.

In the meantime, my friend and blogger-extraordinaire Michael van der Galien has graciously invited me to be a co-blogger at his own website, The Van Der Galiën Gazette.  Michael has made a few adjustments to the site, and continues to make it bigger and better.  I’m honored to be a part of those plans.

My first post is up and ready for torching, so be a sport and go read it.