Amitai Etzioni Notes

Four Myths About Afghanistan

Here follows a list of widely held myths about Afghanistan.

1. The number of troops 

According to the figures often cited in the media, the number of NATO troops in Afghanistan, most of which are American, is near 100,000. Actually, the number is twice as large, as there are more than 104,000 private contractors in that country who carry out many of the missions the military used to carry out itself.

2. We must cut benefits.

One of the clichés of the day, repeated even by several liberal economists, is that we must cut benefits (such as Medicare and Social Security) in order to reduce the deficit, because that is where the big bucks are. Well, is a trillion dollars big enough? We have already spent some $229 billion in Afghanistan and our commitment to stay the course there is estimated to be at least $1 trillion for the next decade.

3. Our money helps build a new Afghanistan.

For counterinsurgency to succeed, we are told we cannot win militarily; we must win over the hearts and minds of the population. To succeed we need to get them jobs and a decent income, eradicate illiteracy and otherwise build a civil society. Several reports show that corrupt Afghans ferret out so much money that ends up in overseas bank accounts (especially in Dubai) that this outflow exceeds whatever we have given them. (The difference is made up by income from the trade in poppy).

4. We seek to help Afghanistan build a democracy.

Yeah, but only as long as they do what they are told by our emissaries. We played a key role in drafting their constitution. We insisted that the government be a Kabul-centered one, which appoints governors and mayors and allows next to no autonomy in a country in which local bonds are strong and the distrust of the national government runs deep. We regularly seek to manipulate the decisions made by the Afghan government and undermine the peace deal Karzai is trying to work out with the Taliban. No wonder they have no real sense of what democracy is all about.

"You cannot fool all of the people..."

Americans are busy seeking jobs or doing theirs, taking care of their children, trying to find a few moments to follow their favorite sports team and have a beer. It hence takes them time before they realize that they are hoodwinked by reports about Afghanistan. But in the longer run -- and by now we have been in this war longer than in any other -- they will see that what they are told about Afghanistan has no connection to the reality on the ground. They are not going to appreciate having been fooled.

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.

Hillary: 1, McCain: 0

Hillary Clinton and John McCain unfurled their foreign policy agendas in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs. Hillary used her essay to move her position further away than ever from the Neo Cons' "democratize the world by Monday" position. McCain, instead, showed that he forgot nothing and learned less. (Other candidates have preceded them or will follow. For a discussion of the position taken by Barack Obama in his Foreign Affairs article, click here).

Security First

Both neoconservatives and liberals have overestimated the extent to which one nation, even a superpower with United Nations support, can re-engineer regimes. Neoconservatives believe forced democratization is possible; liberals believe in the transformative power of foreign aid, debt relief, trade concessions and support for reformers. The tragic reality is that both approaches to long-distance, large-scale social engineering have failed in most cases.

Read the rest of the piece here (PDF).

A right to a false ID?

As an immigrant I read the constitution several times, quite carefully. Still I have been unable to find any mentioning of a right to present false IDs. However this is in effect the claim set forth by the state of Maine, soon by to be joined by several others. These states, and allied privacy advocates, do not object to the requirement that those who negotiate public roads must carry a driver license. They object “only” the new measures that seek to make it difficult to falsify these documents. They reveal all the chutzpah of a under aged college kid who demands a right to Xerox the ID of an older fraternity brother, so that he can booze all he wants. The hell with law and public safety.

I chaired a small group of security and privacy experts who studied the existing forms of identification, for the Markle Foundation. We learned that the most widely used ID, the state issued driver licenses, are extremely easy to forge. In a test conducted by the Government Accounting Office, home made driver licenses fooled the border patrol a cool 25 out of 25 times. A citizen who already has a driver’s license from one state, can get up to 49 such licenses from the other states, and dole out these “extras” to all comers. In effect, the 9/11 terrorists used such licenses to open bank accounts and travel by air. (The states do not share information with each other about who already received a driver license, as long as those involved have not committed a crime and do not drive a commercial vehicle).

Now comes the big bad federal government and has the temerity of insisting that those who obtain a driver license (or renew one) show up in person rather than apply for them via the mail. In this way the states are to be able to verify that, first of all the person exists, and second that he is who he claims to be. These measures that should have been introduced five years ago, say on 9/12.

The Maine legislature started the national campaign against vetted driver licenses, by passing on January 26 a resolution against complying with the Real ID Act of 2005. Other states, including Georgia, Wyoming and New Mexico are expected to follow in Maine’s footsteps. The Real ID law, to take effect in May 2008 (what is the rush?), rules that driver licenses that do not meet the federal standards will not be useable after that date in entering federal building, flying, and opening bank accounts.

The main complaint is that by setting federal standards rather than allowing each state to follow its own lights and refuse to collaborate with the other states, the US is moving toward the repugnant national ID card. However vetted driver licenses differ profoundly from such cards in two major ways. No one is required to have them on their person at all times, and people cannot be stopped without cause and confronted with the demand that they identify themselves. The vetted licenses are to be used only if and when a person seeks—voluntarily-- to enter a controlled public space such as a court house, legislature, or secured parts of airports.

Privacy advocates such as Jim Harper of the Cato institute argue that these driver licenses lead us down a slippery slope toward an Orwellian police state, based on national ID cards. However the proper response to such a danger is to enact laws that ensure that authorities can demand the presentation of driver licenses only to vet the ID of those who wish to enter secured public spaces—rather favor licenses that are not worth much more than the pieces of paper on which they printed.