John Robb's Weblog

Maliki's Rout

Qais Mizher has an excellent account of conditions inside Basra. Sounds like the Iraq army was surprised and routed:

Iraqi forces started their assault on the Shiite militias in Basra on Tuesday. Whatever the initial goal of the operation, by the time I arrived in Basra it was a patchwork of neighborhoods that were either deserted or overrun by Mahdi fighters. There were scattered Iraqi Army and police checkpoints, but no place seemed to be truly under government control.

The logic of guerrilla warfare applies: Given this result and the fact that the assault hit militia homes/neighborhoods (particularly aerial bombings), any casualties suffered were likely replaced (10 to 1) by new recruits. Further, any internal dissension that existed before the event due to a ceasefire is now gone.

What a disaster.

Trashed homes

With 2 million foreclosures enroute, lots of people crushed by the system are going to be doing some anti-handiwork:

These days, bankers and mortgage companies often find that by the time they get the keys back, embittered homeowners have stripped out appliances, punched holes in walls, dumped paint on carpets and, as a parting gift, locked their pets inside to wreak further havoc. Real-estate agents estimate that about half of foreclosed properties to be sold by mortgage companies nationwide have "substantial" damage, according to a new survey by Campbell Communications, a marketing and research firm based in Washington, D.C.

Strange analysis

on Sadr from the NYTimes (Tavernise/Moore). Total confusion until the last para:

A former political adviser to the American military in Baghdad, Matthew Sherman, cautioned that the conflict could easily lead to a situation similar to that in Lebanon in 2006, when Hezbollah claimed victory in a war of perceptions against Israel even after a bombing campaign had weakened it militarily. “The Sadrists will likely view their survival as victory,” he said.

Sadr reigns in the militia

Sadr reigns in militia:

Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has ordered his fighters off the streets of Basra and other cities in an effort to end clashes with security forces.

• Sadr's plan was defensive and not offensive. However, the militias were starting to take too much territory and expose themselves to airstrikes. This is an attempt to get them back into a defensive crouch.
• It likely means that government's offensive has failed. The US didn't ride in to bail Maliki out from his adventure (he wasn't deemed too big to fail and the open source counter-insurgency effort was considered too important to abandon).
• This also likely means that a deal is likely in the works between Maliki and Sadr. Wonder what Maliki is going to be forced to give up in consideration.

Garbage in Google News

Two examples of garbage in Google News:

• Fluff articles from blog hubs like the Huffington Post and the International Analyst Network. Let me subscribe to blogs directly via RSS please. Don't garbage up the easiest place in the world to see/review what the print world is saying. Further, that is why Google has "blog search."
  
  
• Links to for fee research companies like Stratfor. I don't read Google news to get "teaser" content/advertisements from research companies.

This makes my earlier point re: thinking about the future

The Air Force is under the gravest threat (future funding) of its entire existence, so its decided to outsource its future plans.

Think Tanks in Decline

Shloky has the details. I've seen this in the tech research world too. Too many academics (drown in minutia and barren specialization) and too many insiders (breathing your own exhaust) can kill a great research company. Those types of folks are great as back-up to stress test thinking, but the best analysts (the money/prestige/publicity earners) are ALWAYS horizontal thinkers. If you don't systematically hire these horizontal thinkers (easy to ID based on published works), you might as well shut the doors since you aren't influencing anybody.

QUOTE that sums up US decision making

Paul Krugman: What’s the point of taking the risk of challenging conventional wisdom if, even after you’re proved right, only the guys who were wrong get invited to opine on Charlie Rose?

Time-outs for Twitter

Agree with Dave on this. Need to be able to time-out a connection on Twitter when someone in the flow goes rapid fire.

Essentially, we are taking baby steps, developing the rules for connecting minds. Twenty years from now when the connections are several orders of magnitude faster/closer/deeper, we'll be able to see that this type of improvement was an important step on a long progression...

Was COIN really a System Reboot?

Frank Hoffman reviews an essay by David Ucko on the systemic factors that will force the US military to forget COIN when the Iraq war is over. I think the problem goes much deeper than this. The renaissance of COIN in the US military, revived a 20th century doctrine that is simply too inflexible to handle the fluidity of modern irregular warfare. Further, the assumptions upon which this revived COIN is built upon haven't been revisited and as a result are outdated/false.

History is a great teacher, but it also lies with impunity.