A relatively quiet week, it seemed to me. I'm not sure whether I'd say that the Minnesota government shutdown mattered -- well, of course, it matters to the people affected, but I'm not sure whether or not it matters generally. I would love to see a good estimate, however, of the aggregated effect of state and local government budget cuts over the last two years, cuts which could have been avoided had Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress sent them money in late 2009.
The big thing that I've been tracking this week are the month-end numbers for Americans killed in Iraq, which have received a fair amount of attention, and for coalition troops killed in Afghanistan, which mostly hasn't. First, Iraq: 15 dead in June, highest in two years. 28 over three months, also close to a two-year high. On the other hand, 39 for the first half of the year is basically even with 41 through June in 2010 (and far below 2009). My guess is that, other than of course that every such death matters, it's not going to be especially important that deaths have spiked up a bit there. If anything, it may keep Barack Obama on course to pull the troops out...basically, it would of course be too bad if the last stages of leaving prove to be more costly than the earlier stages, but it isn't likely to change much.
In Afghanistan, the news continues to be that coalition deaths have leveled off. June 2010 was the record month for those casualties, so it's already good news that the record is a year old, and the 65 lives lost in June 2011 were far lower. But month-to-month numbers fluctuate a lot. More telling is that 2011 to date, through the end of June, the coalition death toll was at 281 (203 Americans), down from 2010 January through June when 323 coalition troops (201 Americans) died. As I've said before, to me the thing that really matters is whether Barack Obama (and, in this case, leaders of allied governments) are going to be tyrannized by the logic of the Friedman unit. It's always going to be the case that one can try just a little bit longer, one can try to avoid making previous losses "meaningless" by hanging on, one can always believe that victory is around the corner. That's the logic of the quagmire. And, as far as I can see, it's a logic that Obama has strongly resisted. That was the message of his Afghanistan decision last week, and I suspect from the casualty numbers that it's a decision that's been made and implemented in the field for as long as a year, now.
Probably.
There's still no guarantee that Obama is going to ultimately follow through, in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya.
So that's what I'm watching for.
At any rate, I seem to be off track here -- what do you think mattered this week?
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Maybe, maybe, maybe the idea that Republicans' defense of the uber-rich is starting to wear thin?
ReplyDeleteI was shocked to learn that what the Democrats are struggling to "win" in deficit reduction talks is a lousy $300-400 billion in new revenue over 10-12 years -- less than half of that called for in the conservative Bowles-Simpson plan. It seems to be that barring some unlikely event, such as the admin ignoring the debt ceiling and erasing everything we think we know about these negotiations -- Obama and the Dems have already lost big-time on this core battle.
ReplyDelete"It's always going to be the case that one can try just a little bit longer, one can try to avoid making previous losses "meaningless" by hanging on, one can always believe that victory is around the corner. That's the logic of the quagmire. And, as far as I can see, it's a logic that Obama has strongly resisted."
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with you here. Obama is leaving the bulk of our forces in Afghanistan for now (I actually know guardsmen who are being sent back), and he has some reason for doing this -- either there's a military objective that has yet to be achieved, or he's worried that all of our gains will be lost if we leave right away. If our reasons for not withdrawing immediately continue to exist, why would an artificial timeline override that? And if withdrawal is simply the right thing to do, as I believe it is, then why wait? Even if we don't use the word "victory," it seems that we're still chasing after it.
Some weak signals got stronger as mainstream and moderate-conservative types (including in WSJ) expressed some rather leftist and FDR-inspired notions about boosting the economy: a new spending stimulus, increased taxes on the wealthiest, and a jobs program--even WPA and CCC were mentioned. This may fade away over the Summer, but it also might turn into a political issue in the Fall.
ReplyDelete