Late comments on “Triage” and the CNAS Conference

The Center for a New American Security held its annual conference last Thursday at the Willard Hotel. The event featured GEN Petraeus as the morning keynote speaker, followed by a series of panels related to the rollout of several new policy papers. The one I’m most interested in, pretty obviously, is Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Andrew Exum, Nate Fick, Ahmed Humayun, and Dave Kilcullen. Fick and Ex participated in a panel discussion — moderated by the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, LTG (ret) David Barno — alongside noted counterinsurgency skeptic Andrew Bacevich and COL Chris Cavoli, who commanded a battalion of the 10th Mountain in RC-East in 2006-07.

Sour grapes and finger-pointing on Mexico, brought to you by the NYT

Today’s New York Times plays host to an opinion piece from Mexican historian Enrique Krauze — who, for what it’s worth, was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals in 2008 — entitled “The Mexican Evolution.”  Krauze’s message can be boiled down into a pretty simple summary, so if you’ll indulge me:

1) Mexico is not a failed or failing state

2) There’s a lot of good stuff about Mexico

3) Mexico has dealt with trouble in the past and come out stronger

4) Most of Mexico’s problems are other people’s fault, anyway

5) If you guys didn’t complain so much, there wouldn’t be a problem

6) We could take care of all this mess just by imposing some very sensible restrictions on freedom of the press…

7) …and by giving everyone their own flying unicorn!

A cause in Afghanistan that’s worth your cash

I am the biggest sucker in the world. I should say this up front. Yesterday some punky kid from the eco-terrorist outfit Greenpeace (ha, just kidding… mostly) came to the door with a petition and a poorly-memorized schpiel. He’s going on and on about how we need to stop environmental degradation and the U.S. is a world leader and now we’ve got a president who will do something and we have to DEMAND that Congress take action; meanwhile I’ve got a thought bubble coming out of my head with Totino’s pizza rolls in it and the kid sounds mostly like the teacher from Charlie Brown. But I signed his petition. Why? Mostly to get him out of my face. And also because I thought it would get me off the hook from giving money.