The New Yorker

Military Conflict

Ron Tang — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:15:00 -0400

General Richard A. Cody graduated from West Point in 1972, flew helicopters, ascended to command the storied 101st Airborne Division, and then, toward the end of his career, settled into management; now, at fifty-seven, he wears four stars as the Army Vice-Chief of Staff. This summer, he will retire from military service.

In 2004, in a little-noted speech, Cody described the Army’s efforts to adapt to its new commitments. (It was attempting to fight terrorism, quell the Taliban, invade and pacify Iraq, and, at the same time, prepare for future strategic challenges, whether in China or Korea or Africa.) The endeavor… more

The Lost Children

Ron Tang — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In the summer of 1995, an Iranian man named Majid Yourdkhani allowed a friend to photocopy pages from “The Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel, at the small print shop that he owned in Tehran. Government agents arrested the friend and came looking for Majid, who secretly crossed the border to Turkey and then flew to Canada. In his haste, Majid was forced to leave behind his wife, Masomeh; for months afterward, Iranian government agents phoned her and said things like “If you aren’t divorcing him, then you are supporting him, and we will therefore arrest you and torture you.”… more

Jeffrey Lewis in The New Yorker | 'A Strike in the Dark; What did Israel bomb in Syria?'

Communications — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:51:00 -0500

New America in the News:

A Strike in the Dark; What did Israel bomb in Syria? (The New Yorker)

...Much of what one would expect to see around a secret nuclear site was lacking at the target, a former State Department intelligence expert who now deals with proliferation issues for the Congress said. "There is no security around the building," he said. "No barracks for the Army or the workers. No associated complex."

Jeffrey Lewis, who heads the non-proliferation program at the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington, told me that, even if the width and the length of the building were similar to the Korean site, its height was simply not sufficient to contain a Yongbyon-size reactor and also have enough room to extract the control rods, an essential step in the operation of the reactor; nor was there evidence in the published imagery of major underground construction.

"All you could see was a box," Lewis said. "You couldn't see enough to know how big it will be or what it will do. It's just a box." ...

Steve Coll in The New Yorker | 'Armed and Dangerous' (audio clip)

Communications — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:57:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Armed and Dangerous (New Yorker)
This week, in an article in the magazine and in an audio interview online, Steve Coll delves into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the current turmoil in Pakistan. “Few victims of political murder have contemplated their demise in advance as thoroughly as Benazir Bhutto did hers,” Coll writes. “In her final weeks, she criticized the country’s radical Islamist groups and also warned repeatedly about civil violence.” ...

Time Bomb

Ron Tang — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

At around noon on December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto arrived at a fourth-floor suite in the Serena Hotel in Islamabad to meet with Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan. She “was in a very good mood,” Karzai told me recently. She admired his cape, and they laughed as he recounted how he had acquired it -- an improbable tale that involved a visit to the exiled King of Afghanistan. They sipped tea and coffee and discussed the region’s gathering political violence. Militant Islamic leaders had named both of them as targets for assassination; suicide bombings had escalated in their two… more

Bombs

adminn — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:25:00 -0500

Last week, the Bush Administration released declassified extracts from a new National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s nuclear program. The passages landed in Washington like a religious scroll; they radiated revelation. The N.I.E. drew upon new intelligence, collected last summer, to report with “high confidence” two facts that were previously unknown, or at least heavily disputed: that Iran’s Islamic revolutionary government had commissioned a secret, military-run atomic-weapons program, in addition to its open nuclear-power program, and that, in 2003, Iran halted this secret program, “primarily in response to international pressure.”

This assessment may yet prove to be no more accurate than past… more

Miscalculations

adminn — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:10:00 -0500

In his autobiography, “In the Line of Fire,” published last year, the Pakistani military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, describes himself as a once talented college athlete. His achievements attracted a particular compliment that lingered long in his mind:

I was fourth in cross-country, was the top gymnast, and was third in the “Mr. FC College” bodybuilding competition. . . . Muhammad Iqbal Butt, who had competed creditably in the Mr. Universe competition, told me at the time that I had a most muscular physique.

Yet Musharraf did not always feel a need to display his prowess. As a boy, he had a… more

Stealing Life

Articles — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:27:00 -0400

On a muggy August afternoon in Baltimore, trash scuttled down Guilford Avenue, the breeze smelling like rain and asphalt. It was the last week of shooting for the fifth and final season of the HBO drama The Wire, and the crew was filming a scene in front of a boarded-up elementary school. Cast members had been joined by forty or so day players -- mostly kids from the neighborhood. Earlier, the episode’s director, Clark Johnson, had been giving some of the kids the chance to say "Cut!," and they’d bellowed it like drunks at a surprise party. Now, when… more

Disparities

Articles — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:16:00 -0400

Just over a year ago, during a high-school assembly in Jena, Louisiana, a black student asked the school’s white principal if it would be all right to sit under an oak tree outside, an oasis of shade known as the “white tree,” because only Caucasian students congregated there. The principal said that the young man could sit where he liked. Later, the student and some African-American friends walked over to the oak and chatted with some white schoolmates. The next day, somebody fixed two nooses to the tree’s branches.

The ropes inaugurated a narrative of conflict and small-town justice in the… more

General Accounting

Articles — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:28:00 -0400

Last December, the Army released a document entitled “Counterinsurgency,” an updated field manual designed to guide United States forces to victory in guerrilla wars. “Legitimacy Is the Main Objective” is one heading above its thematic advice. To defeat a resistance force in irregular war, the manual observes, it is essential to recognize “that political factors have primacy” and may account for as much as four-fifths of the struggle -- an insight ascribed, a little showily, to a strategist on Mao Zedong’s central committee.

The general who oversaw the field manual’s rewriting, David H. Petraeus, was dispatched to Iraq upon its… more