Here are the things that I read in 2011. Many might be useful to those of you wishing to explore some of the topics we discuss here in more depth. Most are at least okay, a number are quite good. Ask if you wish more detail on specific titles. All are available on Kindle.

Aid, Matthew (2009). The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency. New York: The Bloomsbury Press.

Alexander, Matthew (2011). Kill or Capture: How a Special Operations Task Force Took Down a Notorious al-Qaeda Terrorist. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Allin, Dana H. and Simon, Steven (2010). The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America and the Rumors of War. New York: Oxford University Press.

...could someone explain to me the practical moral difference between Hitchens actively supporting policy that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the group of you who seem to be pretty much yearning for some significant discontinuity that would result in death - of your countrymen, no less - on an even larger scale?

As someone who's pedalling just as hard as he can to help mitigate against the social and economic consequences of all this bullshit, I have to say I really have a tough time figuring out how passivity and latent desire in the face of shit like this is any less morally culpable. I mean seriously folks it puzzles the fuck out of me.

Explanations of the reasoning at work here welcome.

Robert Baer | November 30

Time - The CIA found itself in some rough waters in the Middle East last week. On Thursday, an influential member of Iran's parliament announced that the Islamic republic had arrested 12 "CIA agents" who had allegedly been targeting Iran's military and its nuclear program. The lawmaker didn't give the nationality of the agents, but the presumption is that they were Iranians recruited to spy for the CIA. The agency hasn't yet commented, but from what I've heard it was a serious compromise, one which the CIA is still trying to get to the bottom of.

Even more curious was the flap in Lebanon. In June, Hizballah's secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah announced that the movement had arrested two of its own members as CIA spies. But it wasn't until last week that the story got traction in Washington. The CIA confirmed that operations in Beirut had been compromised but declined to offer details. As in the case of the alleged Iranian debacle, it's no doubt still doing a "damage assessment" — a process that can take years. Even then, it will be difficult to determine exactly what happened.

IRAN CONTRA AT 25: REAGAN AND BUSH 'CRIMINAL LIABILITY' EVALUATIONS

November 25 | Washington D.C.

National Security Archive – President Ronald Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment in the Iran arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86, and Vice President George H. W. Bush chaired a committee that recommended the mining of the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983, according to previously secret Independent Counsel assessments of "criminal liability" on the part of the two former leaders posted today by the National Security Archive.

Twenty-Five years after the advent of the "Iran-Contra affair," the two comprehensive "Memoranda on Criminal Liability of Former President Reagan and of President Bush" provide a roadmap of historical, though not legal, culpability of the nation's two top elected officials during the scandal from the perspective of a senior attorney in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. The documents were obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the National Security Archive for the files compiled during Walsh's six-year investigation from 1987-1993.

Peter Harling & Hugh Pope | November 25

International Crisis Group Blog - Turkey arguably ranks highest on the outside players’ score sheet after a first year of Arab revolts. Ankara responded fastest to the region’s paradigm shift, taking the lead in calling Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak to step down; defined clear principles, pushed for sweeping reforms and denounced repression; avoided rushing into a questionable war to oust Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, but emerged on the winning side; satisfied the Arab public’s mood by challenging Israel and downgrading relations with the Jewish state, even though this occurred for mostly unrelated reasons; and could flaunt the “Turkish model” as a conveniently ill-defined way forward. The prize: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could tour the Arab world to a hero’s welcome.

Randall Palmer & Louise Egan | Ottawa | November 21

Financial Post - Finance officials bit their nails and nervously watched the clock. There were 30 minutes left in a bond auction aimed at funding the deficit and there was not a single bid.

Sounds like today’s Italy or Greece?

No, this was Canada in 1994.

Bids eventually came in, but that close call, along with downgrades and the Wall Street Journal calling Canada “an honorary member of the Third World,” helped the nation’s people and politicians understand how scary its budget problem was.

“There would have been a day when we would have been the Greece of today,” recalled then-prime minister Jean Chretien, a Liberal who ended up chopping cherished social programs in one of the most dramatic fiscal turnarounds ever.

“I knew we were in a bind and we had to do something,” Chretien, 77, told Reuters in a rare interview.

Robert Mahoney | October 6

CPJ - The severity of the nearly 20-year jail sentence handed down to veteran Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, left, has shocked many exiled Iranian journalists and bloggers with whom I've spoken. It's also reinforced their belief that the best way to help jailed colleagues is not through quiet diplomacy but by making a lot of noise.

Derakhshan's case made headlines last month when human rights groups reported that prosecutors were seeking the death penalty for the writer, dubbed the "blogfather" of Farsi blogging, on a raft of antistate charges. In the end, a Revolutionary Court sentenced the Iranian-Canadian dual national to nineteen and a half years in prison. His family and lawyer learned of the verdict through the news media.

Derakhshan's case does not fit the mold of oppressed Iranian online journalists and bloggers. He talked openly in his blog about his visits to Israel and publicly criticized the government in Tehran and later the reformist movement.

October 9

NYT - The Obama administration has sharply expanded the shadow war against terrorists, using both the military and the C.I.A. to track down and kill hundreds of them, in a dozen countries, on and off the battlefield.

The drone program has been effective, killing more than 400 Al Qaeda militants this year alone, according to American officials, but fewer than 10 noncombatants. But assassinations are a grave act and subject to abuse — and imitation by other countries. The government needs to do a better job of showing the world that it is acting in strict compliance with international law.

The United States has the right under international law to try to prevent attacks being planned by terrorists connected to Al Qaeda, up to and including killing the plotters. But it is not within the power of a commander in chief to simply declare anyone anywhere a combatant and kill them, without the slightest advance independent oversight. The authorization for military force approved by Congress a week after 9/11 empowers the president to go after only those groups or countries that committed or aided the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration’s distortion of that mandate led to abuses that harmed the United States around the world.

The issue of who can be targeted applies directly to the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen hiding in Yemen, who officials have admitted is on an assassination list. Did he inspire through words the Army psychiatrist who shot up Fort Hood, Tex., last November, and the Nigerian man who tried to blow up an airliner on Christmas? Or did he actively participate in those plots, and others? The difference is crucial. If the United States starts killing every Islamic radical who has called for jihad, there will be no end to the violence.

The transcript of this recent event at Carnegie is well worth reading in detail. Pretty much summarizes where I have been thinking things were going to go from the events of February and with the announcement that the main deployments were going to be down south in the heartland.

Transcript (.pdf)

Collateral article

Video and audio also available off the collateral page.

Statistics Canada chief falls on sword over census

Steven Chase and Tavia Grant | Toronto and Ottawa | July 21

The Globe and Mail - The head of Statistics Canada has delivered an extraordinary rebuke to the Harper government over its plan to scrap the mandatory long-form census, quitting his post in a highly public letter that bluntly undercuts Conservative efforts to sell the changes.

Chief statistician Munir Sheikh, who helmed what has been ranked among the top statistical agencies in the world, used his agency’s own website as a last act Wednesday evening to fire a shot across the bow of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Mr. Sheikh, whose agency relies on rich data to take the collective pulse of Canadians, posted a statement saying the Conservative plan to replace a compulsory census questionnaire with a voluntary one won’t work.

This is a public repudiation of suggestions from Industry Minister Tony Clement that Statscan and Mr. Sheikh were of the opinion the shift was acceptable and would produce an equally detailed and accurate picture of Canada.

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Stefan Bos | Budapest | July 10

VOA News - Preparations are underway for the 15th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II. On July 11, 1995 about 8,000 Muslims were killed in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica during the Balkan conflict that broke up Yugoslavia.

Activists of the group Women in Black creating a memorial to the over 8,000 Muslim men and boys who are believed to have been killed in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.

Old shoes, including worn-out children's boots with anti-war messages stuffed inside, are piling up in the Serbian capital Belgrade, representing victims of Europe's largest mass killing since the Holocaust.

Women in Black Coordinator Stasa Zajovic says it is crucial that Serbs never forget that Bosnian Serb forces killed Muslims, after they overran the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

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James Rainey | January 1

LATimes - Looking into the media furor over swine flu last spring, I interviewed a UCLA epidemiologist, who told me it was best to assume "a posture of humility" in trying to assess how deadly the H1N1 virus would be.

"This is a virus we haven't seen before," said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley. "We don't really know what will happen."

I've thought often in recent months about those words, which just as easily might be applied to viral change infecting the news media.

We don't know exactly what's coming in the news business, only that change is coming fast. But if 2010 is anything like the year just ending, expect to see: more opinion, more partisanship, more (amateur) voices in the mix, more niche websites, less original reporting, less separation between news and advertising, and fewer paid journalists on the beat.

Information in the broadband, iPhone world will be more accessible, more quickly. Many consumers will find outlets that slice and dice information by subject, ideology and tone in ways they find pleasing. But with the citizenry increasingly fitted into a series of silos, the challenge of coming together for a civil, coherent conversation will grow greater.

Michael Slackman | Amman | December 28

NYT - If you were to slow everything down, this is what you would see: scoop of sauce, pinch of onions, scoop of tomatoes, shovel in some meat, roll it all up in a pita.

But who has time to slow down? The crowds are always pressed up against the gate — in the searing heat of a Jordan summer day or the desert chill of a cold winter night — outside Reem, a hole-in-the wall takeout place with a reputation for the best beef and lamb shawarma sandwiches in the Middle East.

Shawarma is marinated meat grilled on an upright skewer, then shaved off in bits and rolled in a pita. It looks like a Greek gyro.

Behind the counter, Alaa Abdel Fattah flies through ingredients, rocking at the waist, with the focus and precision of an athlete. He assembles sandwiches in a blur. Four seconds each. “You get used to it,” he says, pausing for a moment to wipe sweat from his brow.

Gary Sick | October 25

The Daily Beast - Last week, an Iranian-American colleague of mine, Kian Tajbaksh, was sentenced in Tehran to 15 years in prison. The indictment included the charges that (1) he was in contact with me; (2) that he was part of the Gulf/2000 network that I manage; and (3) that I am an agent of the CIA.

Normally, I simply ignore silly accusations such as this. They are nothing new. On one hand, it has been intimated that I must be under the influence of Iranian intelligence (by prominent neoconservatives who believe that my views on Iran’s political development and especially its nuclear program are not sufficiently alarmist). I have also been accused (by such worthies as Hossein Shariatmadari, the ultra-radical editor of Iran’s Kayhan newspaper, who is also a representative of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei) of being a CIA agent. I regard these insinuations as badges of honor, since they merely confirm that I do not subscribe to the ideological extremes of either of these groups. I have always felt that my reputation could speak for itself and required no public defense.

In November 2005, reports surfaced that that Germany would sell Israel 2 AIP-equipped SSK Dolphin Class submarines. In 2006, the deal was finalized at a total of $1.27 billion, with the German government picking up 1/3 of the cost. The new boats were built at the Howaldtswerke-Deutche Werft AG (HDW) shipyard, in the Baltic Sea coastal city of Kiel.

Now, reports indicate that both submarines have been delivered early…

The Dolphin Class, and Its Improvements

The Dolphins are quiet diesel-electric attack submarines that evolved from Germany’s famous and ubiquitous U209 Class. They can fire torpedoes and missiles from their 533mm torpedo tubes, perform underwater surveillance, and even launch combat swimmers via a wet and dry compartment.

Germany had already donated two Dolphin submarines to the Israeli navy after the Gulf War in the early 1990s. The first-of-class INS (Israeli Naval Ship) Dolphin was commissioned in 1999, while INS Leviathan was commissioned in 2000. The Israelis later bought a 3rd submarine for $350 million total, using a 50/50 shared cost arrangement with the German government. INS Tekuma (“revival, renewal”) also entered service in 2000.

Denis D. Gray | Bangkok | June 15

AP - Charming a fuming Elizabeth Taylor, personally snipping a British duke's hair or catering to the refined palates of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge leaders.

It was all in a day's work for Kurt Wachtveitl, as he looks back on 41 years running one of the world's fabled hotels, not with nostalgic tears but plenty of juicy tales and trenchant thoughts about how Bangkok's Oriental Hotel got to be so good.

A legend himself among the international hotel fraternity, the 72-year-old Wachtveitl retires this month, having amassed awards for the five-star hotel along the Chao Phraya River as well as an endless roster of famous and rich, albeit not always agreeable, guests.

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CNAS' third annual conference, "Striking a Balance: A New American Security," will be streamed live starting at 8:30 AM EST.

8:30-8:45 AM - INTRODUCTION AND OPENING REMARKS

The Honorable Dr. Richard Danzig
Chairman of the Board, Center for a New American Security

Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns
Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Board of Directors, CNAS

8:45-9:45 AM - KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Dr. John A. Nagl (INTRODUCTION)
President, Center for a New American Security

General David H. Petraeus, USA
Commander, U.S. Central Command

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON A NEW BEGINNING

Cairo University
Cairo, Egypt

1:10 P.M. (Local)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. And together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I'm grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. And I'm also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum. (Applause.)

Dexter Filkins | May 20

The New Republic

The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008
By Thomas E. Ricks
(Penguin Press, 394 pp., $27.95)

I.

From centrality to banality: perhaps no other event in modern American history has gone from being contentious to being forgotten as quickly as the war in Iraq. Remember the war? It consumed a trillion American dollars, devoured a hundred thousand Iraqi lives, squandered a country's reputation, and destroyed an American presidency. Given the retreat of the American press--the first American withdrawal from Iraq, you might say--one could almost be excused, in the spring of 2009, for forgetting that 140,000 American troops are still fighting and dying there.

That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America's war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. The American people, we are told, appear to be exhausted by the war in Iraq. But exhausted by what, exactly? Certainly not from fighting it. The fighting is done by kids from the towns between the coasts, not by any of the big shots who really matter. And they are not exhausted by paying for it, either: another generation will do that. No, when Americans say that they are tired of the war in Iraq, what they really mean is that they are tired of watching it on television, or of reading about it on the Internet. As entertainment, as Topic A, the agony has become a bore. "A car bomb exploded today in a crowded Baghdad marketplace, killing 53 and wounding 112." Click.

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Carlos Lozada | May 17

WaPo - His hero? Lincoln. His challenges? FDR-like. His speeches? Downright Reaganesque, we're told. But when it comes to foreign policy, who knew Obama would emulate George Bush? No, not the son, but the kinder and gentler one: George H.W. Bush.

So argued Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, in a talk Thursday at the New America Foundation. As he discussed his memoir, "War of Necessity, War of Choice," Haass was asked why the "realist" approach he shared with Bush's national security adviser Brent Scowcroft had lost out to lofty visions of America's ability to transform the world. His answer suggests sober expectations for Obama -- and that the era of idealism in U.S. foreign policy is over.

"This is a pretty good time for us realists," Haass said. "Indeed, the foreign policy of the Obama administration resembles nothing so much as the foreign policy of Bush 41."

[Comment: Dick? Please: help less. I agree and I'm largely happy about it too, but less help. ~ JPD]

Janine di Giovanni | April 24

NYT - David Kilcullen is a former officer in the Australian Army, a strategist and a scholar. He is also an expert on counterinsurgency, or how to combat a rebellion, and one of the few brave souls who had the ear of people in the Bush White House and advised against the invasion of Iraq.

“It’s going to take a lot more than you seem to be willing to commit,” he told the Americans. No one listened. After the invasion, Kilcullen watched the growing mayhem with outrage and dismay. This time people listened.

The French writer on military affairs David Galula, who was known for his theories on counterinsurgency, particularly during France’s Algerian war, must have influenced Kilcullen while he was doing his Ph.D. in political anthropology. Galula’s thesis is that one aim of war is to support the local population rather than control the territory. Part of Kilcullen’s academic research involved living and working alongside villagers in West Java, trying to absorb the culture of Dar’ul Islam, a guerrilla movement hatched in the late 1940s (and later identified by some as an Indonesian clone and ally of Al Qaeda).

What Kilcullen wanted to do was to observe the movement the way the locals did — not from the “official version I could find in books.” So he lived in vil­lages and conversed with his curious neighbors about blue jeans and the Internet, until they trusted him enough to share ­information.

Kamin Mohammadi

It is Friday and Abadan's graveyard is busy. The second day of the weekend, this is when many Iranians head to the cemetery to pay their respects to their dead. Families come en masse, bearing flasks of rosewater and boxes of sweetmeats to hand around to other mourners. The graves are raised stone platforms topped by a gravestone or often, a picture of the deceased set in a glass case. Beyond, the recent rain has turned the marshland into fields of mud, palm trees swaying in the breeze.

I am here with my cousin Esmael and his wife and we are bearing trays of homemade halva, honey biscuits, rosewater and fruit. In the martyr's section of the cemetery there are special prayers taking place, the flags placed above each grave flapping in the wind that wafts round the scent of the rosewater used to wash down the graves. We are here for the rituals marking 40 days after my cousin Ebby's funeral, hence the special collection of funereal sweets we are carrying.

We walk past the martyr's section to another part of the cemetery because, although Ebby was a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, he died not martyred on the battlefield, but 16 years later in an abandoned slum in Abadan, a homeless heroin addict with AIDS and Hepatitis.

Michael Knights | March 16

WINEP - In December 2008, shortly before assuming office, President Barack Obama called for "tough but direct diplomacy with Iran." As the new administration moves forward, it must realize that U.S.-Iranian negotiations will take place while Iran is killing Americans in Iraq and increasing its support for armed Iraqi factions. Like its predecessor, the Obama administration must prepare for the challenge of negotiating under fire.

Iranian-Backed Operations, 2003-2007

In addition to significant economic investment and relationship building among Iraq's political parties, Iran develops influence in Iraq by providing Iraqi militants with training, shelter, money, and equipment. Analysis of declassified interrogation and other intelligence material published by the West Point Counterterrorism Center, the Institute for Studying War, and the Long War Journal, has publicly revealed what military intelligence professionals have been piecing together for longer than five years: that Iran has been developing a covert action program in Iraq for decades, one that is open-ended, resilient, and well-funded, and that utilizes a broad range of Iraqi proxies.

For those of you who don't know, MEI is the Middle East Institute, headquartered in D.C. To my mind, it's about the most "non-denominational" of the various organizations of its type.

Anyway, they've got a quite useful podcast series which serves as a vehicle for various of their events, etc. Well worth a listen. In particular, this recent event [February 11] is a hoot. The link given is to the event page, podcasts can be accessed from that page.

Reflections on the Iranian Revolution

Charlie Naas, Henry Precht, Alex Vatanka & Trita Parsi

link