Al-Qaeda: a brand you can trust

I see interesting parallels between the "Al-Qaeda" label and the more conventional brand names and trademarks used in the global economy. Brands are valuable: they allow consumers to avoid the trouble of researching products every time they buy. Protecting a brand name can be a major priority for a multinational corporation. (Don't believe me? See what happends if you label your drink "Coka-Cola". Look at the effort by the Xerox Corporation to prevent their name from becoming a synonym for photocopier.)

Why did the group commanded by al-Zarqawi change its name from Tawhid and Jihad to Al-Qaeda in Iraq? Not because of any substantial ties to the core of the Bin Laden network, but because it was a cheap way to get brand recognition. Prior to coming to their present accomodation, there were signs that Bin Laden wasn't happy with al-Zarqawi or his strategies. But Bin Laden had to recognize the inevitable: al-Zarqawi was going to link himself to the brand name, and Bin Laden was in no position to stop it. So al-Zarqawi pledges allegiance to Bin Laden, runs his operations to suit himself, and grabs the spotlight. Coke or McDonalds would never have stood for it.

It's a pity there isn't trademark protection for criminal organizations or ideologies, isn't it?

Why won't anyone in authority admit what's going on?

According to sources cited in the New York Times, bombs used in Iraq are being designed and assembled in Iran, and closely match designs used by Hezbollah in Israel.

At the same time, "U.S. officials said they had no evidence of the Iranian government's involvement."

Anyone else sense a contradiction here?

Measures of effectiveness

Operationalize and test. A key to evaluating any policy is to (1) decide what you are trying to accomplish, and (2) figure out a way to measure your results. Number (2) is hard, and if done incorrectly the measuring device can be more misleading than helpful. (Remember body counts?) Number (1) is harder. All too often we don't know what we are trying to achieve, and/or different people are supporting the same policy in order to achieve different ends. These problems can be papered over in the politics of coalition-building, but they don't go away. Agreeing on an adequate measure of success or failure forces us to look at the problem.

Consider Iraq. What is the goal? What is the ultimate goal, and how do we know if we are getting there?

At least some people recognize the problem.

Addendum (thanks to Instapundit): You want numbers? I got numbers. Compiled by the Brookings Institution, and very interesting. A few preliminary conclusions, based on what I skimmed:

1. Things were much worse last year than they are today.
2. The general political and economic trends continue to be in the right direction.
3. The native resistance is fairly large (around 20,000 and recruiting enough each month to more than cover losses), but what most of them are fighting for is an end to the shame of occupation by foreign powers.
4. There is a small core of commited Islamists (in the low hundreds), mostly from Saudi Arabia, who see the struggle as being about creating a base for a global religious/ideological war.
5. The vast majority of the population is focused, and rationally so, on getting clean water and reliable electricity. They are generally optimistic about the future. I suspect they'd be happy to see the ideologues kill one another and leave their families alone.
   

I'm still reading. Very, very interesting, and much more telling than the crap on the evening news. A major limitation to keep in mind: people taking polls in a war zone are more likely to tell the interrogator what they think he wants to hear. I don't think its a significant problem, since the poll numbers appear to reflect facts on the ground, but keep it in mind.

Goodbye to article 9

The ruling party in Japan is proposing changes to the "pacifist" constitution enacted after WWII, and China is worried.

Friends and allies

It's a truism of international relations that states don't have friends--only interests. Here's a case in point: in 1958 the British sold Israel twenty tons of heavy water, essential for the development of plutonium-based atomic weapons, without ever telling the U.S. The Americans had already announced that they wouldn't supply anything like that without solid assurances that it wouldn't be used in weapons development. The British, for "reasons of state" (including money) decided they wouldn't be so picky.

Friendship isn't trivial. But it only goes so far.

Egyptian democracy

Another small step in the right direction.

Planet Ten

The solar system keeps getting more and more interesting.

Can you get there from here?

I posted the following on R.J. Rummel's Democratic Peace website today. To be honest I'm still thinking this through, in large part becasue I don't like the answers I keep coming up with.

[I want to] talk about two things at once--the general "freedomist" principles, and the War in Iraq--and how one can support the first without necessarily supporting the other.

I think Kenneth got the gist of what I meant by the "liberation from above" remark. I'm trying to draw the distinction between *formal* rights and institutions and the practice of everyday life. It's important to remove impediments, and outsiders can contribute a lot to that. But removing the chains from a slave doesn't necessarily make him free--if he has adopted the mindset of a slave. Education helps, institutions help, law helps. We can encourage people to be free, but people have to want to be free, and to believe freedom is a real possibilty for themselves, and to be willing to tolerate the freedom of others.

As for Iraq, I opposed the war not because I thought Iraq wasn't deserving, but because in a world with finite American resources the U.S. has to pick its battles, and I concluded that this particular battle was too costly in terms of the probable results. It was a judgement call, and I understand how others could disagree.

I hope I was wrong.

The Iraq case also raises another point, which is that whatever the practical arguments for and against an American invasion of Iraq, it was (without a Security Council resolution) clearly a violation of international law.

Now, that might not bother some people. I think most of us would agree that international law is wrong to place national sovereignty over the rights and lives of individuals. Before WWII individuals had the relation to the state under international law that is similar to the relationship between a pet and its owner, and the law (made by states for purposes of state) has been very slow to improve. Any new, better set of rules will require a degree of consensus (or hegemony) that doesn't exist.

Some kind of international law is required, if there are to be relationships across borders. The current system of international law is far from what I (and I think most of us) think it should be. Improving the present system is at best a long-term project. (A global cataclysm or war would probably speed things up, but at a terrible cost, and not necessarily for the better.) So what do we do now?

Another reason to get off this rock

"Earth is a crumb in a supermarket full of resources."
--Peter Diamandis, originator of the X-prize, at this year's TED conference.

From the people who brought you the oil for food program

...the UN is debating what to do about the administration of the Internet. Please excuse me if I have little faith in any UN involvement in this. There are too many UN member governments who perceive freedom of speech as a threat to their continued rule (in many cases, because it IS a threat). The best outcome for this would be if the organization, as usual, fails to accomplish anything. The status quo is almost certainly better than anything these people might agree on.