WNYT-TV:

A former FBI agent recently trained all Waste Management drivers, helpers and technicians in Rensselaer and Albany Counties to act as a mobile community watch. Trucks are now armed with a cell phone, camera and incident reports so they'll have accurate information for police and, possibly, prosecutors.

Decius:

One must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-9/11 mentality.

Janet Napolitano:

In a sense, this harkens back to when we drew on the tradition of civil defense and preparedness that predated today's concerns.

Chris Dixon:

The carriers are thinking about pushing the edge beyond recommendations to see how they can start turning their records into revenue.

Ken Doctor:

It's a box that, once you look inside, you can't not look.

Jaron Lanier:

A sufficiently copious flood of data creates an illusion of omniscience, and that illusion can make you stupid.

G.L. as Johnson at The Economist:

There's something athletic, soulful even, about the thought of physically diving into a spreadsheet, kicking around in its dusky deep columns, paddling lazily through the surf of numbers, digging for hidden gems among its pivot tables, and coming up for air gasping but ecstatic, with the decimal points cascading down your forehead. It could be a subtle signal to colleagues of the effort you are about to make as you hold your breath and plunge into the numbers. Or maybe it's nothing more than an attempt to romanticise to yourself what is otherwise a soul-deadening activity.

One money manager, on Goldman Sachs:

It's like the Mob who picks up the garbage. You pay their fees, because you need your garbage picked up.

North American Aerospace Defense Command:

Whatever it was, "there is no indication of any threat to our nation."

Nir Rosen:

Marines lay about in the shade.

A young specialist sat atop a Humvee.

"We came, we parked, we relocated, then we parked," he beamed.

Richard Haass:

Let's not kid ourselves. We're not going to find some wonderful thing that's going to deliver large positive results at modest costs. It's not going to happen.

David Kilcullen:

You've got to make a long-term commitment.

A retired American military officer, working in security in Afghanistan:

We're winning every day. Are we going to keep winning for 20 years?

Cormac McCarthy:

At dusk they halted and built a fire and roasted the deer. The night was much enclosed about them and there were no stars. To the north they could see other fires that burned red and sullen along the invisible ridges. They ate and moved on, leaving the fire on the ground behind them, and as they rode up into the mountains this fire seemed to become altered of its location, now here, now there, drawing away, or shifting unaccountably along the flank of their movement. Like some ignis fatuus belated upon the road behind them which all could see and of which none spoke. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies.

In the Land of the Stoner Cops

The Japanese town made infamous by the movie The Cove has temporarily suspended its hunt. The annual Taiji hunt claims around 2,000 dolphins, killed by hand after being herded into a shallow cove.

While Japan officially declares that the move had nothing to do with the protests, an official at the Taiji fisheries association, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Thursday that the decision was made partly in response to the international outcry created by "The Cove."

Ric O'Barry, et al:

We believe that once the Japanese people know, they will demand change.

Paul Graham:

Don't just not be evil. Be good.

"Cove" Town Suspends Dolphin Slaughter

Ahmed Rashid:

The sense of unrealism is widespread.

Pakistan is close to the brink, perhaps not to a meltdown of the government, but to a permanent state of anarchy. We can expect a slow, insidious, long-burning fuse of fear, terror, and paralysis.

American officials are in a concealed state of panic.

The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban.

The Pakistani army seeks to ensure that a balance of terror and power is maintained with respect to India, and the jihadis are seen as part of this strategy.

Since 2004, practically everything that could go wrong in this war has gone wrong. The Obama administration can provide money and weapons but it cannot recreate the state's will to resist the Taliban and pursue more effective policies.

Nir Rosen:

"You Westerners have your watches," the leader observed. "But we Taliban have time."

Graeme Wood:

“Is the boy a Talib?” I asked. “Future Talib,” he said.

Pakistan on the Brink

David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum:

While we agree with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that “fresh eyes were needed” to review our military strategy in the region, we feel that expanding or even just continuing the drone war is a mistake. In fact, it would be in our best interests, and those of the Pakistani people, to declare a moratorium on drone strikes into Pakistan.

Stewart Brand:

In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.

Kilcullen:

People don’t get pushed into rebellion by their ideology. They get pulled in by their social networks.

Kilcullen and Exum:

The use of drones displays every characteristic of a tactic — or, more accurately, a piece of technology — substituting for a strategy.

George W. Bush:

We're not sure who the "they" are but we know they're there.

"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists. "Nooooo!" the audience roared.

Death From Above, Outrage Down Below

Tom Hayden:

The Pentagon's official Quadrennial Defense Review (2005) commits the United States to a greater emphasis on fighting terrorism and insurgencies in this "arc of instability." The Center for American Progress repeats the formulation in arguing for a troop escalation and ten-year commitment in Afghanistan, saying that the "infrastructure of jihad" must be destroyed in "the center of an 'arc of instability' through South and Central Asia and the greater Middle East."

The implications of this doctrine are staggering. The very notion of a fifty-year war assumes the consent of the American people, who have yet to hear of the plan, for the next six national elections. The weight of a fifty-year burden will surprise and dismay many in the antiwar movement. Most Americans living today will die before the fifty-year war ends, if it does. Youngsters born and raised today will reach middle age. Unborn generations will bear the tax burden or fight and die in this "irregular warfare."

There is a chance, of course, that the Long War can be prevented. It may be unsustainable, a product of imperial hubris. Public opinion may tire of the quagmires and costs--but only if there is a commitment to a fifty-year peace movement.

The Other Donald:

Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

On January 21, 2000, a year before he would move into the White House, George Bush said:

When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world.

And we knew exactly who the "they" were.

It was us versus them, and it was clear who "them" was.

Today we're not sure who the "they" are but we know they're there.

A dialogue between Dyson and Brand:

Dyson: It's very important that we adapt to the world on the long-time scale as well as the short-time scale. Ethics are the art of doing that. You must have principles that you're willing to die for.

Brand: Do you have a list of these principles?

Dyson: No. You'll never get everybody to agree about any particular code of ethics.

Brand: In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.

Understanding the Long War

Craig M. Mullaney:

On September 29, 2003, on a lonely windswept ridge on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border dotted with ancient ruins and scrub pines, my platoon was ambushed. In the opening salvo, four bullets struck Private First Class Evan O’Neill beneath his body armor. He bled to death quickly. Since I was his platoon leader, he was my responsibility. I had vowed to bring him and all of my men home to their parents, children, spouses, and neighbors. When we returned to our mud fort that evening, the first sergeant read the roll call and repeated Evan’s name three times before another sergeant responded, according to custom, “Evan O’Neill is no longer with us.” I returned to my cot, struggled to unlace my boots, and cried myself to sleep.

Mullaney's book is must-read.

On a moonlit night early in Ranger School, my squad collapsed from exhaustion after more than 40 hours of patrolling without sleep. The Ranger instructor infiltrated our unguarded perimeter and woke us up with gunfire. As punishment for our lapse in vigilance, he ordered our squad to hoist our heavy packs and follow behind as he marched mile after mile along the sandy firebreaks of Fort Benning.

Eventually we slowed to a halt and the Ranger instructor asked each of us in turn why we were at Ranger School. Our answers, predictably, ranged from “For the challenge” to “My platoon sergeant made me.” The instructor stared at us silently, unsatisfied, and responded, “You’re not here for any of those reasons.” We looked at him blankly.

“You are here for the troops you’re going to lead. I don’t care if you’re tired, hurt, or lonely. This is for them. And they deserve better. You owe them your Ranger tab.” He paused. “Fuck self-pity,” he added with a hiss. “This isn’t about you.”

This Isn't About You

Robert D. Kaplan:

Americans are about to lead a great battle against culture and geography.

Literacy rates in the Pushtun belt of the south and east that has seen most of the serious fighting is under ten percent, with women's literacy hovering near zero in many places. One regional governor told us that he has to micromanage everything because there are so few competent people around him.

"This is not easy shit," says one American Army colonel. "But what's the alternative?"

Robert Levine:

The Great Depression brought the New Deal to the United States. It brought the rest of the world Nazism and universal war. This time, though, many nations have nuclear weapons.

"Maybe we could" is the limit of optimism in this paper. The world ahead looks difficult.

David Kilcullen:

We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state. The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.

Saving Afghanistan

David Kilcullen:

We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state. The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.

Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan Pakistan.

And now for something completely different:

Attendant: More anything?
Jerry: More everything!

Back to the Kilcullen interview:

Q: What are the lessons of Iraq that most apply to Afghanistan?

Kilcullen: You've got to protect the population. You've got to focus on getting the population on your side and making them self-defending. And you've got to make a long-term commitment.

Freeman Dyson:

It's very important that we adapt to the world on the long-time scale as well as the short-time scale. Ethics are the art of doing that. You must have principles that you're willing to die for.

Nir Rosen, in Rolling Stone:

"You Westerners have your watches," the leader observed. "But we Taliban have time."

A Conversation With David Kilcullen

From a new report by the Markle Foundation:

For all the nation has invested in national security in the last several years, we remain vulnerable to terrorist attack and emerging national security threats because we have not adequately improved our ability to know what we know about these threats. Today, we are still vulnerable to attack because we are still not able to connect the dots. At the same time, civil liberties are at risk because we don’t have the government-wide policies in place to protect them as intelligence collection has expanded.

Old habits die hard. The "need to know" principle and stovepiping of information within agencies persist. The adoption of the "need to share" principle and the responsibility to provide information, and actions to transform the culture through metrics and incentives, are necessary to the success of the information sharing framework. In addition, those who depend on information to make decisions and accomplish their mission must be empowered to drive information sharing, to ensure they get the best possible data.

Noam Cohen's friend:

Privacy is serious. It is serious the moment the data gets collected, not the moment it is released.

Louis Menand:

The interstates changed the phenomenology of driving.

Finally:

We're all losers now. There's no pleasure to it.

Nation At Risk: Policy Makers Need Better Information to Protect the Country