Greg Sanders

Celebrating the end of the Iraq War

Mixed feelings are the common response to the news that the United States has completed the terms of our treaty and withdrawn from Iraq. That is appropriate; there is substantial uncertainty about Iraq's future and there is a level of ongoing violence that belies the term peace.

However, I would argue that celebration is also appropriate. I'm glad that we were able to end ahead of schedule giving the recently deployed a chance to celebrate the holidays at their home. The withdrawal completes a process of de-escalation that first saw troops pulled out of Iraqi cities and then out of the country entirely. As one might expect, this process involved steady declines in the level of violence directly precipitated by the U.S. occupation. While there are still Americans in Iraq who will maintain our relationship with that country and at times be in harm's way, the withdrawal is no illusion; the change has been significant and I suspect any attempts to reverse it would be politically disastrous.

There are those that argue that while this may prove temporarily good news for us, it will come at Iraq's or ultimately our expense. I would counter with my second reason to celebrate: we chose to respect the will of the Iraqi people as expressed through their nascent, troubled, and yet still somewhat democratic institutions. To the right, you can see the parliamentary vote on the Status of Forces Agreement that set our deadline for departure, an agreement that had been negotiated under President Bush. The abstentions are certainly troubling, but I have seen no evidence that they, let alone the Sadrist-dominated no voters, favored a less restrictive agreement. After we returned sovereignty to the Iraqi government they are without question the competent authority under just war theory to determine whether America's involvement should continue. They decided it should not, at least not under conditions acceptable to the U.S. government. Arguments about whether we could achieve a better result by staying longer should only come into play after answering the question about whether we have the authority to stay.

Thus while there are many to mourn, an overabundance of regrets, and a widespread sentiment that the war was a mistake, I would argue that we should celebrate its end. The return home of our troops, the reduction of violence that we're participating in, and the triumph of treaty law in dictating the timeline are all outcomes worth celebrating.

As ever, I speak for myself and not my employer.

Iraq Polling with Gary Langer of ABC

Intro by Tony Cordesman, uptick in Iraq violence, still more violence in casualties than in Afghanistan.  Do not measure violence in terms of killed, casualties are killed and wounded because it tends to disguise trends.

Gary Langer, ABC’s director of polling with D3 Systems/KA Research Ltd.  The poll found dramatic improvements in public attitudes across a range of measures.  Sample size: 2,228 with 446 sampling points.  By comparison, the Hopkins Lancet survey with the high casualty count only had 47 sample points.  They give more detail on their methods which seem quite robust to me but is a bit over my head.  67% cooperation rate which is higher than the U.S. but lower than their Afghanistan polls.  Iraqis interviewing Iraqis which lets them get

Roots of the change is security.  Low in March 2007, level in August with improvements on an individually level.  Much better for February 2008 and February 2009.  Suicide attacks are the form of attack people have the most experience with.  Only area where things have degraded is Anbar.  Local services and conditions have improved, but aren’t yet to pre-violence 2005 levels; fuel has the greatest improvement.  Confidence in national government is at a new high as is the support for Democracy at 64% (although not getting a majority of Sunni Arab support).  Support for Islamic state is relatively stable at 19% has for the first time overtaken the support for a strong leader at 14%.

Maliki has been gaining support among his base in Shiites, increase in Sunnis to 31%, but Kurds have dropped to 51% despite prior stronger support.  That said, even Shiite Arabs are concerned that Maliki is consolidating too much power.  Even so, there’s not a great deal of confidence in the Council of Representatives with the least support among Sunnis.

Interestingly, if the ABC polling is accurate, Shiites Arabs are just 49% of the population and not the 60-65% classic CIA/LoC sources have said but there’s no source for the numbers.  Kurds are still around 16% which is standard and non-Muslims at  4%.  The dramatic change is that Sunni Arabs come in around 31% of the population.  This means that the standard measures might overestimate Shiite Arab vs. Sunni Arab population by 10 percentage points!

In general, Sunni’s still lag in the positive ratings of the situation, but have been dramatically increasing sometimes to the extent of doubling.  The prior strong support of Kurds remains above the Sunnis but is leveling off and now sometimes dropping below Arab Shiites levels.  That said, Kurds still feel very safe in their neighborhoods and able to live where they wish without prosecution.  When it comes specifically to services, it appears that the dramatic improvements are coming from the Arab Shiites.  There’s been some suggestion that this was a boost targeted at majority Arab Shiite provinces in an attempt to win votes.

There is evidence of increasing ethnic separation with 62% in Baghdad and 75% in the rest of Iraq living in neighborhoods dominated by one sectarian group.  They estimate the population of Baghdad down to 30% with others estimating it’s gone as low as 15%.  But as the number above shows that this is not a Baghdad only phenomenon.  Fewer friends across doctrinal lines Sunni/Shiite relations are rated positively in homogenous neighborhoods but negatively in heterogeneous neighborhoods.  While the vast majority of the country prefers a strong central government, 39% of Kurds favor a confederate government and another 39% favor full separation.

Even so, 56% of Iraqis opposed the invasion with a small increase since 2008.  Kurds highly supportive, Sunni Arabs opposed, and the Shiite Arabs becoming a bit more opposed perhaps as they’re more confident that they aren’t dependent on American power.  Although negative ratings of the U.S. and Britain are dropping and are now below the negative ratings of Iran.  In terms of withdrawal 35% current time table (2011), 46% leave sooner, 16% stay longer.  Based on that question it does sound like the Status of Forces Agreement could be ratified by a majority vote, although it would be a near thing.

I wouldn’t have been able to guess the specific numbers, but most of this information is in line with what I expected.  The main surprise was that the standard demographic profile might be dramatically off.  This does suggest that Sunni-Shiite Arab reconciliation is all the more vital for the stability of the country.  I’m most depressed at the level of the ethnic cleansing and the extent that this ethnic separation seems to be a key driver of security perceptions.  One other fascinating point, security has a weaker effect on confidence with the national government that development, but I’d guess that they may be holding the U.S. and not the national government culpable for security problems.

Here’s the charts for the data itself.

Worries about Iraqi Democracy

I favor withdrawal from Iraq but I'm a bit unclear on what people mean when they say we should pare down our objectives by not talking about democracy.

Adam Blickstein notes that Obama and Gen. Odierno are both using roughly the same language in reference to Iraq:

This strategy is grounded in a clear and achievable goal shared by the Iraqi people and the American people: an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant.

Blickstein goes on to say:

Ilan noted the shift in tone and rhetoric between Obama's stated goals and those espoused by Bush, whose central pillar was "helping the people of Iraq establish a democracy in the heart of the Middle East." But it is striking that almost a month before Obama's speech that Odierno used nearly the same language as Obama when describing the desired end state in Iraq.

As recently as December 2008, Bush still clung on to the ideal of a democratic Iraq: "There is hope in the eyes of Iraqis' young. This is a future of what we've been fighting for -- a strong and capable democratic Iraq."  This starkly conrasted with what General Petraeus said in April 2008 while he still was commander of troops in Iraq: "We're not after the Holy Grail in Iraq, we're not after Jeffersonian democracy."

A sense of realism has blanketed the idealism of democracy promotion in Iraq in both the political and military circles. And clearly, it's refreshing to finally see both the military commanders and the Commander-in-Chief on the same page whe it comes to Iraq's future.

What exactly does this mean?  That Maliki is going to suspend elections and we're going to be okay with it?  As I said, I favor withdraw.  I'm not favoring the U.S. fighting to make sure the Iraqi government maintains electoral democracy though I do think using political pressure is appropraite.  If Maliki becomes a full-on strongman I think we should just get out faster.  But could those that are so happy about the dropping of the democracy language explain a bit more what they're talking about?  The Jeffersonian democracy line is fairly meaningless, only fools ever thought that a successful democracy in Iraq would look like ours.  Are we talking democracy with weak liberalism or not even the minimum standards of electoral democracy?

[Beginning] of the End in Iraq

I wasn't at all sure this would happen when I was reading the paper this morning, but Obama's speech was better than I hoped.

The key acknowledgement wasn't the 18th month draw down.  With 50k troops as a resisidual force, that's more than the U.S. will have in Afghanistan, even after 17k more arrive as ordered.  However, he also acknowledged the reality of our agreement with the Iraqis, everybody out by the end of 2011.  As Ackerman notes, originally Obama was talking about keeping that force there indefinitely  (That's why I supported Edwards specifically for the Iowa primary.  Let's just say I'm very glad we dodged that bullet.)

Marc Lynch describes the good parts of the speech in detail.  One point he picks up on that particularly gladened me, we are committing to help resettle Iraqi refugees including those that can't go home because they helped us.  This is the necessary moral adjunct to respecting Iraqi self-determination, we still owe a debt to those individual Iraqis that threw in their lot with us.  Also, admirably, Obama did take the time to directly address the people of Iraq.

Ackerman has the full text as well as some additional useful insight.

There was, of course, still some hedging in the speech.  That's to be expected.  Even so, why am I so assured?  I think Fred Kaplan sums it up best:

For some time now, the United States has had less and less say over the nature and direction of post-Saddam Iraq. We declared it to be a sovereign nation, at which point its leaders started acting as if it were true...

If all hell breaks loose, is it possible to revise the SOFA to let U.S. troops remain? Strictly speaking, no. Article 30 states that either party can notify the other that it's terminating the agreement—but it also notes that the termination wouldn't take effect until one year after the notice (by which time the full withdrawal might be mandatory). The Iraqi parliament could theoretically draft a new SOFA, but the one in place now took many months to compose, and if the country is falling apart—the premise of this scenario—it's unlikely that the factions would agree on a revision or on wanting U.S. troops to stay in any case.

Blog roll addition: Marc Lynch

There's a great discussion up on the Foreign Policy blog of Tom Ricks' new book: the Gamble.  Everyone seems agreed that it's a good book and I tend to find Ricks reporting quite useful.  That said, I quite disagree with his conclusions.  Happily, Marc Lynch is way ahead of me and challenges Ricks directly on two vital points.

First is the near-complete absence of the Status of Forces Agreement, which Iraqis call the Withdrawal Agreement. The SOFA sets an end-date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, at December 31, 2011... Ricks may feel that the United States will ignore these requirements, or that the Iraqis don't really mean it, or that they are a bad idea. But he makes no argument one way or the other, instead acting as if it simply doesn't exist. To the extent that this reflects the mindset among his key informants, that's a problem...

Second is the near-complete absence of Iraqis. In 325 pages of text, I could find only ten pages which quoted an Iraqi of any description, and only two unmediated by an American military official.

Here's Ricks's response where he forthrightly addresses the points:

1. On the Status of Forces Agreement, I just don't think it is that meaningful.

As I watched it come together in Baghdad, it appeared to me to simply be a way of taking the American military presence off the table as a divisive issue in Iraqi politics. That is, it was much more about 2009 than about 2011. So I make less of it than others do. I might be wrong...

2. On the absence of Iraqi voices, Lynch's criticism again is correct.

I was aware of this lack, painfully so, but decided against trying to paper it over with some desultory interviews. I don't speak Arabic and I am not an expert on Iraq, so I think I would have done of mediocre job of trying to figure out the Iraqi side of the story. What I know a lot about is the U.S. military. I even speak some of its dialects... The absence of Iraqis in my book is especially significant because Iraqi solutions will be the key to the end of this story. That is, Iraqis will make the decisions that determine how this all ends.

I take this to mean that Ricks thinks the SOFA was a successful con-job by American and perhaps also by Iraqi politicians.  Perhaps it is, but Ricks never explains how he thinks we can pull this stunt in perpetuity. 

There's an old adage on strategy cited here by Gen. Franks: "In any war plan the enemy gets a vote."  Modifying it slightly, in any occupation, the populace gets a vote.  If that vote doesn't come in the form of democracy it can still come in the form of support for insurgency or counter-insurgency.  I don't see how it is possible to form any conclusion about what we should do in Iraq without taking into account the views of the Iraqi people.  I mean this in a realist sense, not a liberal sense.  We may be able to stay in Iraq in perpetuity but if we do so without popular support the Iraqi people can extract a heavy price. 

To be clear, I am not saying that I'm a regional expert or an expert on the conflict.  Ricks certainly knows it orders of magnitude better than I.  He is an excellent writer and as his responses show above a self-aware and an honest one.  I think his reaching a conclusion about staying without grappling with Iraqi popular opinion is probably attributable to status quo bias.  In someways leaving Iraqi can be literally unthinkable in much the same way that I'm sure leaving Vietnam was unthinkable.  Giving up control can be a very difficult step to take until one is pushed.

Since I am not a regional expert, let me recommend someone who is: check out Marc Lynch on the foreign policy blog.

The coming withdrawal from Iraq

Spencer Ackerman notes an AP article and finds independent confirmation the information:

The United States plans to withdraw most of its troops from Iraq by August 2010, 19 months after President Barack Obama's inauguration, according to administration officials. The withdrawal plan would fulfill one of Obama's central campaign pledges, albeit a little more slowly than he promised. He said he would withdraw troops within 16 months, roughly one brigade a month from the time of his inauguration. ...

The 19-month strategy is a compromise between commanders and advisers who are worried that security gains could backslide in Iraq and those who think the bulk of U.S. combat work is long since done.

This would leave 30 to 50 thousand troops in Iraq, although the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) mandates that most of them get out by the end of 2011.  There's room for negotiation there, but Obama has said he'll abide by the agreement and I think domestic Iraqi politics place a severe upper limited on long term U.S. presence. 

Ackerman isn't particularly worried about the three month delay and thinks it's fairly good politics by making a fixed withdrawal look like a compromise.  That's probably true from at least a domestic U.S. perspective.  From the Iraqi perspective, we probably want to front load that a bit.  I've read the suggestion that making a large withdrawal gesture prior to the referendum on the SOFA would ease the passage of the agreement which would mean we wouldn't need to withdrawal even more rapidly. 

Beyond the lack of details on scheduling, there's one major error in the AP piece.  Specifically the implication that some Obama advisors "think the bulk of U.S. combat work is long since done."  That's the sort of naive formulation that Tom Ricks tends to push back against, and rightfully so.  There's still a lot of fighting left.  But I part company with Ricks and this Joshua Keating post on Ricks' blog.  The argument for withdrawal isn't that the fighting is done, but that the U.S. role in the fighting is largely done.  Why?  Because as the SOFA debate show the Iraqis are ready for us to start leaving.

Photograph by Jamesdale10 used under a creative commons license.

And the breakup is official

The Status of Forces Agreement passed Iraq’s presidency council (which basically gives the Shia, the Sunnis, and the Kurds each a theoretical veto).  For more on the SOFA, here’s my earlier post.

Iraq: The democracy kicked in!

Electoral democracy has taken its lumps in post-conflict situations.  The lead-up to elections is statistically correlated with a rise in violence while the post-election period doesn’t lead to a substantial drop-off.  Participatory direct democracy is a popular tool at the low levels, but the two don’t have to be linked.  Protection of minority rights can even be at odds with majoritarian democracy.  For a round up of some of these critiques you can see Fareed Zakaria’s The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.  And obviously not even those wacky neo-cons thinks it actually works in the way shown below.

Family Guy~Democracy comes to Iraq | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Nonetheless, the strength of democracy is not picking good leaders but in kicking out bad ones. Similarly while democracy can lead to problems with minority rights, it’s also rather good at bringing in excluded factions.  In the Iraqi case, this process was slower because of electoral boycotts (have those ever worked?) but now the Sunni Awakening groups and Sadr’s people, if not Sadr himself, are likely to participate in the upcoming provincial elections.

Those thinking we may be staying in Iraq for another ten years, and that think this is a good thing, tend to say that Prime Minister Maliki is just responding to domestic political pressure.  His chief Shiite rival, Sadr, seems to have lost some support as a result of the tougher line. They may be right in the source, but as the SOFA negotiations shows, they are very wrong in the implications.  The U.S. occupation is massively unpopular, the surge and associated efforts strengthened Maliki’s hand, but that just makes him less dependent on the U.S. and thus better able to negotiate a tough deals.  The Sunni’s also managed to win a concession and adopt my favorite suggestion [update: notably proposed by the PCR team over at CSIS] on handling Iraq, a referendum on the agreement and thus the occupation.  If we can’t win that referendum in July we’ll need to be out in 18 months and not 3 years.

Of course, at the same time, democracy has been working in America.  Kicking out our old leadership led to the Iraqis trusting that withdrawal might actually get implemented and progress on the SOFA.  As Matt Yglesias notes, Obama did not ‘get lucky’ that the Iraqis supported his withdrawal plan.  Instead, he was aware of the unpopularity of the occupation and incorporated that into his plan.  Good policy can make for politics.

Also, some commenters seem to think this is a win for the admin.  Chill people.  We need to be out of Iraqi cities by the end of 2009, that substantially limits what we can actually do on the ground, and there’s a deadline for total withdrawal, absent circumstances short of negotiating a new agreement, by 2011.  Our contractors no longer have legal protections. In short, we are staying on an uncomfortable SOFA, it does not fold out to make a bed, unlike Japan, Germany, or Korea, this is not a long term arrangement.

Sen. Lieberman is a crazy person

Matt at the Project on Middle East Democracy has tidbits from Joseph Lieberman at a Republican foreign policy forum.

Lieberman notified the audience that his candidate would shake up the U.S. foreign policy structure by committing more support to State, USAID, and public diplomacy efforts that span several agencies. Lieberman said McCain understood the need for “better public diplomacy to get our case out in the Islamic world,” saying, “we’ve tried, but we still haven’t figured out how to do it.”

No, no you haven’t. One possibility, less bombings. More seriously, McCain is keeping the Bush tax cuts, keeping the war in Iraq, and may rework military spending but I don’t think he’s proposed cutting it. More support to State, USAID, and public diplomacy is a good idea, but where’s the money coming from?

Discussing Iraq, the Observer quotes Lieberman as adding, “whatever one thinks about whether we should have gone into Iraq, Iraq now is potentially a great model for the future in the Islamic world.” [emphasis mine]

Wow.

Wedding Planning Foobs

The Comics Curmudgeon had roughly the same response to today’s For Better of For Worse that I did. I’ll skip the summary and just recommend you click through.

Happily this is an issue on which I have some credibility, as I’ve put in my hours on wedding planning. I’m actually reasonably sympathetic to Liz here, hers is being pushed up because of a relative on the edge of death, that’s not really something you can plan for. She’s stressed, but I would be to in that situation particularly if I wasn’t getting any help.

I do wonder to what extent the Patterson men in For Better or For Worse are supposed to be somewhat unlikable because they never help around the house (even though one is a stay at home writer) or just act bratty. The flashback strips further reinforce this phenomenon with Michael doing his best Dennis the Menace impersonation. I think it actually is increasingly intentional, but I’m not sure where Lynn Johnson is going with it just yet.

More on Iraqi government calls for withdrawal

Both Kevin Drum and Spencer Ackerman note that Iraq’s national-security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, is echoing Maliki’s statement on withdrawal.

"There should not be any permanent bases in Iraq unless these bases are under Iraqi control," Rubaie said. "We would not accept any memorandum of understanding with [the U.S.] side that has no obvious and specific dates for the foreign troops’ withdrawal from Iraq."

That quote is from the a Post article by Ernesto Londono and Dan Eggen, and Ackerman adds that al-Rubaie has been national-security advisor under the past three premiers. Wacky. Anyways, in addition to other Arab governments and the Iraqi people, according to some perhaps sketchy sources serious pressure is apparently now coming from the top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sadr is a top rival to Sistani, even to the extent of allegedly having some of the Grand Ayatollah’s people killed, but they seem to come down on the same side on this one.

I rather doubt the Bush administration would sign on for an agreement that had firm withdrawal conditions. Instead they’d probably try to renew the U.N. authority. That’s actually a perfectly reasonable option as it will leave the decision in the hands of the next administration,possibly one more willing to consult Congress. Alternately, Kevin Drum notes that they may just have an easily fudge-able set of withdrawal guidelines. That’ll depend on whether this timeline talk is genuine or merely a response to outside pressure to be slipped out of at the first opportunity.

Iraqi government interested in a withdrawal timetable

I’ve been neglecting Iraq a bit because I keep meaning to make a comprehensive post but don’t end up doing any shorter easier ones. That seems silly so I’m jumping back in the game. Iraq is definitely looking better than this time a year ago, the Sunni awakening, the ceasefire with Sadr, the increase in the number of troops, and the adoption of more counter insurgency tactics all made a difference.

I think the most interesting story of the past few months has been of Primen Minister Maliki finding ways to consolidate power. I was initially skeptical, particularly when he needed the U.S. to bail him out of his attack on Sadr’s militia’s. However, the Iranian negotiated settlement of that conflict seems to have reduced the profile of Sadr’s people without resulting in a renewal of conflict. The provincial elections will be an important test of strength and popularity, but for the moment it appears Maliki has managed to co-opt or sideline some of his key Shia rivals.

Not surprisingly, at the same time the Iraqi government is getting tougher in negotiations with the U.S. on a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Ilan Goldberg has analysis over at Democracy Arsenal:

First of all, this is no surprise. The entire controversy over the SOFA from the Iraqi perspective was that the Iraqis wouldn’t sign onto any long-term agreement if it didn’t include a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces. The political uproar in Iraq for an American withdrawal is simply too great. So this makes absolute sense. The key question now is whether or not the Bush Administration agrees. If they do, we might get a reasonable agreement. If they don’t, they’ll probably end up with a temporary renewal of the UN Security Council Resolution and the next President can negotiate this agreement.

The third alternative, the one many people expected, was that the U.S. would use carrots and sticks to get the government of a country we occupy to go along with the rules we wanted. That’s often how things work out, governments in occupied states tend to be highly reliant on the occupier. Instead, democracy might just help us get out of Iraq. If Maliki provides too many compromises he won’t be able to get the Iraqi Parliament to pass the SOFA or will be vulnerable to a electoral (or insurgent) challenge by his Shia rivals (possibly in coalition with Sunnis that want the U.S. to leave). Thus he’s got a strong incentive to stand up to the U.S. Since a President Obama is also interested in the U.S. leaving Iraq, post-2009 this could be a relatively easy negotiation.

More Mechanics=Worse game?

[Pre-scheduled post while I’m off on a trip.]

Via N’Gai Croal, an argument from John Rose of Gamasutra: Fewer Mechanics, Better Game.

Players must feel as though their possible actions form a cohesive whole. They must think that they sufficiently understand the system of their game world. Therefore we must make our systems strong enough to be understandable. The inclusion of too many game mechanics is the surest way to dilute this strength and rob players of their valuable insight...

I argue that a few well-developed game mechanics in a strong play aesthetic will always be more enjoyable. Players ultimately want to learn and triumph over a system. But the inclusion of too many mechanics only serves to de-systemize the game...

When applied to game mechanics, this fact supports the inclusion of only strong ones. Any mechanic that is underutilized by most players is a waste of developer and player time. It’s well known that if players aren’t confident with a game mechanic, they simply won’t use it. They demand a set of influences that they understand. Bad designers will often force players to use mechanics in order to justify their existence, but this robs the developer of its resources and the player of his fun.

Okay, I’m with him so far. On the whole we probably err on the side of too many mechanics. A mechanic should be fairly strong or left out. That said, I do make an exception for flavor mechanics. Things like customizing character appearance, getting stuff for the player’s house, optional mini-games can add to the fun. That said, they shouldn’t be mistaken for core mechanics. However, Rose also makes an argument I vehemently disagree with.

A recent trend in games is the ability of players to "play their own way." It’s a design choice that includes more mechanics than any particular player will explore in a single playthrough. While superficially this seems like the Holy Grail of game design, the idea merely passes on the entertainment responsibility to the player. These games include a myriad of mechanics in the hope that the player will find some to suit him.

BioShock is an example a great game whose giant mechanic set only weakens its play aesthetic. While the title’s story and environment have set the bar for many games to come, there’s just too much to do. In many a difficult situation players are left to decide between their guns, plasmid powers, hacking, stealth, and the use of one-shot items.

I’d say the problem in Bioshock is more one of resource management. It was greater for me than for most players because I intentionally kept my Big Daddy kill count down and thus reduced the amount of powers I could buy. That said, aside from your wrench, everything burns either ammo or energy. This can easily force players into having to use mechanics they don’t like because they don’t have the resources to use the ones they do. I’d agree that in that case, the systematic nature of the game is undermined. Similarly, some of the mechanics, like stealth, were pretty dang weak. If dropping that would have greatly improved another mechanic, I guess I’d take it.

All that said, Bioshock isn’t the epitome of multi-path gaming, for that, one must turn to Dues Ex, and indeed one of a commenter does. That game was known for letting you play with powers, stealth, or guns and doing a lot of things pretty dang well. Did it do too much? Sure, but multi-path was not the source of that problem.

What Rose misses is the possibility for a game to have multiple systems. He favorably sites Team Fortress 2 being multiplayer only but doesn’t mention that the play style will vary greatly dependent on which character type you have. That said, I think there’s a fair argument for cutting down unnecessary features within each character type and will probably do a post on this vis-a-vie Mass Effect later this week.

In a small scale game, like a Portal, having a single path is appropriate. The world needs more small scale non-casual games. But as the scale rises, one of the features you can add is new, tight, systems of mechanics within your larger system. Not everyone will enjoy every sub-system, but it means that some players will enjoy their favorite gameplay style a heck of a lot more.

Labor protections? Jeez, you'd almost think China was going communist on us

Ariana Eunjung Cha wrote up the impact of the new labor in China a couple days back in the post. Is it a good law? Well the title is "New Law Gives Chinese Workers Power, Gives Businesses Nightmares" which, given the present situation in China, basically means unalloyed good thing.

Wei Hoqiang used to work in a toy factory that forced him to sign a contract it did not let him read. It paid him 30 cents an hour, made him work 100 days without a day off, and kept him in a room that was
ice cold in winter and suffocating in summer. He said he knew he was being taken advantage of, but he was so afraid of his boss’s ire that he stayed for two years...

Armed with a landmark new labor contract law that went into effect Jan. 1, employees like Wei are turning the tables on employers in China.

The law -- designed to combat forced labor, withholding of pay, unwarranted dismissals and other abuses -- represents a major victory for Chinese workers who for decades have complained of companies that would stop at nothing to wring out profits. It has prompted legions of workers in recent months to become bolder about quitting and about staging strikes to demand improvements in work conditions and wages...

It has added to the rising cost of doing business in China -- contributing to an exodus of what is estimated to be thousands of factories from places like the Pearl River Delta in southern China, for 20 years synonymous with cheap and abundant labor and the engine behind China’s rapid growth...

Not all of these companies are leaving the country, however. Many say they are moving to less developed parts of China that offer tax breaks and other incentives to offset the increasing costs associated with the new labor law.

Well worth reading the whole thing. Anyways, while the article does compare the worker-business trade-offs I think it makes quite clear that in the places where it’s really coming into force, the situation is still roughly full employment. That isn’t a coincidence, you can probably bet that in the less developed parts of China mentioned above, one of the incentives will be spotty enforcement of the law. The PRC may have a strong central government, but it has fairly weak regulatory regimes and lots of corruption.

Anyways, from the sound of it, the sketchy businesses are finding new people to exploit and the prosperous regions are maturing into economies with more legal safeguards. This will probably be a good thing for everyone involved, the less developed areas will probably initially welcome some of those sketchy jobs.

There probably won’t be that many implications for U.S. companies operating in China. From what I’ve heard, we already tend to be at the top end of employers. What are the implications for U.S. importers? Harder to say, there’s a lot of poor Chinese people out there, although businesses operating in the interior will probably have to rely on less developed infrastructure.

How ethnic cleansing happens

Spencer Ackerman, over at his new blog Attackerman, comments on a Washington Post article by Walter Pincus that I also noticed this morning. In short the article said that the Iraqi government isn’t doing much for Iraq’s 2 million refugees but that sectarian militia’s are helping them resettle.

How are they helping them resettle? By putting them in the houses abandoned by refugees from rival sectarian groups. That’s ethnic cleansing for you, or I suppose sectarian cleansing. To be clear, I’m not using ethnic cleansing as a euphemism for genocide, I don’t think what’s happening is quite so one-sided or has the enormity to qualify.

Here’s Ackerman’s take on the subject:

One of the things that struck me as impressive on the part of David Petraeus and (yes) Ray Odierno was their understanding that you’d support a militia, too, if it was the only thing standing between you and an opposite-sect death squad — or even an out-of-control traffic roundabout. It’s just that there’s a difference between understanding the problem and having the capacity to solve it. It turns out that if you judged just by someone’s track record on delivering security and services to the desperate, the best-qualified reconstruction czar in Iraq would be Moqtada Sadr. And he’s, you know, thugged out.

The Refugee International study found that, with many displaced Iraqis living in poverty, the movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has become Iraq’s “largest ‘humanitarian’ organization.” It said that Sadr’s group ” ‘resettles’ displaced Iraqis free of charge in homes that belonged to Sunnis.” It said Sunni militias “play a similar role with displaced and needy Sunnis.”

I tend to think the next PM of Iraq will be Sadr or Sadr’s man, although obviously the situation is still volatile enough that I won’t say that with a high degree of certainty.

The deeper problem here is that doing it right, by reintegrating refugees into their former neighborhoods is much harder than just putting them in homes stolen from other refugees. Similarly just keeping people in refugee camps for ages is also destabilizing. The Iraqi government has mostly handled the problem by exporting it to neighbors, but the neighbors are getting tired of refugees and are starting to send them back. Regardless, ethnic cleansing is not a consequence of withdrawal, it’s something that’s happening anyways.

Cole and Drezner

Great in depth Iraq discussion in a bloggingheads between Juan Cole and Daniel Drezner. A few interesting points, mostly from Cole:

• Withdrawal is basically a decolonization situation in Iraq.
• Aside from U.S. presence in Iraq, U.S. and Iran both want a stable Shi’a led Iraq.
• The Iranians work with all the Shi’a factions and a few of the Kurdish ones dating back to their anti-Saddam alliance.
• It’s difficult to base in Kurdistan because if things got hot between Kurdistan and Turkey, we lose our main access point via Turkey.
• We need a plan for Iraqis who worked with the U.S. According to Dan Drezner, Sen. Clinton has talked about that, good for her. Juan Cole said we may be talking about 300k people in need of asylum.

How wrong was I about the Iraq war?

How wrong was I a little over five years ago?  Embarrassingly so, considering I had a frigging BA in Political Science. I’ve grabbed these from an old personal site, so I’m not linking it. In essence I backed the Tony Blair approach on Iraq. So based on what I said back then, if I’d been in the Congress I’d probably have unwisely voted for that accursed resolution.

The question here is can Bush be trusted? I’m willing to believe him on his intentions to rebuild Iraq but I don’t believe he’s willing to take substantial political risk to guarantee that it will succeed. Fortunately I believe there are still enough leaders left in America that it will not be allowed to fail...

Ultimately, I’m gonna sleep [fine] without Saddam Hussein or even a soft-autocrat in charge of Iraq. Let alone knowing that said leader won’t have access to weapons of mass destruction. It’ll also help that most U.S. troops are out of Saudi Arabia and thus all that much farther from Mecca. But most important, a rebuilt democratic Iraq will be a proving grounds for idealism in American policy. I have enough faith in current non-Bush leadership, liberal democracy, and America to think we’ll pass the test. Although if I’m wrong,or if Bush actually is just straight out evil, the price will be terrible. Here’s hoping I’m right...

Finally, I believe we’ll suceed [sic] in rebuilding Iraq if we have the will to do it. Although, as much as I knock the admin, at least they are being aggressively rhetorically pro-democratic. I just hope the misteps [sic] in regard to preparing for the next stage were mistakes and not indications of lack of concern...

In short my judgment on the biggest foreign policy decision of the past decade was terrible. I supported sending between hundreds of thousands and millions of Iraqis and 4,000 American troops to their death based on faith and not the analysis, available at the time, of the order of magnitude of the true cost. 

So in short, I fell for the classical Green Lantern line of thought. With sufficient will we’d be fine. I’d seen a lot of humanitarian interventions that went from okay to not so impressive. These interventions were typically mediocre at best, although the incompetence of the start of the Iraq occupation was still remarkable.

However, I will not avail myself of the incompetence defense. The Iraq war was a horrific mistake, one that could have been and indeed was foreseen by many people including some friends. After having realized this mistake, I have left the ranks of liberal hawks as have many others.

I’m sorry.  My form of penance is listening more to those that were right and trying to fix the problems the invasion caused.  My read for the past few years is that the best first step is withdrawal from Iraq.  What lessons have I learned?  I think Timothy Noah is right, it's probably a better use of your time to focus on why some people got it right than what people who got it wrong think now.

My ideas aren't so crazy!

So via Kevin Drum, Juan Cole and I seem to have a similar read.

My reading is that the US faced a dilemma in Iraq. It needed to have new provincial elections in an attempt to mollify the Sunni Arabs, especially in Sunni-majority provinces like Diyala, which has nevertheless been ruled by the Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq [ISCI]. But if they have provincial elections, their chief ally, the Islamic Supreme Council, might well lose southern provinces to the Sadr Movement. In turn, the Sadrists are demanding a timetable for US withdrawal, whereas ISCI wants US troops to remain. So the setting of October, 2008, as the date for provincial elections provoked this crisis.

I think Cheney probably told ISCI and Prime Minister al-Maliki that the way to fix this problem and forestall the Sadrists coming to power in Iraq, was to destroy the Mahdi Army, the Sadrists’ paramilitary.

For those of you who don’t remember, here’s my post from two days earlier. I won’t quote myself, as that’s silly.

Kevin Drum agrees and adds a few thoughts I also back:

First, Cheney’s visit came ten days ago and this operation seems to have been in the planning stages for several weeks. My guess is that this operation is Maliki’s idea, not ours, and Cheney merely offered his blessing and a promise of U.S. air/ground support.

Second, I continue to be slightly mystified that Muqtada al-Sadr continues to make such soothing noises. It seems increasingly unlikely that Maliki is targeting only rogue Sadrist groups, but despite this, "A statement released late Thursday by Sadr’s political office said the cleric remained committed to the cease-fire he imposed on his militia in August."

I’m not sure why Sadr is sticking to the ceasefire. My guess is that he feels sufficiently secure that he’s looking at the long game. While Maliki doesn’t really distinguish between Sadr’s people and "special groups" I think the U.S. does (although we might not in this offensive). So Sadr sticks this one out, the ceasefire with the U.S. kicks in again, and he’s facing no real threats that can keep his people from taking power in the provincial elections.

And behind it all there's a price to be paid

From the Washington Post (Emphasis mine)

Iraqi forces were backed by U.S. and British reconnaissance planes as they launched their Basra offensive, an operation aimed at breaking the power of politically backed gunmen in the city.

The fiercest fighting took place in Basra neighborhoods where Iraqi forces targeted members of Sadr’s Mahdi Army, further risking the collapse of a cease-fire that Sadr declared last summer. His fighters’ stand-down has been widely credited with helping curb violence throughout the country during the U.S. troop buildup known as the surge.

From what I can glean from the Post, the real change in status quo came from the Iraqi security forces. Two days ago Sadr’s followers launched a civil strike planning mass protests and shuttering their stores.

But in recent weeks, Iraqi security forces have clashed with Mahdi Army militiamen and conducted large raids and arrests of Sadr followers in southern Iraqi towns such as Kut and Diwaniyah. Sadrist leaders in Baghdad said that they were still obeying the cease-fire and that the demonstrations would be peaceful.

The protests came a day after at least 60 Iraqis were killed in a wave of car bombings, suicide attacks and gun violence, and the U.S. military death toll reached 4,000.

Some of the uptick in violence may be attributable to elements of Sadr’s forces that aren’t following the ceasefire, but that’s not a major change from the hardly peaceful status quo. [Update: Spencer Ackerman thinks the first blow may have come from Sadr’s people who could have just been waiting out the surge.] At this point, the cease fire may be completely falling apart. So why the change? Sadr’s Shiite rivals are the biggest faction in the government. I’m guessing we went after Sadr in exchange for the Shiites withdrawing their veto of the election law. That happened four days ago and was personally negotiated by Vice President Cheney. We badly needed that election law because the Sunni Awakening Forces are increasingly restless over lack of pay and the fact that they need those election to displace other Sunni groups that got in the provincial government because they didn’t boycott the elections.

To be clear this is just a guess. But this is the sort of unpleasant faction balancing that we’re going to be doing again and again if we stay in Iraq. We’ll soon know whether we frakked this one up and the Sadr ceasefire completely breaks down. But rather than making tough call after tough call, the better choice is to get the hell out of Iraq.

[Update: Ilan Goldberg argues that the Sadr ceasefire may have been key to driving down civilian casualties. A co-worker of mine provided an alternate theory that we could be hitting Iran’s assets intentionally either as signal or to reduce their options for counterstrikes.]

Our real moral obligation to the Iraqis...

Should be focused on those who want our help. The Post headline says it all: Stalwart Service for U.S. in Iraqi is Not Enough to Gain Green Card. Saman Kareem Ahmad was widely lauded by the U.S. military but has been turned down by the U.S. government. The reason:

Ahmad had once been part of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which U.S. immigration officials deemed an "undesignated terrorist organization" for having sought to overthrow former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

After doing a bit of searching I only found one reference to the KDP and terrorism. Apparently they were associated with an explosion at a NGO that killed two. They are not designated as a terrorist group by most governments and aren’t even on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, at least according to this site. That said, at least one Assyrian site does have a beef against them but doesn’t seem to back it up with independent news accounts.

Anyways, this sort of thing is why many counter-terrorism efforts worry me. Militant non-state groups are routinely conflated with those that purposefully attack civilians. Why? Because it’s in the interest of governments in general to demonize any competitors. So when there’s no real push in the administration for helping Iraqi refugees, innocent allies get hurt.

Good political news from Iraq

Three bills passed the Iraqi parliament today. One on provincial powers, one granting amnesty to thousands of mostly Sunni uncharged prisoners, and the 2008 budget. They used classical log-rolling to get it done. By passing three bills at once, everyone got something they were happy about. The need for such logrolling was predicted in a piece by Ilan Goldberg who argued that trying to pass the benchmarks one at a time because all the issues were linked.

Apparently the vote was unanimous (although it was arranged that those who objected would have a chance to leave the chamber first). That seems odd to me, but hey maybe it ties into Iraqi political culture. 206 of the 275 were in attendence.

On government structure, the provincial powers law, which I’m told is among the most important of the laws that need to get past, devolves a lot of power to the provinces. In addition, Kurdistan gets 17% of the budget after certain national ministries, like Foreign Affairs and Defense, are removed. However, that’s just a one year compromise.

The provincial election date was apparently controversial as some of the current parties are likely to lose. They’re now mandated for October 1st. That may cause trouble with the Sunni "Awakening Councils" which wanted provincial elections in March or April.

Anyways, the bad news is that there’s increasing reports of Sunni infighting. In addition, the de-de-Baathification law still seems highly dubious and no word on an oil proceeds law.

Is the law on De-Bathification progress?

In Iraq, the Surge in Baghdad and perhaps more importantly the Anbar Awakening appear to have gotten violence and American casualties down from their 2006 and 2007 peaks.  That said, the surge is temporary, our military runs out of troops come May and we’ll have to cut back or make some truly radical changes.  The strategic point of the Surge was buy breathing room to achieve political goals.  Up until a week ago, there were no results.  But now, the Iraqi parliament has passed one of the Surge’s key goals: a law to roll back de-Batthification.

For those that don’t know, Saddam Hussein’s party was the Baath party.  While the party was secular, it was largely made up by members of Hussein’s sect, Sunnis.  Shortly into the occupations, Baath party members were purged from the government and military.  This purge, while having an obvious logical basis, helped alienate Sunnis and is thought by many to have gone too far.  President Bush has stated revising the de-Baathification law is key and Congress put that statement in our political benchmarks.

So here’s the big question: is the new law any good?

Pending information on implementation of the law, the short answer is probably not.  The longer answer after the break.

Left of Boom

The Left of Boom series in the Post on IEDs has been terrific. If you want to know more about the weapon that’s killed the most US soldiers and how we’re responding it’s a must read.

A few key points:

• The number of IEDs have been doubling and redoubling, but we’ve been able to keep U.S. casualties resulting from IEDs roughly in check.
• Due to a lot of R&D, training our people in Electronic Warfare, and bringing Navy’s experts into the field, we’ve managed to substantially reduce the percent of IEDs triggered by radio control or cell phones.
• The amount of money you need to pay someone to hide a bomb has steadily dropped from the initial $300 suggesting that even with more bombs than ever being hidden, the supply of would-be bombers outstrips demand.
• They covered most any solution I’d thought, except perhaps for using explosives or projectile weapons (rather than advanced energy weapons) to counter the force of explosions. My Finnish officemate tells me that some ships use this technique, but they have the advantage of much greater distances a missile and the ship versus the IED and a land vehicle.

If you want to see a quick summary of each part and a couple of related links, check out the PCR blog.

Actual good news from Iraq

The Washington Post reports a drop in Iraqi and US casualties in Iraq.  Via Dan Drezner the Financial Times offers the same story with a bit more detail of interest to me.

The apparent decline also comes in spite of September’s partial overlap with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which usually sees an increase in attacks by Sunni Arab militants. A tally provided by Iraq’s health, interior and defence ministries quoted by news agencies noted 884 civilians killed in September, down from 1,773 in August, 1,653 in July and 1,227 in June.

The independent Iraq Body Count, which tallies press reports of civilian deaths, recorded higher numbers but showed a similar trajectory – 1,280 killed in September, 2,575 in August, 2,600 in July, and 2,092 in June.

US casualties also declined. Icasualties.org, a website which keeps a tally of US deaths, reported 63 fatalities in September, compared with 84 in August and 126 in May. September’s total is the lowest since July 2006.

Given past discrepancies, I don''t tend to trust either the U.S. or Iraq numbers on Iraqi casualties.  However, the numbers on U.S. dead are going to be reliable and press reports provide some supporting evidence.  If this bares out it is definite good news but the Post provides the still dreary context:

Numbers alone cannot describe the level of danger and the pervading sense of insecurity that still exist in much of Iraq. Some U.S. soldiers in Iraq have argued that sectarian cleansing in some Baghdad neighborhoods has progressed to the point that there are fewer opportunities for killing rivals. Many Iraqis still refuse to travel from their homes or immediate neighborhoods for fear of crossing into territory under the control of rival militias or insurgents. Thousands of residents each month are still driven from their homes and from the country, afraid for their lives.

In an interview Monday, Tariq al-Hashimi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents, said that the detention of thousands of people this year during the troop buildup has created dire long-term problems. Mass arrests and the prolonged detention of uncharged and sometimes innocent people fuel the sectarian hatred that drives much of the killing, he said...

[Rear Adm.] Fox stressed that while trends were "encouraging," violence overall still remained too high.

"There's no sense of 'We've accomplished what we want to accomplish here,' " he said.

 

The Post's new Fact Checker blinks

The Washington Post's Fact Checker column has a good column on the controversy about casualty figures.  Unfortunately, the conclusion blinked: "This issue is too complex for a snap Pinocchio rating. In this case, our goal is to shed light on a complicated statistical debate, rather than slap Pinocchio or Geppetto labels on either Petraeus or Clinton."

Oddly enough, they don't seem to have any trouble with complicated statistical debates on polling.  They recently did a post on John Edwards' claim to be most electable:

"While the Edwards campaign can certainly produce polls showing that their candidate is ahead in head-to-head matchups with individual Republicans, so can Clinton and Obama. The polling data is all over the map at this point. We award Edwards two Pinocchios for wild exaggeration.

Rewording that a bit:

"While [General Petraeus] can certainly produce [casualty figures] showing that [casualty figures support his judgment of the surge], so can Clinton and Obama. The [casualty figures are] all over the map at this point. We award [General Petraeus] two Pinocchios for wild exaggeration.

I don't think this was a partisan blinking, but for the Fact Checker column to really elevate the level of accuracy in political reporting, they're going to need to apply the same scale to highly controversial calls as you do to easier statements. 

Presenting only the data most supportive of your cause without explaining yourself or acknowledging opposing data is no different than what the Edwards campaign did.

In fairness you could also say that Hillary Clinton was cherry picking her figures.  That said, General Petreaus, much like John Edwards' pollsters, is not a disinterested third party.  He is making a case defending his own performance.  The burden of proof is on him.

And you thought the American housing market was bad

WPost profiles the Baghdad housing market which had a mini boom post-invasion.  As the number of refugees rise because of ethnic cleansing, many families are lucky to sell their house at half its value.  The trend isn't a nationwide one, in areas like Anbar have a sellers market and Sunnis fleeing Baghdad often end up with much worse accommodations.

Last I heard (admittedly a year or two ago), prices are rather high in Kabul Afghanistan.  Various governmental organizations and NGOs all bought up a lot of the better spots in the city and even on a budget had far more money than local competitors.  Unfortunately, a lot of that money then left the country as the sellers bought a ticket to more developed countries.