Public Adminstrator's Role

Arianna Huffington has written a post about why Biden should resign if Obama does not follow his advice. This view of the role of a public adminstrator - i.e. someone serving an elected official - is oversimplified and makes me think she has never served in that role.

The fact is that the role of public administrators, or civil servants, is to give the best counsel to the elected officials or political appointees they serve. And once they give that advice, their role is to implement the final decision to the best of their ability. Resignation should only occur if the decision is so egregious that the public administrator cannot bring themselves to carry out the orders.

Huffington's tone suggests that one should resign anytime they disagree with the decision of an elected official or appointee, which if everyone followed that advice there would be no civil servants.

To be fair, maybe she is not suggesting that one should resign so easily. But she does not do enough in her post to tell us why a decision to remain in Afghanistan is so wrong-headed that it would be worth resigning over. She does what many far left liberals do, which is wonder why people in government are not as irrational as they are. When you work in government, you are bound to disagree with some of their decisions. The question is, do you disagree enough that you cannot work with them, and that you are willing to significantly weaken the person you are working for.

In addition to her logic about resigning being oversimplified and definitely not objective (I wonder how she would feel if someone resigned in protest of a policy she supported), her arguments against troop increases in Afghanistan are cherry-picked. She quotes pieces of Richard Haas' arguments, but conveniently leaves off parts that do not support his argument. Haas does say Afghanistan is not a war of necessity, but she does not bother talking about wars of choice and when you do or do not commit to a war of choice.

As much as I disagree with her post, I can take some comfort in the fact that Biden is unlikely to resign. If Obama disagrees with Biden, and Biden does not change his mind that it is the wrong decision, he is likely to stay on board anyway because I don't think he, or any other rational person think that staying in Afghanistan is as bad a decision as Vietnam or even Iraq. In other words, I can sleep well knowing Biden is not going to be listening to Huffington.

Afghanistan's Future

The news out of Afghanistan is troubling. There appears to have been some fraud in the election, Karzai has chosen to align himself with war lords and people involved in the drug trade, and the violence is not decreasing. Now, things could certainly turn around. After all, Iraq was much worse at one point and has improved significantly. The question though is what if it does not and what is our responsibility there.

I used to feel very strongly about our presence in Afghanistan, but over time I have started to have my doubts. Basically, my doubts stem from my more recent belief that real change takes a long time. I do not believe that democracy and stability can happen overnight. Instead, I believe that it requires many factors that take time to develop. I believe you need a strong middle class to be effective participants in democracy - a middle class that has enough leisure time to be involved in democracy. And debates about how democracy works in the culture that is attempting it also takes time.

If that is the case, then what should we do with Afghanistan? I still believe that we have a responsibility to help Afghanistan recover from decades of civil war - especially since we are partly responsible for the war by arming the Mujahideen and then turning our backs on the country once the USSR left. At the same time, I am not sure that our troops will really be able to pacify the country in the short term. I also think the longer our troops are there, the more they will be resented and resisted.

I think then the solution will be to keep the troops there for a while longer hoping we can improve security to some reasonable level. But more importantly we need to do more to improve the infrastructure and improve the lives of the people in the country. Granted, these two often work hand in hand, and achieving the right balance is key. However, I think in the long run our best bet will be more funding for non-military efforts and slowly decrease our troop levels.

Some Ideas from the Atlantic

This month's Atlantic Monthly had some interesting stuff in it. They called it the ideas issue, and the first three of the "Quick Fixes" were actually pretty good (the rest, not so much): Allow foreclosed owners to stay in their homes as renters, allow the UN to pay private soldiers to act as peacekeepers, and a more flexible attitude about installing democracy in Afghanistan.

I think only the last of the three, no democracy in Afghanistan, is likely to happen. Some big lenders may allow foreclosed owners to stay on, by I think few will and there is no will to impose that.

And although I do not think it would happen, the private UN peacekeepers is an interesting idea, although not a terrible new one. In fact I think my brother might have mentioned it one time. And it is possible that I dismissed it. But now that I consider it more, I do think it makes sense. It seems to me that the private troops could be more accountable, through contract renewal, than some of the country-sent troops, which have been accused of crimes and abuses themselves. And this way, only funding would stand in the way of peacekeeper deployment, and not the lack of willingness to send troops, which is more common.

Future for Afghanistan

I remember in the VP debate there was a back and forth over whether the strategy to pacify Iraq would work in Afghanistan. Biden remarked that the Iraq strategy wouldn't work - citing comments from the military leader in Afghanistan. At the time though, I didn't really know what they meant - which part of the Iraq strategy wouldn't work? Now I know.

Okay, so turning Sunni leaders against foreign Al Qeada in Mesopotamia fighters was far easier than getting Sunni tribal leaders who support the home-grown Taliban to support the new Afghan government. Is it hopeless?

It seems that it will just be much harder. We'll have to show that siding with the Taliban means joining the losing side and that through the government is the means to delivering real improvements to the people in their region. In other words, it will take real commitment, real resources (not just military) and time. This should have been the plan from the beginning. Well, hopefully now we have a president with a normal attention span who will see this through. The people of Afghanistan need it.

Wow, They Have Feelings

It is amazing how often it turns out that the right thing is also the more efficient policy option. Sometimes it seems so obvious, it's hard to imagine that people don't see it ahead of time. For example, it turns out that killing civilians by mistake when trying to bomb insurgents, turns local civilians against your cause. Imagine that. So if we were smart, we could avoid civilian deaths, actually engage insurgents, and we would be more successful. Of course this won't happen, because people are a little slow at catching up to anti-insurgent tactics.

Deal with the Devil?

This is an interesting story from Afghanistan. I will be very interested to see if this deal with Taliban works out. The fact that the area is peaceful now allows me some optimism, but I doubt that anything will keep the Taliban from sometime soon fighting for power again.