Bill Clinton NYT mag interview

Peter Baker has a long story/interview about Bill Clinton in this week's NYT  magazine. It's a interesting and fair-minded portrayal of the former president and seems to show that he's begun to accept life as a former president and that the effects of last year's campaign (where he seemed to run the risk of ruining his legacy in the eyes of many dems) are over. Instead, he's dedicated himself fully to his foundation, has stayed largely out of the public eye and, while he's never shy in front of the camera, doesn't seem to need the constant attention anymore.

One of the more interesting sections of the article is Clinton's self-criticism about his role in the financial crisis. While he does argue that many of the Republican's claims about his responsibility are insance, he does take responsiblity for the things he thinks he missed. In particular, he wishes he'd had more foresight on derivatives (though, I wonder who doesn't wish anyone had had more foresight there) and to a lesser extent regrets the repeal of the Glass-Stegal Act, though he argues if the SEC had done its job, that wouldn't have mattered as much. It's an interesting read and seems to capture the 42nd President very well.

Does Iran really want nuclear weapons?

Fareed Zakaria has an interesting opinion piece in Newsweek this week
arguing that the real powers-that-be in Iran have been fairly
anti-nuclear weapon for years and that reversing now could have
seriously repercussions for their religious legitimacy. This is largely
because in the past they've phrased anti-nuke rhetoric in extremely
Islamic language--language it's not easy just to forget or move past.
Check out this line from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, given in a sermon in 2004:

"developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam."

It's pretty tough language to walk back and, as Zakaria points out, it would be pretty odd for a regime that claims legitimacy based on its fidelity to Islam to want to develop nuclear weapons even as it argues that they are un-Islamic. Just on the face if it, it's pretty terrible PR, something Iranians have tended to be pretty good at.

Just by airing this viewpoint the article raises a fascinating point about the perspective most Americans approach this issue with. We are trained by the media, our own government and other external actors (no names given) to see the Iranian regime as a suicide cult of death merchants. It couldn't be farther from the truth but that narrative never gets challenged. Thus, while Zakaria's article will probably shock a lot of the America audience, the real surprise should be how uninformed the American people and officials are about Iran and its leadership.

Waterboarding transcripts

The Atlantic's Jonathan Bines somehow got a hold of the very, very top secret CIA's transcripts of Abu Zubayday's 83 waterboardings. They make for a hilarious read....personally, my favorite entries are 5 and 6:

5. You can’t do this! Show me the authorization for you to do this!

6. Wow. O.K., technically, you can do this. Although the quality of the legal work in these memos is shoddy at …

NYC/London still the top finance centers

The ranking of world financial centers came out recently and while it's not full of surprises, it is interesting to see the change in ratings since last year. The top two, London and NYC, fell 10 and 6 points respectively but the cities just below them, including Singapore, HK and Zurich fell an average of 15 points. Other cities farther down the list suffered as well, but the only one to have fallen badly in terms of rank is Tokyo, going from 7 last year to just 15. Shanghai still doesn't make the top 20, but perhaps over time it will continue to steal some growth from HK and push its way up the list.

GOP continuing to lose ground

This news is about a week old, but is worth flagging nonetheless. A new Gallup poll was released showing Republican party identification down in virtually every group since 2001. Some declines are sharper than others, college grads dropped 10%, non-graduates only 3, but it is a pretty depressing graph for those trying to push for a Republican renaissance.

Metro maps

Most subway or metro maps match up pretty horrendously with the actual city around them. Think of the London tube map: a complete misrepresentation of the above ground city in order to make it easier to understand. The same can be said of the NYC subway and, to a lesser extent, the DC metro. This set of illustrations of 15 or so major cities' metro networks done to scale is a pretty interesting comparison. It's the type of thing that forces a rethinking about how extensive the best metro systems are. Paris, for instance, has one of the best metros, but its system covers an incredibly small area. LA is the reverse, as Philadephia. Of course, not all systems can be as large or as extensive as the Tube or Seoul metro, but it's worth looking at the differences in metro-system size between cities that invest in public transportation and those that don't.

Quote of the day

Christopher Buckley has posted his Yale commencement speech and it's worth reading albeit slightly self-important sounding. But it did contain this gem:

I never thought I’d be looking back on the Cold War with nostalgia.

Life used to imitate John le Carré novels. Now it imitates Tom Clancy novels. As an English major, I’m not sure this represents progress.

Broadway Pedestrianized?

Via Felix Salmon it appears that part of Broadway, between 47th and 52nd, is going to be closed to traffic and walkways, grass, plants etc installed to make a pedestrian zone. If the pilot project is a success, it could be expanded to include larger and larger chunks of the major avenue until, quite possible, the entirety of Broadway could be a park!

The project is the brainchild of Janette Sadik-Khan, the city's transportation commissioner and it is hoped that shutting down some of the busiest portions of Broadway will both improve the area's tourist and retail appeal while at the same time reducing accidents around some of the city's most dangerous traffic intersections. From an urban-planning perspective it's a fantastic concept, one that will open up a large chunk of midtown to pedestrians while encouraging public transportation. As the NY mag article says, wouldn't it be amazing if New York ended up with two major parks? One as old as the city, the other a 21st century innovation?

Update: Check out this NYT slideshow of Broadway having undergone the change

Harry Reid's tough life

Gail Collins had a great op-ed over the weekend detailing life as Harry Reid--and all the joy he must be having with a uncooperative yet, at least in the media's mind, invincible majority. Reid gets a lot of criticism and much of it is generally deserved, but it is worth bearing in mind the fairly raw hand he's been dealt and the uncooperative senators he has to wrangle into line.

What Rumsfeld Wrought

For anyone who hasn't seen it I highly recommend Robert Draper's excellent GQ article on Donald Rumsfeld. It's an insiders account with narratives from several, albeit anonymous, former White House and Pentagon staffers of Rumsfeld actions during his tenure as a SecDef. The stonewalling, the obfuscation, the refusal to engage with anyone he didn't like. Interesting stuff, terrifying how long he lasted.

Wolfram Alpha

The next generation of search engines is one the horizon and the first one it its class is WolframAlpha. Unlike a typical search engine which simply provides links to information, WolframAlpha actually gives you hard data related to your search. Type in NYC population and up pops demographic information and historical trends. It's still limited (it doesn't recognize a lot of more complex searches) but it halves the online distance one needs to go to get information. Well worth keeping an eye one and following as it develops.

h/t Ezra Klein, now at his fancy new spot at the Post

Tom Ricks on FDL

The author of the Gamble held an online Q&A session on Firedoglake yesterday. It's here for those of you who watched the basketball instead! Hosted by Spencer Ackerman it didn't suffer from too many idiotic rants/questions but instead raised some interesting points on both the surge and, more relevant to today, the question of whether the Pakistani police are up to the challenges of COIN, especially as it's becoming clear the military isn't pulling its weight.

McKiernan Out, McChrsytal in

Fred Kaplan continues his string of great articles with a very good explanation of the motives behind the leadership shakeup in Afghanistan and how it will play out. Well worth the read.

Bringing in a new set of brains (and General McChrystal and his deputy General David Rodriguez have two of the best) is certainly not a bad thing to do. And it would appear that McChrystal has an affinity and knowledge of small wars that McKiernan simply lacked. However, a change in leadership is not a substitute for a strategy and so in the coming weeks it will be important to look for concrete changes at the national and regional level in how US and Coalition forces are reshaping the focus on counternarcotics assignments, roadbuilding and other infrastructure projects, and whether they are utilizing tried and true population-centric COIN tactics. If that's the case, then perhaps attacks will go up, like in Iraq, for a while, but by the end of the year progress will have been made.

100 days

The fuss over Obama's first 100 days has been pretty ridiculous. It does, however, give me an excuse to link, albeit belatedly to this great version done as a facebook feed.

Catch-up

It's been a while, but while I've been attempting to study more and spend a bit more time reading foundational COIN texts a multitude of interesting articles have sprung up. Here's what I've been reading in no particular order:

--Al Qaeda has a new recruitment manual designed to provide recruiters with techniques for attracting new members and tips for recognizing the best potential extremists.

--Two articles on torture and why it was such a terrible misstep (not to mention morally repugnant) in the fight against Islamic extremism. First, an interview in Time with Ali Soufan, the FBI interrogater who just testified on Capitol Hill (and profiled fascinatingly in the New Yorker), and second, a NYT op-ed by Philip Zelikow on the problems with torture's utility.

--From Foreign Affairs, what to read on American Primacy--and while we're on book lists, Abu M has updated his COIN list.

--West Point leading the way on cyber-defense. Great article on what will surely become ever more vital to American security: protection of the computer systems our government and society are based on.