Category Archives: Security

History, Security

Iraq Security Continues to Decline

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The BBC does not mince words with this report. Clearly the Bush administration policies are turning out to be little more than hot air, leaving Iraq a more dangerous place and feeding anti-American sentiments. Since Bush and his team have systematically removed anyone who disagreed with their view of progress (Powell, Garner, etc.) they ultimately have no one left to blame for their failures:

The next stage involves plans to build trenches around Baghdad to make it harder for insurgents and militia groups to get themselves and supplies in.

But no-one believes such a huge city can be sealed off.

And this operation also means the Americans are more exposed to attack. At least 15 soldiers and marines have been killed since Saturday, most in the Baghdad area.

In Washington, much has been made of Bob Woodward’s statements that there are now 800-900 attacks a week.

In fact, such figures were already public.The Washington-based think tank the Brookings Institution has published such statistics on its Iraq Index for some time.

The debate here is not over statistics or how bad things are. It is what to do about it before it is too late.

The answers seem to be running out.

Newsweek’s “State of Denial” covers more of the internal machinations of Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney and Bush as they struggle to shirk accountability:

Indirection? Two or three steps removed? It was inexplicable. Rumsfeld had spent so much time insisting on the chain of command. He was in control; not the Joint Chiefs, not the uniformed military, not the National Security Council or the NSC staff, not the critics or the opiners. How could he not see his role and responsibility?

In a 2004 interview, Garner referred to a relativistic policy “template”:

PALAST:
Garner says his desire for quick elections conflicted with the Bush administration’s economic timetable. Even as they battled to put out oilfield fires, Washington pushed a timetable for privatising oil and other industries.

GARNER:
I think we as Americans – and this isn’t sepia – just we as Americans we tend to like to put our template on things, and our template is good for us, but it is not necessarily good for everybody else. TE Lawrence has a great saying – I wish I could repeat it exactly, I can’t, but it goes something like this: “It is better for them to do it imperfectly than for us to do it for them perfectly because in the end this is their country and you won’t be here very long.” I think that’s good advice.

PALAST:
While Iraqis worried about power and water, Washington’s concern was that Garner impose an elaborate plan to redesign Iraq’s economy on a radical free market model.

Bush put his template on Iraq, and Rumsfeld and Cheney made sure it was his and only his template that would be used. So how can they say today that someone else designed it or that it was not their idea to smash down the square peg of free market economics into a round hole of Iraqi political and social stability?

It is so terribly tragic that the administration’s idea of a free market apparently assumed that security costs would be negligible. Someone completely missed the fact that destruction of essential public services not only creates opportunity for development but even more so for the opposite; far more cost-effective destructive forces (fueled by unguarded stockpiles of weapons), which the US can now scarcely afford to compete with. It seems obvious, but the Bush administration clearly did not appreciate how dangerous it is to remove all the safeguards and structure from a society when you have not figured out a reliable way to prevent exploitation and opportunism by forces other than those you can control.

PALAST:
One year on, the General still worries about the cost of putting economic programmes before democratic elections.

GARNER:
I’m a believer that you don’t want to end the day with more enemies than you started with.

Energy, Sailing, Security

Cruising with diesel-hybrid boats

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While researching sailboats with the latest diesel-hybrid technology, I noticed an interesting question on a Magnet DC manufacturer’s message board:

Do you produce motors, and systems large enough to provide power for a catamaran boat of 40 X 28 foot, and what speed could this achieve.

Looking for a Diesel electric propulsion system to achive +- 12 knots to sruise the Indonesian Islands

The answer was not only yes, but they gave a suggestion to check out the current MW Line boats, which are solar-electric:

The running costs are 20 to 45 times less important than for the equivalent powered motor boat.

Add a sail and you have some incredible speed/comfort/sustainability. I suspect that these advances also make a navy nervous, given the applicability of the technology (silent, odorless, less supply required) to everything from submarines to zodiacs.

Security

Nigerian taxi ban hits commuters

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The BBC reports that the capital city of Nigeria has banned the use of motorcycles for taxis:

The high profile minister in charge of the city of three million, Nasir el-Rufai, has cracked down on the motorbikes for two main reasons, he says.

Accident rates involving motorbike taxis are very high and the authorities have also become increasingly frustrated with the number of motorcycles being used as getaway vehicles in armed robberies across the city.

The decision has angered many who considered the motorcycle taxis worth the risks that are cited by the government:

A frustrated Adamu Mohammadu, waiting for a minibus at an Abuja street corner, complained there had been no consultations before the ban was announced.

“If you want me to appreciate that type of decision, carry me along; seek my view before you decide on my behalf. If they are really protecting my interest, they should return those okada boys to the streets,” he said.

First, this is undoubtedly due to the externality of the accidents and robberies. If the frequency of these two are not sufficiently high to be a worry to the average commuter then they should not be expected to automatically be sympathetic to a regulation that has a clear downside. Second, the giant increase in demand for other forms of public transportation has not been handled well, causing further slow-downs and spike in prices.

This is an excellent example of how trying to reduce one type of risk can ultimately lead to an increase in others, as well as the difficulty in generating support for addressing external risks (e.g. someone else in an accident or robbery). And so I am certain many people in Nigeria will ask whether the frequency/severity of the accidents and robberies (and insurance or other costs?) will decline enough to offset the frequency/severity of inconvenience to commuting without motorcycle taxis.

Perhaps rather than an outright ban (preventive measure), the government should have sought less intrusive strict regulation of identity and licenses or even partnered with the private sector to require a higher-level of insurance (detective measure). If nothing else, they certainly should have better anticipated the economic and social fall-out from blocking a heavily used form of transportation.

History, Poetry, Security

My Country Awake

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A poem by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941):

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

I get stuck somewhere on the “desert dand of dead habit” as I see sand contantly changing and evolving while a stream is burdened by following a familiar path (thus it is a stream, rather than a sea or ocean). Heraclitus would probably disagree, though, as he said you can never step into the same stream twice; it, and you, have undergone countless changes.

Incidentally, I also found a site where you can hear and/or watch actor Martin Sheen read it aloud, “at a rally for Appalachia in Athens County, Ohio”. Sheen does a fine job with this politically charged commentary on political security, but something tells me he is slightly off the poet-to-poem connection. Maybe Sheen would have been more suited for a more self-reflective theme like Shatner’s “Has Been” collection.