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THINKING FOR SOLDIERS vol. 1

THINKING FOR SOLDIERS vol. 1 -- STUDS AND DUDS

Check out Eric Umansky on the U.S. Navy's approach to procurement post A-12 in Washington Monthly. It's a must-read.

RANDOM BIN LADEN TAPE REVELATION

RANDOM BIN LADEN TAPE REVELATION No. 2: MARKETING CRITIC BRANDS HIMSELF AS CLUELESS

I will confess right up front to having almost no idea what "reporter-researcher" Asher Price is trying to say in TNR today about the State Department's recent marketing efforts: I can't decide if it reads like a wild surmise that someone tried to spin up into a piece, or a rambling diatribe the editors tightened up to try and make at least some sense. But it seems he's arguing that the release of the Bin Laden tape was solely a marketing ploy aimed at the Arab "street", and one that is so transparently a marketing ploy it just won't work, a "loose play" in other (Asher's own), self-consciously lingoesque words:

But convincing young Muslims that they shouldn't kill Americans isn't like convincing them to buy Pepsi. This approach "is arrogant in the extreme," says Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East Studies at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. iIt's not like that world is a blank slate where we can write our hopes and dreams. It has its own truth.'

Hey, I'll be the first to admit marketing can't solve EVERYTHING. But what's Asher's alternative, given the starting point of a damning tape in the Americans' possession, exactly? Not release the tape at all? He never says. The entire piece is non-constructive criticism.

If anything, the problem with the tape release was it was clearly done WITHOUT thinking of maximizing the impact on the Arab world. As a very smart Beirut- based commentator (whose name I missed) on PBS' NewsHour pointed out tonight, releasing the tape in an English translation only, and only getting around to releasing the Arabic transcript today, only encouraged Arab listeners to discount it... with the audio so poor, and the words unreadable, anyone would have. As the fellow said on TV, would it really have hurt the Americans to wait one more day until they could release tapes with Arabic subtitles? That is, if they were thinking of their foreign audience at all at the time, so one can safely presume they were not. If the tape was meant to shore up support at home of course, it still has some value, but its handling in the Arab world was botched. Of course, if you believe dear Asher, it wouldn't have worked anyway, as Arabs are genetically immune to PR, or something.

RANDOM BIN LADEN TAPE REVELATION

RANDOM BIN LADEN TAPE REVELATION No. 1: SPY SATELLITES APPARENTLY HAVE TROUBLES RECOGNIZING WHEELCHAIRS

Okay, Lord knows Pakistani customs ain't what it's cracked up to be, and the CIA has nothing to brag about recently, but how exactly did our anonymous paraplegic sheikh from Saudi Arabia manage to both make it into Kandahar and out again IN THE MIDDLE OF AN AIR WAR?

"The tape is... documenting a courtesy visit by Bin Laden and his lieutenants to an unidentified Shaykh, who appears crippled from the waist down."

Californian hippies, Australian chicken-boners, Geraldo, now Saudis with disabilities... is there anyone at all who tried who did NOT make it into Afghanistan this fall?

Nothing to see here, folks,

Nothing to see here, folks, move along, move along. Just a new place to keep my stuff, as Carlin would say.