I give up. For many years I have been looking for a grand unified theory of persuasion or at least of public affairs. I have read hundreds of books about the subject and thousands of articles. I have listened carefully to skilled practitioners and tried a lot of things out for myself. I have achieved success, suffered failure and tried to apply the lessons of each. I have looked for the pattern; inferred the pattern and imposed a pattern where none really existed. But the long search has reached a dead end … and an insight. (The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.)
Below is the Library of Congress. There are several other buildings which together contain the accumulated knowledge of humanity. All you have to do is look for it.
I could not find a grand unified theory of persuasion and public affairs because none exists. I have to be content with tactical success and experimentation. The best strategy is to follow up and double down where things work and abandon failure as quickly and cleanly as possible.
An organization that can do this is not omniscient; it is robust and opportunistic. Inan uncertain world, we are always playing the probabilities. It is a world where the best plan might fail and the worst succeed, but in the course of repeated tries and many actions, the better ones make progress. It is an evolutionarysystem that unfolds through iterations; the truth is revealed conditionally and gradually. It cannot be choreographed in advance.
I remain a believer in truth and in seeking truth. It is just that I do not believe that we humans have the capacity to find the big truths. Actually, I am not giving up the search, but I am switching methods. Repeated inquiry and intelligent analysis of both process and results will bring us to an approximation of practical truth, wrong in many details but useful for decision making in the situations for which it was developed.
You don’t need to know the whole truth to know what to do. We have to walk the line between recklessness and paralysis. At some point we know enough to jump. That point comes when we estimate the probabilities are good enough – not perfect, but good enough – when the probable outcome of doing something is better than waiting. We will be wrong a lot. We need to be robust because omniscience, or even understanding most things, is not an option available to mortal man. We are always wrong to some extent.
“Often wrong, but never in doubt.”
That is how they described MBAs when I was at the University of Minnesota B-school. It was meant pejoratively, but it is not a bad strategy. If you more likely to be right than wrong and the rewards of success are significant while the cost of failure is not catastrophic, the smart decision is just do it. If it works, do it again and improve it. If it doesn’t work, figure out why and do something better.
Just because you don’t have a detailed plan doesn’t mean you don’t have a plan. Often the best plan is the structure of the choice architecture in the organization itself. Giving people a broad goal in an organization structured to take advantage of opportunity and can learn from experience is the best plan you can have in a changing world. After it works, you can take credit for prescience if taking credit is important to you.
Ask the guy in the kayak about his precise plan before he hits the white water around the bend. It is better to know you can adapt to what will come than to develop a bogus detailed strategy for everything that could be on the way.
Mobile devices, such as cell phones, notebook computers and even hand-held games, may soon be the way most people get their news and information and become their primary way of accessing the Internet. We have to be there too. Some places may bypass conventional computers altogether (much like cellular technology bypassed land-lines), especially as more and more features are added to mobile devices. Cell phones now come bundled with still and/or video cameras, global positioning systems and sophisticated computing capabilities. Mobile devices fundamentally change people’s relationship to information because they are available any time and almost anywhere. Mobile devices allow individuals to report what they see on the spot, along with pictures and connections. User created content has essentially made individuals into media.
Above is the hall of the new visitors’ center at the Capitol. It took them years longer and a lot more money. The guard told me that they had to reinforce all the doors and walls to make them more resilient in case of terrorism. This extra precaution costs us billions, but you gotta have it.
Experts from private industry traded experience with veteran public diplomacy officers when International Information Programs (IIP) and the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) explored innovative and imaginative new ways to leverage mobile technologies for public diplomacy during a conference held at NFATC on February 19.
It quickly became clear that mobile media, despite all the highfalutin hoopla, is just another part of the new media environment. Several of the speakers emphasized the necessity of flexibility in the uncertain and protean world of the new media. The new media is more fluid, fragmented, decentralized and personalized than more traditional media. This creates challenges and opportunities for public diplomacy as well as for the traditional way we deliver messages at State Department.
Hearing the experts at the conference talk about exciting new communications technologies and even more coming soon, it also became clear that changes in new media environment are coming at an accelerating rate. We have already seen some of yesterday’s most promising stars become today’s dinosaurs. There is no reason to think this will be any different tomorrow, so it is silly and to try to pick winners among the new media. Besides, we don’t have to. We have an “all of the above” option. What we have to do is experiment, recognizing that many will fail, but we will learn from the experiments that fail and that even those that succeed will work in unexpected ways requiring flexible responses. The new media allows us to be flexible and being flexible means that we don’t choose “the best.” Instead we try all appropriate methods, choosing the mix of media tools we think will work best for particular tasks. We must use technology but not get beguiled by it, remembering that communication is the destination and the technology merely the vehicle we use to get there. The mix will usually involve the newest technology used in the latest ways, but it will just as often include simple proven techniques such as personal visits. Remember, we have the “all of the above” option. Those are some of the lessons I learned at the conference.
Through all the changes in technologies, Edward R. Murrow’s famous observation remains true, “The really crucial link in the international communication chain is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another.” My colleagues and I at IIP understand that but we also know that we need to use all available and appropriate technologies to get within communication range.
I was happy to be able to attend this conference on mobile communications and proud that IIP is looking forward to the future, as demonstrated by its organizing this sort of meeting. State Department is indeed using a variety of media to carry out its public diplomacy. My colleagues at IIP are using twitter, Facebook, webchats, webcasts, podcasts, Youtube, digital video, blogs, online gaming and various mobile technologies to complement our more traditional Internet, speakers, outreach and publications. Colleagues in other parts of State Department are also making innovations that harness the talents of State’s professionals. It is an exciting time to work in public diplomacy.
I went to see the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It is not as good, IMO, as the old Bond movies because Bond has lost his edge, or more correctly, the rest of us have caught up. In one scene, Bond calls back to his HQ for a name check. After a couple seconds, the super spy commuter comes up with a picture of the miscreant. Very impressive, but you or I could come up with the same result on Google Images in around 0.9 seconds. Bond would have been better off just using his I-Phone himself. This is the new world of communications.
Web 2.0/PD 2.0
Initial use of the web for public diplomacy and strategic communications involved online versions of familiar delivery methods, such as magazines, radio and television. Despite vast differences among them, all these shared the paradigm of one-way communications, where a set message was delivered to a passive audience in a one speaker to many recipients model. It ignored the web’s special capacity for interaction. Web 2.0 refers to the way the web has changed the nature of communications, making it interactive, more fluid and less centrally organized. Last year, Internet passed newspapers as a source of news in the U.S. For young people Internet is beginning to rival television. [1] This new world can make many people in governments or powerful institutions uncomfortable, since it signals a diminution of their power over information and a dilution of their messages.
We tend to focus on the instant communication aspect of the Internet, but the sinews of its influence are its capacity to find, sort and distribute information. Powerful search engines give individuals the power enjoyed only by world leaders few decades ago and before that time by nobody at all. Governments have lost what monopolies they once enjoyed and are now sometimes not even the most prominent voices. Controlling information is no longer possible. On the other hand, there is a greater opportunity for engagement to harness the power of the nation and the wisdom of the crowds to produce better and more robust products. There is no option of ignoring the development. Internet users demand a degree of interactivity and accept a measure of ambiguity unpredicted a decade ago. These trends will accelerate as the first generation of digital natives (i.e. kids who don’t remember a world w/o Internet) has reached adulthood. This is the new world of communications. Whether we are ready or not, the future has already arrived.
Interactivity and interrelations
The two concepts to keep in mind are interactivity and interrelatedness. The first concept is more obvious but the second is more pervasive. Internet users ostensibly love the possibility of interactivity, but most don’t use it to an extent commensurate with their stated preferences. On any blog, there are dozens, hundreds or thousands of “lurkers” for every active participant. On the other hand, interrelatedness represents the fundamental power of the Internet and its search engines. It is the interrelatedness – the unexpected relationships – that makes the Internet such a wonderful and terrible place to do public affairs. Some say the web provides a venue for the best and the brightest to share ideas w/o the constraints of status or station; others contend it is a place where peculiar people congregate to accrete one dumb notion on top of another. Both points of view are correct. The medium of free and often anonymous exchange produces the best and the worst as it emphasizes people on the long tails of the normal distribution.
Mass customization
The ubiquity and interactive aspects of Web 2.0 offer public diplomacy the possibility of direct engagement with thousands of individuals on a global scale. We can bypass the state run media and the various despotic gatekeepers that have long hounded the quest for truth & knowledge. In the exchange, however, we get a world of constant change, requiring flexibility and creativity, where you have to earn attention again and again every day. The interactivity means just what the word says. When we are trying to influence others, we need to open the possibility of being influenced by them. In a free marketplace of ideas, this would be all to the good. It would produce a synergy greater than the sum of the parts. The caveat is that this marketplace of ideas is not as free and open as it would appear.
Our own presence in the mix is the first sign of a constrained freedom. Although our opponents disagree, our activities are generally benign and broadly truthful. The USG is constrained to tell the truth by its own rules as well as the continual monitoring by our own free media, interests groups and political leaders in opposition. For the most part, we are probably too timid in the defense of our positions. Not so our adversaries. Most of them are heavy handed and incompetent peddlers of web influence, but there are so many out there that some get it right sometimes and others get it right a lot. When it works for them, their campaign is based on plausible lies, ones that play to stereotypes and prejudice, and often based on caricatures and exaggerations of our own real and verifiable mistakes and missteps. In a world where significant numbers of people doubt that there was ever a moon landing and where in communities where majorities don’t think Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, conspiracy theories go a long way. And the U.S. is probably the single biggest victim of conspiracy theories. In a world often driven by dispersed impersonal forces, people look for someone to blame. The U.S. is always there for that purpose.
Countering conspiracy theories with facts and information is futile. Most conspiracy theories have a built in defense against such quaint ideas as truth or fact. They are, after all based on “hidden,” “denied,” “secret,” or “occult” information. True believers in conspiracies derive significant personal status and feelings of self worth from the idea that they know things overlooked by or kept from the masses of people. It is a true Gnosticism. As they see it, any counter arguments are merely examples of clever attempts to discredit them. We have to recognize that some people are incurable conspiracy theory believers. Others are susceptible to the contagion, but can be cured, but through relationships, not information alone. A trusted and credible source of the information is what makes the difference. Web 2.0 provides the opportunity to create such relationships.
In a New World Where Nobody is Well-Loved
We also need to recognize that the constant vetting and finding of flaws, even when done honestly, will create a permanent state of dissatisfaction among large numbers of people. This is what happens when campaigns go negative and it is just easier to go negative than to defend a positive position. The U.S., as the most ubiquitous presence in the history of the world, will naturally come under the most scrutiny, fair and foul, but it is a general trend that affects everybody. The good new in this is that it applies to our adversaries as well as to ourselves. Al Qaeda’s popularity has also plummeted in recent years among Muslims, for example. [2]
Insiders & Outsiders
Internet 2.0 will strengthen “tribes” as people can go online to find others with whom they identify even across great geographical distances. (Of course, the tribes I am not talking about are not kinship of linage, but kinship of ideas.) This may lead to greater trust within groups, as they become more uniform and homogeneous, but also lead to a general decline in tolerance overall, since most people will be out-groups to any particular in groups. Early hopes that Internet would weave the world together in a kind of cyber age of Aquarius have been dashed against the reality of self-selection and segregation. In a mass information market, differing viewpoints must be tolerated, not so in the case of core groups of believers autoerotically communicating among themselves on the Internet. Where websites and blogs are most developed, disagreements have become sharper and more venomous. However, the impersonal/personalization of web interactions allows people with very divergent views to coexist and performs mutually beneficial transactions that would be impossible in a face-to-face world. General “approval ratings” have already become more transactional and unstable, making it even more important to discount what people tell opinion pollsters and watch what they do and get an idea of their true beliefs by their revealed preferences.
Public diplomacy and the marketing mix
The analogy of public diplomacy with marketing is far from perfect, but it provides some useful insights. When marketing a product or service, you have to understand which communications techniques are appropriate. Those useful for selling Coca-Cola are often not valuable for selling passenger jets or legal services. The same goes for public diplomacy. Our business is more analogous to selling high end legal services than consumer products. This informs and constrains our choices.
Public diplomacy involves communicating complicated concepts to people who come from a variety of backgrounds and the U.S. operates in a truly global environment. It involves long term relationship and trust building. Messages are more problematic. Some of our world audiences will react in sometimes violently different ways to the same subject. Imagine the discussion of U.S. attitudes toward same sex marriage at venues in Amsterdam and Jeddah. Aspects of the discussion popular in one venue would be odious in the other. In this interconnected world, messages cannot be neatly targeted to a discrete audience. Even more challenging is that the more extreme members of each audience will seize on the aspects they find most objectionable rather than look for areas of compatibility. This has long been a problem, but web 2.0 exacerbates it, since one blogger in an audience of hundreds can characterize a discussion for thousands of his compatriots back home.
In other words, web 2.0 has as much or more capacity to puncture and disassemble public diplomacy messages as it does to deliver them. The shorter the attention spans media, the more likely this is to be the case. Twitter with its 140 character limit is a good example. We have used Twitter successfully to send short messages and a give a “heads up” about bigger things, but it doesn’t easily lend itself to any proactive public affairs task beyond notices and reporting the equivalent of scores or stock averages. One the other hand, 140 characters is plenty of space for a slogan or attack. BTW – the last two sentences of the paragraph above had 327 characters counting spaces. These two directly above are 140 characters – exactly the right size for a tweet. Good luck with deep explanations.
So what do we do?
We look beyond or through the technology to our purpose. You cannot answer the how question until you have address they why question. Communication and relationship building is our goal. Rather than be beguiled or intimidated by technology, we simply need to keep our focus on the goal and use whatever technological tools are most appropriate. But we do need to acknowledge that changing technologies have changed the game.
Common themes not unified messages
There is much talk in public affairs about having a unified message. The new technologies, with all the links and leaks they entail in the information net, mean we can no longer have one unified centrally crafted message. We can have themes and goals that are interpreted and alerted by the individuals on the ground and closest to the challenges. We will, however, need to tolerate significant local variations on the themes and welcome the ambiguity of message delivery.
Delivering variations on the themes is much more labor intensive than cranking out a single message because rather than one voice speaking to millions (on the model of the national television program) we will have many voices speaking to thousands or maybe even to hundreds and not only varying the theme to suit particular audiences, but also responding to them and quickly responsive to changes in the environment. It is important that the theme be consistent but the delivery is protean. It requires more of a robust process than a comprehensive plan.
Set the Proper Goals for Each Situation
There are many degrees of distinction between active opposition and enthusiastic support. Americans are particularly afflicted by the desire to be loved in the world, but all that is often required is compliance or even indifference. Although outright opposition constrains our policy options, America’s image in the world has no discernible impact on the sale of U.S. goods or the acceptance of U.S. cultural products. Much of the sound and fury of anti-American prejudice signifies nothing or not very much. The fragmentation of media on the web means that those who dislike us will always have an outlet for their vitriol and they will probably be among those yelping the loudest. The majority may not have a strong opinion on a particular issue. They may voice support for our opponents, but take no steps to provide anything practical.
Military action, which by its very nature is coercive, will almost never be popular and any exercise of power, which inevitably means choosing among priorities, will annoy somebody. Since you usually get less credit for the good things you do than blame for the bad, any use of power will probably create more perceived losers than winners. (The world’s superpower is always on the hot seat. President Clinton gets blamed for not sending troops to Rwanda; President Bush is excoriated for sending troops to Iraq.) Lack of practical support for extremism and neutrality or even indifference toward our policies among the mass of a country’s people may be sufficient to accomplish our purposes. Often neutralizing or discrediting opposition will be the most appropriate tact, and Internet is well suited to this task. We should consider this on a case-by-case basis, rather than compromise practical goals by pursuing the chimera of seeking full throated outright approval.
All of the above
Using technology to communicate will be an all of the above proposition, with a cocktail of technologies usually more appropriate than reliance on any one. We will never find the Holy Grail or silver bullet of communications technology and we will never again have anything comparable to the nationwide television network where everybody is watching at the same time. The ability to reach the whole nation was a historical anomaly. Throughout most of history and in the future, the communication environment was and will be fractured. It is only because we all grew up in that unusually homogeneous media environment that we think of it as normal in any way.
The right tools
We cannot prescribe the particular technological tools for any public affairs task until we have assessed the task and the environment. What we should be looking for is synergy among the tools. For example, a live speaker is very compelling but not particularly memorable, while an internet page has the built in memory (you can refer back to it) but is unlikely to be compelling. Twitter can announce the availability of some piece of information or some event, but it cannot explain the nuances. An event might be very informative, but nobody comes unless they can be told and reminded. Obviously a combination of technologies works best, changing them to adapt to circumstances. BTW – technology is not only high tech or electronic. A technology is merely a way of doing something. A personal meeting is a kind of technology. Sometime the thousands year old technology is the way to go. We seek the right MIX of technologies, not the right ONE technology. There is no silver bullet or Holy Grail of communications. It is easy to be beguiled by the new or the latest big thing, but technology is not communication and the medium is not the message. It is only the method.
Other information is based on personal interviews with those doing public diplomacy as well as extensive personal experience working with USG webpages and blogs.
Below is a giant typewriter eraser in the National Gallery Sculpture Garden. Kids don’t know what this is. They never touched a typewriter.
I have been thinking re public affairs strategies. New studies about public affairs are coming out all the time. Heritage just published one and Brookings will release one tomorrow. There are at least thirty official or authoritative studies done since 9/11/2001. I know because I have read many of them. They come to similar conclusions, but still nothing much seems to work.
In Public Diplomacy Relationships Trump Information
The proliferation of media sources and the rise of the Internet have made information almost free to anybody who can use has a computer and can use a search engine. In this situation, influence becomes more a matter of relationships than of actual facts, figures and reports. The trusting relationships people have developed with individuals and media providers are the source of the influence, not the information itself.
Despite the ubiquity of general information, usable information sometimes is missing. Bloggers and other new media players are in need of content that they can use w/o copyright or based on creative commons copyright provisions. We should provide this material in easy to “steal” chunks. Pictures and video would be especially useful.
Below are American elms outside the American Indian Museum. They are Princeton variety, immune to Dutch elm disease that wiped the beautiful elms off our city streets in the 1960s and 1970s. Soon we will have a restoration.
We can draw on an analogy from an earlier crisis in American public diplomacy when we faced strenuous and vitriolic opposition to the proposed deployment of U.S. Pershing intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe in the 1980s to counter Soviet SS-20s. More protestors hit the streets to voice their opposition to our policies in those days than came out against our Iraq activities more recently.
Our action came in response to a Soviet threat, but much of the European media treated it as an American aggression. One of the things they did consistently was to show picture of American Pershing missiles, instead of the Soviet SS-20s that had provoked the crisis in the first place.
Through their contacts, American public diplomacy officers in Europe learned that one of the reasons for this imbalance was simply that many media outlets had pictures of the American weapons but they just didn’t have any of SS-20s. Soviets were not a forthcoming with such things. U.S. officials remedied the problem by providing good quality pictures of the Soviet missiles that helped level the playing field.
Below is Smithsonian Mall. The pictures, BTW, are just ones I took this morning. They are not related to the article text, but they are nice, right? I have a really nice walk to work.
This example is instructive in several ways. Most important, it shows that a sound policy can be implemented in the face of vocal opposition. What passed for public opinion in this crisis was wrong, but it didn’t seem so clear at the time. It also shows how some big problems may have an easy to implement solutions and how we should not attribute to malice what may result from mere indolence, ignorance of a simple lack of proper materials. But the deeper lesson is that this example indicates the importance of relationships, being near the customers and understanding their needs. Our PD people would not have correctly diagnosed the problem w/o close contact with the people providing the information and they would not have been able to remedy the situation had they not already built a network of trusting local contacts that could & would help.
We could get by with a little help from our friends. Unfortunately, as I wrote in a previous post, we wantonly destroyed our networks during the 1990s.
Above is the old post office building.
I will write more on this subject over the next weeks.
We speak with awe or scorn about spin. But ask yourself this. If spin is so effective, how come you and (almost everybody else) can see it? There is much more to public affairs than information or even persuasion. Public affairs is relationships. Relationships are what we stupidly threw away during the 1990s. We fell into a type of historical amnesia during the 1990s. It we chased a dream, a chimera. The fall of communism made most people in the west think that we had finished – and won – a hard race. Now we could rest. All those soldiers could come home. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, just a little late. Harmony and understanding would certainly follow.
I need to digress. Americans have always been interested in public opinion. Our Declaration of Independence talks about a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, but we learned the importance of information policy in the modern sense in the time before WWII. The Nazis were good at persuasion. (Many of the anti-free market, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitic themes are still used today.) In the 1930s, they were making significant public affairs gains in Latin America by exploiting latent anti-Americanism and taking advantage of ethnic loyalties and spreading money around. (Hugo Chavez is following the precedent.) Many 1930s era public buildings in Latin America originally had plaques expressing gratitude to the 3rd Reich because they paid for the construction.The U.S. responded with its own public diplomacy. On the ground, that meant establishing libraries and bi-national centers that taught English and carried American culture, encouraging exchanges and making cartoons. Yes. Look at the Disney Classic the Three Caballeros. Donald Duck was the most popular American south of the border.
During the war, we made more movies and worked hard to win the war of ideas. I will not go into details. Suffice to say, we won. It certainly didn’t hurt that allied forces occupied Germany & Japan, however. Winning hearts and minds often follows the practical victory, not precedes it. The golden age of public diplomacy came during the Cold War. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were effective alternative media for those countries trapped behind the Iron Curtain. The government also created the United States Information Agency (USIA) to carry out a broad range of information programs. Republican and Democratic Administrations supported this. USIA’s most famous director was Edward R. Murrow. Murrow knew the power of radio and television, but he also understood the need for relationships. He said that we can beam information hundreds of miles, but to get the message across we needed to get that last three feet and that took personal contact.
The Reagan era represented the last bright flash for U.S. public diplomacy. Reagan understood the need and various programs were well funded. Reagan himself was a great spokesman. His policies were initially unpopular. The ultimate success of his policies is partially a tribute to the power of public affairs. Reagan called on the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall and it resonated. The struggle against communism culminated with the fall of Wall in 1989. Soon the benighted communist regimes were gone like the snows of last winter. And we drew the wrong lesson. Many people thought it just happened, that history had ended and the world would now be a generally safe place. Our problems were how to fairly divide the prosperity. We cut our defense budget and spent the “peace dividend.” Life seemed good.
We also cut public affairs. The will to cut went beyond the desire to save money. Some people considered this a moral decision. What right did the U.S. have to try to influence others? Did we think we were so good that we could tell others what to think?From 1993-1999, the USIA hired almost no public diplomats and attrition reduced their numbers by around half by the end of the decade. Morale was terrible, promotions rare. The USIA director was ineffective. Overseas posts were closed. Budgets were cut. Libraries disappeared. The equipment of American centers decayed. (BTW – a similar process was at work in our intelligence community with similar consequences.) The 1999 Department of State/USIA Anschluss indicated the attitude toward independent public affairs.
When 9/11 happened, we saw that the world was not as safe as we thought. We tried to fire up the public affairs machine, but we found that we no longer had enough wing tips on the ground overseas and a decade of neglect had allowed our network of contacts to atrophy. I do not want to overstate the case, but just do the math. You can only do less with more for so long. When you lose half your strength, you probably cannot do as much heavy lifting.
Rebuilding American diplomatic capacity began soon after 9/11. Colin Powell spearheaded a diplomatic readiness initiative to help compensate for the damage done during the 1990s Results are starting to show but rebuilding networks will take a while longer. U.S. diplomacy has a very peculiar age structure because of the nineties neglect. There are many new employees (>10 years experience) and many old employees (20 > years experience), but not many in the middle. This will be a challenge in the next five years, as much of the experience will go out the door through retirements. (Career diplomats can retire after 20 years.) It will be a good time to look for a job in the Foreign Service, but our government will be paying for mistakes of the 1990s for the next ten years. You cannot turn these things on and off like a lightbulb. Think of public affairs like a forest. Things take time. The trees you plant today determine the forest years from now and you cannot expect to walk in the shade of your trees you didn’t plant 15 years ago.
Choosing to do the surge was really a profile in courage for George Bush and General Petraeus. After the political passion, sound and fury calms down, I think that GW Bush will enjoy a revaluation, much like Harry Truman, and historians will say that in David Petraeus Bush finally found his general, much like Lincoln and Grant. We forget how dicey it was in 1864 and how close we came to a different result in that conflict and how many of the arguments made today are not new.* War is always hard and it is natural for people to look for faster ways out. Sometimes these short cuts end my being the long way around.
Below – this guy has a sweet seat, but I wonder how fast he can turn his lazy-boy lounger if he gets in trouble. I didn’t see if he had the cup-holder feature.
This recent article from the NYT shows how dicey it was back in 2006. “Expert opinion” said that we had lost. Many people were calling for us to cut our losses and run out. Almost nobody believed the surge would accomplish the stated goals. The easy choice would have been to go along with that conventional wisdom. That would have meant that many of our friends in Iraq would be dead and we would suffer a resurgence of terrorism, but conventional wisdom would have accepted that as regrettable necessity.
BTW – the article I linked is NYT, but that paper remains still defeatist on Iraq, as this editorial shows. Of course, they are already modifying their understanding in the face of objective reality and I think that in the ripeness of time, they also will come around and pretend they always knew the truth.
Below is the signing ceremony with the gaggle of journalists
Today I went to the Provincial Iraqi Control (PIC) ceremony in Ramadi, where we handed authority back the Iraqi authorities in Anbar. Anbar! In 2006 this province was a lost cause. Today our ceremony just marked a milestone on path so well established I doubt that many people will even take notice.
Below – you see that MRAP riding is not very much fun. I try to avoid that seat. I guess he just hopes the gunner didn’t have the burrito at chow.
I would write more re the ceremony, but there isn’t really much to write. I met a lot of my contacts there – saw & was seen. Speeches were long. It was really hot. Iraqis don’t seem to have learned how to organize a good marching band. You would think there would be something like that at an important ceremony, but no. I have included pictures throughout. I would have liked a little more pomp and circumstance, but it was a proud day for the Iraqis and a vindication for us. I guess I am less excited about it because it is anticlimactic. The turnover just made official what we (the Iraqis and us) were doing already.
It is also the first day of Ramadan, so there was no meal with the ceremony. That saved much time for all of us, but there is something about having a meal together that seems to finalize a deal. We all just kind of wandered off and went home. It seemed odd.
BTW2 – A good article re Iraq came out in Foreign Affairs. I recommend you read it at this link.
This is the good line from it: “But if the United States can maintain a substantial force in Iraq through the critical period of the next two to three years, there is now a credible basis for believing that major drawdowns after that can be enabled by success rather than mandated by failure.”
Below – Marines playing volleyball in 110 degree heat. It is a dry heat and there is plenty of water.
Foreign Affairs also has a very good article re general American image and problems at this link.
Below is the Ramadi bend in the river from the back of theCH53
* Follow that link to the 1864 Democratic Party platform.
Above is one of my teammates with a couple of friends.
Today was very encouraging. We came into Haditha from the south and walked up the market street that we call Boardwalk past workshops and retail outlets. People were very friendly and open, more so than I have felt ever before but they were not telling us only what we wanted to hear.
Just as we got out of the MRAP and started to walk up the street, I guy ran up to ask re rental arrears on a building he owned. He said that the Marines had occupied his building and but had yet to pay all the rent owed or fix the place up when they left. One of the Marines with us knew who to talk to and said he could help with the problem. The guy was happy that we listened to his problem and were working to fix it. These are the kinds of interactions that are surprising locals and winning respect.
We stopped at a storefront where a bunch of strong looking guys were standing. They were partners in a construction firm. They told us that business was good, but they could use some loans to grow their business and enable them to bid on bigger jobs. Unfortunately, the small loan program was too small. They said they needed around $50,000.00 to really get to be big players. They complained that many contractors do not do good jobs but continue to get contracts anyway. This concerned us because we depend on local contractors. The men assured us that things were better when Americans were doing the contracting, but we still do need to be careful.
Down the street was a rug and furniture shop. Sam Said bought a small rug showing the tower of Babel. You can see it on the picture. The owner told us that business was basically good, but that he still did not have total confidence in the Iraqi police. Shop owners still needed to keep the wherewithal to defend themselves, he said. I asked where the rugs came from. He said from Turkey or Iran. There are local rug factories, but they are not in operation. Our PRT hopes to get a couple up and running. There is obviously a market.
Up the street, the shops started to get better and more stocked with goods. I have wanted to go to an ordinary Iraqi restaurant for some time. Finally I had an opportunity. Marc Humphries, who is our liaison officer in Haditha, told me that he heard that a particular kabob restaurant was good so we stopped in. There were a few guys waiting for their food. They told us that they were workers at Haditha dam. If you look at my picture with them below, you see that my hairstyle and general appearance fits with the natives.
We got ten sets of kabobs and bread. That Iraqi flat bread is great.
Farther up the street we stopped in a grocery store. I had been there a few months ago and the owners remembered my visit. The shop had greatly improved in terms of goods on the shelves and general appearance. The owners insisted on giving us some Mountain Dew and told us about business. Business was generally good, but they had a big problem with the nearest bridge over the Euphrates. In order to regulate the weight of vehicles, city authorities had set up a bar. The grocery store owners said that their suppliers have small trucks that they pile high with goods. The height of the vehicle is not necessarily related to the weight, but their tall loads cannot get through on the bridge. I have seen how they load these trucks and I understand his position. I am sure they would not pass American road standards, but it is the standard in this part of the world. We are on the same side on this issue, BTW, since our MRAPs with their machine gun turrets, are also too tall to get through.
Our final stop on the market street was a dress shop. It looked like a nice quality shop anywhere in the world. The owner told me that most of his products come from Syria or Turkey. They had some nice things on display. I wanted to buy something for Chrissy & Mariza and I found some things I thought were nice. When we got to the price, he wanted to give it to me free because we were guests in his country and he was grateful for what we had done. Of course, I couldn’t let him do that and I paid the full price. Now that I think about it, maybe that was his clever negotiating ploy. He got me to pay full price and thank him for it.
Above – we have enjoyed the sheik’s hospitality on many occasions, but I never really knew the host.
The old sheik spent twelve years as a prisoner in Iran. He lost most of his teeth and much of his hearing. Before it was home to Iraqi prisoners, the place where he was held had been used to house enemies of the Islamic Republic, but not for very long. The Sheik said that they would literally find pieces of people, at least the parts that didn’t rot quickly such as bones and hair. Sometimes, he said, they would find whole hands. The horrors he described were unimaginable. He remained a prisoner long after the war between Iraq and Iran was ostensibly over and finally got out in a prisoner exchange. His family thought he was dead after not hearing from him in twelve years and when he returned home nobody recognized him at first because he was so gaunt and worn down.
Back in Iraq, he assumed the duties of tribal sheik, since it was sort of the family business. During the insurgency, he worked with neighboring sheiks to root out the insurgents and bring peace and security back to this part of Iraq. He is still fighting a blood feud with AQI and says he still cannot sleep safely more than a couple of hours. He carries his AK with him when he goes to the bathroom, he says.
I did not know any of this about the man, although I had met him on several occasions at goat grabs at his home and in a variety of other venues. He seemed like a pleasant enough old man. That was the extent of my assessment. Of course, the broad outline of his story is not unique around here, but the time spent in Iranian captivity is unusual, i.e. unusual that he both spent the time in Iran and is still alive to tell about it. But most people around here have war stories or insurgent tales to tell and most local leaders still have a well-founded fear of retribution at the hands of the bad guys should the situation ever go bad again.
The old sheik loves the Marines, who he credits with saving his own life and those of his family. He fears a U.S. pullout and who can blame him. If we pull out too soon, we get to go home; he dies along with his family and a lot of other people he knows.
I talked to Chrissy today and she asked me if I had seen anybody killed. I have not. I was lucky to come just as the “most dangerous place in the world” was calming down to an almost tedious, if heavily armed, normality. This is good. I have no need nor do I want the kind of experience so many here have had. I have learned as much as necessary from their stories. I do not yearn for any of my own.
Americans wonder why Iraqis seem afraid to take initiative; Iraqis wonder why we fearlessly embrace risk. It comes from our respective experiences.
We Americans are a blessed people. We live in a land of opportunities where hardships don’t long prevail. Few of us have ever experienced any real deprivation and most of us have never personally experienced war. In Iraq, war has dragged on for almost thirty years and even during the brief interwar moments they were ruled by a capricious dictator who might decide to kill or displace thousands. Most Iraqis are under that age of thirty so few Iraqis are old enough to remember anything except war, hardship danger and deprivation. I can well understand why the people we meet are so resolute in their hope that this time the peace will hold; this time the stability will be enduring; this time prosperity will return. In spite my sojourn in a recognized war zone, I still count myself in that happy group that has not personally experienced war and it is my fervent hope to keep it that way.
When we asked the Sheik how he felt about Iran today, he approached the subject obliquely, explaining that it is the duty of good Muslims to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Then he told us that if Mecca was in Iran, he would not go. He would prefer to go to hell rather than back to Iran. I guess as far as he is concerned it is hard to tell the difference between the two locations.
The picture is me waiting for my ride. Notice the coat and gloves. It is cold around here in the mornings and colder still up in the air.
Vast – that is the adjective that usually comes before Anbar. The province is not really so big. It is about the size of North Carolina, but it is vaster because it lacks infrastructure. Vastness is really a time/distance/hardship equation. You can drive from Wilmington to Asheville in a few hours and expect to find plenty of restaurants and gas stations to help you along. Driving across Anbar is just not practical at all and there are places where you just can’t get there from here. We are trapped by the vastness of Anbar and Iraqi leaders are in a worse position than we are. So we help them with a program called “helicopter governance.” We provide air assets that allow the governor and his staff to travel to meet local officials and the people of the province. When the governor of Anbar went to Al Qaim, I got to go along, since AQ is in my district.
The governor seemed a decent sort who wanted to help the people of Anbar. Local officials in Al Qaim, many of whom I know and respect, are also decent sorts. When they got together, they got along and cooperated. The governor promised to fund projects and address many of the concerns they voiced. It looked like a productive town meeting. It went as it was supposed to go. But I have doubts about the whole system.
Sometimes things fail not in spite of our best efforts but because of them. You always have to look to the whole, to the systemic solutions. Good intentions, good individuals & even good particular results do not suffice.
Everything was reasonable, but many of the things requested should not be in the purview of government. They are the business of private business. Maybe this is just an earlier stage of development, which they will pass through. This country is still recovering from years of socialism, after all. The other problem was “earmarks.” In the U.S. we complain about earmarks. This session was about nothing but earmarks. Every one of the requests granted represented a specific earmark. The program was working, but the system was not.
Our goal as a PRT and as USG officials in Iraq is to help the people of Iraq develop systems that will make this heroic sort of political display unnecessary. Priorities should be addressed through prosaic & routine governmental procedures. It should not require special interventions by government officials to get normal services. We take so much for granted in the U.S. In most places in our country we have reasonably competent & honest officials, but more importantly we have systems in place to make it possible for them to do their work and to a decent extent let us do ours. We complain about it, but when you see the alternatives ours doesn’t look so bad. The current Iraqi system reminds me of the goat grab I described in an earlier post. All the food is in the middle, available, but you have to be there to grab it.
The governor regaled his colleagues with a great and wonderful thing he had observed during a visit to America. He sent a box from Texas to New York. He did not require a special request to get into the post office. Even more surprising, the box arrived in New York completely intact. Whoddathought the post office was so wonderful. We take a lot for granted.
Below is the town hall meeting. Notice the TV camera. No matter how vast a place is, you cannot escape the TV cameras.
Iraqi feasts are good, but predictable. You get goat (or sheep) meat on top of rice, topped with a kind of rice-a-roni, with peanuts, raw vegetables and raisins mixed in. All of this is piled high on some very good tortilla style bread. I like the bread.
Americans try to use the bread to grab the food, making a kind of rice and goat burrito. Iraqis don’t have much use for that strategy. They grab a handful, squash it all into a ball, letting juice & pieces fall back on the big plate, and pop it into their mouths. The guy next to you will often rip off a piece of goat with his hands and put it in front of you. You are supposed to eat it. If he likes you, you will get a big fatty piece. You have to eat that too, it is the honor and all that. Sometimes I suspect it is a long standing practical joke they are playing on us – see what the American will eat.
Some feasts feature roasted chicken and a kind of carp that comes out of the Euphrates. The chicken is very good. I am content if I can get a piece of that. I am also accustomed to eating chicken with my fingers, so it is not so odd. The fish tastes okay, but it is very boney. You need to be careful eating it. I prefer both chicken and fish to the goat. What I really cannot get used to is the communal nature of the eating. All the food is in the middle and you all eat from the same place – with your hands. Rice just does not lend itself to hand eating, so sometimes they dump some soup on top. It helps the rice stick together but, IMO, that makes it a worse mess. At some of the classier meals, a kid comes around with water and soap before the meal. I am happy wash my hands before the meal and even happier to see my neighbors and future meal mates washing theirs.
There are different shifts of eaters. The higher ranking people belly up first. When they wander off, some others come. It looks like there are at least three waves and I suppose whoever cleans up finishes up the scraps.
After the meal, people sit down around the room and they bring tea. The tea is very sugary. I am told it is good manners to drink three little cups of tea. If you drink less you are not accepting the proper hospitality; if you drink more you are abusing it. Everybody stands or crouches while eating; you do not sit. The meal has a kind of ad hoc feeling. It is sort of like a lot of guys hanging around a public place, say a train station, and then somebody brings out a big bowl of food, forgetting the plates or utensils, and puts it on the counter or on the floor. I guess you can see how this sort of thing would grow up in a nomadic culture.
