User talk:Erxnmedia/Archive 4

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[edit] Dispute at unconventional warfare

If you've looked at the discussion page at the article, at MILHIST, and at the Wikiquette notice board, you'll note that a dispute is in progress. Might I ask that until the basic dispute gets some resolution, that you not edit the disputed article, since the article, as it stands now, is unstable as to versioning?

Thanks.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 13:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

you think IP xxxx is going to revert the "See Also"?

Erxnmedia (talk) 14:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Branching to country level

Might I ask you to slow down a little in moving regional CIA activities to individual country articles? I thought our understanding was that it was clearly appropriate to move material when there was a huge amount of country-specific material, as with Laos, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan.

Many of the Western European countries have a small amount of text. My rule of thumb would be to spawn a new article when the country has more than a printed page or so of information. I'm concerned that if everything goes to country level, that also may inhibit additions that are triggered by people looking at a stubby entry for one country, which reminds them of something on their border.

It had not been my understanding or agreement that all country-specific data would be in individual articles.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Howard,
I can slow down to 0 because I'm done -- I was only interested in branch the "CIA activities in region Y" articles, not the transnational articles, and I branched everything there was to branch.
Putting things at country level may stimulate the arrival of new contributors.
I tagged these with Foreign relations of country X and Politics of country X which may bring country X-o-philes and experts out of the woodwork to polish those entries.
This is not possible if you leave some countries in the root article and some out.
Also when I moved the countries out it revealed that the basic structure of the root articles is, in all all cases, a total shambles. The root articles do not stand on their own, and in most cases, the country articles are a random assortment of table scraps, with no standalone quality to the writing.
I think the root articles should be able to stand on their own and the individual country articles should be able to stand on their own.
It is hard to evaluate stand-alone-ness when you have a lot of table scraps mashed together.
Also there are many countries that were added and had controversial entries that were edited down to 0, so I just deleted them for now.
Already I am seeing new people come into to clean up structure and categories. These pages were lying fallow after a lot of controversy and then everybody taking their ball and going home. This is not a good thing in the sense that, as I said, they were structural shambles/junkyards, and nobody was doing anything about it.
Thanks,
Erxnmedia (talk) 01:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Independent critique of Weiner

Jeffrey Richelson, I believe, is one of the most respected and clearly independent writers on US intelligence. I found his comments on Weiner's Legacy of Ashes to be notable; see http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2007/09/sins-of-omissio.html. One might argue POV with the critique in Studies in Intelligence, but this is hard to ignore.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Howard,
I'm not glued to Weiner. Ghost Wars was less readable but more informative. Now I'm on to Trita Parsi's book.
Ghost Wars in particular, especially the last few chapters leading up to 9/11, give a real sense of what a hopeless bureaucratic slog the IC is and the relationship between the IC and the U.S. State Dept. The State Dept has been an insidious hedger in many major conflicts, most notably in actively resisting any kind of helpful gestures during the Holocaust, and during the late 90's, appeasing the Taliban and following the line of Pakistan's foreign policy.
So I would agree that Weiner's book is agitprop but the reality is less colorful and grimmer at the same time: cumbersome institutions representing rival bureaucracies, and inertia, timidity and bigotry masking as policy. It's a wonder anything gets done.
Thanks,
Erxnmedia (talk) 18:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Documentary

Have you seen this French documentary (Part 2, Part 3) about Iran-Iraq war? --CreazySuit (talk) 15:20, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi C-suit,
No, I haven't, I'll watch it now on youtube.
Also I am reading Trita Parsi's book on interaction of US, Iran and Israel foreign policies. Have you read it, and what do you think of it and of Parsi?
Thanks,
Erxnmedia (talk) 22:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Hi
Trita Parsi is probably one of the most reliable experts on Iranian affairs. I would also recommend books by Reza Aslan and Vali Nasr as reliable sources on Iran and Middle East affairs.--CreazySuit (talk) 16:20, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, so Trita Parsi is breaking down the counterparties as:

  • West (US, Britain, France)
  • Russia
  • Israel
  • Persians
  • Arabs

and says that the basic dynamic is that the West and Russia want oil, Israel wants to make friends with Persia to balance Arabs, Persia wants Israel in conflict with Arabs to balance Arabs, and Arabs want to control Persia and eliminate Israel. In this context, in the Iran-Iraq war, Russia was the major supplier to Iraq, not the US, because Russia was not welcomed by Khomeini (anti-Communist), was moved out of Arab countries like Egypt by the U.S., and saw Iraq is the best friendly proxy.

So in that regard, the above video that you mentioned pushes U.S. and France and Western arms merchants as prime movers in Iran-Iraq war, where Parsi sees Russia's desire for oil and territorial influence, Saddam's desire for territory, and Persian desire (under both Shah and Khomeini) for regional influence over Arabs, as prime movers, with arms merchants being a supporting cast, not prime movers.

Do you agree?

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 13:27, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's debatable. I think they both have valid points, and they don't really contradict each other. They just have different emphasis and focus. While the USSR was the biggest military supplier of conventional arms to Iraq, it was ultimately the United States and to a lesser degree France/Germany who prevented Saddam's defeat. The key turning points in the war were the use of chemical weapons, the tactical support of United States on the ground, as well as their military engagement in the Persian Gulf. However, the ultimate responsibility of the war rested with Saddam and nobody else.
As for Iran-Israel relations, non-Arab Iran and Israel are natural allies in an otherwise Arab region. But since Iran, just like Israel, has always faced an existential threat from Arabs (see: Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews, and Flies ), Iran sees a prolonged conflict between Arabs and Israel as a distraction to keep the Arabs busy so to speak. But this is also a bi-product of hostilities between Iran and United States. Iran does not wish to submit to United States' will (like in Shah's era), and the United States does not wish to acknowledge Iran as a regional power. However, once the United States realizes that Iran is her only natural ally in the region, and treats her as an equal partner in the region by speaking to Iran, not at Iran, Iran will certainly feel secure enough on one front, to put an end to her hostile policy on Israel in another front.--CreazySuit (talk) 16:59, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] NOIWON

Yes, I was quite familiar with that, and answered on Buckshot's user page. It didn't seem appropriate to go into some of the manuals on U.S. C3I networks, especially when I don't remember whether all was declassified -- I gave a specific reference from open source. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gulf of Tonkin

Is there a particular reason for going after this additional source, after having been through such things as the sometimes minute-by-minute NSA reports, or the policy analyses by McMaster? There is no question in my mind that LBJ wanted it. McMaster subsequently showed that LBJ's obsession with meeting TV news and morning newspaper deadlines was such that he went on TV and announced the strikes, while the aircraft were still inbound to their targets, which might not have been on alert.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:04, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not going after a source, I was just sharing with you this guy's story about his involvement with the process. He was responsible for rendering a technical opinion, he tried to do the right thing, but Johnson wanted a different answer to the question. In retrospect, looking at the story, I suppose that his part in the process was minor, but he was the person at the bottom of the technical analysis foodchain whose job was to supply an estimate/opinion. I just thought it was interesting. Erxnmedia (talk) 17:06, 20 May 2008 (UTC)