Who Are the Libyan Rebels?

Some links with different answers:

ABC NEWS: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/libyan-rebels-target-libya-missile-strike-war-us-president-obama-battle-13176688

THE FINANCIAL TIMES: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5bfb98b0-52fd-11e0-86e6-00144feab49a.html

NOLAN CHART: http://www.nolanchart.com/article8465.html

None of this is surprising. The leaked State Department memos describe Eastern Libya (2008) as an area of fervent Islamic sentiment, where "a number of Libyans who had fought and in some cases undergone 'religious and ideological training' in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the West Bank in the late 1970's and early 1980's had returned [...] in the mid to late 1980's". There they engaged into "a deliberate, coordinated campaign to propagate more conservative iterations of Islam, in part to prepare the ground for the eventual overthrow by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) of Muammar Qadhafi's regime, which is 'hated' by conservative Islamists". While Qaddafi's position was perceived to be strong, the East Libyans sent jihadis to Iraq, where "fighting against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq represented a way for frustrated young radicals to strike a blow against both Qadhafi and against his perceived American backers".

It is these same religiously and ideologically trained East Libyans who are now armed and arrayed against Qaddafi. Qaddafi's claim that all his opponents are members of Al Qaeda is overblown, but also not very far off, in regards to their sympathies. Anyone claiming that the Eastern Libyans are standing for secular, liberal values needs to overcome a huge burden of proof. First, what is the social basis of such a movement, when neutral observers have been characterizing East Libya as a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism? Second, if the revolt has started on religious grounds, when and how exactly has it radically changed its character?

Caroline Glick in THE JERUSALEM POST (ht Martin Kramer)

Then there is Libya. One of the most astounding aspects of the US debate on Libya in recent weeks has been the scant attention paid to the nature of the rebels.

The rebels are reportedly represented by the so-called National Transitional Council led by several of Gaddafi's former ministers.

But while these men - who are themselves competing for the leadership mantle - are the face of the NTC, it is unclear who stands behind them. Only nine of the NTC's 31 members have been identified.

Unfortunately, available data suggest that the rebels championed as freedom fighters by the neoconservatives, the opportunists, the Europeans and the Western media alike are not exactly liberal democrats. Indeed, the data indicate that Gaddafi's opponents are more aligned with al-Qaida than with the US.

Under jihadist commander Abu Yahya Al- Libi, Libyan jihadists staged anti-regime uprisings in the mid-1990s. Like today, those uprisings' central hubs were Benghazi and Darnah.

In 2007 Al-Libi merged his forces into al- Qaida. On March 18, while denouncing the US, France and Britain, Al-Libi called on his forces to overthrow Gaddafi.

A 2007 US Military Academy study of information on al-Qaida forces in Iraq indicate that by far, Eastern Libya made the largest per capita contribution to al-Qaida forces in Iraq.

None of this proves that the US is now assisting an al-Qaida takeover of Libya. But it certainly indicates that the forces being assisted by the US in Libya are probably no more sympathetic to US interests than Gaddafi is. At a minimum, the data indicate the US has no compelling national interest in helping the rebels in overthrow Gaddafi.

The significance of the US's descent into strategic irrationality bodes ill not just for US allies, but for America itself. Until the US foreign policy community is again able to recognize and work to advance the US's core interests in the Middle East, America's policies will threaten both its allies and itself.

Juan Williams on NPR's Fall

From The Hill:

Liley’s revealing comment and Schiller’s arrogance are instructive because they provide a window in to the culture of elitism that has corroded NPR’s leadership. They're willing to do anything in service of any liberal with money. This includes firing me and skewing the editorial content of their programming. If anyone challenges them on this point, they will claim with self-righteous indignation to have cleaner hands than the rest of the news media who accepts advertising revenue or expresses a point of view.

I'm not just talking about conservatives but also the far left, the poor – anybody who didn't fit into leadership's marketing design of NPR as the elitist voice of comfortable, liberal-leaning, highly educated, upper-income America.

As Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, it was not until he saw the secretly recorded videotape of NPR executives that he understood the extent of political bias at NPR. “Of all the data that we’ve seen, we still had not absorbed the culture of NPR until we saw the video of that dinner.” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor added: “Why should we allow taxpayer dollars to be used to advocate one ideology?”

That dinner tape and the Democrat’s fundraising letter set the table for a totally partisan vote with Republicans voting in opposition to public funding of NPR and Democrats voting for it. Last Thursday, 228 Republicans voted to defund NPR while seven Republicans joined with 185 Democrats to preserve it. The effort was largely symbolic as there is hardly any chance the Democrat-controlled Senate will go along with the House on this one. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is a huge NPR fan. When I was host of NPR’s afternoon talk show he once called me up to tell me how much he enjoyed an interview with soul singer Al Green. Sen. Reid is going to defend public radio.

The Democrat in the White House, President Obama, issued a statement of opposition to the House vote but stopped short of promising to veto any budget that eliminates NPR funding. And the White House did not make the case for why NPR deserves funding.

Before NPR’s top executive, Vivian Schiller, resigned her goal for NPR was to increase federal support to create an American version of the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC]. The BBC, which also began as a radio news service, is funded by a mandatory licensing fee paid by all British subjects. It is essentially a tax set by Parliament every year to support a national news operation.

At the moment the government funding for NPR is only one of many sources of revenue and a very small one in the grand scheme. Arguably, the appropriators of federal dollars are more important to the local affiliates who depend on that money to buy public broadcasting programming. To my mind, this is the underlying problem that connects the hidden camera episode and the funding issue.

Journalists should not be doing news to please any donors – private citizens, political parties or government officials – out of fear of losing funding.

LIMITLESS...

Reviewed by Jefferson D. Dunbar:

LIMITLESS...
...concerns a "blocked" writer, Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), who is unable to begin, let alone, complete his novel until he runs into his ex-brother-in-law, Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), who offers a rescue in the form of a new experimental, pharmaceutical drug called NZT, which is likely a stand in for the well known prescription drug Adderall. Desperate, Eddie accepts the pill. Reluctantly - at first. The effects occur within thirty seconds after we actually follow the pill down the inside of Eddie's throat. Seemingly unbounded, focused energy allow him to sanitize himself and his ratty apartment situated in a not so pleasant location in Manhattan's Chinatown. The bigger bonus is that he's able to finish his long overdue novel and turn it in to his publisher, who has long ago lost faith in Eddie.

An old saying goes something like: "...Nothing on this earth or in life is free..." Well, in "Limitless", it applies to Eddie. Because along with his new found success (financial freedom; the return of Lindy (Abbie Cornish), the girlfriend who dumps him early in the movie; a shave, haircut, and a hip new wardrobe), comes more than a few nefarious characters and wicked incidents that may lead some to believe Eddie sold his soul to Satan rather than swallowed a pill that contains more than one dangerous and deadly side effect. Not only does Eddie come near to losing his new life, he also places Lindy in harm's way.

There are a few surprising, enlightening twists - Eddie is not the only one who climbs the ladder of success taking multiple giant steps at a time. If one stops to consider the satirical subtext of "Limitless", some may come away wondering about or questioning the rapid rise to the room at the top of business icons such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg; Google creators Larry Page and Sergey Brin; and the sustained success of Apple's Steven Jobs. But see it for just what it is. A visually inventive and entertaining movie that utilizes more than its share of smoke, mirrors, and red herrings. "Limitless" opened nationwide Friday, March 18th. Neil Burger is the director and it is written by Leslie Dixon, based on Alan Glynn's novel, "The Dark Fields".

House Votes to Zero Out NPR 236-181

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

White House Introduces Chutzpah.gov (aka FOIA.gov)

I got a laugh when I saw this, given 3 wasted years and 2 expensive lawsuits, that produced zero documents from my own FOIA request to the CIA about its role in the Andijan, Uzbekistan violence of May, 2005...IMHO, the Obama administration has been worse than Bush in this regard. From the White House blog:

Introducing FOIA.gov
Posted by Melanie Ann Pustay on March 14, 2011 at 07:33 PM EDT
Ed. Note: This post originally appeared on The Justice Blog.

FOIA.gov is a site dedicated to the Freedom of Information Act, a law at the very heart of open government. Congress passed the FOIA in 1966 and since then it has been known as the law that keeps citizens “in the know” about what their government is doing. Any citizen can make a FOIA request about any topic.

FOIA.gov makes it easier than ever to find information about the FOIA. With clear explanations and short videos, we’ve explored all the major aspects of the FOIA, including how you can make a request and what happens when you do.

We’ve also gathered information on where to send a FOIA request into one location. Just click on the name of a department and you’ll see where to send your request and the names of the officials responsible for making sure your request is completed.

If you want a quick glance at an agency’s data – we’ve got that too. Select any agency and you’ll see top-line data, like the number of requests for the most recent year and the number of total and partial grants made.

For more detailed information from an agency, you can generate your own report.

Each year, every federal agency is required to report to the Justice Department, which oversees FOIA compliance, basic information about how they complied with the law. This data is compiled into an annual report. This includes data like:

How many requests were received?
How many requests were processed?
How old is an agency’s oldest request?
How much did it cost to answer requests?
FOIA.gov takes that data and lets you search, sort and compare the information. You can compare one agency to another. You can even compare the data from within the offices of a single agency.

Every year, we’ll add the numbers to the database, allowing users to see trends over time. Using the “FOIA Spotlight” we will spotlight some of the most interesting documents to be released under the law. We’ve invited every agency to submit their suggestions for this section of the site.

The Freedom of Information Act is a key part of open government. FOIA.gov celebrates that, while providing a deeper look at how agencies are striving to improve their compliance with the law. We welcome your feedback on how we can improve the site in the future. If you have ideas, e-mail us at: feedback@foia.gov.

Melanie Ann Pustay is the Director of the Office of Information Policy (OIP) at the Department of Justice. OIP oversees agency compliance with FOIA directives and encourages all agencies to fully comply with both the letter and the spirit of the FOIA on behalf of the President and the Attorney General.

Not to be outdone, the US Department of Defense claims to still be "processing" a FOIA request that I filed in 2006--and given the lack of success in the last FOIA dispute, I haven't had the desire to spend any more money on attorneys to fight the delay. IMHO, they could call it the "Expensive Restriction of Information Act." The US government releases only what it chooses to release, to whom it chooses, when it chooses. We had better public information about our government before FOIA created the illusion of openness--thanks to people like Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson....

Ann Althouse's Madison, Wisconsin Updates

Glenn Garvin on the NPR Scandal

From the Miami Herald:

If just 2 percent of NPR’s money comes from the government, why not just tell Congress to take a flying frack at a rolling doughnut? Two percent, heck, you could make that up on doughnuts. Tens of millions of Americans have taken hits of more than 2 percent in this economy and lived to tell about it. And think of the inner tranquility that 2 percent nip and tuck would buy: Nobody from NPR would ever again have to listen to some braying reactionary complaining that NPR has more practicing witches on its staff than Republicans. (Even if it’s true: NPR reporter Margot Adler is a Wiccan high priestess, while any registered Republicans on the staff remain deeply closeted.)

The answer: NPR gets a lot more than 2 percent of its budget from taxpayers — perhaps 20 times that. It’s completely a creature of government subsidies and cannot possibly survive in anything like its current form if Congress plucks public broadcasting from the federal teat. NPR’s real costs are hidden in a system of back-and-forth payments quaintly known along the Bogota-Miami axis as “money-laundering.”

Here’s how it works: Congress gives money to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which cuts off a small slice — the hallowed 2 percent — and hands it directly to NPR. The rest of the money goes out to public radio stations themselves, who then pay it back to NPR as programming fees. Other taxpayer money — from the Energy Department, state and local governments and state universities — also gets mixed into the pot.

In the end, something close to 40 percent of NPR’s budget has been extracted from taxpayers. And that doesn’t even include tax money spent on the operations of the radio stations themselves, without which there would be no audience for NPR programming. If NPR bosses look slightly twitchy when they talk about how insignificant their subsidies are, it’s probably because they’re glancing around for signs that the roof is about to fall in on them.

Juan Williams: End Federal Funding for NPR

He's finally said it. I hope Congress listens, and acts accordingly. From FoxNews.com:

I'm not being vindictive when I say that NPR leadership had become ingrown and arrogant to the point that they lost sight of journalism as the essential product of NPR. People like Schiller and Ellen Weiss, the head of news for NPR, who made it her life's work to fire me, came to think of themselves as smarter than anyone else. They felt no need to answer to any critic. No other point of view had any importance to them. They came to personify anti-intellectual resentment and arrogance in journalism. Any approach at variance with their own was considered traitorous and a basis for exiling them to the Gulag or in my case, firing me.

The recent videotape showing NPR chief fundraiser Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian Schiller) is just an open microphone on what I've been hearing from NPR top executives and editors for years. They are willing to do anything in service to any liberal with money and then they will turn around and in self-righteous indignation claim that they have cleaner hands than anybody in the news business who accepts advertising or expresses a point of view.

Ron Schiller's performance on videotape -- which included lecturing two young men pretending to be Muslims on how to select wine -- is a "South Park" worthy caricature of the American liberal as an effete, Volvo-driving, wine-sipping, NPR-listening dunderhead.

The work of NPR's many outstanding journalists is barely an afterthought to leadership with this mindset and obsessed with funding. NPR has many, very good journalists. But they are caught in a game where they are trying to please a leadership that doesn't want to hear stories that contradict the official point of view. I'm not just talking about conservatives but also the far-left, the poor, anybody who didn't fit into leadership's design of NPR as the official voice of comfortable, liberal-leaning upper-income America.

This just confirms my belief that it is time for our government to get out of the business of funding NPR. NPR's management had been wanting to not only maintain current funding but expand the network to create a much larger BCC-style institution in the United States. The idea to me of government-funded media doesn't fit the United States. No matter the good intentions about protecting journalists from the excesses of the marketplace such as sensationalism and the dominance of entertainment news, journalists should not be doing news to please any party or any elected official -- out of fear of losing funding. And the tremendous variety of sources for news -- in print, broadcast, on the radio and on the Internet, does not suggest that there's any reason for the U.S. government to make a priority of supporting NPR while cutting funding for school breakfast programs or college scholarships.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News may have budget struggles but they do fine journalism while accepting advertising. Over the last several years, NPR's leadership had become so obsessed with the money issue, as evidenced by Ron Schiller's behavior, that it had started to corrupt the news gathering process because non-profit fundraising has devolved into an underworld cesspool.

The result is that NPR's leadership under the likes of Weiss and the two Schillers has been diminishing their own brand. They created an anti-intellectual environment that took delight and pride in censoring journalists like me for honestly admitting that people dressed in Muslim garb make me nervous at airports. They had lost slight of promoting debates and providing information that is essential for people who want to be well-informed as citizens of a thriving democracy.

I am still insulted when I hear Ron Schiller, no doubt reflecting his boss Vivian Schiller, still making the case that my firing as a good thing, it was just handled badly. This was not a process problem. I said nothing, I violated no journalistic standard that should have resulted in me being fired. It's only in the very small world and small thinking of NPR's leadership that appearing on Fox News Channel and speaking about a feeling in the context of a larger debate somehow makes for a bad journalist who needs to be muzzled.

Sympathy to Japan...and a link to Google's Crisis Response Website

Our thoughts go out to our Japanese readers, and to those affected by the terrible earthquake, tsunami, and its aftermath. Here's a link to Google's Crisis Response Website, which includes a "people finder" to help locate missing persons:

http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html.

Tim Graham Explains NPR Scandal to ABC Nightline

Althouse Reader Explains NPR Scandal

Tom from Virginia posted this parable to explain NPR's candid camera video scandal:

A man in Havana loses his parrot. He reports it to the Ministry of Lost Pets and tells them "if you find my parrot, please understand that I do not agree with any of his political opinions."

NPR Boss Quits

From NPR's website:

NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller has resigned, NPR just announced.

This follows yesterday's news that then-NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller (no relation) was videotapped slamming conservatives and questioning whether NPR needs federal funding during a lunch with men posing as members of a Muslim organization (they were working with political activist James O'Keefe on a "sting.")

Vivian Schiller quickly condemned Ron Schiller's comments, and he moved up an already-announced decision to leave NPR and resigned effectively immediately. But Ron Schiller's gaffe followed last fall's dismissal of NPR political analyst Juan Williams, for which Vivian Schiller came under harsh criticism.

NPR just sent this statement from NPR Board of Directors Chairman Dave Edwards to its staff and member stations:

"It is with deep regret that I tell you that the NPR Board of Directors has accepted the resignation of Vivian Schiller as President and CEO of NPR, effective immediately.

"The Board accepted her resignation with understanding, genuine regret, and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past two years.

"Vivian brought vision and energy to this organization. She led NPR back from the enormous economic challenges of the previous two years. She was passionately committed to NPR's mission, and to stations and NPR working collaboratively as a local-national news network.

"According to a CEO succession plan adopted by the Board in 2009, Joyce Slocum, SVP of Legal Affairs and General Counsel, has been appointed to the position of Interim CEO. The Board will immediately establish an Executive Transition Committee that will develop a timeframe and process for the recruitment and selection of new leadership.

"I recognize the magnitude of this news – and that it comes on top of what has been a traumatic period for NPR and the larger public radio community. The Board is committed to supporting NPR through this interim period and has confidence in NPR's leadership team."

According to NPR's website, the new NPR boss apparently has a background in what Senator DeMint calls the "Muppet Lobby's" licensing business, marketing Barney, Thomas the Tank Engine and Sesame Street. In addition, she had been NPR's "Chief Ethics Officer" (sic)--therefore, logically responsible for the type of ethical problems at NPR revealed in James O'Keefe's hidden camera expose, which must have occured under her "ethics guidelines" and obviously on her watch:

Joyce Slocum joined NPR in July 2008 and serves as Senior Vice President, Legal Affairs, and General Counsel. She is responsible for directing all legal and business activities and the staff of the Office of the General Counsel. In addition, Slocum serves as NPR's Chief Ethics Officer and as Secretary to the NPR Board of Directors.

Prior to joining NPR, Slocum was Executive Vice President, Global Legal and Business Affairs, and General Counsel at HIT Entertainment, a leading provider of high-quality children's programming worldwide. There, she oversaw all legal and business affairs aspects of the company's content production, acquisition, and distribution businesses (more than 1,500 hours in its catalogue), directing a 23-person in-house legal team. Slocum assumed the role at HIT in 2001, when it acquired ownership of Lyrick Corporation, a privately owned entertainment company that she joined in 1994 to establish that company's first in-house legal department. Following the HIT/Lyrick acquisition, the combined companies' legal and business affairs worldwide were consolidated under Slocum's leadership.

Among her accomplishments, she was a key participant in bringing together HIT, PBS, Sesame Workshop, and Comcast Cable to establish the 24/7 pre-school children's channel PBS Kids Sprout. Launched in 2005, Sprout is now available on digital cable and satellite to over 45 million homes. Slocum also played a critical role in HIT's acquisition of Gullane Entertainment, a publicly traded UK company which owned the Guinness World Records and Thomas the Tank Engine properties, among others, and in acquiring representation rights for other famous properties.

From 1984 to 1994, Slocum was staff attorney for The Southland Corporation, where her work included international licensing and franchising, involvement with the company's business expansion, and serving as a liaison between the company and its licensees, franchise owners' groups, community groups, and government officials. Slocum's early legal career was as an associate at the firm Johnson & Swanson in Dallas.

She received her B.A. from Southern Illinois University and her J.D. cum laude from St. Louis University School of Law.

Saudi Opposition Calls for DC Protest

Ali Alyami of the Campaign for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudie Arabia sent the following email:

Freedom fighters, please join us
Tyranny is a threat to humanity
The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia invites you to join us on March 11, 2011 at 10 AM in front of the White House to show our solidarity with and support for the Saudi people in their noble struggle to liberate themselves and their country from the yoke of oppression, gender segregation, discrimination, exploitation, religious extremism and its byproduct, terrorism. Stand up and join us to demonstrate our universal commitment for what’s morally right.
Contact: Ali Alyami 202.413.0084, ali@cdhr.info

Why Didn't We See This NPR Hidden Camera Interview on 60 Minutes?

From the Daily Caller (ht Drudge):

A man who appears to be a National Public Radio senior executive, Ron Schiller, has been captured on camera savaging conservatives and the Tea Party movement.

“The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian. It’s this weird evangelical kind of move,” declared Schiller, the head of NPR’s nonprofit foundation, who last week announced his departure for the Aspen Institute.

In a new video released Tuesday morning by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe, Schiller and Betsy Liley, NPR’s director of institutional giving, are seen meeting with two men who, unbeknownst to the NPR executives, are posing as members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The men, who identified themselves as Ibrahim Kasaam and Amir Malik from the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust, met with Schiller and Liley at Café Milano, a well-known Georgetown restaurant, and explained their desire to give up to $5 million to NPR because, “the Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere.”

On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

Schiller goes on to describe liberals as more intelligent and informed than conservatives. “In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives,” he said.

Here's a link to the Project Veritas NPR Investigative Journalism Website.
Here's a partial transcript from National Review Online:

On the Jewish influence of media coverage:

Fake Muslim: … The extent to which Jews do kind of control the media. I mean, certainly the Zionists and the people who have the interest in swaying media coverage toward a favorable direction of Israel. The Palestinian viewpoint since NPR is one of the few places that has the courage to really present it. It was kind of a joke that we used to call it National Palestinian Radio.

Lilely: Oh, really? That’s good. I like that.

Fake Muslim: I’m not too upset about maybe a little bit less Jew influence of Jewish money into NPR. The Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere …

Schiller: I don’t actually find it at NPR.

Fake Muslim: What exactly?

Schiller: The Zionist or pro-Israel even among funders. … I mean, it’s there in those who own newspapers obviously, but no one owns NPR. So actually, I don’t find it.

Fake Muslim: I just think what Israel does, I don’t think, can be excused frequently, so I’m glad to hear that. …

[Lilely talks about how one of NPR’s funders, the American Jewish World Service, doesn’t necessarily agree with NPR’s perspectives always.]

Schiller: Right because I think they are really looking for a fair point of view and many Jewish organizations are not. Frankly, many organizations … I’m sure there are Muslim organizations that are not looking for a fair point of view. They’re looking for a very particular point of view and that’s fine.

Fake Muslim:We’re not one of them.

Schiller: I’m gathering that you’re not.

Fake Muslim: Our funding comes from a place like the Muslim Brotherhood. You look at the way they are demonized and looked down on and shown as horrible, terrible people when they are simply just trying to help.

Lilely: Sadly, our history from the record … shows that we’ve done this before. We put Japanese Americans in camps in World War II.

On Juan Williams:

Schiller: In all of the uproar for example around Juan Williams, what NPR did, I’m very proud of. What NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news. Our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist, they can no longer fairly report. And the question we asked internally was can Juan Williams when he makes a statement like he made can he report to the Muslim population, for example, and be believed and the answer is no. He lost all credibility and that breaks your basic ethics as a journalist.

Happy International Women's Day!

In the former USSR it's Secretary's Day, Mother's Day, and Valentine's Day all rolled into one...

Paul Moyar: To Win Afghan War, Cut USAID Funding

After 10 years of fighting, someone finally publishes the obvious: USAID money has paid for the Taliban to fight the US Army. So says Dr. Paul Moyar, in a summary of his study, Development in Afghanistan's Counterinsurgency: A New Guide, posted on the Small Wars Journal Blog:

In the areas of Afghanistan beset by insurgency, development spending has done little to increase popular support for the government, casting doubt on the counterinsurgency and development theories that have inspired this spending. Practitioners, however, have lacked access to viable alternative theories or principles on the use of development in COIN. This guide offers a comprehensive alternative approach, derived from the leader-centric model of counterinsurgency and based upon a wide variety of counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and previous conflicts. According to this approach, the primary purpose of development aid in counterinsurgency should be to improve local security and governance, because development is less important than security and governance and is effective only where security and governance are present. Development aid should be used to co-opt local elites, not to obtain the gratitude of the entire population, and should be made contingent on reciprocal action by those elites. The elites must be selected carefully, as the selection of certain elites will empower malign actors or alienate other elites. The number of organizations involved in development activities should be kept as small as possible, and greater attention should be paid to the selection of leaders for those organizations, as leadership quality has a great impact on project effectiveness. In select districts and provinces, governors should be permitted to use development aid to bolster patronage networks. The current aid streams flowing into Afghanistan far exceed the capacity of leaders and development personnel to handle them, so aid levels should be reduced, and emphasis on quantity of aid spent should be replaced with emphasis on attainment of COIN objectives. In Afghanistan, senior leaders of USAID and other foreign development organizations still prefer long-term development to short-term stabilization, to the detriment of the counterinsurgency. If they cannot be convinced to change their ways, then their participation in Afghanistan may need to be downsized.

You may download the full report as a PDF file, here.

Agustin Blazquez's CHE Featured on Breitbart's Big Hollywood

You can read the article
at this URL.

Tom Gross on Libya's Lobbyists

From Tom Gross's Media Dispatch:

* No remorse from The London School of Economics (LSE) which agreed to take millions from Gaddafi
* Only 11 weeks ago, Gaddafi himself was invited to address LSE students via video link, with the help of a leading London PR firm

* Leading New York law firm White & Case took $1000 an hour to lobby for Gaddafi

* Among others who have written soft propaganda pieces for Gaddafi in the Western media in recent months: Sarah Leah Whitson, the head of Human Rights Watch’s Mideast division (the same woman who has helped run the HRW delegtimization campaign against Israel), and Stephen Walt (author of the best-selling conspiracy theory “The Israel Lobby”), and writers for The New York Times and Financial Times.

This dispatch concerns the situation in Libya.

Martin Kramer on the MIddle East

I have to admit that I don't know enough about the Middle East to have a reasonable opinion about what is going on. So, here's a link to Martin Kramer's blog, Sandbox.