Amitai Etzioni Notes

Beware of Generals Carrying Metrics

The newest way General Petraeus plans to measure success in the war in Afghanistan reminded me of what the government did when its campaign to persuade the public to stop smoking did not make much headway. It stopped counting how many people had had their last cigarette -- and started counting how many anti-smoking pamphlets it mailed.

The White House will conduct a review of Afghanistan policy in December. With this in mind, as Maj. Gen. John Campbell, the commander of allied forces in eastern Afghanistan, put it, "We have to show progress". Accordingly, Gen. Petraeus has outlined five metrics of military success, including: "the elimination of Taliban sanctuaries outside the city of Kandahar and continued targeting of senior and mid-level insurgent leaders by U.S. Special Operations forces, an increase in the disappointing number of Taliban fighters brought into a government reintegration scheme, the development of newly authorized local defense forces, and improvement in the capabilities of Afghanistan's national security forces."

These measurements correlate very poorly with what the U.S. is seeking and with what General Petraeus argued to date was what he sought to achieve. Petraeus is famous for his counterinsurgency strategy, according to which one cannot win the war militarily, but only by building a "legitimate and effective" government composed of the citizens of the country, so that those who would rebel will be enticed to come in from the cold.

To measure progress on this front one, would have to know, for instance, that, if following the last election, the public does feel that the Karzai government is more representative and less fraudulent? Hardly. Does the public feel that the Karzai government and its local representatives, including the police and army, are less corrupt? No indication to this effect. Do they feel minimally secure in their homes and public spaces? Evidence shows to the contrary; the Taliban has been spreading in the northern, non-Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and holding on to most of the Southern ones. According to the Afghan NGO Safety Office, Afghanistan is more dangerous now than at any time since 2001. Four years ago, insurgents were active in only four Afghan provinces. Now, they are active in 33 of 34.

Last August, insurgents carried out 630 attacks. This August, they carried out 1,353. The International Security Assistance Force recorded 4,919 "kinetic events" (small-arms fire, bombs and shelling, etc.) in August, a 49% increase over August 2009. Thus a proper set of measurements would show a retrogression rather than progress.

Petraeus' measurements not only measure minor steps, but they are so limited and hedged that success can be achieved without any true progress, like saying that if you used to have a dollar and now have two -- you are twice as rich. True but meaningless. "Eliminating Taliban sanctuaries outside Kandahar" after several months, during which a very large American and Afghan force set out to secure the city itself, seems small potatoes. "Targeting senior and mid-level insurgent leaders" is a continuing operation; more of the same, it is unlikely to turn the tide that is running against us. The same holds for the remaining measurements. The whole metrics idea smacks of the body count in Vietnam. When the U.S. was failing to roll back the Vietcong, which was controlling more and more of the country, the U.S. military started showing "progress" by reporting every so often how many of the enemy were killed - and making the figure grow by counting the innocent civilians killed. The figures were irrelevant and misleading.

If the American leaders and public will be swayed by these metrics, General Petraeus will turn out to be right when he stated:

You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually.... Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives.

Criticize Israel, but...

There is nothing wrong with criticizing many of the policies of the current Israeli government -- and those of the previous ones. And it is completely uncalled for to try to tar such critics as anti-Semites. Indeed, many Israeli citizens are more critical of their government than their American counterparts.

However, such criticisms do turn into a prejudice when they are completely one-sided. Thus, very little was heard recently from the critics of Israel, including many progressive American Jews, when Hamas killed four Israeli civilians, including a couple with six children and another on the way.

Note that Hamas kept to the ceasefire despite the continued blockade and did not raise its arms to support those who tried to break the blockade or against Israeli settlers -- until the Israelis and Palestinians sat down to try to negotiate a peace settlement. Thus, Hamas openly set out to kill these negotiations.

For those who hoped to draw Hamas into these negotiations, it one more time articulated what it is seeking: Hamas official Ismail Ashqar deemed the whole of Israel and the Palestinian territories "an Islamic endowment for all Muslims," adding that the Palestinian Authority and negotiators "cannot give up any single piece of dust of its soil." Yet none of this seems to particularly trouble those who chastise Israel whenever it needs to be chastised and sometimes when it needs not.

More astonishing is that we have heard nothing -- not even simple news reports -- in the progressive media, from NPR and New York Times to Huffington Post about the following, revealed by a Washington Post editorial: Palestinian police "rounded up scores of Hamas operatives last week [after the shooting of the settlers] but quickly released them - reminding some of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's duplicitous response to acts of terrorism." The editorial urges Mr. Abbas to "match intentions with actions."

A fair-minded critic does not jump on one side and turn a blind eye to the other.

PS : and did you learn from any of these publications that the growth rate so far in 2010 was 16% for Gaza and 9% for the West Bank?

Two for the Price of One Equals None

One cannot but respect President Obama for heeding his inner voice, come what may. It may be disastrous politics and cost the Democrats and the country dearly, but people claim that they want a public leader who does not mind the public opinion polls. Well they got one, with a vengeance.

One of Obama's core ideas was and is that he can get two for the price of one. Thus, in composing the original stimulus bill he did not go for those outlays that would stimulate the economy most quickly and those that would create most jobs -- but for projects that would make us better in the long run, as well as have some stimulating effect. For instance, fixing the infrastructure. For example, increasing the expenditure on research. And making the economy greener.

Here he goes again. Having finally decided -- better late than never -- that the country needs more stimulus, he goes again for the long run: more money for infrastructure projects that take years to get rolling and generate relatively few jobs but that the country surely needs. And more investment in research and development, which takes even longer to pay off, but pays off handsomely when it finally kicks in.

Nor does the president give up on his notion that he can get the GOP to play ball. Thus, the new proposals call for tax deductions for corporations, despite the fact that businesses have already found numerous ways to evade paying most taxes due, in the vain hope that this could maybe, possibly -- this time -- win the GOP support. Providing funds for those unemployed to enroll in community colleges for retraining and hiring them to carry out public jobs (via the states) would not face much more GOP opposition but would have gone a much longer way toward reducing unemployment.

In short, in this case at least the vox populi has it right. These tax cuts will not do much of anything. We may hence salute our president's integrity and cry for those without work, their families, and all those who would have more work and income if the economy did not continue to be in such an anemic state. Cry for America.

Needed: A Social Security Holiday

A recent forum in The Nation includes commentaries by seven public intellectuals about the ways Obama is progressing. At least five of them blame his failing on The System and urge that more attention be paid to his "major achievements." They are not doing any favors to the Democrats' and the President's reelection prospects or to his agenda, because they divert attention from those matters in which Obama has considerable degrees of freedom.  I am not referring to past mistakes -- those are water under the bridge -- but to their extension into the near future.

The System is indeed stacked against the progressive agenda. However, it did not make Obama get ever more deeply mired in Afghanistan. It did not force him to increase the levels of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, nor to sign off on a fantasy of nation-building on the cheap, leading with the demand that Afghan's corrupt government -- which the U.S. continues to prop up -- curb corruption. True, he might have taken a short-term hit from the right if he followed the Biden strategy of disengagement and used drones and Special Forces to deal with the few remaining Al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan.  However, this was a political choice, not a course Congress or the lobbies forced on the Commander-in-Chief. Most important, it is not too late for him to reverse course, say, by following the promised December review.

Second, nobody can stop Obama from framing the forthcoming election as a contest between those who advocate economic growth and those who want to hit the brakes just as the economy is about to take off.  I am not talking about more infrastructure-building which takes years to have an effect and much of the money goes to jobs overseas.  What is needed is a year-long social security holiday, which would inject into the economy some $650 billion over 12 months, which would put money into the hands of workers and employers in short order.

The conventional wisdom that the American people are all worked up about the deficit is a myth. A July poll shows that 70 percent of Americans favored reducing the unemployment rate over reducing the deficit. A Gallup poll shows that the top issues Americans are concerned about are the state of the economy in general (30 percent) and unemployment (28 percent). The deficit got the nod by a mere 7 percent.  And this holds not just for Democrats. A July Quinnipiac poll finds that 61 percent of independents and 58 percent of Republicans think that reducing unemployment is more important than reducing the deficit!

There is a season for everything. Now we must stimulate more; next year, or in two years, we will make deficit reduction our priority.  In effect, the president would do well to lay down specific markers. For instance, he could state that if unemployment falls below 7%, he will cut the deficit say by 20%; once it falls to 6%, some more;  and that he will jump on it with both feet -- cutting costs and raising revenues -- once unemployment falls below five percent.

The Democrats cannot win if they make the deficit their cause, as they will be outgunned by Republicans, who will claim that whatever deficit reductions the Democrats favor, they will do better.

It is time for a Hail Mary pass. The Democrats cannot lose much worse in November than they are now slated to suffer if they come out with a strong "pro-growth, the hell with the deficit now" message. 

In short, if Obama does not change course, the voters are likely to face a lousy economy and a miserable war, not just in 2010 but also in 2012. We owe him a loud and clear wake-up call, as he seems all too certain to follow the failing policies and politics he has followed so far.

Obama's Apologists: Take Note

The Obama loyalists argue that while he is being impolitic, he will leave a great legacy behind. True, they proffer, he may have gone for health care while the people wanted jobs, and tried to bail out Main Street by bailing out Wall Street rather than the other way around. However, look at the first major health care reform in decades, and the first major financial reform in years, and so on. (Actually there are not so many "and so ons".) The president himself once intimated that if he had to choose, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." Most recently he allowed that he was governing while the Republicans were "politicking," but now he must also do some of this degrading stuff.

Well, the bad news is that if he does not do better politically, his legacy will not last long. If the economy continues to meander along, Japanese style, and the U.S. continues to be mired in a losing war in Afghanistan -- both look likely now -- the Republicans may well win control of both the White House and Congress in 2012.

And although they will not wipe out all that Obama achieved, they will cut and slice it, water it down, and then dilute it some more. The president and his remaining friends had better realize that legacy requires politicking. The argument that he can go for one at the cost of the other just does not hold water.

The Democrats' Failing Micro Politics

Jeffrey Toobin's thorough profile of Sen. Chuck Schumer in a recent issue of the New Yorker provides valuable insights into the micro politics that the Democrats practice these days.

Schumer worked with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to advance a bill that would provide $15 billion to exempt private-sector employers from paying the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax in 2010 for any new hires who had been unemployed for at least 60 days. However, the bill -- known as the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act or the Schumer-Hatch Bill -- is so small in a $14 rillion economy that it hardly can be expected to do any good.

Moreover, Toobin quotes Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who correctly observes, "the Schumer-Hatch tax credit will probably create almost no jobs." Firms hire so many new workers every month -- upwards of 4 million -- that employers are getting a tax credit for employees they would have hired anyway. The tax credit is too small -- amounting to $1,000 per new hire -- to incentivize additional hiring. "It truly is money for nothing," says Baker.

Schumer argues that the bill will have semi-magical, psychological effects. "When I got to Washington, I used to think, Oh, you know, politics, it's a lot of hype and fluff. But you go to the markets and they are immutable and you can't fool them. And, the longer I'm around, I think it's the market's psychology that matters dramatically. So if the local businessman thinks, hey, they've got a good plan here, and over the next two or three years the economy is going to get going, he is likely to spend more -- all because of the little Schumer-Hatch proposal." 

And Schumer hopes that the Democrats will be rewarded for such maneuvers. In his words, "The Republicans vote no, we win -- and, if the Republicans vote yes, we win." All this shows how unreal politicians have become and why such large segments of the American electorate holds that Washington is not working for them.

Give Them an Out

The U.S. Department of Justice should draft a contract for every American who opposes "big government" and wishes to cut it down and have their taxes slashed. The contract should stipulate that those who sign it will have to pay only a third of the regular tax rate (to cover the costs of our military and homeland security). However, in exchange they will not be entitled to any government services. 

They will not be able to obtain passports, enter public parks, or use the highway system paid for by the federal government. They will all go on the no-fly list because they have not paid for the air control system. They will have to take their children out of public schools. Above all, if they grow ill, they will have to pay the doctors a fee that will help cover the costs of training these physicians which is now largely covered by the federal government. If they are hospitalized, they will have to pay their share of the building costs, also often largely covered by the federal government, including of the so called "private" hospitals.

The contract will of course have to be much longer. In effect, I suspect that it will extend to at least 20 single-spaced pages. However, you get the point. We shall never be able to gain a hearing from the millions who have been brainwashed by the libertarian nonsense and its laissez-faire conservative accompaniments until we find a dramatic way to drive home the point that although there is great room -- in effect, urgent need -- to reform our government, nobody really wants to live without most of the services it does provide. And if a bunch of libertarians want to sign the contract and move to some mountaintop and take care of each other, so be it. Just remind them not to call 911 in an emergency.

Return of the Hooverites

The Republicans are willing to put the brakes on now despite the fact that the economy has not gained enough lift to take off. Indeed, their deficit-mongering is already causing a drag, which is slowing down the economy, and may well make it crash again. It is precisely the policy that Hoover notoriously embraced.

More surprising is that many Democrats do not dare point out the ill effects of this GOP maneuver. Privately they acknowledge that more stimulus is now needed and that deficits will become a problem only later, but they claim this sounds like "political double speak." For that reason they, too, tend to at least make Hooverite noises.

However, when I asked a bunch of primary school kids if they understood that the need for heating in the winter does not deny the need for air conditioning in the summer, sure to follow, they had no difficulties in coping with such a 'complex' thought.

Neither did Ben Bernanke, who testified before a House committee early in June this year that, in the succinct words of The Wall Street Journal, "if Congress pursued more fiscal stimulus to sustain the recovery, it should be accompanied by a concrete plan to bring the deficit back into line in the long run. But he [Bernanke] indicated the economy is too fragile to begin reducing the gap now."

Moreover, only a very untutored reading of public opinion polls will lead one to conclude that the public favors deficit reduction now. Thus, asked if they are concerned about the federal debt, a large majority expressed concern -- but only because this is a so-called "no costs" question. It is like asking if you like to have a free dinner. Much more revealing is that when Americans were asked what they would rather spend money on -- cutting the deficit or creating jobs -- more people favored jobs over deficit reduction (by 50 percent to 42%). Another poll shows only 30 percent willing to make cuts in government spending on health care or education to reduce the deficit, versus 62 percent who are opposed! More are willing to cut the military budget, but not as many as those who would rather not reduce the deficit.

President Truman once remarked that if you run a Republican (meaning a Democrat who acts like a Republican) against a Republican, a Republican will win every time. The same holds here. If Democrats try to compete as to who is the holier deficit cutter, expect the Republicans to win. This is not merely bad news for the Democrats, but for the country. The economy now needs more lift, not more drag.

* * *

The very framing of the debate whether now is the time to focus on generating jobs or reducing deficits plays into the hands of the deficit hawks. Deficits supposedly are going to devastate us all, including our children and grandchildren. Jobs are missing for a minority. Dedicating funds to "them" is a form of transfer payment. This wording makes one lose sight of the fact that when more people work, we all benefit. Let's hence put it in terms of what we do now need - more or less business?

Shameless

If you believe that corporations would be willing to make a little less money in order not to put the nation - their nation - at risk, you should read Richard Clarke’s excellent, just-issued book, Cyber War.

As Clarke reports, prior to the 1990s, the Pentagon made extensive use of specialized software designed by in-house programmers and a few defense contractors. But under pressure from libertarian ideologues and business’s lobbyists, the Pentagon began to use commercial software instead – in particular, Microsoft software.  However, it turned out that Microsoft had built a low-cost brand and based a principle of “one format for all” –  rather than software that was tailored to special security needs. Problems soon arose, including, as Clarke recounts, a 1997 incident when the USS Yorktown, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser whose ship operations were administered on computers running Windows NT, was rendered inoperable after Windows crashed. “When the Windows system crashed, as Windows often does,” Clarke writes, “the cruiser became a floating i-brick, dead in the water.” After this and a “legion of other failures of Windows-based systems,” the Pentagon considered a shift to free, open-source operating systems like Linux. The code of open-source software can be altered by the user, and so the government would be free to change the software without interference from companies jealously guarding their design. It is also free.  

Such a switch, though, would have been disastrous for Microsoft’s lucrative dealings with the government. The company was already fiercely opposed to regulation of its products’ security; it did not want the added delay and cost of improving its software in order to decrease its vulnerability. If the government switched to open-source software, it could make the improvements itself – but doing so would deal a major blow to Microsoft’s profits. So Microsoft moved to prevent the government from exploring any alternatives. It “went on the warpath,” writes Clarke, threatening to “stop cooperating” with the government if it adopted an open-source platform. It made major campaign contributions and hired a small army of lobbyists. Clarke outlines their purpose as: “don’t regulate security in the software industry, don’t let the Pentagon stop using our software no matter how many security flaws it has, and don’t say anything about software production overseas or deals with China." (China security experts feared, could plant logic bombs and malware into the software.)

Clarke reports that Microsoft insiders admitted that the company “really did not take security seriously,” because “there was no real alternative to its software, and they were swimming in money from their profits."

Nothing has changed since these lines were written last year – and a sitting-duck Navy cruiser is just one example of security risks caused by private corporations’ consistent practice of preferring profits over protecting the nation.

In 2007 an unknown intruder infiltrated the networks of the Departments of State, Defense, and Commerce, and all of the military agencies. The intruder stole an amount of information roughly equal to the entire Library of Congress.

In addition to the theft of sensitive information, a successful cyber attack could dismantle America’s power supply for extended periods of time. Conducting a test, the Department of Energy found that it could hack into a 27-ton power generator control, and remotely causing it to destroy itself. (The generators are run by private companies who are not subject to regulation forcing them to secure their sites – sites which can be accessed and directed using a normal Internet connection.)  The utility companies’ resistance to cyber security regulation echoes the position of Microsoft, which has stymied the government’s efforts even while expanding its business into government activities.

When it comes to cyber attacks, the bottom line for the public is increased defense. But again and again, private corporations have demonstrated that they have a very different bottom line in mind.

Needed: A Progressive Story

In preparing for the 2010 midterm election, we need a progressive summit to prepare a shared narrative and shared positions. Currently, progressive groups are each pulling in a different direction, favoring distinct tactics, promoting their own rationales. True, despite all the talk about a "progressive movement," there is no way to cobble the various progressive groups into one coherent force. However, one can find what political philosophers call "overlapping consensuses." That is, instead of seeking one agreed-upon platform and strategy, progressives should identify major points all can agree to promote.

The Missing Narrative
Successful political movements have a narrative that usually takes an historical form. The narrative provides an account of the forces that got us into our current predicament and the rising forces that will save us, and an image of the more perfect union that we are going to reach once we put our shoulders to the wheel.

The most effective narratives follow the same pattern, one which is found in the Bible and in Marx. Once, we were in a state of grace (the Garden of Eden, the early commune); we sinned (took a bite from the forbidden apple, technological developments advanced a new ruling class); we must atone for our sins (pray, organize); and we will return to nirvana (the Garden of Eden, a stateless commune). Call it the U-turn of the human narrative.

When I recently scoured the major progressive publications and interviewed a few progressive leaders, I could not find a progressive narrative.

Hence, the first task of the progressive movement is to compose a shared narrative. It must include a characterization of who bedevils us: Is it the military-industrial complex? Wall Street? Capitalism? The Christian Right? Or...? Who will save us: A rainbow coalition of minorities, feminists and labor unions? A new third party, à la Nader? A youth movement of the kind that served as the core of the Obama election? Or...? And last but not least: What is the end-state we are aspiring to bring about? What is our shining city?

The preceding are excerpts from an article that first appeared in The Nation.