Seeking reliable, objective sources on economics, foreign-policy and energy-policy issues.
One of the useful exhibits incororated in Managing the Transition to Climate Stabilization is the tabulation at left. This is a convenient comparison of projected cost premiums for carbon-friendly electrical generation options. I believe the backup for these costs per kilowatt hour is in the CCSP papers — I just haven’t had time to dig through those yet.
There is a similar tabulation for nonelectric fuel options.
Greg Mankiw referenced this Tufts University study by economist Gilbert Metcalf — looks good to me. It appears to me that the level of incentive required is closer to $25 per ton of CO2 than the $15 carbon tax posited — but that’s a detail — it just increases the payroll tax exemption but doesn’t change the authors’ conclusions.
Concerns about global warming have raised policy interest in the United States in some mechanism for discouraging carbon emissions. One such mechanism is a carbon tax. The GETS reform uses a carbon tax to rebate payroll taxes for the first $3,660 of earnings per worker. This reform is revenue and distributionally neutral and makes clear that while a carbon tax alone may be regressive, a carbon tax reform package can be designed to achieve any desired change in progressivity. While the focus here has been on distribution, carbon tax revenues provide flexibility in the policy process to help achieve any number of objectives. Fairness in taxation is one objective. But carbon tax revenues could also be used to contribute to simplification in the tax code or improved efficiency. A transparent linkage between a carbon tax and a thoughtful tax reduction could help build support for an environmental tax reform that brings the United States into closer alignment with other developed countries in their reliance on environmental taxation and in efforts to reduce global warming.
If you have been seeking solid information on how various carbon mitigation policies compare, I recommend this policy study from the AEI Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, a combined effort of the free market think tank American Enterprise Institute and the liberal Brookings Institution. I believe it deserves at least a temporary spot in your archive of climate change policy resources. So far as I can tell the authors do not advocate an agenda, either alarmist or skeptic.
Rather they have built on the product of the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) to develop a sensitivity analysis of the economic costs of emissions stabilization. I.e., what are the costs of the “insurance premium” for optimal to very sub-optimal risk management strategies.
For a quick summary of the annual U.S. GDP costs over time, click on the graphic at above left [Figure 9. U.S. GDP Loss from Reference in Policy Scenarios] — then print the full size panel of charts for study.
Depicted in Figure 9, at left, are the results of eight runs of the MERGE model for the eight scenarios as shown in the schematic at immediate left [Figure 2. Scenario Design for Analysis]. These are arrayed in three layers by Target/Policy/Technology:
TARGET: Two emission reduction targets for the year 2050 are compared:
“3.4 RF”: radiative forcing levels of 3.4 watts/m2 [corresponding to stabilizing CO2 concentrations at approximately 450 ppmv]
“4.7 RF”: radiative forcing levels of 4.7 watts/m2 [corresponding to stabilizing CO2 concentrations at approximately 550 ppmv].
POLICY: Three policies are compared:
“1st best”, or “China YES, Kyoto NO” – Emission reductions are allocated across space and time in an economically efficient manner. That is, all countries participate from 2010; the emissions constraint is the 2050 Target. I think of this policy as China = YES or “IN” Kyoto = NO or “OUT”, using “China” as shorthand for all the developing world and “Kyoto” as a shorthand for the annual Kyoto-style 2% reduction contstraint.
“2nd best”, or “China = NO , Kyoto = NO” — same as 3rd best but Annex B is NOT bound by the compounding annual 2% reduction constraint. For presentation clarity, this case is not shown in chart Figure 9.;
“3rd best”, or “China = NO, Kyoto = YES” — non-Annex B countries do not participate until post-2050, Annex B countries subject to a “Kyoto style” annual target reduction of 2% AND are subject to the 2050 Target.
TECHNOLOGY: Two scenarios are compared
“Optimistic”: Nuclear power AND Carbon Capture and Sequestration are allowed.
“Pessimistic”: Nuclear power AND Carbon Capture and Sequestration are NOT allowed.
UPDATE 28 June: Figure 11 at left summarizes the relative influence of various factors on total global GDP cost. I’m not sure if the caption “through 2200″ is correct, as throughout the paper the timescale goes to 2100. There is no other reference to 2200 in the document. The difference could impact the magnitude of short-term scenario differences — though the 5% discount rate really diminishes the contribution of 2100 through 2200 costs.
In the author’s discussion below, note these highlighted points:
• If it turns out the 3.4 Target is required, the costs are on the order of four times higher. We won’t know if the 3.4 Target is needed until we accumulate more years of data and research. If we delay getting on track for the 4.7 Target, then the cost of achieving the 3.4 Target may become completely infeasible.
• If the 4.7 Target is sufficient, then total global cost isn’t sensitive to whether developing countries must “pay their share” from time zero. The increase in the total global cost is entirely due to the 2% per year Kyoto-style constraint through 2050. There is vitally important information hidden behind this time & country integration and discounting calculation. Obviously in the “2nd or 3rd Best” or “China = NO” cases, the developing countries pay all the reduction costs for the first 50 years. My question for the authors is “how does this work?”.
• Conversely, if the 3.4 Target is required the difference in total cost is entirely whether China = YES or China = NO.
Finally, in our last figure (Figure 11), we examine GDP losses at a global level, discounted back to the present. The figure provides a summary of our analysis. Notice that the largest determinant of losses is something over which we may have little control—Mother Nature. That is, if we assume that ultimately the RF target will be based on a better understanding of the science underlying global warming and that this understanding will determine what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” then the resolution of uncertainty surrounding such issues as climate sensitivity, the thermohaline circulation, sea level rise, etc. will ultimately determine the appropriate target.
The second largest determinant of costs and the one over which we do have control is technology. If a transformation of the global energy system turns out to be required, trillions of dollars are at stake. At the present time, there are insufficient supplies of low cost substitutes for high carbon emitting technologies. Currently we are limited primarily to fuel switching and price induced conservation, both of which will come with a sizeable price tag. To develop the technological wherewithal to do the heavy lifting in the future is essential for managing the costs of the transition. This will require both a sustained commitment on the part of the public sector upstream in the R&D chain and incentives for the private sector to bring the necessary technologies to the marketplace.
Finally, there is the issue of the design of climate policy. The cost comparison reveals that in the current formulation, policy choice plays a smaller role than either the stabilization target or the state of technology. Moreover, note that the entire gain from policy flexibility is obtained without developing country participation in the 2nd best case with the 4.7 watts/m2 target, while including these countries accounts for the entire gain in the 3.4 watts/m2 stabilization scenario. Even though it ranks third in this analysis, the difference between economically efficient and inefficient policy is still on the order of trillions of dollars. But the main contribution of climate policy may be as an enabler of new technologies. By recognizing the acute shortage of low-cost substitutes, the long lead times required for development and deployment, and the market failures that impede technological progress, climate policy can play an important role in reducing the costs of the transition.
The authors’ final comments summarize the policy challenge nicely in the highlighted emphasis:
As climate negotiators continue the struggle to agree upon a set of goals for climate policy, the debate appears to be becoming even more polarized. This may seem surprising given the growing consensus among the scientific community that something should be done and done soon. Upon reflection, however, the widening gulf should be expected. The calls for action are being accompanied by demands for increasingly tighter constraints on greenhouse gas emissions and hence, both sides of the debate see the stakes increasing.
Of course, the “stakes” tend to be perceived differently depending upon one’s perspective. The activists are concerned that we are imposing an unacceptable risk on the environment. To them, the very ecosystem, and its ability to provide the services to which we are accustomed, is at stake. The climate skeptics, even those who acknowledge the need for some action, fear that the types of actions that are being suggested will impose an unacceptable and unnecessary burden on our economy and in doing so will divert attention from more pressing social needs.
The real question is not whether to take action but how much action to take. Unfortunately, given the deep and pervasive uncertainties that both sides acknowledge, the problem does not lend itself to a simple solution. The issue is one of risk management, that is, how much insurance we should buy to reduce the risks associated with climate change. Here the answer will hinge upon one’s perception of the stakes, the odds, and how risk averse we choose to be as a society. Our analysis focuses on one part of the risk management calculus: the costs of the insurance premium.
The CCSP papers which inform this study can be found here. There is a lot of good work here. More commentary to follow — for now I just wanted to expose this study for comment.
John Wixted examined the divergence between GDP growth and US carbon emissions a month ago. John attempts to work out the implications of the recent data showing the US is improving greenhouse gas intensity [GGI] faster than the EU15. I think some of John’s conclusions are correct
…Meanwhile, we should also do something serious, like fund research investigating how to make the burning of coal a cleaner process. A substantial reduction in CO2 emissions depends on the success of that research (nothing else).
and some aren’t correct — like the first sentence of that paragraph
Politically, we should do what everyone else has learned to do (i.e., make vows). It’s not serious, but it’s cheap and it seems to make some people less angry than they otherwise would be.
Given more study time I’ll speculate that John will come to much the same conclusion that I have: that it is time to make policy design our principle focus — to develop a politically viable risk managment strategy. What should be the future emissions targets [very rarely discussed, but economically critical]? How can we get there at the least economic cost? What are those costs? Who pays?
In a comment I looked at explanations for the divergence, none of which reflect policy changes — nor inform future policy:
Good post John. Like hurricanes, presidents have little short term impact on economic growth or greenhouse gas emissions. There is some evidence that the Bush tax cuts accelerated economic growth, but that’s another topic.
What explains the divergence of CO2 from GDP growth? Three things I think:
[1] In part it is the yearly dividend of GGI [greenhouse gas intensity], which has been averaging about -1.8%/year for the past 50 years. Since 1990 GGI has averaged -1.9%/year. GGI is a compounding improvement in efficiency [like productivity], so since 1990 the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP have declined almost 27%.
[2] The weather was favorable: mild winter, cooler summer.
[3] The power generation fuel mix shifted slightly, away from coal to more natural gas, nuclear, and renewables.
There is more background at the Energy Information Agency. The EIA also has a PDF/Flash presentation on this topic which provides a short tutorial on the interplay of most of the factors that influence US emissions.
Bottom line: the 2006 drop isn’t a new trend. So politically unpopular policies are still required to adjust incentives so the markets produce the results we desire:
1. A carbon tax, see, e.g. “Carbon taxes or cap-and-trade?”
2. Real-world full scale tests of carbon sequestration. If this doesn’t work then we are facing very serious problems with coal dependence. We need to know ASAP, which can only be achieved by “doing it”. The MIT Future of Coal study stresses this urgent priority.
3. For a better-explained top-five key actions see Elements of an effective response to global warming.
UPDATE: for a quality study of the costs of a range of risk management strategies, see “Managing the Transition to Climate Stabilization”
Noah Shachtman for Wired:
For al-Qaeda and other Islamist types, the “information” side of [their] operation[s] is primary; the physical is merely the tool to achieve a propaganda result,” blogs U.S. forces’ counterinsurgency guru Col. David Kilcullen. “For all our professionalism, compared to the enemy’s, our public information is an afterthought.”
But how deep, how big, and how loud is the insurgent noise machine, really? This Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty report has to be one of the most meticulous public studies yet of the other side of the propaganda war, one “presented primarily in Arabic on an array of websites unknown to most Americans and Europeans.”
…<more>…
David Kilcullen wrote this concise summary for Small Wars Journal. Kilcullen is Gen. Patraeus’s Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser. For more I recommend this interview, where Dr. Kilcullen said “Watch this space…”. BTW, you are not likely to see this perspective reported in the big media:
June 6: I’ve spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. I’ve been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but I’d like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of what’s happening, right now, in Iraq.
This post is not about whether current ops are “working” — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I’m not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemen—sorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations.
Ten days ago, speaking with Austin Bay, I made the following comment:
“I know some people in the media are already starting to sort of write off the “surge” and say ‘Hey, hang on: we’ve been going since January, we haven’t seen a massive turnaround; it mustn’t be working’. What we’ve been doing to date is putting forces into position. We haven’t actually started what I would call the “surge” yet. All we’ve been doing is building up forces and trying to secure the population. And what I would say to people who say that it’s already failed is “watch this space”. Because you’re going to see, in fairly short order, some changes in the way we’re operating that will make what’s been happening over the past few months look like what it is—just a preliminary build up.”
The meaning of that comment should be clear by now to anyone tracking what is happening in Iraq. On June 15th we kicked off a major series of division-sized operations in Baghdad and the surrounding provinces. As General Odierno said, we have finished the build-up phase and are now beginning the actual “surge of operations”. I have often said that we need to give this time. That is still true. But this is the end of the beginning: we are now starting to put things onto a viable long-term footing.
These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we’re doing in Baghdad and what’s happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don’t plan to leave these areas once they’re secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have “gone quiet” as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.
When we speak of “clearing” an enemy safe haven, we are not talking about destroying the enemy in it; we are talking about rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don’t get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that’s OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain – as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.
The “terrain” we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa’ida, Shi’a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that “80% of AQ leadership have fled” don’t overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return.
This is not some sort of kind-hearted, soft approach, as some fire-breathing polemicists have claimed (funnily enough, those who urge us to “just kill more bad guys” usually do so from a safe distance). It is not about being “nice” to the population and hoping they will somehow see us as the “good guys” and stop supporting insurgents. On the contrary, it is based on a hard-headed recognition of certain basic facts, to wit:
(a.) The enemy needs the people to act in certain ways (sympathy, acquiescence, silence, reaction to provocation) in order to survive and further his strategy. Unless the population acts in these ways, both insurgents and terrorists will wither, and the cycle of provocation and backlash that drives the sectarian conflict in Iraq will fail.
(b.) The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. (The enemy is fluid because he has no permanent installations he needs to defend, and can always run away to fight another day. But the population is fixed, because people are tied to their homes, businesses, farms, tribal areas, relatives etc). Therefore—and this is the major change in our strategy this year—protecting and controlling the population is do-able, but destroying the enemy is not. We can drive him off from the population, then introduce local security forces, population control, and economic and political development, and thereby “hard-wire” the enemy out of the environment, preventing his return. But chasing enemy cells around the countryside is not only a waste of time, it is precisely the sort of action he wants to provoke us into. That’s why AQ cells leaving an area are not the main game—they are a distraction. We played the enemy’s game for too long: not any more. Now it is time for him to play our game.
(c.) Being fluid, the enemy can control his loss rate and therefore can never be eradicated by purely enemy-centric means: he can just go to ground if the pressure becomes too much. BUT, because he needs the population to act in certain ways in order to survive, we can asphyxiate him by cutting him off from the people. And he can’t just “go quiet” to avoid that threat. He has either to come out of the woodwork, fight us and be destroyed, or stay quiet and accept permanent marginalization from his former population base. That puts him on the horns of a lethal dilemma (which warms my heart, quite frankly, after the cynical obscenities these irhabi gang members have inflicted on the innocent Iraqi non-combatant population). That’s the intent here.
(d.) The enemy may not be identifiable, but the population is. In any given area in Iraq, there are multiple threat groups but only one, or sometimes two main local population groups. We could do (and have done, in the past) enormous damage to potential supporters, “destroying the haystack to find the needle”, but we don’t need to: we know who the population is that we need to protect, we know where they live, and we can protect them without unbearable disruption to their lives. And more to the point, we can help them protect themselves, with our forces and ISF in overwatch.
Of course, we still go after all the terrorist and extremist leaders we can target and find, and life has become increasingly “nasty, brutish, and short” for this crowd. But we realize that this is just a shaping activity in support of the main effort, which is securing the Iraqi people from the terrorists, extremist militias, and insurgents who need them to survive.
Is there a strategic risk involved in this series of operations? Absolutely. Nothing in war is risk-free. We have chosen to accept and manage this risk, primarily because a low-risk option simply will not get us the operational effects that the strategic situation demands. We have to play the hand we have been dealt as intelligently as possible, so we’re doing what has to be done. It still might not work, but “it is what it is” at this point.
So much for theory. The practice, as always, has been mixed. Personally, I think we are doing reasonably well and casualties have been lower so far than I feared. Every single loss is a tragedy. But so far, thank God, the loss rate has not been too terrible: casualties are up in absolute terms, but down as a proportion of troops deployed (in the fourth quarter of 2006 we had about 100,000 troops in country and casualties averaged 90 deaths a month; now we have almost 160,000 troops in country but deaths are under 120 per month, much less than a proportionate increase, which would have been around 150 a month). And last year we patrolled rarely, mainly in vehicles, and got hit almost every time we went out. Now we patrol all the time, on foot, by day and night with Iraqi units normally present as partners, and the chances of getting hit are much lower on each patrol. We are finally coming out of the “defensive crouch” with which we used to approach the environment, and it is starting to pay off.
It will be a long, hard summer, with much pain and loss to come, and things could still go either way. But the population-centric approach is the beginning of a process that aims to put the overall campaign onto a sustainable long-term footing. The politics of the matter then can be decisive, provided the Iraqis use the time we have bought for them to reach the essential accommodation. The Embassy and MNF-I continue to work on these issues at the highest levels but fundamentally, this is something that only Iraqis can resolve: our role is to provide an environment in which it becomes possible.
All this may change. These are long-term operations: the enemy will adapt and we’ll have to adjust what we’re doing over time. Baq’ubah, Arab Jabour and the western operations are progressing well, and additional security measures in place in Baghdad have successfully tamped down some of the spill-over of violence from other places. The relatively muted response (so far) to the second Samarra bombing is evidence of this. Time will tell, though….
Once again, none of this is intended to tell you “what to think” or “whether it’s working”. We’re all professional adults, and you can work that out for yourself. But this does, I hope, explain some of the thinking behind what we are doing, and it may therefore make it easier for people to come to their own judgment.
Kilcullen BTW is a retired Aussie officer — his Aussie heritage is regularly displayed in interviews:
“We haven’t turned the tide. We haven’t turned the corner, there isn’t light at the end of the tunnel. But what we have done is take a failing enterprise and put it on a sound long-term footing.”
If you run this search every day as I do you’ll find Dave’s latest observations written for fellow counter-insurgency specialists. E.g., from 19 January Don’t confuse the “Surge” with the Strategy, written right after the Bush “new strategy” speech:
…The new strategy reflects counterinsurgency best practice as demonstrated over dozens of campaigns in the last several decades: enemy-centric approaches that focus on the enemy, assuming that killing insurgents is the key task, rarely succeed. Population-centric approaches, that center on protecting local people and gaining their support, succeed more often.
The extra forces are needed because a residential, population-centric strategy demands enough troops per city block to provide real and immediate security. It demands the ability to “flood” areas, and so deter enemy interference with the population. This is less like conventional warfare, and more like a cop patrolling a beat to prevent violent crime.
It is a measure of soaring Kurdish optimism that government officials here talk seriously about one day challenging Dubai as the Middle East’s main transportation and business hub.
The Kurdistan Regional Government is betting that it can, investing $325 million in a modern terminal at the Erbil International Airport to handle, officials hope, millions of passengers a year, and a three-mile runway that will be big enough for the new double-decker Airbus A380.
“We’re not saying Kurdistan is heaven,” said Herish Muharam, chairman of the Kurdish government’s Board of Investment. “But we’re telling investors that Kurdistan can be that heaven.”
Perspective not seen in big media:
June 24, 2007: Roadside bombs, or IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) have been the most successful terrorist weapons for injuring American troops in Iraq. Currently, over two thirds of American casualties are caused by these weapons. Getting these bombs made and placed is the single largest expense for the terrorist organizations. But there have been some disturbing trends in the IED department. Three years ago, for each IED used, one American was killed. Now it takes six IEDs to kill one U.S. soldier or marine. The countermeasures to these weapons have been formidable, and this has forced the terrorists to place more and more bombs, at greater expense, and to employ them more effectively.
The main problem with this is that you cannot win a war with IEDs. In Vietnam, IEDs were used, but as a minor, secondary weapon. The Vietnamese communists knew they had to drive the Americans out before they could take over. When that effort failed, North Vietnam made peace, and once the American troops left, the communists launched two conventional invasions across the border. The first one, in 1972, failed, but the second one, in 1975, succeeded. The Sunni Arab terrorists have no such invasion option. They have to drive the U.S. troops out and then, vastly outnumbered, take over the government. Many Iraqi Sunni Arabs believe they can do it, with the help of a media campaign that convinces the world that the elected government of Iraq, and their American allies, are the bad guys. This is all absurd, but the Sunni Arabs are spending over two million dollars month to build and place IEDs, just to inflict casualties on American troops, in an attempt to achieve their impossible dream.
Over the last three years, the Iraqi terrorists have largely scaled down other forms of attack (assault rifles, RPGs, rockets), and concentrated on the IEDs. There’s a very good reason for this, building and placing an IED is much less likely to get you killed, than having a shootout with American troops. The terrorists will still attack with rifles and RPGs, and still get killed in large numbers when they do so, but the word is out that this approach is basically suicidal. So a great deal of effort, and resources, has gone into building more, and better, IEDs. In the three years, the number of IEDs used has increased by more than five times. The only downside to this is that an increasing number of IEDs don’t hurt American troops. Most fail to hurt anyone. Instead, they are discovered and destroyed, or dismantled by an American forensics team, in order to help in the search for the groups that specialize in building IEDs.
That raises another important issue; IEDs are big business in Iraq. Most of the Iraqis making and planning these bombs are not doing it for free. They get paid, and the bomb building industry generates over twelve million dollars a year in revenues for Iraqi individuals and contractors. For a Sunni Arab who once worked for Saddam, this is one of the few good employment opportunities available. Moreover, the low risk aspect has brought out the “Geeks-for-Saddam,” crowd and resulted in many snazzy instructional DVDs and videos for wannabe bomb makers. Excellent graphics, and everything is in Arabic. Many of these items have been captured, along with a few of the geeks. The educational effort was supported by the terrorist leaders because it was obvious that, without constantly improving the bomb designs and planting tactics, the failure rate would soon get to 99 percent, or worse.
The organizations that provide the money for bomb building, and help with obtaining materials (there’s a black market for everything in Iraq, everything), are also evolving. They have to, as the management of the IED campaign have look been considered prime suspects, and much sought after by U.S. troops and Iraqi police. But you don’t hear much about this in the media, for the simple reason that American intelligence does not want to let on how much it knows and how close it is getting to the IED kingpins. That’s very much a war in the shadows, and one that extends into neighboring countries. A number of the IED gangs have been destroyed, or severely damaged. But while attempts are made to decapitate the IED campaign, work continues at the grassroots level to detect, disable and destroy those that are placed. Currently, there are 10-12 American combat casualties a day, with two or three of them being fatal. About two thirds of these casualties are caused by IEDs. Troops are most vulnerable to IEDs when they are on combat operations. The supply and transportation troops have their regular routes (especially the MSR, or Main Supply Route highways), very well covered. IEDs rarely get a chance to go off, or even get planted, on those roads. But for Sunni Arab areas, not visited until recently by American troops, there are more opportunities to place an IED that won’t be discovered, and will get a chance to kill and wound Americans.
… <more>
Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay team up with Instapundit for an informative June 26 podcast on the Iraq — recommended [32 min]. And here is today’s vintage Jim Dunnigan:
June 27, 2007: One of the great tragedies of the Iraq war was how much it was politicized. A simple matter of ousting a tyrannical minority (the Sunni Arabs, who were 20 percent of the population) and allowing the entire population to form a democratic government, was twisted into a number of unfamiliar shapes to fit the political and media needs of many groups, foreign and domestic. But for those who were paying attention, you could follow the progress of the war, despite the misleading reporting and partisan rhetoric.
Added to the mix was the Western attitude that Arabs were not capable of handling democracy. There was certainly a lot of evidence to back that up. There were no functioning democracies in the Arab world in 2003. The sorry state of Arab governance had also produced economic and cultural backwardness. Despite all that oil wealth, the Arab world had made little progress in the last half century, and was still mired in poverty and ignorance. Even many Arabs were noticing. The initial purpose of al Qaeda was to rectify this situation by replacing the tyrants with a religious dictatorship. The tyrants proved too formidable for al Qaeda, which turned to attacks on Western targets (in the belief that it was the West that was keeping the Arab tyrants in power, when, in fact, Arab tyrants got most of their police state tutoring from the defunct Soviet Union).
The war in Iraq is basically the war against the Sunni Arab minority, who refuse to acknowledge defeat, and are using terror tactics to stimulate a civil war that would, as their fantasy goes, enable them to regain power. There was never any secret about this. The story of Saddam’s “Plan B” made a brief appearance in the mass media right after Saddam fell. But that was the last you heard of it.
Throughout the world, many objected to the war, for emotional, political or financial grounds. This opposition could not cope with what the war was, but instead invented many alternative versions (Iraqi freedom fighters, al Qaeda on steroids, and so on). There was an al Qaeda component, which quickly united with their natural enemies, the Sunni Arab nationalists, to put the Sunni Arabs back in charge. Added to the mix was Shia Iran, eager to see Iraq turned into a Shia Islamic state. This was competing with the al Qaeda, which wants to establish a Sunni Islamic state. Many Iraqi Sunni Arabs liked the idea of a religious dictatorship, because the secular version (Saddam) had been a disaster, and democracy would put the Iraqi Shia (who make up 60 percent of the population) in power.
The strategy for such a war is simple, hold elections and get the elected government strong enough so that it can take care of itself without American troops. The media missed an obvious part of this story. That is the fact that the majority Shia and Kurds had been excluded from leadership positions in the military, police and government for decades. There were obvious reasons for this, but the present result was that loyal security forces required experienced Shia and Kurdish leaders, who had to be created from scratch. There were some Sunni officers and officials that could be trusted, but most were suspect. That’s because of another problem you encounter in much of the Arab world; family and tribe count for more than national loyalty. This makes sense when you remember that there are no Arab governments that are “just and reliable” in the Western sense. The only institution the individual can depend on for help was the family and tribe. Thus you keep hearing about “Arab tribal leaders” getting involved in whatever is happening in Iraq.
At first, most of the Sunni tribal chiefs refused to participate in a democracy. This didn’t get the media coverage it deserved, partly because it was becoming dangerous for Western journalists to operate in Iraq, and partly because most of the interpreters and free-lance Iraqi reporters hired by Western news organizations, were Iraqi Sunni Arabs (who were the most educated segment of the population, and most likely to speak English). Naturally, these Sunni Arabs would spin the news in their favor, and they did. If you knew anything about Iraq, you could pick this out. But most people didn’t, and couldn’t. As a result, reporting on Iraq veered off into fantasy land, where much of it still resides.
But as capable as the Sunni terrorist were, they found it was much easier to kill Iraqis, than it was to kill Americans. The terrorists quickly realized that the first order of business was to force the foreign troops out of Iraq. But the foreign troops were skilled professionals, and killing them was very difficult. In fact, many of the attacks on foreign troops, as with roadside bombs, ended up just killing Iraqis instead. Some 95 percent of the dead in Iraq were Iraqis, and most were Iraqis killed by Sunni Arab terrorists. The Iraqis noticed.
If the victims were the new Iraqi police or soldiers, than that was good as far as the terrorists were concerned. And many terrorist attacks were directed at the new police force and army. But then a strange thing happened, one that never got the attention it deserved. Despite all the terror attacks, people kept joining the police and army. While the cops were often corrupt, as they had always been, they were less corrupt than in the past, and they began to take back the streets. The big problem with the cops was the lack of experienced leadership. This was impossible because, under Saddam, Shia and Kurds could not have leadership positions in the security forces. But one could see how the future would develop by looking to northern Iraq. There, the Kurds had been free of Saddam since the early 1990s, when U.S. and British forces basically told Saddam to stay away, or else, and Saddam did. Left alone for a decade before 2003, the Kurds developed leadership for their security forces. The bumps along that road went largely unreported, but the end result was police and military units that were able to keep the terrorists out of northern Iraq. This began happening in other parts of Iraq. This was not news, except on a slow news day when it was OK to run a story on vacation sports and resorts in Iraq (they exist).
…
The reader of the whole thing will be rewarded.
“Everyday Jihad” is an example of the kind of scholarship 9/11 should have produced.
Interesting commentary by Michael Young on Bernard Rougier’s new book “Everday Jihad”.
Bernard Rougier is the kind of scholar of political Islam that 9/11 should have created. A Frenchman who teaches political science at the Université d’Auvergne in Clermont-Ferrand, he is fluent in Arabic and is willing to supplement his theoretical knowledge with analytical creativity and intrepid reporting. His “Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam Among Palestinians in Lebanon” looks at a fascinating, under-investigated microcosm of the Islamist landscape.
This looks very interesting, but probably a specialist’s book.
Bad Behavior has blocked 2451 access attempts in the last 7 days.
Latest Comments
RSS