Pundit Accountability - What I Got Wrong Posted by Michael Cohen

One of my biggest pet peeves as a denizen of the think tank and blogging world is the propensity of my fellow foreign policy analysts to make mistakes and errors of judgment - and never be held accountable for them.  Why should we be above reputational scrutiny for making errors in what, after all, is our primary occupation - analysis? And after all a little humility is probably a very good thing, especially when you are regularly standing on a soap box telling other people what they don't know or what they got wrong.

So just to show that I am willing to put my money (or in this case reputation) where my mouth is, I, a bit belatedly, decided to review the lion's share of my blog postings at DA from 2010 and pick out the worst ones for public exposure. (I would encourage other bloggers and analysts to follow suit - it's actually quite cathartic.)

For the most part I feel pretty good about my track record and I think most of my writings hold up to scrutiny - of course is things start going well in Afghanistan I may have to revise this entire post! But there are a few stinkers out there - and while I'm sure I've missed some errors along the way these are the ones that really leaped out to me.

Let's start with this post from May of last year about the attempted Times Square bombing, which is just plain embarrassing and was indeed wrong about where responsibility lay for that foiled attack. I jumped to some overwrought conclusions and my rhetoric was really a bit over the top. I wish I could delete it.

In April, Jim Arkedis wrote what I thought was a rather harsh assessment of a piece I'd written about Afghanistan in Dissent. It seemed a bit unfair . . . but that doesn't really excuse the rather d***ish tone I took in my response. So if you're reading this Jim, my apologies.

In November I wrote this rather blistering attack against Wikileaks. Now I still think that the basic approach of Wikileaks is dangerous and undermines US national security in ways that Julian Assange and his band of cohorts don't truly understand. But, I'm chastened a bit by the fact that Wikileaks has responsibly not leaked all the cables they have and has wisely redacted the names of those who might be affected. I'm hardly a Wikileaks supporter but I think there is reason to believe that my initial take on them was perhaps too dogmatic.

Ok, now to some more substantive critiques related to Afghanistan. I wrote this in January 2010:

"'The more there is talk of negotiation, the more the Taliban view it as a sign of weakness. How do you make sure the reconciliation process does not embolden the Taliban to go on the march?'" It's a good question and it seems like the answer would be to put greater military pressure on the Taliban, but that isn't the strategy being espoused by General McChrystal."

Careful readers of this blog would know I've switched my position on the necessary precursors to negotiation - and I'm now generally opposed to putting greater military pressure on the Taliban. Honestly, it's a case of my view about the conflict evolving, but there is an apparent contradiction here that should be acknowledged.

Then there is this from April:

The idea that we are able to provide security in places like Helmand and Kandahar is nothing less than sheer folly; that we believe it will turn the tide of the war is far worse.

I stand by the turning the tide argument; but the US has been able to provide somewhat improved security in some parts of Helmand and Kandahar so I should admit that I was perhaps too skeptical in some of my earlier assessments. Of course, I still think those security improvement are mere tactical gains that don't fundamentally shift the strategic deficit in Afghanistan.

This post from June, which postulated that the "worm had turned on Afghanistan" was, um, wrong - and dramatically so. Even worse was my response to the McChrystal firing last June and what it might mean on the ground in Afghanistan:

And while this is unlikely to lead to a wholesale - and much-needed - change in strategy one would imagine that it might lead to other important tactical changes around the margins. For example, it will be very interesting to see if the long-planned offensive in Kandahar, which would almost certainly lengthen US involvement in the Afghan fight, still happens. Or perhaps there will be new efforts to open political negotiations with the Taliban. And I'll even be even more curious to see if the current, restrictive rules of engagement for US troops are relaxed by a general who hardly practiced the same sort of population centric COIN so favored by McChrystal. Quite simply, there is going to be enormous pressure on Petraeus to show results, particularly by December when the first major review of the Afghanistan policy is supposed to occur.

In the end, what matters perhaps more than anything else is that Obama is now quite firmly in charge of Afghan policy - and the longer, even open-ended, commitment favored by the generals is on the outs . . . Petraeus will now be under enormous pressure to stick by his promise to Obama and begin troop withdrawals by 2011. Maybe at one point Obama might have bended the rules or even been flexible if McChrystal or Petraeus were able to show "progress" in Afghanistan; not anymore.

I got the change in the Afghan rules of engagement part correct (but that was kind of an easy one) and I was right to suggest that there would be pressure on Petraeus to show results by December . . . but the how part was off 180 degrees. And the argument that Obama was back in charge of Afghanistan policy; chalk that one up to wishful thinking on my part. I completely misjudged and misunderstood Petraeus and what his ascendancy would mean to the war effort.

I doubled down on this silliness in July with a post postulating that we had hit an inflection point in Afghanistan that leaned toward de-escalation and not escalation. Yeah, not so much.

These were perhaps my two worst pieces of prognostication . . . well except for this post that I wrote after the capture of Mullah Baradar by Pakistan:

Not only is this enormous as far as the US war in Afghanistan, but it suggests for perhaps the first time that the Pakistan government is willing to cooperate with the US in going after the Afghan Taliban.  One can only imagine the impact on Taliban feelings of security and reliance on Pakistani support: that safe haven ain't feeling so safe anymore. One has to think this will affect the drive toward political reconciliation in a dramatic way - because if you're the Taliban this news suggests that time is no longer necessarily on your side.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this may be the most important to thing to happen to the US war in Afghanistan.This has the potential to change the entire complexion of the war in Afghanistan - and for the better. For the first time in a very long time, there is reason for optimism.

Jesus, that is awful. This is a great example of trying to write something that is absolutely outside my lane of knowledge (which is already a fairly narrow country road). At the time, I had a rather poor understanding of Pakistan internal politics . . . and it showed. I just had no idea what I was talking about (perhaps it reflected some desperate desire to say something good about the war).

To that last point, I can't help but note that the three worst blog posts of the year; the ones that most wildly missed the mark; the ones that put the greatest egg on my face - what they each had in common, was that they were perhaps the only three times all year I wrote something that offered an optimistic view of the war in Afghanistan. And as I now know that optimism was sorely misplaced.

I think there might be a lesson there. 

Anyway, sorry for the navel-gazing; I'll get back to pessimistic Afghan blogging toot suite.

Comments

[DE Teodoru]

No one blames you Mr. Cohen, you were lied to by everyone from the Bush-it White House, DoS and DoD about Pakistan and India relative to Afghanistan. But the real fact is that, before he went to Pakistan to die, binLaden was accessible to us if Bush were anything but Bush-it. However, since 9/11-- which is seared in my mind as I was a survivor-- was only an excuse for the Iraq War, according to official USArmy history, binLaden and much of his crew were able to slip to Pakistan.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/nytdocs/docs/21/21.pdf

To cover-up, Bush went after the Taliban, a totally nationalistic movement, much as he covered up for the criminal negligence of the airlines. The had left the pilot's cabin door wide open in flight and the alQaeda shahids saw that to be the rule, DESPITE THE FAA rules, so four airliners were seized in ten minutes each.

We live in a world of larceny and lies at the top, except that now the victims of corporate cannibalism are not the lumpen proletariat but the lumpen middle class.

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