Even in the early days of political philosophy, authors took note of moral psychology—the constraints that human psychology places on the creation of a moral system. When Plato dreamed up his just city in The Republic, he first imagined a city where people lived without luxuries, but his interlocutor protested against this drab city: a theory of justice would have to account for the human psychological need for luxury. The same efforts to match justice to human psychology continue today. Consider, for instance, the famous ‘nudge’ of behavioral economics. Coined by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, the nudge is the idea that a policy maker can increase the likelihood of a citizens bringing about a desirable (or just) outcome for a society by incentivizing the choices consistent with that outcome or merely by making the right choices the default ones. Ethicists and political theorists increasingly are taking this kind of strategy seriously: people are predictably just when put in situations that encourage just action—situations that leverage the quirks of human psychology. So, Gornick is right to note that there is a gap between the theory of justice and just action, and the way to fill the gap is to let theory determine the just society and economics and psychology determine how to encourage people to realize that society with their everyday choices.

In the book’s closing line, he writes, “A day after that last visit of mine to Sabra and Chatila, on 6 February 2001, Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister of Israel.”  Sharon, the complicit general on whom much of the blame was deservedly placed for the massacres of unarmed Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila, comes full circle, from embarrassment to a renewed and more powerful position within the Israeli government.  The implications are clear and consistent with the rest of Fisk’s narrative; Lebanon is not a country where justice prevails—indeed, it seems no one does, from conventional armies (Israel and Syria) to peacekeepers (UN and US) to the myriad militias that have thrived in the absence of a unified government (the Amal, Phalange, PLO etc.).  Certainly the Lebanese civilians suffer the most, needlessly and to none of their own volition.

Sharon’s political rebirth is also prescient in implying that history will continue to move in a cyclical fashion much as it has throughout the time of Fisk’s reporting.  The massacres at Sabra and Chatila marked the moment in which the Western world, as well as much of the Israeli population, finally awoke and put its foot down, at least for a short while.  Although the months of Israeli carpet bombing in Beirut and Southern Lebanon that had preceded it were anything but humane, this act, committed by the Phalange under the watch of the Israeli army, possessed a perverse lust for cruelty and violence that tipped the scales against the anti-“terrorist” mission in Lebanon.  It should have been a “never again” moment, in which the humanity compromised by war is rediscovered in the face of an egregious act.  Instead, it proved to be one of the many lessons forgotten, to then be learned and forgotten all over again.

Fast forward to today, two and a half years after Israels’s latest endeavor in Lebanon, an ill-fated attempt to punish Hizbollah for having kidnapped Israeli soldiers.  After engrossing myself in the relatively recent history of the country, I realized how little we hear about the current state of the nation.  A quick Google News search finds Robert Fisk himself (now with The Independent) at the top of the list.  The five year anniversary of Rafiq Hariri’s assassination, demonstrations in Beirut and anger tempered by a pragmatic knowledge that Syria, who almost certainly had a role in Hariri’s death, is an essential ally and should be coddled.  As usual, the foreign hand behind the puppet’s mouth.  On that same subject, Iran has pledged its support of Hizbollah in the event of an Israeli attack.  From Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

“If they (the Israelis) want to repeat the mistakes of the past (by attacking), then their case should be closed once and for all and the region delivered from their evil ways.”

Though little credence should ever be given to the words of the Iranian President, it does appear that tensions are once again rising on the Southern border.  Power dynamics have shifted—Hizbollah’s military capabilities, buttressed by Iran, are purported to have grown to the point of posing legitimate resistance to the Israeli army.  Alliances have also evolved; just this week, the US sent a diplomat to meet with President Bashir Assad of Syria, formerly dubbed a “state sponsor of terrorism” and a beneficiary of Lebanon’s awkward proxy status.  All of this points to a new dynamic in Lebanon that is yet somehow so familiar.  On the entire page of “News from Lebanon” there is scant mention of the actions and desires of the Lebanese themselves.  “Lebanon as victim in waiting” says one headline, an appropriate classification for a people who must, even in times of relative peace, live under the shadow of war.
As much political maneuvering as takes place inside and around the country, the results seem to always be of the same mold. Foreign armies leave embarrassed, unsure of what went wrong, while the Lebanese are left to sort out their own divisions shaped by years of political interference.  Unlike the PLO, Hizbollah are indeed Lebanese; they grew out of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon and now have a stake in Parliament.  But ultimately, as a military entity, they are little more than an extension of Iran and its ambitions in the region.  If this next chapter in Lebanese history follows the narrative of the past, it will likely mean more suffering for a people who have already endured more than any should.  The necessity of war should always be challenged but in Lebanon the question is as pertinent as ever: what is it all for?

One very important reason, beyond the basic issue of legitimacy, is culture. Until those crafting counterinsurgency policies understand the intricacies of their beliefs, history, and traditions of “host population”, they cannot be effective. This is something the US has failed to do. The question remains of whether it is even possible at all. To do so would require one to look at a war from the point of view of the natives of the country. Doing this is inevitably difficult because as Americans, we have a certain way of looking at the world and where we see ourselves in it. Trying to change that and see the world through the eyes of another is difficult. So we should be much more hesitant to assume we can “win the hearts and minds” of a population as if they were a bunch of naive children.

For example, in present day Iraq, different regions are comprised of different ethnic groups that interact with each other in very specific ways. The US has disrupted the balance and does not possess the intricate knowledge of how to navigate between these groups and understand the deep historical and cultural context of present day Iraq to effectively “fix the problem”. Just by glancing at Nir Rosen’s An Ugly Peace in the December 2009 issue of the Boston Review, one can see how the intricacies of religion, culture, and history have played out in the war in Iraq today.
The culture gap between America and many of the countries in which they are attempting to use these counterinsurgency tactics is huge. We must realize the cultural intricacies of the countries at hand before we even begin to think we can have effective counterinsurgency policies.

While today is a holiday, it is by no means one to rest and forget. Under the radar in recent news is the parallel policies of the Chinese and Vietnamese governments, particularly when they concern dissidents. As Google’s threat to pull the plug on its Chinese operations continues to stir conversations in Beijing and Washington, many do not know about similarities between Beijing and Hanoi.

Two days from today, Nguyen Tien Trung will face trial on charge of treason by the Vietnamese government. Trung, a French-educated pro-democracy blogger and software engineer, had first been drafted by the Vietnamese army following his return from France and arrested the day after his dishonorable discharge. He is founder of the Young Vietnamese for Democracy Association and, according to government media, a member of the banned Democratic Party of Vietnam.

Trung’s was part of a series of high-profile summer arrests that included Le Cong Dinh, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, Nguyen Si Binh. The first is one of Vietnam’s top human rights lawyers and a former Fulbright scholar at Tulane, the second is chairman of a top Vietnamese Internet company, the third is a Vietnamese-American democracy activist. The American government, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have all called for their immediate release.

Government media has also been particularly preoccupied with these cases. VTV, the government’s central news channel, devoted a significant amount of prime-time to air the four’s public confessions. Similarly, many major national newspapers carried the full text of their confessions. While the Vietnamese government is no stranger to human rights-related arrests, the extent of official attention it has showered on these four is still surprising.

The spotlight is shifting away from Le Cong Dinh, the American-educated lawyer with an international reputation, towards Nguyen Tien Trung, as the latter’s trial date nears. Trung is merely 26 years old, far younger than the other three middle-aged men. Trung graduated from Le Hong Phong High School, southern Vietnam’s academic powerhouse. He then went on to graduate school in computer science in southern France, where he was an outstanding student. His profile eerily matches that of many young Vietnamese who have the opportunity to study abroad. Many will surely be watching the outcome of his trial, where he may face the death sentence.

In a recent article, the New York Times highlights the simmering tension between Google’s 80 million Chinese users and their government. At the same time, Vietnamese Facebook users have had trouble accessing the site for months and blame the government for this partial block. With a former Fulbright scholar in jail and a young blogger on trial, Hanoi’s suspicious eye on Beijing, bauxite and imperial past notwithstanding, may just relax.

A cause célèbre among liberals, financial regulatory reform has become the most recent partisan boxing match on the Hill, following a stormy (and ongoing) healthcare battle. Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Republicans have wasted no time in making the case that regulation is precisely how ‘we got into this mess.’ With thousands more joining the unemployment lines daily, it’s becoming harder to sympathize with such a position. So far from offering a prescriptive solution, it offers platitudes. But slogans don’t feed families and they certainly don’t jumpstart faltering economies. That hasn’t stopped the debate from being fought at the ideological margins as a veritable referendum on capitalism. To its credit, Baker’s piece has no interest in such a discussion – indeed, he makes clear at the outset that regulation has nothing to do with a free-market story, but rather an equity story. Banks have been ready if not eager to line up for government checks when it behooves them. In fact, the insurance scheme implemented in the wake of the 1930s collapse, ostensibly a consumer protection, effectively insulates banks – particularly large ones – whose failure would cause systemic damage to the larger financial system.

Because the failure of large banks poses a non-trivial threat to the economy, government aid is a forgone conclusion. What’s worse is they know it. To offer government insurance of deposits without also regulating the behavior of its recipients would be akin to an endorsement of reckless behavior – the kind that penalizes smaller banks who get swept up in the storm, despite abiding by conventional, low-risk strategies. As Baker notes in his piece, “The banks presumably understood the risk that they were taking in making loans in the first place. They are in the business of distinguishing good credit risks from bad. A financial institution that is unable to make such distinctions is misallocating capital.” Hewing to a capitalist argument, then, shouldn’t it follow that the government ought not to intervene and merely let the market do what it will, shuttering the windows of banks who are unable to compete? I sense the boardrooms of America would chafe at my glibness, but the point remains: if you want to be consistent in your ideological arguments, one can’t ignore the double standard by which the banking industry has managed to reap the benefits of government intervention while actively resisting meaningful regulatory changes.

Although the regulatory fight is only just getting started, the administration is taking preliminary steps to address the problem with President Obama’s decision this afternoon to implement a tax on TARP funds to recoup the projected $117 billion in losses from the original $700 billion loan program. In strikingly populist language, the President made it clear that stalling tactics would not prevent his administration from doing the people’s business, calling on Wall Street to “meet [its] responsibilities.” Some 50 companies are expected to fall under the new guidelines. It also represents a major shift in existing policy, where administration officials like Secretary Geithner previously asserted that such a tax would merely be passed on to the consumer; these pressures are expected to be minimal since the tax is targeted and affected companies will presumably still have an incentive to remain competitive. Industry spokesperson Steve Bartlett called the move “strictly political” and maybe it is. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right move. Nor by any means should it be the last.

In the current issue of the Boston Review, Nir Rosen argues that the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan is misguided and likely to fail.  Several respondents have varying analyses of Rosen’s piece: some agree with his conclusion but thinks he misses a few points; others claim that he is too pessimistic. Aziz Hakimi thinks Rosen is right to doubt the success of an American-lead COIN operation in Afghanistan, but claims that Rosen is wrong in marking Karzai’s government as illegitimate—there is hope for politics in Afghanistan, says Hakimi, as long as the central government devolves power to local officials. Hakimi, however, is not clear about what responsibilities the United States has in Afghanistan, if any. This omission clouds the discussion of what the United States should expect to accomplish in Afghanistan.

Hakimi does not discuss what duties the United States has now that it has invaded Afghanistan. He writes,

When the problem is cast in combat terms—Afghanistan as a theater in the “war on terrorism”—the solutions are inevitably military. But the central problem in Afghanistan is political.

It is common to talk about the “problem of Afghanistan” and how to fix the problem. To military commanders on the ground, it is clear that Afghanistan is not a smoothly-functioning state. But it does not follow that the United States must do much at all to ensure security in the country. Nor is it immediately evident, though, that America can consider Afghanistan as a problem only insofar as the country poses a threat to America’s domestic security. Perhaps the United States has now incurred a responsibility to the people of Afghanistan and to other governments in the region: a responsibility to provide the basis of a secure state.

Hakimi’s recommendation is to devolve power from the central government in Afghanistan to local officials. That, not COIN or “a centralized state with a massive military and police presence”, is the key to success in Afghanistan. Michael Cohen concurs on the topic of a big Afghan army: he doubts the possibility of training a “big [Afghan] army with gaudy six figure numbers”, despite claims to the contrary from the American military. Perhaps a large standing army is unrealistic. But if we assume that America’s goal in the United States should be to provide the basis for some security and we accept Hakimi’s recommendation to devolve power, a well-trained police force appears necessary. Establishing a credible, community-focused police force is a crucial ongoing reform in Northern Ireland, for instance, which also suffered from civil strife, instability, and military presence. It may be both a waste of resources for the United States to train a large national army in Afghanistan, but to neglect the importance of a police force seems unwise.

In the second of his two recent contributions to the Boston Review, Nir Rosen describes his experiences following a team of marines in Afghanistan who trained and fought alongside a force of Afghans. For most of the article, Rosen sticks to the facts and avoids drawing many explicit conclusions. However, it is reasonably clear that Rosen is skeptical of the ability of the US to succeed in Afghanistan, and he suggests several views in the article: first, it is misguided to optimistically compare the counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts in Afghanistan’s to those in Iraq, second, the state of Afghanistan’s police and armed forces is very poor, and third, the military does not fully support COIN. This last suggestion is unfair.

Rosen writes,

Westby was trying to be a good soldier in the COIN spirit. But the fact is that once you get down to the rifle squad, COIN does not make any sense. Soldiers, whose greatest concern is living through their deployments, are being asked to mix Wyatt Earp and Mother Theresa. In public they pay lip service to COIN because that is the way to advance. Less publicly, officers speak of going in to villages and “doing that COIN shit.”

He continues,

The troubles with COIN are institutional. The American military and policy establishments are incapable of doing COIN. They lack the curiosity to understand other cultures and the empathy to understand what motivates people.

Consider two of Rosen’s suggestions: first, for COIN to be successful, soldiers must believe in its merit, and, second, it is a point of fact that the soldiers in Afghanistan do not. Neither, however, is fully true. If COIN is to work in Afghanistan, no doubt foot soldiers, military strategists, and administrative officials must collectively believe that it has some chance of success. If everyone believes that it is damned, then it is reasonable to assume that a joint lack of commitment to COIN will ensure its failure. Does COIN require a soldier’s approval over-and-above following orders? Approval cannot hurt: foot soldiers who are convinced that they can successfully train an Afghan army will probably be better trainers. Their fully convinced state of mind, however, is not necessary to get the job done.

What are the actual attitudes of those soldiers after all? Is it merely true, as Rosen claims, that, “in public they pay lip service to COIN because that is the way to advance”? I find it a stretch to believe that if soldiers embrace COIN they do so for purely Machiavellian reasons. It is, after all, possible for a soldier to be cynical about COIN—and the politicians who promote it—and still be committed to the basic principles of COIN. One military blogger has concluded, for instance, that Obama’s recent decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan was the “right strategy” while maintaining that his optimistic speech sent the “wrong message”.   Another journalist claims that the military is still fairly unschooled in COIN, but that the “stigma” is changing.  In short, a person can express cynicism in all sorts of ways, and some cynicism about COIN on the part of soldiers doesn’t entail that they reject the entire project.

Immigrants, of course, aren’t the only victims in this story. Law enforcement has been hard-pressed to keep up with the growing influx of ‘criminal-aliens’ since the 1980s. In its effort to reign-in the overflow, the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice have turned to private firms, at the expense of struggling rural towns. These corporations have come under fire in recent days with the unfolding story of Michael Hinton – an ex-con caught defrauding the small Montana town of Hardin in an alleged scheme to operate its local prison. Sordid as it is, his story is quite common. Ostensibly sanctioned by law enforcement officials, these private firms have sought out small, impoverished, predominantly South Western towns for which the building of prisons would guarantee jobs and steady incomes. Promising greater and greater efficiency at a minimum of the cost necessarily comes at the expense of something else – such ‘nonessential’ services as in-house medical and psychological staff. All this begs the question, at what point do civic and humanitarian concerns outweigh efficiency arguments? More important still, how does a society reconcile its public duty to uphold and enforce the law – a task most of us agree that society alone can exercise – against an increasingly privatized corrections industry?

The Obama administration continues to tread lightly – holding their predecessor’s line under the guise of preserving ‘law and order.’ Perhaps that’s a rationale which voters are willing to accept for the moment, but all that clamoring for change back during the campaign will come back to haunt the President and his congressional allies in 2012 unless they actually follow through. In preparation for the coming immigration debate, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano spoke on Friday, November 13th at the Center for American Progress on the issue of reform, broadly defined. While it’s encouraging to see some movement on this front, any part of a workable solution will require a reassessment of the draconian public-private prison scheme. Talk only goes so far before voters begin to wonder whether they’ve backed the wrong horse. Ball’s in your court, Mr. President.

The Obama administration’s attention is currently solely fixed on Afghanistan, and understandably so.  The President has rejected all of the proposals set before him by his war council and continues to ponder over whether or not to employ an Iraq-styled “surge” in Afghanistan.  While considering the question of whether to increase troops or not, he should also ask if the “success” he would be looking to replicate with the surge is the type of success he wants.  The decision facing Obama has been compared to the dilemmas faced by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 with respect to Vietnam.  “Eikenberry’s stand” gives the President some time to continue to weigh the pros and cons of a troop increase.  During this time, he should not only refer back to the consequences of Johnson’s decisions in Vietnam, but also to what is shaping up to become an untenable peace in Iraq.

David Schulman notes in the aforementioned BR article, “[Nawi] will not be the first imprisoned for defending the defenseless.” Today we salute not only our veterans but peace activists who work to make suffering and war unnecessary. Read more about the current state of Israel’s peace movement in “Peace Out” by Helena Cobban, from the July/August 2009 issue of Boston Review.