1/ Today, 8:01 AM:

It is fas­ci­nat­ing to me how both lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives are using the story of Faisal Shahzad, the would-​be Times Square bomber (as well as the story of Nidal Malik Hassan, the Ft. Hood shooter, among others), as a kind of spring­board to launch into all sorts of extra­ne­ous and some­times com­i­cal dis­qui­si­tions about the Larger Mean­ing of his (thank­fully incom­pe­tent) act…. In fact, the mean­ing of Shahzad’s alleged ter­ror­ist attempt is fairly limited.

2/ Yes­ter­day, 8:32 AM:

This is a guess, but I don’t think that Faisal Shahzad, if he is indeed a ter­ror­ist, was rad­i­cal­ized solely by the con­struc­tion in East Jerusalem of apart­ment build­ings for Jews. This sug­gests the lim­ited rel­e­vance of the “linkage” argument.

1/ From an op-​ed by David Brooks last Thursday:

Haiti, like most of the world’s poor­est nations, suf­fers from a com­plex web of progress-​resistant cul­tural influ­ences. There is the influ­ence of the voodoo reli­gion, which spreads the mes­sage that life is capri­cious and plan­ning futile. There are high levels of social mis­trust. Respon­si­bil­ity is often not internalized.

2/ From a Sunday dis­patch by Dr. Evan Lyon of Part­ners in Health:

can’t get through much now but beyond the horror, one very strik­ing real­ity is that things are totally peace­ful. we cir­cu­lated in PAP in the middle of every­thing until just now. every­where. no UN. no police. no US marines and no vio­lence or chaos or any­thing. just people help­ing each other. drove past the main cen­tral park in PAP where at least 50K people must be sleep­ing and it was almost silent.

people cook­ing, talk­ing, some singing and crying. people are kind, calm, gen­er­ous to us and others. even with hun­dreds lying on the ground, open frac­tures, mas­sive injuries of all kinds.

1/ Pres­i­dent Obama, in a speech on the earth­quake in Haiti:

This is a time when we are reminded of the common human­ity that we all share.

2/ Genevieve Peters, on plans to kick non-​resident stu­dents out of the Bev­erly Hills Uni­fied School District:

This is a com­mu­nity trying to take care of its own, and there is noth­ing wrong with that.

1/ From Andrew Bace­vich, in the LRB:

Con­sider the views of John Nagl, a former sol­dier, counter-​insurgency enthu­si­ast and some­time adviser to Petraeus and McChrys­tal. Accord­ing to Nagl, ‘pop­u­la­tion secu­rity’ – the cen­tral ele­ment of McChrystal’s pro­posal – ‘is the first require­ment of suc­cess in counter-​insurgency, but it is not suf­fi­cient. Eco­nomic devel­op­ment, good gov­er­nance and the pro­vi­sion of essen­tial ser­vices, all occur­ring within a matrix of effec­tive infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions, must all improve simul­ta­ne­ously and steadily over a long period of time if America’s deter­mined insur­gent ene­mies are to be defeated.’ The imper­a­tive, Nagl argues, is for the United States to wage a ‘“global counter-​insurgency” cam­paign’ – in Pen­ta­gon par­lance, GCOIN. Indeed, Nagl and other counter-​insurgency enthu­si­asts believe that with Petraeus’s ‘surge’ having demon­strated the effi­cacy of FM 3-24 in Iraq, the US mil­i­tary has already embarked on such a global cam­paign. Afghanistan is merely the next step.

In giving McChrys­tal what he wants, Obama, whether wit­tingly or not, has signed on to this larger cam­paign. Bush’s policy of rely­ing on Amer­i­can mil­i­tary prowess to ‘change the way they live’ is now Obama’s. Cui bono? For defence con­trac­tors, ‘counter-​insurgency experts’ and the var­i­ous insti­tu­tions that make up the national secu­rity state, GCOIN – jus­ti­fied as nec­es­sary to pre­vent another 9/11, enforce the Carter Doc­trine and uphold the Pax Amer­i­cana – promises to be the gift that never stops giving. Per­pet­ual war now looms as a real prospect, car­ry­ing with it abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties for exer­cis­ing power, reap­ing profit and sat­is­fy­ing per­sonal ambi­tion. Lost along the way is the promise of ‘change’ that vaulted Barack Obama to the White House in the first place.*

2/ From CNAS’s Andrew Exum: