Ben Buckman.net

 From the Daily Dish, The Blogosphere's Moment:

A reader writes:

So all day long, I'm glued to your blog, Juan Cole's blog, Josh Marshall's blog, and a couple others reading as much as I can about the (stolen) Iranian election.

I turned on CNN, and they were going three rounds about some idiot Republican operative in South Carolina who called Michelle Obama an ape.  Nothing on Iran.

MSNBC was in the middle of one of its hour-long crime documentaries.

FNC was showing a pre-taped piece on Bernie Madoff.

And I realize that it's the weekend and they usually take the weekend off, but over at NRO, the only thing they've managed to post about Iran today is a link to Daniel Pipes' piece cheering on an Ahmadinejad victory because otherwise his dream of a massive Israeli air assault would be dashed.  That's it...a staff of 10+ regular bloggers, and all they can come up with in the midst of an Iranian revolution is a single piece cheering for the status quo?

Thank God that you, Juan, and Josh are on the story.

There's a reason the MSM is in trouble. 

Update: The NYT was there, but totally wrong.

The NYT has an interesting video interview with a Somali pirate. He's under pressure from traditional power sources because piracy is seen as a source of drugs and social corruption. He'll stop being a pirate, he says, when the government lets his gang join an official Somali coast guard, to defend the waters against illegal fishing.

This jibes with what Global Guerillas wrote recently about these pirates: they have a legitimate grievance/cause in stopping foreign corporations from illegally fishing their waters; and the only solution that will work is arming anti-pirate militias (aka a "Coast Guard"), similar to the Awakening in Iraq.

Via Tom, Matt Yglesias has a fascinating post about "social production" that doesn't translate into standard monetary value. Craigslist, Wikipedia, and open-source development are classic examples: they "revolutionized the way people do a lot of things but have done far more to destroy other firms’ revenue sources than to make money for themselves." The ramifications of this are huge, and he explores a few briefly: financial markets become less effective at efficiently allocating resources; there will be pressure on the labor market (as after the Depression) to shorten working hours; broadband connectivity becomes crucial; the roles of the government and markets needs to fundamentally re-evaluated.

One of the most fundamental and lasting concepts I learned in college was the principle of externalities in Econ 101. It's basically when the true cost or value of something isn't adequately captured by the actors' balance sheets in the market. Dumping waste in a river is a classic negative externality, because it costs the polluter nothing; education and health care are considered positive externalities because the market lacks the long-term and social-value calculations to provide enough. This makes sense for particular behaviors and sectors in basic economics. What we're seeing now, though, is potentially an entire economy based on externalities; or more accurately, an economy in which the most valuable production isn't adequately calculated by the market. Everything from news to books to music to communications is becoming "free," breaking all conventional business models. I tweeted earlier about open-source textbooks; that plus the Kindle guarantee the brick and mortar book store giants won't be around forever.

This happens to coincide with an economic depression in which all the economic titans of the past - finance, auto manufacturing, real estate - are collapsing. Coincidence? Maybe the underlying dynamic is that the markets, at a very basic level, aren't functioning anymore. There's all this surplus capital lying around, incalculable non-monetary value being created, quality of life improving on the one hand, but basics like jobs and homes disappearing. This is obviously extremely simplistic. But we need so much money now for things that could be "free" in the near future. They'll be allowed to be free, perhaps, because we'll have more free time - because less work will be financially profitable - so people will contribute more to projects they truly love.

Several years ago, I was fascinated by economists trying to put monetary value on the seemingly incalculable. I thought answering the question, how much will global warming cost (in dollars)? would be the key to smart environmental policy. The GNP/GDP paradigm (in which war and natural disasters look great for the economy) would be turned on its head with new models that took into account actual cost and value. Now I'm not so sure we'll ever really have the numbers. But we're going to need the models someway or another, to understand the new economy.

The Atlantic has a fascinating cover story this month, How the Crash Will Reshape America, that takes a big-picture view of home ownership in the U.S. and its central part in an obsolete socio-economic order. Subprime mortgages were only the straw that broke the camel's back. A housing bailout, the article suggests, would only sustain an obsolete model that long ago ceased to be suitable to the new economy. We need a complete paradigm shift about homes, home ownership, and the geo-economic makeup of the country. Some excerpts:

In the heady days of the housing bubble, some Sun Belt cities—Phoenix and Las Vegas are the best examples—developed economies centered largely on real estate and construction. [...] To an uncommon degree, the economic boom in these cities was propelled by housing appreciation: as prices rose, more people moved in, seeking inexpensive lifestyles and the opportunity to get in on the real-estate market where it was rising, but still affordable. Local homeowners pumped more and more capital out of their houses as well, taking out home-equity loans and injecting money into the local economy in the form of home improvements and demand for retail goods and low-level services. Cities grew, tax coffers filled, spending continued, more people arrived. Yet the boom itself neither followed nor resulted in the development of sustainable, scalable, highly productive industries or services. It was fueled and funded by housing, and housing was its primary product. Whole cities and metro regions became giant Ponzi schemes. [...]

The housing bubble was the ultimate expression, and perhaps the last gasp, of an economic system some 80 years in the making, and now well past its “sell-by” date. The bubble encouraged massive, unsustainable growth in places where land was cheap and the real-estate economy dominant. It encouraged low-density sprawl, which is ill-fitted to a creative, postindustrial economy. And not least, it created a workforce too often stuck in place, anchored by houses that cannot be profitably sold, at a time when flexibility and mobility are of great importance. [...]

If anything, our government policies should encourage renting, not buying. Homeownership occupies a central place in the American Dream primarily because decades of policy have put it there. A recent study by Grace Wong, an economist at the Wharton School of Business, shows that, controlling for income and demographics, homeowners are no happier than renters, nor do they report lower levels of stress or higher levels of self-esteem.

And while homeownership has some social benefits—a higher level of civic engagement is one—it is costly to the economy. The economist Andrew Oswald has demonstrated that in both the United States and Europe, those places with higher homeownership rates also suffer from higher unemployment. Homeownership, Oswald found, is a more important predictor of unemployment than rates of unionization or the generosity of welfare benefits. Too often, it ties people to declining or blighted locations, and forces them into work—if they can find it—that is a poor match for their interests and abilities.

As homeownership rates have risen, our society has become less nimble: in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans were nearly twice as likely to move in a given year as they are today. Last year fewer Americans moved, as a percentage of the population, than in any year since the Census Bureau started tracking address changes, in the late 1940s. This sort of creeping rigidity in the labor market is a bad sign for the economy, particularly in a time when businesses, industries, and regions are rising and falling quickly.

The foreclosure crisis creates a real opportunity here. Instead of resisting foreclosures, the government should seek to facilitate them in ways that can minimize pain and disruption. Banks that take back homes, for instance, could be required to offer to rent each home to the previous homeowner, at market rates—which are typically lower than mortgage payments—for some number of years. (At the end of that period, the former homeowner could be given the option to repurchase the home at the prevailing market price.) A bigger, healthier rental market, with more choices, would make renting a more attractive option for many people; it would also make the economy as a whole more flexible and responsive.

AP:

David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency adviser to Condoleezza Rice when she was secretary of state, recently warned senators against widening U.S. involvement in the [Afghanistan] war.

"If you think about what we did in Vietnam, we escalated, we overthrew that leader, we took control of the problem, we tried to fix it and we couldn't fix it, couldn't afford it," said Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"And I just think we need to be extremely careful about signing ourselves up to escalating to the point where we can't pullback. ... Because once you own the problem, you own it," he said.

The objective can't be the elimination of the Taliban and the stabilization of a strong central democratic government, cuz that 'aint happening on our watch. The arguments against an open-ended commitment in Iraq were not merely rhetorical. We're going to have to co-opt parts of the Taliban at the very least. We need to pay lip service to Karzai but he has to go in the next elections. There has to be a viable objective, a cost-benefit analysis, and an exit strategy. Military escalation should be only a small part of a much bigger realignment, including smarter cooperation with NGOs on promoting alternatives to opium. I really, really hope we've all internalized the lessons of Iraq.

I tuned in to Sky News for a few minutes this evening (via Livestation) and learned that they're debating trade and bankers' compensation just like we are here. (Maybe I should re-subscribe to the Economist so this wouldn't be news...)

I'm watching the White House press briefing on Livestation, and W.H. spokesman Gibbs has said twice so far that the administration "supports the democratically elected president of Afghanistan" (Hamid Karzai). The problem is, every independent report from the country tells us that Karzai's government is corrupt through and through, and our ties with it only delegitimize our presence there.

Newsweek has a story on Somali immigrants being recruited in Minneapolis to return to Somalia and fight with jihadist groups there. Counter-terrorism officials are concerned the same network and recruiting capacity could be used for attacks in the U.S.

What strikes me here is that these kids, after coming all the way to the U.S., go all the way back to the hellhole of Somalia to fight. It almost seems a waste of energy to recruit people who've come here; aren't there potential jihadists or Somali patriots closer to (or in) Somalia?

It also reminds me of the argument Bush/Cheney used for Iraq: we fight them there so they won't come here. Iraq was a jihad magnet in their view. Jihadists are inevitable, so better to let them die as martyrs somewhere far away than in New York. (Never mind the Iraqi civilians and American soldiers in the cross-fire.) Now Somalia is the jihad magnet for Somali immigrants.

Obviously I think the strategy of creating jihad magnets to prevent domestic terrorism is flawed. Killing more Muslims "over there" just stirs up more of the ingredients - instability, combat training, fanaticism - that breeds jihadism in the first place. Directing all the jihadists in the world today to a battle far away does nothing to prevent the jihadists tomorrow from coming here. Or jihadists today for that matter: if the Iraqi insurgency were sophistocated enough to attack the U.S., and thought doing so would help its battle in Iraq, having battles to fight in Iraq wouldn't have stopped them.

I suspect the main reason we haven't had a terrorist attack in the U.S. since 9/11 is that the jihadist networks had other priorities: like sapping America's resources indefinitely in the quagmires of Iraq or Afghanistan. Why provoke a full-scale assault on the Pakistani tribal areas when we were exhausting ourselves without any "help"?

That leads to the question, what does happen with the jihadists when the Iraq war is phased down? Maybe they'll go to Afghanistan. But the U.S. force there will draw down at some point too. Does the next magnet automatically become domestic? Is there a necessary link between foreign wars and domestic terrorism (namely, start the former to prevent the latter)? Or is the Bush-Cheney analogy of terrorists to flies and distant wars to fly paper absurdly simplistic and short-sighted? I don't think the lack of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 is because Bush did a great job, but I do think we shouldn't take the calm for granted.

I haven't had any brilliant insights to add about the Gaza situation, but a few points keep coming back to me. First, the Israeli-Arab conflict is a perpetual chicken and egg dilemna. Moral/moralistic outlooks on war assume an aggressor (bad) and defender (good), so "who started it?" is a vital question, but with Israel involved, boths sides can always plausibly claim to be the victim. Every argument I've engaged in or observed about the latest conflict went something like this: Israel is defending itself against rockets -- but Hamas is defending itself against the siege -- but Israel closed the borders to stop weapong smuggling -- but Hamas needs weapons to defend itself against Israeli raids -- and on and on.

The most recent fighting ended a relatively long hudna (cease-fire). Who ended it? Well, Israel did on November 5th (from the Guardian):

Israeli troops crossed into the Gaza Strip late last night near the town of Deir al-Balah. The Israeli military said the target of the raid was a tunnel that they said Hamas was planning to use to capture Israeli soldiers positioned on the border fence 250m away.

So that violation preempted an imminent Hamas violation. And Hamas fired rockets and mortars intermittently throughout the hudna, ostensibly all in response to Israeli raids which were themselves retaliation or preemption... so no one respected the hudna, and everyone was justified in breaking it. Both sides used the hudna to prepare for more fighting, which is not unusual for cease-fires anywhere, especially in the Middle East.

Another absurd factor in everything Palestine-related is that everyone knows what "needs" to happen. Obama was on ABC this morning and described it well: all the players know what needs to happen but it's "politically difficult." Precisely: Hamas needs to stop firing and stockpiling rockets. Then Israel needs to open up the borders. Then Hamas needs to accept Israel's existence and form a joint negotiating team with Fatah. Then they need to reach a "final status agreement." It's all so simple and yet so impossible. Because in reality Hamas wants to remain relevant, and that means continuing to fight Israel and opposing Fatah. (Jeffrey Goldberg writes about Hamas' ideological implacability - at its core Hamas is an Islamic-fundamentalist terrorist group devoted to Israel's God-ordained destruction - making most rational prescriptions irrelevant.)

It's worth noting what isn't happening: there aren't rockets flying out of the West Bank every day. In fact, Fatah seems to be actively preventing violence in the West Bank, so Israel has no cause for a large-scale invasion of Fatah-controlled territory. In other words, the Palestinian faction in charge does matter a great deal. The old argument that "the PA doesn't control anything anyway" has become irrelevant. A decisive shift of power in Gaza back to Fatah really would change the whole picture, and bringing that about should be an objective of international political efforts.

Of course it's possible that Hamas just gives Fatah cover for a phony good-cop-bad-cop game, but it seems more likely to me that the PA sees the obvious: Hamas' continued fighting serves no one's constructive ends. No matter how self-righteously oppressed the Palestinians feel, aimlessly firing rockets at civilians in southern Israel accomplishes nothing. It doesn't weaken Israel militarily; it doesn't encourage diplomacy; it doesn't bring the destruction of Israel, the creation of a Palestinian state, the Mahdi, or Peace on Earth a minute closer. So what's the point?

Hamas booby-trapped a school the other day, for no reason other than to blame Israel for the murder of innocent children when it exploded. (The IDF probably got local intel and neutralized the explosives. They don't get international applause for that, though, but you can bet they would have been condemned if it had gone off.) The extent of Israel's intelligence in Gaza is encouraging; the hope is that, when this fighting ends, public opinion in Gaza will shift against Hamas, but frankly I doubt that'll happen.

A slightly more realistic end-game for this round of fighting is an international monitoring force for the borders. If Israel can destroy enough weapons caches and tunnels and kill enough skilled operatives in these weeks, then the addition of UN-mandated monitors - bolstered by Egypt which harbors no love of Hamas - could have a real impact. I doubt rockets would drop to zero, but they'd be "manageable" like the West Bank.

The test for this operation, like Lebanon in 2006, will be its end result. The operation is morally justified in an abstract sense, but is only really justified, in my opinion, if it accomplishes something constructive. Israel failed that test in Lebanon. I hope it succeeds this time. Then the ball will be back in the Palestinians' split court.