In the West, media coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan is framed by military and political concerns, resulting in a simplistic picture of ageless barbarity, terrorist safe havens, and peoples in need of either punishment or salvation. Under the Drones looks beyond this limiting view to investigate real people on the ground, and to analyze the political, social, and economic forces that shape their lives. Understanding the complexity of life along the 1,600-mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan can help America and its European allies realign their priorities in the region to address genuine problems, rather than fabricated ones.

This volume explodes Western misunderstandings by revealing a land that abounds with human agency, perpetual innovation, and vibrant complexity. Through the work of historians and social scientists, the thirteen essays here explore the real and imagined presence of the Taliban; the animated sociopolitical identities expressed through traditions like Pakistani truck decoration; Sufism’s ambivalent position as an alternative to militancy; the long and contradictory history of Afghan media; the simultaneous brutality and potential that heroin brings to women in the area.

Moving past shifting conceptions of security, the authors expose the West’s prevailing perspective on the region as strategic, targeted, and alarmingly dehumanizing. Under the Drones is an essential antidote to contemporary media coverage and military concerns.

Is this the first time Kalecki got mentioned on the Times editorial page?

There can't be too many books blurbed both by Bacevich and by Gen. Zinni, can there?

"Bliss it was in that atrocity to be alive, but to be on the internet was very heaven."

"What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it."

Shorter Lancherster: We're fucked.

"Dick Cheney was a self-aggrandizing criminal who used his knowledge as a Washington insider to subvert both informed public debate about matters of war and peace and to manipulate presidential decisionmaking, sometimes in ways that angered even George W. Bush. 
After his early years of public service, he capitalized on connections he made while being paid by taxpayers to earn tens of millions of dollars presiding over Halliburton. While there, he did business with corrupt Arab autocrats, including some in countries that were enemies of the United States. Upon returning to government, he advanced a theory of the executive that is at odds with the intentions of the founders, successfully encouraged the federal government to illegally spy on innocent Americans, passed on to the public false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and became directly complicit in a regime of torture for which he should be in jail."

"Get Smart insisted that we’d trapped ourselves in a game of Spy v. Spy, that it was ridiculous (and very funny) that we were plowing huge amounts of money into developing levitating shoes, or having agents brew up coffee in a lab. The conflicts never really required more in the way of resolution than a punch in the face. The prospect of infiltration was about as serious as the threat of vampires. I can’t imagine the reaction to a mainstream show today that so forcefully and hilariously insisted that our whole national security enterprise was a fraud, but an equivalently funny show would be incredibly bracing."

Presumably elaborates on her piece in Boston Review in 2002 (http://bostonreview.net/BR27.5/scarry.html)

"So I hope this Libya policy works out. I have my doubts, but who knows. The world is full of surprises. I do know, however, that providing more bed nets to prevent malaria would be cheap and logistically simple compared to deposing Gaddafi and that the easiest step America could take to deal a blow to Arab autocracy would be to stop selling weapons to Arab autocrats that they turn around and fire on their people."

"This is an eye-opening exploration of a troubling phenomenon: the fast-growing belief in Muslim countries that the end of the world is at hand—and with it the “Great Battle,” prophesied by both Sunni and Shi`i tradition, which many believers expect will begin in the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands. Jean-Pierre Filiu uncovers the role of apocalypse in Islam over the centuries, and highlights its extraordinary resurgence in recent decades. Identifying 1979 as a decisive year in the rise of contemporary millenarian speculation, he stresses the ease with which subsequent events in the Middle East have been incorporated into the intellectual universe of apocalyptic propagandists. ... Christian and Jewish visions of the Final Judgment have stimulated alarmist reaction in Islamic lands ... examines the widespread fear of Christian Zionist domination as an impetus to jihad..."

"accomplished scholars, humanitarian workers, politicians, and journalists—most with extended experience inside Afghanistan—examine the realities of life for women in both urban and rural settings. They address topics including food security, sex work, health, marriage, education, poetry, politics, prisoners, and community development. Eschewing stereotypes about the burqa, the contributors focus instead on women’s empowerment and agency, and their struggles for peace and justice in the face of a brutal ongoing war."

Shorter DeLong: fucked is the new normal.

Master's anthro thesis, applying Hirschman's _Exit, Voice and Loyalty_ to Pashtuns in northern Afghanistan post 2001.

"examines more than two hundred cases of forcible regime promotion over the past five centuries, offering the first systematic study of this common state practice. He looks at conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism between 1520 and the 1680s; republicanism and monarchy between 1770 and 1850; and communism, fascism, and liberal democracy from 1917 until the late 1980s...."

Indeed: what IS our third current war? Is Central Command also secretly fending off the lizard people from planet XII, come to reclaim Sumeria?

"How is it a waste of their time to take someone who is otherwise unemployed and pay them to do such work, especially if it provides us with something of long-term value and them with earned income? AND it stimulates demand. Where is the down side, pray tell? Even if we guess wrong, we'll have much needed improved infrastructure, mass transportation, new energy sources, better educated kids and safer streets and highways.

I believe the problem for Glaeser (and many others who dither while unemployment is high) is a morbid fear that putting people to work with taxpayer money (much as we have done for investment bankers) will crowd out efficient private sector productivity and jobs....some day. I'm left to wonder why crowding out of public infrastructure and education by unproductive, inefficient speculation in private financial and mortgage markets is OK, but I digress."

J'accuse! "He allowed the illegal creation of Citigroup with a nod and a wink, knowing that Gramm-Leach-Bliley was just around the corner and would make Citigroup legal in retrospect. He then collected his just rewards in the form of $126 million in pay from Citi, for a job which even Weisberg admits involved no managerial responsibility." Plus, all the stuff about derivative regulation. May I add that if I am ever appointed treasury secretary, I would be willing to engage in comparable acts for a mere $20 million (in 2010 dollars)?

"In that sense, this time really is different: while the first great global financial crisis was followed by major reforms, it’s not clear that anything comparable will happen after the second. And history tells us what will happen if those reforms don’t take place. There will be a resurgence of financial folly, which always flourishes given a chance. And the consequence of that folly will be more and quite possibly worse crises in the years to come." --- I wonder, does Krugman read Ken MacLeod? If not, someone should send him a copy of The Fall Revolution.

Stiglitz expounds on the current crisis, under the pretense of reviewing a book about Keynes.

"My gut reaction on reading Marc Thiessen's new book ... was: "Why is a speechwriter who's never served in the military or intelligence community acting as an expert on interrogation and national security?" Certainly, everyone is entitled to a voice in the debate over the lawfulness and efficacy of President Bush's abusive interrogation program, regardless of qualifications. But if you're not an expert on a subject, shouldn't you interview experts before expressing an opinion? Instead, Thiessen relies solely on the opinions of the CIA interrogators who used torture and abuse and are thus most vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes. That makes his book less a serious discussion of interrogation policy than a literary defense of war criminals. Nowhere in this book will you find the opinions of experienced military interrogators who successfully interrogated Islamic extremists.... Courting Disaster is nothing more than the defense's opening statement in a war crimes trial."

"the new US Embassy in London is intended to be "a 12-storey cube clad in a blastproof glass and plastic façade" surrounded by a 30-metre blast zone. In the proof image above, it looks not unlike a high-end bunker has been simply dropped from space on London, an impregnable and isolated chunk of America. And while security is an obvious and present concern, I think perhaps this building says a little more than it was intended to. In fact, let’s admit it. IT’S A FORTRESS WITH A FUCKING MOAT. It doesn’t say "welcome to a little piece of America, one of the best ideas the world ever had and a country that welcomes the tired and poor and afraid." It says "if you even look at us funny we’ll pour boiling oil on you from the roof. Raise the drawbridge! Release the Mongolian Terror Trout!""

This looks extremely promising, not least because Barfield was studying Afghanistan _before_ 2001: "introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite [their[ regional, cultural, and political differences.... [G]overning these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite ... delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed...."

"I want to address all of the criticisms that Obama should have returned to the White House rather than staying in Hawaii after the attempted bombing. While the readers of this blog know that I am very critical of him, I can’t fault him on this one. If you were a black guy with close family in Africa and a Muslim name, would YOU get on an airplane while the TSA is on the alert for Nigerian Muslims?"

Perhaps the most horrifying thing I have read this year.

Words fail.

"Today marks a grim anniversary, a day when a few fanatics, equipped and secretly encouraged by foreign ideologues, struck a violent blow against normal, civil, democratic society. In the years that followed, the events of that day led to further tragedy, as a once-civilized country turned to the widespread practice of torture. Perhaps now at last we can gain some perspective on this history, and better understand what the defense of a democratic society demands of us. --- Today is also the anniversary of an attack on New York City and Washington, DC."

Now, how _do_ I teach the 2nd part in 350?

Too essentialist.

Wow does Caldwell sound like a thoroughly unpleasant idiot.

Comparing the military's integration of blacks and whites during the Korean War with the integration of women and men during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"You know, were I the guy whose unit failed to capture a seventy-year-old, two meter tall man on kidney dialysis, I wouldn’t be mentioning that as proof of my skills in intelligence gathering."

James Wimberley's suggestion; buy up the Afghan opium crop and use it as medical morphine.

The "mosaic philosophy" bit in particular is so crazy that "utter stupidity" is hardly adequate.

It sounds like a bunch of warblogger scientists.

Dear God.

But it's true, we're not human. We are simply biding our time until you go extinct, when we will fight it out with the cockroaches.

Recommended by James Fallows.

Krugman's long-form take on what Obama should do, domestically, in year 1. Where do I sign up to help pressure Obama to do all this?

(And, in a "why oh why can't have a better press" moment, why does our leading public intellectual have to publish this in Rolling Stone, of all places?)

An illustration of the necessity for counterfactuals.

Who hasn't been thinking this?

Draft inspector general's report on the Iraqi reconstruction project. I've not finished it yet, but: Unbefuckinglievable.

I deeply resent the way my country is making me feel like a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

"About science fiction's uncanny oracle, and U.S. politics, and Katrina. With poetry."
But, as you know, you should be reading this blog already.

Yes: "I’m half inclined to say there should be neither truth nor reconciliation. Instead, George W. Bush should be kidnapped, drugged, flown to Spain in an unmarked plane, and wake up on the streets of Madrid tied up with a bunch of files and evidence pinned to his chest so Judge Garzón can sort the whole thing out. If anyone asks how that happened, deny knowledge and mention “executive privilege.” "

2004 profile of Rashid Khalidi.

The worst-case scenario.

I got _two_ copies.

A sterling example of how NOT to do social network analysis: as illustrated by the idiots setting our policy for the last eight years.

Scott McLemee vivisects Bernard-Henri Levy. I am at a loss as to why anyone takes the latter seriously, but he has at least provided an opportunity for this demonstration of McLemee's skill.

Only GYWO and the Medium Lobster are adequate chroniclers of our times; and the Medium Lobster is not available in print form.

Aaronsw on Galbraith junior.

Just read it.

"Reform is hard. Promoting reform is harder. Promoting reform in the name of cheap oil and military domination is almost certainly impossible."

It is, in fact, a really good speech.

Of Bush: "May his war-crimes prosecutor be Iraqi; may his judge be American; and may he die in the Hague."