Demography isn't everything, but it's important

ZenPundit has a talent for crossing disciplinary divides. This time it's neurophysiology and nation-building.

What I infer from this data and the Neurolearning Blog post is that the most favorable time for any effort, external or indigenous, to engage in a positive restructuring of a nation's societal rule-sets may be when a given country's youth bulge hits their early twenties. A narrow window of time when the most physically vigorous and largest section of the population has reached mental maturity in terms of accepting, comprehending and processing abstractions yet are most open to new ideas and desirous of a productive future for themselves.

This reminds me of another point that annoys some of my students: prior to about twenty-one, a person's brain is still growing and developing. There is, in that sense, a physiological basis to the notion of "adulthood" beginning in the early twenties (call it twenty-one for convenience). That in turn, gives us a reason to postpone the legal age to drink or to vote. Thus, when someone tells me "if I'm old enough to vote I should be old enough to drink," the proper reply is "you shouldn't be allowed to vote."

It's hard to keep a network down

Then again, I could be wrong...



Signs of Qaeda resurgence - International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON: Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Bin Laden and Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.

American analysts said recent intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with Al Qaeda. They receive guidance from their commanders and Zawahri, the analysts said. Bin Laden, who has long played less of an operational role, appears to have little direct involvement.

Officials said the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But groups of 10 to 20 men are being trained at the camps, the officials said, and the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature.



(March 10 is OBLs birthday. Remember to send a card.)

Gas warfare in Iraq

Stratfor has some interesting things to say about the use of chlorine gas by Iraqi terrorists. Key points:

1. they aren't doing it well (yet), and
2. the psychological effect will likely be far more substantial than any physical effect could be.

Burden-sharing

Mark Steyn is always a fun read. A recent sample:

ACCORDING to my dictionary, the word "ally" comes from the Old French. Very Old French, I'd say. For the New French, the word has a largely postmodern definition of "duplicitous charmer who undermines you at every opportunity".
For the less enthusiastically obstructive NATO members, "ally" means "wealthy country with no military capability that requires years of diplomatic wooing and black-tie banquets in order to agree to a token contribution of 23.08 troops." Incidentally, that 23.08 isn't artistic licence on my part. The 2004 NATO summit in Turkey was presented as a triumph of multilateral co-operation because the 26 members agreed to contribute between them an additional 600 troops and three helicopters to the Afghan mission. That's 23.08 troops and a ninth of a helicopter per ally. In fairness, Turkey chipped in the three helicopters single-handed, though the deal required them to return to Ankara after three months.

And these days troops is something of an elastic term, too. In Norwegian, it means "fighting men who are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, as long as they don't have to do any fighting and there are at least two provinces between their shoulders and the American ones". That's to say, Norway is "participating" in Afghanistan, but, because its troops are "not sufficiently trained to take part in combat", they've been mainly back at the barracks manning the photocopier or staging amateur performances of Peer Gynt for the amusement of US special forces who like nothing better than to unwind with five acts of Ibsen after a hard day hunting the Taliban.

Me Tarzan, you the world

From Ivan Eland, another note of sanity in an insane world.



American Chronicle: A Foreign Policy that Only Tarzan Could Love



What do I have to do to get involved with the Independent Institute? They often seem to say what I want to say, and usually they do a better job of saying it than I do.

A tough year for Bin Laden

Some interesting thoughts on Afghanistan and how it fits into the overall war. From Stratfor:

A new audiotape surfaced Tuesday from al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In this latest message, al-Zawahiri pledges allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who he calls the leader of the worldwide jihadist movement. Even more striking, there is no mention whatsoever of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. This suggests that al Qaeda has been weakened to the point that a major shift in the leadership of the wider jihadist movement is under way. There is no proof that bin Laden is dead, but he is certainly missing in action...



These circumstances have created a situation that has allowed Mullah Omar to reassert himself as the leader of the jihadists...



In fact, the Taliban resurgence to a great degree has been made possible by the renewed al Qaeda commitment to the Taliban insurgency. Now that bin Laden is no longer leading al Qaeda, and with the Taliban revived as a major force, al-Zawahiri has no choice but to acknowledge Mullah Omar as the supreme jihadist leader. Al Qaeda's dependency on the Taliban (as opposed to the other way around) will create a struggle over operational planning and allocation of resources -- directly impacting the network's global reach.

One of the better observations I've seen in a while

DefenseLink News Transcript: DoD News Briefing with Secretary Gates

What I have said in my testimony is that I think that the words "civil war" oversimplify a very complex situation in Iraq. I believe that there are essentially four wars going on in Iraq. [my emphasis] One is Shi'a on Shi'a, principally in the south; the second is sectarian conflict, principally in Baghdad, but not solely; third is the insurgency; and fourth is al Qaeda, and al Qaeda is attacking, at times, all of those targets.

So I think I just -- you know, I -- it's not, I think, just a matter of politics or semantics. I think it oversimplifies it. It's a bumper sticker answer to what's going on in Iraq.

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Holidays

I'm relearning that a lot of what of what we do to survive involves making choices to view realities in the best light possible. With that in mind, several high points:

My wife survived an unexpected case of Thyroid cancer. The Thyroid is now out,with over thirty of her lympth nodes. The surgeon was very thorough. A radioactive iodide treatment in a few weeks should simultaneously locate and destroy any remaining tumor.

Although we didn't get to visit her family over the holidiays, her mother drove up here and rescued us just when it was beginning to feel overwhelming. I'm lucky to have a mother-in-law like her.

Although the tumor attached itself to the vocal cords, it was removed with minimal damage. Susan needs some special training to get more of her voice back, but the recovery so far has been remarkable. She's singing again! (Quietly, to be sure, but so what?)

It's easy to look at the negative. Seeing the positive takes a little more effort--for me, at least--but it's a lot better for everyone, and there's a lot to be thankful for.

One of the more interesting Iraq strategy proposals I've read

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=121806A

To summarize: Go with the 80%, screw the Sunnis.

It is rather ironic, when you think about it. The U.S. is stuck in a COIN effort, mainly against Sunnis.

Counter-insurgency being what it is, the U.S. is of course attempting to win over the Sunnis, and U.S. efforts are probably preventing an all-out civil war, complete with ethnic cleansing that would leave the heavily outnumbered Sunnis in a distinct pickle.

Thus, the U.S. is insulating the Sunnis (again, the primary source of current American woes in Iraq) from the worst consequences of their own failure to maintain control over the country after decades of repressive rule over the others; namely, extermination, or something close to it.

Wealth and power

According to a report from the World Institute for Development Economics Research (Helsinki), the wealthiest 2 percent of adults own more than half of the world's household wealth, and the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets. In case you wonder where you fall, as of 2000 the richest 10 percent of adults had assets of $61,000 or more, and the top 1 percent had at least $500,000.

I have nothing against getting rich. I do wonder about the political consequences. Wealth is power, and power tends to institutionalize and advance its own interests. And while economics is not necessarily a zero-sum game, politics usually is.