The Changing Goals of the Best and Brightest

I've been reading Niall Ferguson's Colossus, a briskly written brief for liberal imperialism -- and consequent criticism of United States for hampering overseas missions by going over-the-top in denying their imperialstic natures. I'll save a large reaction for later, but wanted to share one passage I recently enjoyed:

[Few], if any, of the graduates of Harvard, Stanford, Yale or Princeton aspire
to spend their lives trying to turn a sun-scorched sandpit like Iraq into the prosperous caoitalist democracy of Paul Wolfowitz's imaginings. America's brightest and best aspire not to govern Mesopotamia but to manage MTV, not to rule the Hejaz but to run a hedge fund. Unlike their British counterparts of a century ago, who left the elite British universities with an overtly imperial ethos, the letters ambitious young Americans would like to see after their names are CEO, not CBE [Commander of the British Empire].

This is interesting to me particularly because I have absolutely no interest in managing any business, running a hedge fund, or anything else so mercantile. (The only lucrative dream I have might be to write a best-selling book.) Yet, of course, for so many of my college and law school classmates, all that is indeed the height of their aspirations.

It's probably a good thing; this is why America is such an economic powerhouse. And of course it's also a good thing to have more talented people see the private sector as the place for them, rather than trying to expand government. But it is striking that fewer young Americans now aspire to public service than they did even a few decades ago. (Forget the Victorian Brits, recall Kennedy's eponymous Best and Brightest.) This trend has reversed itself since 9/11, to be sure, but I wonder how much.

A Day in Anbar, Part I

Yesterday I met the gang at 0730 to drive over to LZ (Landing Zone) Washington to get on the helo and head west to Anbar province, which, before Gen. Petraeus took command of MNF-I, was the roughest part of Iraq. It's now among the best, and so a large group of rule of law folks (military and civilian) was going out there to be briefed and make decisions about the setting up of a rule of law complex akin to the one we stood up in Rusafa this spring.


We first took two Blackhawks to Fallujah, crossing over Baghdad -- including the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (a sort of flying saucer-type monument) and the famous crossed-swords.

The city soon gave way to farmland and then desert. The austerity of the land was impressive, but certain incongruities cropped up from time to time, like the (rice?) paddies that made everyone think of movies about Vietnam.

When we landed, the marines (Anbar is the one province for which the army is not responsible) took us in a big white school bus to the briefing room on their base. Brig. Gen. Allen and his staff gave us a terrific overview of the site that had been selected in Ramadi for establishing a courthouse, detention facility, judges' quarters, and security. We discussed the logistics involved, timing issues, and, perhaps most importantly, where the money was coming from.

God Bless the USA

If there's one thing sexier than a woman who orders steak, it's one who handles a heavy automatic weapon.

Marine, I salute you! (Taken on board a Chinook helicopter in flight from Fallujah to Ramadi.)

Tinkering with the Social Engineering

Soon after reading the story on insufficient army recruits, I came upon one describing a study finding that the Army's policy barring the assignment of women to units whose primary mission is combat. The main problem, says the report's lead author, Margaret Harrell of the RAND Corporation, is that "the policies do not anticipate the style of combat experienced in Iraq, where there is no clearly defined battlefield."

I had noticed and wondered about this phenomenon myself, as I observe female soldiers manning posts that are clearly dangerous and requiring the maintenance of weapons in a "red" (loaded, safety off) state.

As of July 21, 76 servicewomen have died in Iraq, including 62 soldiers. I don't know whether this is too high -- if the only acceptable number of combat enemy-fire fatalities is 0 -- or too low. My intuition is that it's just about right. You don't want to see "equality" in casualties (see, e.g., human nature, biology, psychology, etc. -- imagine if half the "flag-draped coffins" the media wails about were our "daughters" rather than our "sons") but if women are allowed to serve at all -- which I believe they should -- it is unavoidable, if they are to get meaningful assignments, that they occasionally be exposed to dangerous situations.

It's a difficult issue, one with which the Defense Department has obviously struggled. I've neither see nor heard anything to suggest the need for a change of policy, other than perhaps operational tinkering around the edge to make unit-assignment rules more clear to commanders.

An Army of Very Few

I just saw yet another one of those AP stories about how the army is having a hard time recruiting (though it exceeded its July target) and is increasing its normal staff of 8,000 recruiters by 1-2,000 more people.

The striking thing about this story, which I unfortunately can't find online, is a pie chart showing the percentage of qualified, recruitable youth, age 17-24. It shows the following three "pieces" of pie: 11% of the above demographic is qualified but enrolled in college; 15% is qualified, eligible, and available to be recruited; and a whopping 74% are disqualified (medically or for drug or alcohol abuse, criminal record, dependents, or low aptitude). That is, almost three-quarters of our young people aren't of sound enough mind and body to be a private, seaman, or airman.

This is appalling. Despite the recent lowering of the bar to allow certain ex-cons, high school drop outs, and recovering drug addicts to enlist, 74% of the target population apparently still does not measure up.

Time to create a foreign legion, Congress. Many of the world's youth, healthier in many ways than our own, would literally die for the opportunity to serve this country if it meant being able to live here at the end of their tours.

Watery Rubbish

Accuse me if you will of linking too often to the New York Times, but that paper provides such rich blog fodder ("blodder"?).

Just now I read an article on how a backlash against bottled water is developing among the smart (read urban liberal) set. It infuriated me, but I'll spare you my picking apart nearly every person figuring in the piece.

I mean, c'mon people, we throw out so much stuff, why single out water? Moreover, most recycling uses up more energy than you save. (I don't mean re-using the same bottle, obviously, but rather bottles made from recycled materials.) And you know what else? -- buying bottled water spurs the economy (just like buying any other consumer good), and you bleeding hearts with your heads in the clouds wouldn't want little children to starve because their mommies and daddies lost their jobs in plastic engineering, now would you?

And I'm not saying all the above because my current daily consumption rate is about 6-8 bottles/day (along with 3-4 iced teas, 1-2 Gatorades, and several 100% juice drinking boxes). Mmmm... writing all this has made me thirsty. Time to go to one of the refrigerated palettes we have sitting around and pick up some more future trash and the refreshing liquid it holds inside.

Nice Job If You Can Get It

A few days ago I attended one of the periodic welcome briefings for all new non-military embassy personnel. The vast majority are State Department folks, but there are some from other agencies, as well as contractors and the like. We got briefings on security, HR, medical issues, mental health ("come to us before you go crazy here"), IT, Finance, Consular Services, and a few others -- such as the contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), which runs everything from the dining hall to laundry, office supplies, and MWR.

The briefing was led off with a welcome from the Deputy Chief of Mission, the "vice-ambassador," Patricia Butenis (whose signature got me my badge) and was organized by a familiar face. It turns out that the "front office" executive secretary is a guy who was the graduate assistant to my policy task force my junior year of college -- and was one of our "chaperones" for various official meetings in Brussels for spring break 1998 ("Eurocrats Gone Wild"). He went into the foreign service after his MPA and here he is. Small world.

Much of the briefing was either inapplicable to me or I'd already picked it up in my short time here. (Believe it or not, given the turnover, I'm already "established.") One of the more interesting inapplicable tidbits to pick, however, was the compensation package folks staffed here receive.

There's a 35% hazard pay bonus, followed by a 35% "location" bonus, plus per diems and overtime pay, plus several two-week paid vacations and 5-day local R&Rs (taken in Qatar or Rome, I believe). It's pretty sweet, and seems to be a lot better than what the military guys get.

Do Not Talk About The Book

Last night I watched Fight Club at the MWR (Morale, Welfare, Readiness) theater. Yes, I know, it came out in 1999, but for some reason I'd never seen it. Now, because I read the book over the course of several "hurry up and wait" episodes at Fort Benning last month, I was curious to see the movie.

Curious mostly to see why it had been such a talked-about movie in its day, because I really didn't like the book. Whether it was the minimalism or the nihilism, something just didn't do it for me. And Chuck Palahniuk has such a reputation for edgy, avant-garde, thought-provoking writing.

(Well, I guess he is edgy and avant garde, but judging by that book alone he seems to be part of that notorious school of post-modern lit that's really an emperor-has-no-clothes deal. Like David Sedaris. What is so funny about David Sedaris? I don't get it. And the fact that he moved to Paris to live with his gay lover is supposed to be, what, brave? Nope, all too banal for me.)

Anyway, I thought the movie dragged at times but was ultimately entertaining. Ed Norton and Brad Pitt were tremendous. I got out of it, beyond a warning about pschizophrenia, a Dead-Poets-Society-type message about seizing the day, not letting yourself get sucked into a dreary 9-to-5 white- or blue-collar existence. And also the dangers of the aforementioned nihilism.

I'm sure that wasn't what Palahniuk intended; to whom it was probably "just a story," or perhaps a long-needed glorification of extra-societal underground groups of marginalized individuals who revolt, in their own way, against the bourgeoisie. That may very well be what he meant, but so I can continue thinking good things about the movie, I'll discount that view.

Beef: It's What's for a Dinner Date

It is definitely attractive for a woman to order steak.

The General and I

I'd tell you what we were discussing as this photo was taken, but that information's classified...

The Circularity of Life

Here's a typically beautiful Peggy Noonan column about the intersection of two men I've been privileged to work for, Gen. Petraeus and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Here, of course, I'm advising Petraeus's rule of law efforts, and Frist I interned for in winter 1997 (when he was a freshman legislator over a decade ago). In both cases, I've been allowed to perform a wide array of tasks and learn the behind-the-scenes dealings of awesome and humbling offices -- though I haven't had to open Gen. Petraeus's mail (yet).

Here's a snippet of Noonan:

What does it all mean? Life is interesting, mysterious, and has an unseen
circularity. You never know in any given day what's going to happen or who's
going to have a big impact on you and on others. A future military commander got
shot, and a future leader of the Senate stopped the bleeding.

Both men, incidentally, share my affiliation with Princeton and its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, which has put a renewed emphasis of late on public service.

A Facebook User and a Gentleman

As I was doing my PT this morning, I listened to last week's podcast of On The Media, NPR's popular show covering how the "sausage" of journalism is manufactured. (Yes, I listen to certain NPR programming, and also eat sushi, drink lattes, and read the New York Times -- while also supporting the Iraq mission, wanting to cut taxes, eliminate most federal agencies, and bring back the Constitution circa 1937... you got a problem wit dat?)

Anyway, one particular segment caught my attention, a piece on how internet social networking sites reinforce preexisting social divisions rather than create a new world utopia where we all hold hands and sing Kum-ba-ya. To wit, a researcher has determined that sites like MySpace and Facebook self-segregate by class.

MySpace originated in the indie music world of LA, and has continued to be a fannish/high school type of place. Facebook, meanwhile, was created by Harvard students, quickly expanded to the rest of the Ivy League, then to all college students, and of late seemingly anyone (though with certain gatekeepers).

Further, the military has restricted access to MySpace (ostensibly for bandwidth reasons), but not Facebook. The researcher surmises that this policy results from a situation whereby, of the military community that uses these sites, most officers (being college-educated) skew toward Facebook, while enlisted men use MySpace.

So, accepting the above distinction between MySpace and Facebook users (and limiting our discussion to those two sites), there are two things going on here: 1. People choosing to join virtual communities where they can find their peers, and 2. Official policies privileging what is perceived as the higher-class online network.

On the first, well, that's human nature. I don't want to tell people who like and are comfortable with MySpace to switch to Facebook because I personally find MySpace too cluttered and juvenile. Similarly, forcing Facebook users to suddenly switch to Facebook would do nothing but create resentments. As a rough analogy, look at the effects of busing schoolkids in an attempt to remedy racial segregation (leaving aside the issue that the Supreme Court recently decreed such a practice to be unconstitutional).

On the second, I can't imagine that the military instituted its internet policy to discriminate in favor of officers (and then concocted some bandwidth ruse to justify it). Everything I've seen suggests that enlisted men are treated fairly, and are valued as soldiers/sailors/airmen/marines and as citizens. There must be something to the bandwidth issue, but also the type of content available (and pushed) on MySpace may not be in line the military's rules and regulations on conduct befitting servicemembers.

Of course, the question remains: Where does Friendster [or insert another networking site] fit into all this? My intuition is that if you surveyed all of these different sites, you'd find a much richer, more parsimonious way to categorize them than simply by class or education level -- much as the "offline" world can be sliced in a practically infinite number of ways.

Europeans Heighten Threat Levels

The English are feeling the pinch of recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from "Miffed" to"Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." Londoners have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz began in 1940 and tea supplies all but ran out. Also, terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

It's not only the English and French who are on a heightened state of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans also increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a good look at the old Spanish navy.

The Russians, meanwhile, are saying that the terrorists double-crossed them by violating the terms of the Zawahiri-Ivanov non-aggression pact. They are determined to beat al Qaeda at its own game by employing two-man suicide bomber teams...

NB: Much of this post is an edited version of an email that's been forwarded around. The last paragraph is 100% my own.

Stovepipes of Excellence

In reading background materials and attending various meetings relating to rule of law programming, one issue struck me as needlessly complicating an already complex mission with many moving parts: For many reasons, many of them quite benign, less-than-ideal inter-agency collaboration acts as a barrier to forward movement.

Even as people work hard and well within their own bailiwicks, there can be a lack of awareness about what others are doing, which can lead to both duplication of effort and gaps in coverage. This is true as between cabinet-level agencies (State, DOJ, DoD), and within them. I've often heard this phenomenon described as "stovepipes of excellence."

To be clear, this goes beyond the usual/expected fights over turf and conflicts in allegiance, and even personality conflicts and different agency cultures. These still exist, of course, but the real issue is, as the (relatively) newly established Rule of Law Coordinator puts it, herding cats. And making sure that what all these cats are doing -- productive as it is in a vacuum -- gets disseminated amongst themselves and to the Big Cat (here that means, ultimately, the Ambassador).

This is an area I hope to delve into a bit in my remaining time here (because, you know, it's so readily solvable). I just spoke with a professor of public management, actually, whom I had done research for one summer in college. He gave me some pointers and further direction. A few initial suggestions:

• Mandate/support from the top.
• Cooperation/information-sharing along people at lower levels.
• Building common databases.
• Common/pooled funding sources.
• Measurables/benchmarks requiring inter-agency contributions.

Makes sense. The proof, as always, is in the public policy implementation. (That was actually the name of a class John DiIulio used to teach when he was at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, "Public Policy Implementation.")

It Ain't Shreveport

(As Judge E. Grady Jolly would say.)

My Least Favorite Season

Today, for the first time since I arrived, it was summer in Iraq. A balmy 104 with a cool (well, less hot) breeze. Lovely. Much better than the previous season, oven. I think oven may be my least favorite season. Other than freezer. Brrrr...

Gefilte Fishy

It turns out that lawprof Noah Feldman's story of religious ostracism, which I blogged about earlier, isn't quite how described it in his New York Times Magazine essay. Recall that Feldman had alleged that his Jewish orthodox high school had digitally excised him and his non-Jewish then-girlfriend from a reunion photo, and then declined to print their wedding and birth notices in the alumni newsletter.

Well, the true story is not that Feldman and femme were cropped for heresy, but that the photographer was unable to get all members of the reunion gathering into one photo, despite repeated efforts from various angles. Indeed, Feldman and his bride-to-be were not the only reuners not appearing in the photo that was eventually chosen to be published -- 18 people total were "left behind" -- and this is readily apparent from the photo.

What is worse is that Feldman knew all this even as he wrote the NYTM piece -- or at the latest when the Times got the photograph and wanted to run it along with Feldman's article. The solution that Feldman and the Times came up with when they realized the "incongruity" of Feldman's story? -- don't run the photo!

How did Feldman react to the news that his story had been falsified?

Asked why he didn’t rewrite the story to reflect the newly discovered photo,
Feldman responded: “When I first wrote it I was doing it from memory. When [the
photographer] turned up the contact sheet there was no contradiction at all, as
far as I could tell. They had several photos to choose from and they chose one
that I wasn’t in. There’s no question that one could offer other explanations
for what happened,” other than that it was intentional. “It’s not as if [the
photo] was an outlying event. It fit right in with the other things [refusing to
print his lifecycle notices]. This was a memoir of my experience.”

Now, it is true that the school decided not to run Feldman's wedding notice, and again when the Feldmans -- or "Feldsuk" as the legal gossip blog Above the Law christened the lawprof power couple -- had kids whom they may or may not be raising Jewish (but in any event are not recognized as such halachically because the mother did not convert). Feldman certainly had that story to tell. But were there nothing more to his story, he wouldn't have gotten nearly as much press -- or sympathy -- for his tale of woe.

After all, even those of us who blanche at sectarian infringement on liberal (in the classical sense) values have to simultaneously recognize a fundamental freedom of association. As David Frum puts it, "[w]hile alumni of a Jewish school have every right to turn their back on their tradition if they wish, the school surely has every right not to celebrate this rejection."

Which means that, sure, the school was fully within its right to crop the photo, but the viscerally scornful reaction that such a petty, repulsive act rightfully gets is rather different than the mere sigh at some more benign form of self-segregation. Declining to celebrate by publicly announcing in its own forum Feldman's tradition-breaking acts is different (and less sinister) than erasing a person from the recordbooks a la the vanishing commissar -- especially when Feldman admits the disingenuousness of his published claims.

Read about it all here.

Provincial Reconstruction Teams

One of the most important State Department operations in Iraq is the collection of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) sprinkled across the country's provinces. These teams bear the burden of reconstructing and developing all aspects of Iraqi society. I'm understandably most familiar with the Baghdad PRT, covering the city and its outlying areas that constitute Baghdad province.

The Baghdad PRT -- and I have no reason to believe the others are different -- is made up of the following components: Rule of Law, Governance, USAID, Infrastructure (two for Baghdad because city/province), Economics, and Project Planning (engineers, etc.).

I've spent some time with the Rule of Law folks; it's a hard and tough slog getting courts up and running, regularizing the police, and dealing with detainees. Forgetting security for second, the logistics of the operation are almost imponderable; after decades of neglect, there's a sudden need to train and equip police and judicial investigators, investigative judges (more on how the Iraqi judiciary works later), and auxiliary resources (such as crime labs).

The PRTs also liaise with smaller PRTs which are embedded with the military brigades responsible for a given area (and hence called Embedded PRTs, or EPRTs). This is State's equivalent to the military's "surge," and it is starting, slowly but surely, to pay dividends.

Dear John...

Apparently I'm meant to get the full military experience: Today, or in the last week, or in the last month (it was a bit of a drawn out process, complicated by various of my travels), my girlfriend and I broke up. There was no Dear John letter, fortunately, or even a Dear John email. To add a 21st century spin to things, however, a fair bit of our breakup-related communications took place over instant-messaging. That may seem cold, but it's actually appropriate; we're better together on paper than in real life. [insert winky emoticon here]

Running with the Colonel

This morning I awoke at 0515 to meet my boss for a nice little run before it got too hot outside. Of course it was already 85-90 degrees, with the air as heavy as it always is here, but never mind.

We exited the embassy compound proper and began running along the concrete barricades in the pre-dawn light. The talk turned to swimming and tennis, as the Colonel tried to feel out my athletic background, to see how much he could really push me on this 3-miler. (He had completed four marathons in his day, with a best time of 2:44 no less -- and I had been warned not to let him bet me money on a footrace.)

Then, naturally, we broached Cobra II -- which I posted about earlier this week -- and the latest book I've been reading, Niall Ferguson's Colossus. By the time we finished all that, dawn had broken in its full splendor, so we could see all the stray dogs and hand-painted "Villa for Rent" signs on the side of the road. (A villa in the IZ... yeah, "snookums how about we start summering on the Tigris; it's the Marbella of the Middle East, you know... " -- not so much.)

Toward the end of our run, long after we passed the "Victory Over Iran" monument, my energy began to flag. Not so much my energy as, seemingly, my lung capacity. My legs still felt fresh -- was ready for the finishing kick -- but the ol' respiratory system was feeling it. And of course the Colonel was psyching me out with all his, "just past the arch," "just around the corner," "only about 200m after the light."

So I shut it down early and made it to the gym about half an hour after we set out, just in time to put in some push-ups, shoulder presses, and bicep curls before hitting the showers, breakfast, and continuing to do more before 9am than most people do in a day.