Ahmed Rashid’s new book, “Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic Extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia” provides probably the most detailed examination yet, of how this sad state of affairs came to be and who is responsible for it.

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From Fareed Zakaria to Andrew Sullivan, an endless array of pundits have argued that they wouldn’t have supported the war if were aware of the scale of the Bush administration’s incompetence. As Ahmed Rashid’s book makes clear, this was a poor excuse. They only needed to look to Afghanistan to see that the American government had no intention to carry out nation-building and were only moderately equipped to fight counter-insurgency campaigns.

While the Republicans in America enjoy accusing anti-war people of wanting to ‘cut and run’, it was the Americans which cut and run from Afghanistan. As a result, Afghanistan is as much of a failed state as when the Taliban took over the first time, Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces have managed to regroup, drug production has increased exponentially and any vestiges of soft power that the Americans may have had in the region has been lost.

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Although America was negligent by not focusing on securing Afghanistan, it only deserves half the blame. As Rashid has carefully documented, demoralised Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters would have found it a lot harder to remobilise if they weren’t receiving the patronage of the Pakistani Army and ISI.

Having grown up in Pakistan, I consider myself reasonably aware of Pakistani politics. However I was completely shocked to read the extent to which the Army continued to support the Taliban and in effect Al-Qaeda, after 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan.

Rashid meticulously exposes the self-delusional fallacies of the Pakistani Army in believing that the Taliban and extremists were the only way of ensuring a friendly regime in Kabul while also being used to carry out attacks in Kashmir.

More importantly, he shows how Musharraf was able to play a masterful double game in which Pakistan would demonstrate its commitment to the War on Terror by helping to catch Arab and western Al-Qaeda, while turning a blind eye – if not actively encouraging Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces to set up bases in the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

American and British leaders eager to show results in the War on Terror and unwilling to jeopardise Musharraf’s position (another brilliant piece of propaganda by Musharraf - making himself out to be the bulwark against extremism, whilst simultaneously supporting it), ignored even their commanders reports that the Taliban were using Pakistan to attack them.

After the attempts on Musharraf’s life, a spate of bombings in Pakistan and the Red Mosque affair, Rashid says that it seems that even the army have come to realise the monster it has created. Unfortunately, attempts to disarm the Pakistani Taliban in the border areas have largely been a failure and have demoralised the Army.

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The most plausible critique of Rashid’s book would be that his analysis overestimates the capacity of western and UN forces to carry out nation-building in Afghanistan after the conclusion of the war. As Rashid himself mentions, nation-building has been unsuccessful in places from East Timor to Kosovo.

Given the extent to which Afghanistan has been destroyed through years of Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban rule, reconstruction would have been an immense task. However if the world really did change after 9/11, ensuring that Afghanistan and Central Asia progressed should have been seen as worth the time and effort that it would have taken.

In fact Rashid’s slightly counter-intuitive argument that the years of devastation actually made the Afghans more open to medium term occupation if it meant that they would have security and redevelopment of basic infrastructure is very persuasive. Afghanistan would not have become immediately prosperous but it would have been stable, which is all the majority of Afghans really wanted.

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The state of affairs in Central Asia is pretty dire and it would need dedicated leadership and a lot of luck to turn things around. However from a liberal policy perspective, one of the most interesting elements of the book is when Rashid describes how European politicians and troops were either unwilling or unable to let the troops fight the counter-insurgency.

In a post Cold War, post 9/11 world it was tempting to think that the role of conventional army would be diminished. However Rashid is persuasive in arguing that the real front line in the war on terror is stabilising areas and countries where terrorists are likely to set up camp. For this, conventional armies are very much required and it is important that European politicians don’t ignore this in an effort to keep defence costs low and public opinion satisfied.

“A US judge has ruled that the first war crimes trial at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, involving Osama Bin Laden’s former driver, can go ahead. Judge James Robertson dismissed a claim from lawyers for Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, that it should be stopped while he challenged the process’s legality.

The ruling came after a military judge at Guantanamo denied a postponement. Last month, the US Supreme Court ruled detainees had to be able to challenge their detention in civilian courts. It said the 270 men currently being detained at Guantanamo had “the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus” - the right for suspects to be heard by an independent judge on the legality of their detention.”

The situation is far from perfect, but at least some of the inmates are actually having trials, rather than being stuck in limbo. Hopefully whoever wins the Presidency will speed things up.

Some points I want to make.

No doubt some of these nutcase are whites who are desperate to prove that somehow Obama (or Michelle) are racist and therefore happily peddle lies about some tape. Like, apparently, there are such huge policy differences between Obama and Clinton that these people will vote McCain. These people just don’t want a black man in power, though they won’t admit it.

And then I’m interested in why the black pastor in the video has it in for Obama… there’s lots of comparisons to Hitler but its unclear why he thinks Obama will bring on the Fourth Reich.

Much of this reminds me of the sectarianism that envelops the left in this country - when lefties throw their toys out of the pram and start screaming betrayal if they don’t get what they want. Some on the US left have now taken up the task of proving to others (but mostly themselves) that Obama is a conservative! It’s the People’s Front of Judea! Boo! Hiss! Trotskyites annoy me like no other political group.

But lastly, I do have some grudging respect for these people in that at least they admit that not voting for Obama means voting for McCain. It’s a two party system: at least it’s better than sitting there screaming hysterically about how Obama is the devil’s incarnate and then saying you’re still progressive and that you still hate the Republicans people should just sit at home. Now that’s silly.

One responder to that article says:

I’ll take McCain over Obama every time, at least he loves America.

Oh, why not tell us what you really think? It’s going to be a long and dirty fight… I feel exhausted already.

On Monday evening, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) took to the floor of the House of Representatives to read out 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush in an almost five-hour marathon.

Kucinich’s action made an immediate splash on the Internet. For example, at progressive website Democratic Underground, the historic performance quickly garnered an astonishing 56 separate threads on the most-recommended list.

From Rawstory, (hat-tip Left-I). I’m a bit annoyed that the Democrats haven’t supported this a bit more strongly, given that the Republicans wanted to impeach Bill Clinton for a lot less. Liberals still continue to lack balls, I’d say.

What’s also interesting is how much interest the story generated online. Kucinich’s website went down after a reported 100,000 people per hour were visiting it. The American media almost universally ignored it. Also on Huffington Post.
It’s time the Democrats grew some hairs on their chest and stopped worrying that trying to impeach Bush would damage their re-election chances. Though, admittedly, there is a chance it would rally the small, hardcore Bush base and make them come out during the election.

McWhorter’s thesis rests on the argument that while racism is not extinct, it has diminished greatly and is no longer a life-affecting issue for the majority of African Americans. On the other hand, the majority of race experts view racism as a permanent phenomenon which constantly finds new ways of expressing itself. As Sunny pointed out in an earlier post (if you missed it, make sure you read it!), any attempt to move beyond this prism results in the person expressing this view as a sell-out. (For more on this, see Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy’s book)

However as McWhorter repeatedly points out, dwelling on the vestiges or racism does a great injustice to the legacy of Martin Luther King and the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. I don’t think that its unfair to say that those leaders would be pleasantly surprised by the amount of progress which has been made, albeit concerned at the state of Urban America.

Education and Affirmative Action

What really interests McWhorter are the reasons for African-American underachievement in both schools and universities. The reasons usually given for this phenomenon is the underinvestment in inner city schools. This is a real problem but McWhorter points to the fact that only a quarter of African-Americans still live in the inner cities. Also the achievement gap also exists for middle and upper class children.

Some have used this data to try and prove that African-Americans are genetically less intelligent. McWhorter rightly rejects this and instead pinpoints the problem as a cultural suspicion of education. There are obvious reasons why such suspicions took root in African American communities. Given the complete disenfranchisement and segregation of African Americans, it would be entirely natural to be distrustful of people of the same race who got the opportunity to be educated at top universities.

McWhorter feels that due to the oppression against Blacks, affirmative action was justified when it was introduced, but that it is no counter-productive because it strengthens the cultural meme against studying hard and aspiring to be good at school. Through the judicious use of anecdotes from his own time in academia, he also highlights how this has come to be exemplified by the type of anti-learning and anti-rationalist tendencies in African-American Studies in Departments at universities across America.

Racism: The Next Generation?

In response to my comment, Desi Italiana cited the growing unease at hispanic immigration and the treatment of Muslims as evidence that racism is in fact still pervasive. It is true that people like the minutemen patrolling the border have some very xenophobic tendencies. Yet it is worthwhile remembering that John McCain has managed to win the Republican nomination despite being in favour of comprehensive immigration reform.

Also, while I abhor the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib it is also worth remembering that Muslims are among the wealthiest groups in America and generally live pretty peaceful lives.

Compared to the internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans by Roosevelt after Pearl Harbour, things aren’t nearly as bad. Especially as an Obama presidency is likely to signify that the Bush years were simply an aberration in the aftermath of 9/11. (As an aside, I was watching an excellent documentary on Basil D’Oliveira the other day and appreciated the fact that he was finally selected to tour South Africa because of an outcry by the British Public at the very unfair way in which he had been treated)

So What Battles Should we be Fighting?

I’m not so naive as to believe that racism doesn’t exist or has a profound impact on people who are victims of it. On the other hand, I believe that the really big issues of the day are economic inequality in a globalised world and a somewhat hard to define need for cultural uplift.

In the meanwhile its also important not to get stuck up on issues like which racial minority is more discriminated against or is racism a greater threat than sexism. When we see threats on issues such as a women’s right to choose or increased detention without trial then we should speak up and campaign to the best we can. However that can’t be the be all and end all.

The biggest threat to minority rights and anti-racism both in America and the UK is a disenfranchised and angry white working class. I agree with Sunny that nobody is ever ‘driven’ to join such a party. Yet if conditions become bad they are more likely to be popular and there won’t be much that we could do about it.

There are however steps we can take right now to show we are on the same side.

Firstly not to patronise white workers by implicitly or explicitly assuming they are racist. A lot of people have focussed on some clips by people in West Virginia about why they wouldn’t vote for Obama and extrapolated it to Ohio and Pennsylvania generally. I’d say that any state where a former member of the Ku Klux Klan is a Senator (Democrat no-less) is somewhat of an anomaly.

Secondly showing an understanding that minorities don’t necessarily have things worse off than poor white people. There’s been a lot of talk about who can help Obama pick up the white working class vote. To be honest I don’t think the VP matters that much. If on the other hand Obama declares that he will replace race-based affirmative action with class-based affirmative action I think that he wins in a landslide.

Ultimately, I think the mistake people putting forward the type of arguments I’m making is giving a sense of complacency and self-satisfaction when there is still work to be done. However, I think we can only effectively address the challenges ahead if we are honest about improvements which have been made and build on those rather than disregard them.

“Senator Clinton will be hosting an event in Washington, D.C., on Friday to thank her supporters and express support for Senator Obama and party unity,” said Howard Wolfson, one of her chief strategists.

Earlier Wednesday, a group of top Democratic leaders asked all of the party’s uncommitted superdelegates, the officials and party leaders who get automatic convention seats, to make their preferences known by Friday.

Respeck - Hillary did the right thing and didn’t follow through with the stereotype that had been painted of her. Now Democrats, its time to start arming the guns. The real battle is about to begin.

Two other points. The media coverage has been somewhat annoying. Yes, we know he’s a black man, thanks BBC. It’s a big deal, sure, but that is not why he won the campaign. He won through superior campaigning.
Secondly, he is not black, Barack Obama is mixed race. He is as white as he is black. I hate it when journalists complete eradicate the whiteness of mixed race people, as if it doesn’t matter.

Another day, and yet more news of the crumbling Bush adminstration:

A former aide to President Bush claims the White House deliberately mounted a dishonest propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq invasion to the US public, in the most damning insider account of the presidency so far.

Scott McClellan, who worked for Bush for seven years, including three as White House spokesman, brands the war a “serious strategic blunder” and “not necessary”. The scathing comments stunned Washington today because the Bush team, until now, has had a reputation for intense loyalty to their boss.

Great news for the Obama campaign, another weapon in the growing stockpile against that idiot John ‘A thousand years in Iraq dammit’ McCain.

As for those comments of why he didn’t speak up before? Better late than never and the more damage these Republicans do to themselves the better I say!

Sunny updates Best headline goes to Wonkette: “Bush Propagandist Complains Of Bush Propaganda”.
The NY Times has an amusing round up of American blog reactions.

Anyway. The website Talk2Action, which aims to expose Christian fundamentalism, last week uncovered evidence that John Hagee had also said in one of his sermons that biblical verses made clear that Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust was part of God’s plan to chase the Jews from Europe and drive them to Palestine.

The story made the Huffington Post website and then the New York Times, which adds:

Mr. Hagee quoted from the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah, Mr. Hagee said in his sermon, according to the Huffington Post, “And they the hunters should hunt them,” arguing this referred to “the Jews.”

He went on to read from the same passage, “From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks. If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can’t see that,” Mr. Hagee said.

Poor John McCain was finally forced to “reject” the endorsement of a preacher that he had actively sought. No doubt the media will pay this as much attention as they did to Obama, and question whether McCain thinks the same. Or not.

As an amusing aside, Talk2Action were suitably impressed with my recent CIF article to re-publish it on their site earlier today. Good timing!

A few other points:
1) I have no doubt Conservatives in the UK and USA will completely overlook this “mishap” and keep asking questions whether Obama is sufficiently patriotic enough to be president.

2) Yes I know Rev Wright was Obama’s pastor for 20 years. But nothing Obama has ever said even vaguely says he agreed with what his pastor said.

3) I don’t believe McCain is anti-semitic etc. I’m sure he’s a nice guy apart from the fact he’s a Republican and eats babies for breakfast. The point here is that he’ll escape media scrutiny over something easily as controversial as what happened with Obama, simply because he’s white and there’s no question about his patriotism.

In this video, he makes some really interesting points about the scottish/irish cultural group in America and how they have been left behind and the possibility of a populist politics which cuts across across racial lines. Also check out this clip in which he’s interviewed by Olbermann on the State of the Union address.

Anthony Browne has an excellent piece in this week’s Spectator saying that what Britain needs is US-style think-tanks whose size enables them to do what the far more modest British think-tanks cannot do and for which there is a crying need — to challenge the intellectual stranglehold of the universities. Indeed, we need to go much further than that. At the heart of Britain’s spiral of intellectual, moral, social and political disintegration (yes, I am indeed understating the case) lies the intellectual hegemony of the left, enforced through bullying, intimidation, character assassination and the whole bag of tricks used to stifle an open society.

And she carries on….

The result is a public discourse from which truth, evidence and rationality have been exiled, a society where normative values have been replaced by the transgressive or alien, and a national culture which is losing the will to live. In America, these pressures certainly exist, particularly in the academy and its outriders in the media; but at least there a culture war is in progress with the fightback being conducted by the big think-tanks, publications like the Weekly Standard, City Journal or Commentary, talk radio and Fox News, and the evangelical churches. In Britain, the absence of any such alternative discourse means there has been no culture war here but a culture rout.

This spiral of decline therefore cannot begin to be addressed unless this monopoly is busted wide open. The most urgent task for any government which wants to turn Britain round is therefore to open up the public sphere and restore a liberal society. That would involve a systematic re-balancing of public subsidies away from the institutions doing the damage. Top-slicing the BBC licence-fee so that part of it goes to alternative broadcasters, for example, as the Tories have already suggested, would be an excellent start. The same should be done with the quangocracy — the Arts Council or the British Council spring to mind — and the vast fiefdoms of NGOs and the voluntary sector. Reducing the government grant to Drugscope — the dominant drug advisory body whose ‘harm reduction’ agenda is a Trojan horse for legalisation –  and giving the money to campaigners who are committed to eradicating drug use would bring evidence into the public domain which would open people’s eyes to the legalising propaganda which at present they have no way of recognising. Similarly, helping build alternatives to such citadels of the nomenklatura as the NSPCC, Friends of the Earth, Stonewall or Liberty would end the free pass currently afforded to the cultural nihilists, arrested adolescents and sub-Gramscian subversives who currently have their thumbs on the British windpipe.

Mmm… there’s a part of me that relishes American style culture wars here, simply because it allows one to be much more aggressive and partisan in politics. It’s like that Chris Matthews video I posted here a few days ago - politics becomes entertainment… and much more strategic. Much more war-like.

Is that a good or bad thing over the long term? I’m not sure. Barack Obama’s popularity suggests people do get tired of it eventually. But a part of me wants that aggressive tone simply so I could go out there and build a hyper-aggressive Huffington Post for the UK.

I love the fact that Melanie Phillips still takes herself seriously after writing all that though. Now that is a seriously delusional attitude Gordon Brown doesn’t even come close to.

It’s been a long time coming but John Edwards has finally endorsed Barack Obama:

Democrat John Edwards is endorsing former rival Barack Obama, fresh signs of the party establishment embracing the likely nominee even as Hillary Rodham Clinton refuses to give up her long-shot candidacy.

Edwards was to appear with Obama in Grand Rapids, Mich., as Obama campaigns in a critical general election battleground state.

The endorsement comes the day after Clinton defeated Obama by more than 2-to-1 in West Virginia. The loss highlighted Obama’s work to win over the “Hillary Democrats” — white, working-class voters who also supported Edwards in large numbers before he exited the race.

Another nail in the coffin for the Clinton campaign…

“I think that the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel.”

But, Mr. Obama continued, “the fundamental premise of Israel and the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is, I think, a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world.”

Asked if he thought Israel was a “drag on America’s reputation overseas,” he said it was not. But, referring to tensions in the Middle East, he said: “What I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions.”

I know this will annoy Anas but I’m in agreement with Obama of course. My views are pretty much the same. I’m posting this partly because I’m writing an article for CIF on when politicians pander to specific bases of their party. Shariq wrote about this a few days ago: Micro trends, micro politics?

There are three dynamics here worth noting. First that politicians always have to appeal to different bases of their own party while trying to reach out to new ones. This, to me, is standard politics.

Second, note that American Muslim organisations haven’t issued angry press releases in response, as they probably would in the UK. This is good politics.

Third, inevitably there are different standards applied to different minority groups. If Obama had addressed concerns of American blacks to overtly he’d be accused of pandering. Obama, thankfully, knows this. He’s intentionally said nothing to appear to pander to American Muslims or blacks. This is clever politics.

Is it me or does this come across like the dress rehearsal for a valedictory address? Is Clinton readying herself and campaign for defeat? Or is she just showing a ’softer’ side as a campaign tactic?

Anyway, here are the latest reasons why:
1) Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr formally jumped into the White House race Monday as a candidate for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. He’ll split the Republican libertarian vote.

2) Ron Paul isn’t going away and his supporters keep trying to reclaim the Republican party. This year the Democrats are more united than the Republicans.

3) George Bush, the most unpopular president in American history, is more damaging to McCain than Jeremiah Wright is to Barack Obama. All Democrats have to do is keep linking them together, putting McCain in a fix. If he tries to distance himself too much from Bush, he loses hardcore Republicans, if he doesn’t, he loses independents.

Update: 4) Travis Childers has won Mississipi. He was linked very heavily to Obama by the Republicans.

To a large extent this seems like common sense. However in recent years data collection and polling has become much more sophisticated. In his book “Microtrends”, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Mark Penn claimed to have identified 75 different subgroups of people, ranging from Christian Zionists to Impressionable Elites. George Bush’s success in 2004 is also largely attributed to a very sucessful micro-targeting campaign by Karl Rove.

This passage from Democrat Strategist Ed Kilgore’s review of Mark Penn’s book highlights some key concerns and rebuttals of using Mictrends in political campaigning.

Penn’s critics often fear that his goal is to undermine broad progressive political themes by encouraging an unprincipled slicing and dicing of the electorate to identify various swing targets. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with understanding the electorate in all its complexity, and forswearing microanalysis guarantees willful ignorance but does not guarantee a macropolitics of progressive principle.

Is Fragmentation Really Occurring?

I that fragmentation as a result mainly as a result of the internet is actually occurring. I’m really looking forward to reading Clay Shirkey’s new book which arguest that it is and that this is a good thing (Edited transcript of a speech he gave previewing some of his ideas).

Where do you Draw the Line?
In that sense I don’t necessarily think its a bad idea to understand demographics. I support stressing different policies to separate groups and using different media based on who you are targeting.

I don’t think it is in the interests of progressives to tailor their policies in order to meet perceived voter demands. The Iraq war is a classic example of this. By trying to triangulate, first John Kerry and now Hillary Clinton came across as being naive and indecisive. This proved bad both politically and in terms of real world outcomes.

This also has a negative impact when governing. By reducing the 10 pence tax rate and reducing the middle income band, Gordon Brown thought he was onto a winner by increasing his appeal with people in the middle. The subsequent climbdown has only added to his woes.

A more pervasive example of this is the way in which centre-left governments manipulate tax credits and deductions in order to appease different groups. General frustration with how complicated the tax code is, is often used as an argument by the right to argue for reducing taxes or even implementing a flat tax.

With Gordon Brown seemingly intent on hiring Mark Penn himself, it seems like we’ll get the chance to see how microtrends work in the UK.

There are only six contests remaining in the Democratic primary calendar and only 217 pledged delegates left to be awarded. Only 7 percent of the pledged delegates remain on the table. There are 260 remaining undeclared superdelegates, for a total of 477 delegates left to be awarded.
With North Carolina and Indiana complete, Barack Obama only needs 172 total delegates to capture the Democratic nomination. This is only 36 percent of the total remaining delegates
…
Since February 5, the Obama campaign has netted 107 superdelegates, and the Clinton campaign only 21. Since the Pennsylvania primary, much of it during the challenging Rev. Wright period, we have netted 24 and the Clinton campaign 17.

If all this is gobbledegook to you, don’t worry about it. The point is, Obama is home free. He is the man. And I’m gonna book a ticket to the US for October to work for his campaign. I need more political experience. Who’s coming with me?