Entries from November 2006 ↓

There is no doubt in my mind that Iraq is in a state of civil war. What an oxymoronic term.

It’s been a civil war for some time. In fact, it started more than 1,200 years ago. If you want to nit pick, Iraq’s current iteration of the larger scale war between Sunni and Shia “started” in earnest after the bombing of the gold-domed mosque last year.

President Bush can refer to the situation as “sectarian violence” all he wants, and he isn’t helping to solve the problem or frame it correctly when he does. He’s just being stubborn. Meanwhile people continue to be murdered in various horrific ways.

The Associated Press reports that Mr. Bush still says that the violence in Iraq is not a civil war. Rather, he says, it is actually part of an Al Qaeda plot to “use violence to goad Iraqi factions into repeatedly attacking each other.” He made the comments at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

I gave up a year of my life in Iraq trying to help stabilize the place and make it better for all those who are stuck there. That didn’t really happen. We made small steps forward and took big ones backwards. By nearly any measures that matter - quality of daily life, sense of security, economic indicators, death rate per capita, access to medical care, etc. Iraq has deteriorated in the last year. Baghdad is a mess. Operation Together Forward is stagnant.

Can we please stop debating whether there is a civil war and start talking about how many more troops are needed in the short term to get things secure in Baghdad? That would be nice. Of course, I find it unlikely that our politicians will manage to get much accomplished. If we lose in Iraq, it won’t be because our troops or military failed. It will be because our politicians bicker like four-year-olds and cause us all to lose face on what journalists love to call “the Arab street.” That’s stupid. In Arab culture, pride is just about the most important thing there is. American politicians need to understand that they are playing with the outcome of the way the entire century is going to go. Do we throw our hands up and run away from problems or do we continue taking our licks until Iraq is stable enough to manage its own affairs without turning into the century’s largest exporter of human incendiary devices that home in on Americans? On the other hand, Saudi Arabia currently holds that honor, and we continue speaking out both sides of our mouth about freedom and democracy while holding hands with the royal family in that rather unfree nation populated by an alarming number of violently oriented religious zealots.

What a world.

Wow! A lot of you said “none of the above” in response to my “How did you spend your Thanksgiving poll.” So if you weren’t eating, sleeping, shopping or any of the other choices, exactly what were you doing on Thanksgiving day?

SAN. What a nice three letter acronym. Zzzzzz. Well it does stand for something - storage area network. And since the company that employs me has been going through a massive growth streak, we’ve implemented a SAN. If SANs had existed during the Middle Ages, they would have been managed by wizards and other practitioners of assorted arcanery. You almost need a new bachelor’s degree to understand the basic concepts that underlay the technology.

So anyhow, while I was away at war, the company, led by my trusty right hand man, who I’ll refer to as Mighty T, put in a fibre channel SAN in the main corporate office. Problem - we have four corporate offices, each of which should probably have its own SAN. After all, our data pipes are T1s not OC3s. It takes time for the electronic soup to move back and forth through those little pipes. Our employees are taking cold data showers. They’re tired of waiting for the information to warm up…

Long story short - we’re investigating new SAN solutions that might be better fitted to our company’s needs. Enter the vendors.

Using only the company initials (I lie sometimes), we’re in talks with Left Hand Networks and Equallogic. They are not the only two dealers of SANs in existence, but we don’t have time to listen to 17 pitches. I wish we did, because I could probably get a free lunch every time.

Left Hand Networks seems to have a less proprietary thing going, and I tend to like that approach. They use several different vendors hardware to build their systems, and they had a good pitch. Equallogic is a bigger company. I missed their pitch because I was still in Iraq. So I’m scouring the net today for comparisons of the two vendors SAN systems.

First, let me explain that our basic operating premise is that fibre channel is too expensive and complicated for us. We think iSCSI will be the dominant SAN technology. It’s cheaper, more scalable, seems very reliable and redundant and most of all it’s cheaper. According to Network Computing:

iSCSI accounts for only two percent of the SAN market, but its low cost and ease of use are positioning it for growth. We examined four iSCSI modular SANs and found our Editor’s Choice running circles around the competition.

Network computing also decided that they had a clear winner in their “real-world” tests:

In our real-world performance tests, the EqualLogic dominated the competition, with MPC and LeftHand Networks following at a distant second and third.

On the other hand, Storage Networking World Online (crappy long name, I know) says that:

Consistent customer feedback says that LeftHand’s solution is “easy to implement,” “really drag-and-drop storage” with “the ability to easily auto grow volumes.” One user declares, “We are one of the few organizations our size with a DR plan in place. The reason is that LeftHand makes it so easy to do.” Upgrades are reported to be very smooth and often done while in production.

While users report an occasional hardware failure, they are highly complimentary about SAN/iQ’s ability to tolerate such failures with minimal degradation due to seamless, non-disruptive re-striping. Users are also very happy with LeftHand’s direct support.

And in the “guys I know” department, one guy has a Left Hand SAN solution and loves it. And another guy I know who consults for a living says they are a “garage operation” and to stay away. It’s the age old dilemma we’ve all faced at one time or another - do I want to buy my SAN from the big name corporate suits or should I give the little guys in Dockers and scuffed hush puppies a chance?

What I want to know is - do any of you experienced uber-admins out there have an opinion *insert sarcasm*? Is EqualLogic the only game in town when it comes to an iSCSI SAN? Some of you have real world experience that you might share with no vested interest in the eventual outcome for my company. I want to hear from you. I want to know what you think of EqualLogic, Intransa, StoneFly, Nimbus Data, FalconStor, Xiotech or Network Appliance. Who has the best product, the best price and the best support? We need all three in a package. That should be simple, shouldn’t it?

My life has resumed its normal pace. I once again find myself fully engulfed in the terminology of technology, which I much prefer to the terminology of war. SAN, LAN, WAN and others are much more comfortable than FUBAR, SNAFU and VBIED. I’m not sure why military/government acronyms tend to be longer than private sector ones, but they do.

As I absorb the changes at my company - rapid growth, a larger staff under my management and new office locations, I am busy enough that I don’t think much about Iraq. Except when I’m sleeping.

I’ve dreamed about the place a number of times. The dreams are vivid, lucid and haunting.

Once, I was with my family in a market, and a mob formed. Once, I was in a convoy desperately trying to avoid being blown up. I don’t know what my subconscious is doing, but I do know Iraq will always be with me.

The path ahead seems unclear. Could we have used more troops? Yes. Doubling the troops would change the equation drastically. Half a million troops would be even better. The problem is we don’t have the raw numbers. There simply aren’t that many available troops. Can political negotiation still solve Iraq’s low-intensity civil war? I’m dubious.

American troops are doing some good but the security situation for common Iraqis is abominable and Americans don’t seem to have the will to follow through with what we started. Iraqis pay much more dearly for our mistakes and lack of willpower than we do - for now.

And I keep dreaming my dreams.

Milton Friedman has passed away at 94. I hope he has a good rest. Milton Friedman spent his whole life dealing with the role of government in relation to economics. In other words, Friedman’s ideas and writings may have influenced how many hamburgers you find yourself able to afford at any given time. How much of every dollar you work for do you get to keep? Do you even have a clue? How much money do you earn? Is that really how much you take home? Probably not. Government keeps a good chunk of that money, and uses it for various purposes, including muddling with interest rates and otherwise attempting to massage the economy. And that is what Milton Friedman spent his life thinking about. How money flows from point A to point B and back again, except in much more complex scenarios.

Born in New York City to a working-class family of Jewish immigrants from Beregszász, Hungary (today Berehove, Ukraine), Friedman grew up in Rahway, New Jersey, and was educated at Rutgers University (B.A., 1932) and at the University of Chicago (M.A., 1933). He was strongly influenced by Jacob Viner at Chicago, as well as Frank Knight and Henry Simons. He was unable to find academic employment, and working for the New Deal was "a lifesaver." He approved of "many early New Deal measures as appropriate responses to the critical situation", especially the job creating relief agencies WPA, CCC, and PWA. However, he disapproved of the NRA and AAA farm program because they fixed prices.^[3] He taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin, but encountered anti-Semitism in the economics department and went back to government service. In 1941-43, Friedman worked for the federal government, becoming an advisor to high Treasury officials. As a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury in 1942 he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation, and indeed helped develop the payroll withholding system of income tax payments. In his autobiography, he comments on "how thoroughly Keynesian I was then."^[4] As Friedman grew older he reversed himself and in 2006 said, "You know, it’s a mystery as to why people think Roosevelt’s policies pulled us out of the Depression. The problem was that you had unemployed machines and unemployed people. How do you get them together by forming industrial cartels and keeping prices and wages up?"^[5]
Friedman, before the late 1940s, focused mostly on statistical issues in his research, as exemplified by his dissertation on Income from Independent Professional Practice published with coauthor and thesis advisor Simon Kuznets (1945).
Columbia University awarded him a Ph.D. in 1946. He then served as Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, from 1946 to 1976, where he helped build a close-knit intellectual community that produced a number of Nobel prize winners, known collectively as the Chicago School of Economics. He spent the academic year 1953-1954 as a visiting fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Since 1977, Friedman had been affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Friedman also received the National Medal of Science in 1988.
Friedman’s son is the philosopher and economist David D. Friedman.
Many of us start off as socialists until we realize that socialism, rather than improving societies, often just gives people easier ways to scam other people via the power of government. Friedman seems to have been one of these. However, he spent his life learning, and adjusting his opinions:
Friedman was the leading proponent of the monetarist school of economic thought. He maintained that there is a close and stable link between inflation and the money supply, mainly that the phenomenon of inflation is to be regulated by controlling the amount of money poured into the national economy by the Federal Reserve Bank; he rejected the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management; and he held that the government’s role in the guidance of the economy should be severely restricted. Friedman wrote extensively on the Great Depression, which he called the "Great Contraction," arguing that it had been caused by an ordinary financial shock whose duration and seriousness were greatly increased by the subsequent contraction of the money supply caused by the misguided policies of the directors of the Federal Reserve. "The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933…. Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government."^[6] Friedman also argued for the cessation of government intervention in currency markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as promoting the practice of freely floating exchange rates. Friedman’s macroeconomic theories were soon displaced. His close friend George Stigler explained, "As is customary in science, he did not win a full victory, in part because research was directed along different lines by the theory of rational expectations, a newer approach developed by Robert Lucas, also at the University of Chicago."^[7]

Whatever the role of government is in your personal life Milton Friedman’s life and theories have probably influenced you indirectly. His latter life advocacy of economic freedom means that I will miss him. He leaves behind a great legacy and some important ideas.

Is it time for serious talks about dividing Iraq into three autonomous regions? I think so. And so does Peter W. Galbraith, who writes the following in this week’s edition of Time Magazine:

A divided Iraq will be destabilizing to Iraq’s neighbors. Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbors all fear the destabilizing consequences of partition. But they fear an Iran-dominated Iraq even more. Turkey, Iraq’s other powerful neighbor, has a population that includes at least 14 million Turkish Kurds. The Turkish nightmare has been the emergence of an independent Kurdistan in Iraq. But now that it is actually happening, Turkey has responded pragmatically: it is by far the largest source of investment in Iraqi Kurdistan and has cultivated close relations with its leaders. As Turkey’s more sophisticated strategic thinkers understand, Turkey and an independent Kurdistan have a lot in common. Both are secular, pro-Western, democratic and non-Arab. Not only will Kurdistan depend on Turkey economically, but it can serve as a useful buffer to an Iran-dominated Islamic Iraq.

Prior to leaving for my year-long mission in Baghdad, I believed that we had to do something to stem the tide of Islamic terrorism against Western democracies. I still do. But Iraq isn’t even close to becoming a democracy. It’s not freer than it was under Saddam Hussein. Certainly, there are some freedoms enjoyed by Iraqis now that didn’t exist under Saddam - you can have a cell phone, satellite television and an Internet connection. I’m sure that’s of little comfort to people who cannot move freely through their capital city and must struggle daily just to avoid being murdered by their own police forces or army. I doubt that secular Iraqis who are now being forced to follow new religious mandates appreciate it much.
For the United States, the choices are tough. We lose our sons and daughters everyday trying to make the country a better place to live for its citizens. But are those citizens interested in what we want for them? Many are. But many more are busy being duplicitous with us while settling old scores with each other - and we pay for it daily.

Galbraith says:

Iraq’s national-unity government is not united and does not govern. Iraqi security forces, the centerpiece of the U.S.’s efforts for stability, are ineffective or, even worse, combatants in the country’s escalating civil war. President George W. Bush says the U.S.’s goal is a unified and democratic Iraq, but we have no way to get there. As Americans search for answers, there is one obvious alternative: split Iraq into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shi’ite states.

I saw many Iraqi Army units doing their jobs professionally while I was out and about in Baghdad. But I didn’t really get beyond what was on the surface. I don’t speak the language. I couldn’t tell whether I was watching Sunnis, Shias or a mixture of the two. I only got the “official” viewpoint. I don’t think we have enough Iraqi commanders committed to national unity and a nonsectarian outlook to make a real dent in the violence that takes place every day. The commanders and political figures who do espouse such views are often murdered.

The Kurds in the north live in a completely different world already. The have a de facto nation of their own, provide their own security, and they love Americans. They would welcome us with open arms on most levels. Countering all the messages of national unity that our own government insists on pusing, the Kurds have already stopped flying the Iraqi flag in their cities. And who can blame them? Iraq murdered so many of them under Saddam’s rule.

Southern Iraq is now completely dominated by the Shia and by Iranian interests. And in the middle sits Baghdad and the Western provinces - the sources of the majority of the violence you see on TV and read about in newspapers and on the Internet. These mixed areas are the battleground between the formerly ruling Sunnis and the new Shia power structure. The violence between the two is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, but perhaps it could be mitigated and minimized by the implementation of a Sunni autonomous region - that, at least, would give those now focused on only violence as a solution to problems some other more peaceful avenue on which to focus their energies.

Go read what Galbraith has to say. The debate over Iraq shouldn’t be about timetables or mistakes that have already been made. We shouldn’t talk in terms of abandoning the country. But we should be realistic about the nature of the beast we’ve created. We should be asking ourselves what we can do to help average Iraqis, regardless of their ethnic or religious status. We should be practical about what we can do to improve the security situation.
Autonomous or semi-autonomous regions seem to me to be the only near-term solution that has a practical chance of lowering the level of daily conflict. This might mean mass migration, but that is already happening. It might mean more division between Sunni and Shia inside Iraq but that is also already happening.

Four months before I left Iraq, we were told that Baghdad was the hub that held Iraq together, and that we would have to secure it before the country could have a chance. I don’t think that is even remotely possible with the current state of Iraq’s own military forces and our limited human resources on the ground. Those four months gave me no indicators of an improved security situation, no matter how various departments tried to spin it.

We must try new approaches. If partitioning the nation isn’t a viable one, then what else can we try that hasn’t been tried? I’d love to hear from you.

I’m home.

The trip seemed endless.

We had an awards ceremony at Camp Atterbury but the awards were cookie cutter style - everyone basically got the same thing regardless of what his or her contribution was during our deployment. I really don’t mind that but I’m noting it because it irritates me that the Army does such a poor job of individualizing and doling out promotions and recognition based on merit.

My friends and family surprised me with a welcome home party. The scam went like this - my wife’s boss called and invited us over for dinner and to “catch up.” When we got there, he told me me we needed to go collect his wife from their subdivision’s club house. When we walked into the club house the lights came on and everyone was there. It was great.
I’m not really the type of person who wears his emotions near the surface, and I’m not that comfortable being the center of attention, but I truly appreciated seeing the folks that really matter in life - the people who I interface with on a personal and professional level. I felt a little overwhelmed trying to talk to everyone at once, but it was good to see all those people who cared about me while I was away.
Many of them had been reading my blog without my knowledge and so they knew more about what I’ve been doing then I did about what they’ve been doing. I tried to get caught up with everyone.
The North Georgia mountains and the fall leaves are good for my heart. I love the rolling hills and the sounds of nature. I hope I never hear another mortar in my life. In the weeks it took to travel home and start putting my life back in order, events have continued in Iraq. The violence has continued, and things are still rough. Saddam Hussein has finally been sentenced to death - an end he worked a lifetime to earn. In my opinion, death by hanging is a light sentence. I’m not a judge, nor do I want to be, but the man was a human cancer cell.

He may have been somewhat shaped by his environment, but nothing justifies the sum of the actions that made up his legacy. Iraq is a mess, but I’d rather have the mess than the tyrant. I’m sure many would disagree. Some people would prefer an iron fisted ruler where the killing is done in dark rooms behind thick walls and none of us have to think about it because it’s far away.

Many of us don’t want to think about this war now. It’s painful, messy and heartrending. Some of us who went won’t be coming home - ever. I’m one of the lucky ones. To anyone who reads this entry - remember that this war has a human cost.

This is an election year. Honor those who defend you by taking some time out of your busy life to exercise your freedom and vote. Don’t just vote for anyone - examine the candidates and their stances and cast a ballot for those you believe in. And remember that on your worst day, you’re probably doing a lot better than a lot of people elsewhere in the world. You are blessed to be American. Don’t take what that means for granted.