So...bombs kind of suck

On last night's Bill Moyers' Journal, the two guests for the first half of his program were Marilyn Young, a history professor at NYU with an upcoming book titled Bombing Civilians: a Twentieth Century History, and Pierre Sprey, ex-Pentagon official and former underling to Robert "strict adherence to rationality is itself a form of insanity" McNamara. Sprey is a controversial figure in military circles after his "defection" in the late 70s when he dared to suggest that the defense budgets were maybe a bit too high and that we were spending our money on ineffective weapons anyway.

They start off the discussion by stating how disappointed they were with the January 22nd air strikes in Pakistan, advocating that the new administration should reconsider the effectiveness of an intensified military strategy in the region. No doubt plenty on the left were outraged: Democracy Now! and - a little less hysterically - Lionel Beehner of Huffington Post represented many people's fears that this could be the first indication of a lack of real change on Obama's part. Pakistanis, too, rushed to point out the counter productivity of such attacks.

They have a point. I think it's worthwhile to watch the whole clip, but the two most salient critiques against both the troop increase and an increased arial assault are that we are operating under a backwards assumption and that bombing campaigns, the implicit purposes of which are to avoid politically damaging heavy casualties on the bombers' side and also to dissuade others from fighting by seeing how devastating such resistance can be, don't work.

The backward assumption, what Sprey calls the Petraeus Doctrine, is that we have to deal with the security issue before we begin work on the political issue. That is, in fact, the most prevalent objection to the alternative of seeking a political solution to the problems in both Afghanistan and Pakistan: how, dissenters ask, can it be possible to forge a stable political system in the midst of a war? Well, I can think of one time when it worked out. Sure, it might not be a completely accurate parallel, but I think it's an indication that such a thing is possible

I think Sprey and Young's second point, that bombing campaigns don't work, is much more devastating. Young reminds us that neither the English government nor the German government buckled much under intense bombing. They go on to state that there really is little we can do about collateral damage. The US might not be deliberately targeting civilians, but civilians die nonetheless - just not in as great a number as in WWII. The result is that we are creating recruits for terrorist organizations.

Moyers goes on to ask his panel if they can think of any time when a bombing campaign was effective in ending a conflict. Neither can come up with an answer: it was ineffective in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, the first and second Iraq Wars, etc...

Well, it actually was effective in the Pacific Front of World War II. They seem to have forgotten the two atomic bombs. They forced the Japanese to surrender and saved the lives of "millions" who could have been lost in a land invasion.

So, it's clear then: if we are to assume that the only successful deterrent in the history of bombing was Hiroshima and Nagasaki then we have to nuke Afghanistan, and, probably, parts of Pakistan too if we don't want a politically unfeasible number of American soldiers killed.

This is obviously insane and nobody who does not belong on the villain side of a Batman comic would suggest it unless in the direst apocalypse-as-retaliation nightmare scenario.

And yet the alternative to heavy bombing - increased troop levels - doesn't seem that much better. Obama is increasing the number of troops, but by a ridiculously minimal amount. He would be hard pressed to find the political will necessary to send the hundreds of thousands of troops into the region to stabilize it. Even then, that didn't work for the 100,000 or so Soviet troops and the 350,000 Afghanistan troops who were fighting the Mujahideen.

Let me go on a brief tangent here to say how utterly fucking ridiculous our inability to learn from history is. Vietnam didn't work so well for us. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan it didn't work for them either. The break up of the USSR shortly after that war ended led people to call it the Russians' Vietnam. Now we are back in Afghanistan, fighting the very same rebels whom an insane drunkard congressman bravely exploited the loopholes in our defense spending laws to arm. Not only did we not learn the lessons from our own past we didn't learn them from our former enemy in the same goddamn country.

It's depressing, immensely and utterly depressing, that in the one area where we needed change the most, Obama seems to be pursuing the same failed strategies that have plagued both parties for decades. Vietnam ruined LBJ's chance to more stringently fight for social change in the US. We are in the midst of a serious economic crisis and it would be disastrous if Afghanistan consumed the Obama administration in the ways in which Young and, particular, Sprey fear. I'm optimistic that we can change course, if solely because Obama has the refreshing tendency to surround himself with people who aren't carbon copies of his ideological bent and actually listening to them. We'll see.

(Related: see Robert Farley's takes on abolishing the Air Force.)

Hell Yeah

I'm really glad that one of the first things to pass through Congress under Obama's watch was overturning Ledbetter.

I know some people thought that the wording of the original law needed to be fixed to make it clear that each successive paycheck starts the discriminatory acts clock over,but I don't think that justified the Court's horrendous conclusion that Civil Rights must be extremely and unduly difficult to enforce. It's awesome that this got taken care of so quickly and I'm happy that Ledbetter's name will no longer be associated with an idiotic judicial ruling but rather with a much needed legislative step towards enforcing Equal Pay.

Catching the midday news on Echo Moscow

A correspondent just said that she was "excited and hopeful about the normalization of the intellectual pursuit of statecraft and foreign policy now that the American president speaks better English than the average citizen of Irkutsk."

Russian translated into English is like seriously one of my favorite things in the world.

Dear Chris Matthews

GOOD GOD STOP COMPARING THE BUSHES TO THE ROMANOVS.

Nothing, I repeat, nothing about that comparison makes any sense whatsoever.

Rachel Maddow is the only bright spot about MSNBC's political coverage. I have been half-listening to the inauguration hullabaloo and so far Chris Matthews has made the above idiotic statement three times, posed a barely comprehensible question to Doris Kearns Goodwin which I think had something to do with Lincoln and contained more "uhs" and "ahs" than words which one would find in the OED, told a rambling story about a cobbler and the Chief Justice both being in the same room and how that's somehow indicative of the anti-monarchical quality of American political life, and Keith Olbermann has called Obama a raisin.

This is going to be a long, long day.

I agree with Dmitri Trenin

Great op-ed by Dmitri Trenin in the Moscow Times. In it, he argues that the friendship between Putin and Bush "simulated not stimulated" a real strategic partnership. Trenin urges Obama to not neglect Russia in his administration's foreign policy agenda and offers a suggestion on how to handle Ukraine and other former bloc nation's who aspire towards membership in the European community.

The Euro-Atlantic security architecture is your next priority. In April, you will come to Europe to celebrate NATO's 60th anniversary. As such events go, there is always a temptation to praise the past successes. You need to move beyond that and recognize that Euro-Atlantic security will remain an unfinished business until Russia and its neighbors, including Ukraine and Georgia, are fully integrated within it. The idea that expanding NATO membership while excluding Russia is obviously not working. Seizing upon President Dmitry Medvedev's initiative of a European security treaty offers a chance to start discussing the hard issue so far avoided.

This is anything but a philosophical discussion. Anyone who has an interest in keeping Ukraine intact should support its tortuous but realistic efforts toward accession to the European Union, not on a crash course for NATO. But more important, you will be challenged to come up with a formula for a meaningful Euro-Atlantic alliance that includes Russia. The Kremlin muses about a Helsinki II. Give them an Obama I.

I think the overall point is that seeing someone's soul and a deep, personal friendship tend to get lost in the bureaucratic shuffle inherent in governing.

What the hell, Thailand?

Also, a second what the hell to Pantene.

Putin is expanding his repertoire

Vladimir Vladimirovich, perhaps a little insecure at the thought of being pigeon-holed, perhaps simply grown tired of hearing those around him sing the praises of his masculinity after his habit of throwing down his rifle and ripping off his shirt after he has rescued a child from the maw of a bear only to charge headfirst toward a giant tiger threatening one of his aides, has now decided to take up the art of watercoloring. And all for charity! Take that Sarkozy!

I say good for him. It might boost his ratings with that cross section of the public (read: everyone) who is now beginning to experience the harsher side of relying entirely on global oil speculators to drive your economy.

Two notes: one, for those who don't read Russian those numbers in the second link represent the amount of votes Putin has received in a nationwide poll of who are the "disgrace of Russia"; two, the blame which Putin and Medvedev are placing on the US and, in general, international forces conspiring against the purity of Russian economic leaders in tearing down the facade of their nation's wealth will, inevitably, lead to someone (not just Zhirinovsky) blaming all of this on the Jews.

And....we're back

Well, it's the new year and with today being Russian Orthodox Christmas I thought I'd resurrect this blog. In an effort to force myself to write more I'll be limiting the subject matter to things going on in Russia and various ramblings about classical music.

I've really not been paying attention to the Gas War, aside from finding out that in total 12 countries are without a reliable source of gas this January thanks to the impasse between Ukraine and Russia. I do know that the global economic crisis is hitting the Russian economy harder than most countries in the west. The rouble is being rapidly devalued and their stock market has lost about 70% of its value. Other than that, though, I haven't much to offer as I've been mostly occupying myself with trying to find gainful employment in this new year. The campaign I was working on lost - badly - and thus I was not able to continue my career in politics. Probably a good thing considering how inept I was at it and how much I really didn't enjoy the work.

Anyway, what I have been doing is listening to a lot of new music. I've discovered a truly amazing Russian composer. His name is Alexander Tcherepnin. He wrote in the beginning of the 20th century and his compositions were strikingly original. For example, his first symphony (1927) is the first symphonic work to contain a movement scored entirely for unpitched percussion. He invented his own scale, which bares his name, consisting of nine notes. The main body of his works are six piano concertos and four symphonies. I've only one of his recordings (which you can get off iTunes for ten bucks less than in stores) that contains his first piano concerto, a one movement work with an unforgettable quasi-minimalist opening with a distinctive flair of folk melodies from the Caucuses and also his third piano concerto. The third piano concerto is a bit harder to get into than the first, but it reminds me in a lot of ways of how Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony ties together its material: at first it can seem disjointed, but upon a few repeats the different movements are themselves broken down into discrete sections. The effect is the sonic equivalent of a kaleidoscope and is remarkably enjoyable. In addition to the concertos, there are two "fillers", crowd pleasers which also serve as orchestra show off pieces.

I've heard snippets of his other works and what I love most is the synthesis of so many different musical styles: from the Caucuses, China, Japan, Arabic folk songs, and a number of other places I'm probably missing. It never sounds cheap* and the way that he utilizes his influences combined with his own individualistic contributions makes for some truly weird but never uninteresting sounds.

Anyway, his music is really worth exploring if you're a fan of 20th century music. He's criminally underplayed and yet some of his pieces have the potential to be really big attractions to contemporary audiences. I'd love it, for example, if they took Prokofiev's Third piano concerto off of any one of the numerous "Visions of Russia" lineups orchestras put out each seasons and replaced it with Tcherepnin's First concerto (incidentally, you can hear the awesome opening to this concerto when you preview the work in iTunes store)

I get the feeling my descriptions of this sucked, which is why I need to write more. Hopefully some of you are still checking this periodically.

*It's the complete opposite of the type of imperialistic folk-looting that you get in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. I hate that shit. (not the ballet itself, of course - it's what got me into both classical music and Russia, so...)