It looks obvious

George Will, my favorite political columnist, gave a speech in the Cato Institute to introduce his new book, One Man’s America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation. It is, not surprising, a very interesting speech, and followed by interesting Q&A, and recommended watching.

I’m reading now Ryan Sager’s new book,The elephant in the room , with great joy. In the book Sager review and analyze the historical roots of the conservative movement and the forming rift between its two factions.

After winning the majority in both houses and two terms of President George Bush the conservative movement testing its core values and its future. If in the past, while not in power, The differences between the ultimate goals of the social conservatives and the libertarians - The main two factions of the conservative movement - where hidden, They aren’t any more. Sager eloquently describes the reasons both, the libertarians and the social conservatives, joined together to form the modern conservative movement in the 50’s and their journey to power. He than analyzes the reasons why the social conservatives start turning a way from the ideas of small government and liberty.

It is crucial moment for those of us which are concern with Libertarian ideas. We, or more correctly I, were not aware for the true meaning of the , mistakenly identified as election slogan, compassionate conservatism. It seems that the war on terror and its real menace is being used as an excuse to strengthen the executive brunch . In addition the social conservatives introducing a new area of intrusive government .

The Libertarian faction of the Republican party has to choose, based on the coming mid-term elections and the 2008 presidential election, if they are able to promote, and accomplish, small government and greater freedom. The answer might be, unlike Sager’s optimism, negative.

Recently I started to read a new book about the “Yom-Kipur” war, or the October 73 war in its other name.  The book, "The Yom Kipur War – Moment of Truth ", is not translated to English yet, but I suspect it is not long until it will. Since this war is a long interest of mine, and since the book claimed to bring new evidence not yet published I rushed to buy it.

I know it is wrong to criticize a book by its first chapter, and I’ll try avoiding that. However since the book deal with many aspects of the war, although limiting itself to the southern front, I will allow myself to summarize and state my opinion on the subjects as I’m reading them.

Not surprisingly, the book first chapters discussing the misconception in the Israeli army and government, and the misunderstanding of the Egyptians and Syrian military preparations. The book is rich with description and details about the chronological events. What the book is lacking is an explanation, a theory that will make sense of all the details.

It is easy to claim that the Israeli leadership was captive of its own misconception, and therefore they did not realize from the flood of data that a war is going to erupt. But what was this conception, and why was it so strong that the brilliant people leading the military intelligence and the country leadership just dismissed the obvious data.

It is easy to dismiss the Israeli approach as simple arrogance. The historical documents present allot of evidence how this arrogance affected the military leadership to believe that they are invincible.  But it this explanation solve the mystery?  I don’t think so.

The book, as many other books before it, failed to discuss what the conception that failed was. What ware the criterions they serve to evaluate the flood of information. The information in the book, including the newly reveled pieces, generates a story with no lesson to be learned.

The conception which was a consensus among the Israeli leadership was that the Egyptians will not start a war without bomber that can attack in the center of Israel and that the Syrian will not go to war alone. The reason that the Israeli kept looking for the Egyptian bomber was the understanding that the Egyptian think that they cannot achieve decisive victory without controlling the sky.

Technically this conception was correct. The Syrian didn’t go, and wouldn’t go, to war alone and the Egyptian didn’t believe that they can achieve decisive victory without improving their air-force abilities. However, and this is the biggest failure of the Israeli conception, the Egyptian, and mostly the Egyptian president – Sa’adat, didn’t try to achieve decisive victory.

Sa’adat’s analysis of the situation was much more advanced than is Israeli counterparts. His realization that the Israeli are unwilling for negotiations that will lead to Israeli withdrawal from the Sinay peninsula has to be shaken. Sa’adat was willing to use war as a diplomatic tool, to serve his strategic goals.

This simple concept, that a war can be used to achieve limited strategic goals, was what the Israelis failed to see. While the Israelis looked for the sign to a war that will aim to destroy Israel the Egyptians changed the rules of the game. Moreover, and this point maybe deserve a different discussion, the Israeli failed to recognize the exact same issue  just few years ago, and this is the main reason that they lost the War of Attrition.

With the advantage of hindsight look at the events we can summarize that although the Israeli army was able to achieve several tactical victories during the war it failed to serve the strategic goal of keeping the status-quo in Sinay. The Egyptian war goal to push the Israelis toward negotiations that will lead to Israeli withdrawal from Sinay was achieved completely.

The next chapters in the book discussing the military activity in the few hours before the war and its beginning phase. They are leading toward my next question which is a “what if” question: would the Israeli knew in advance about the Egyptian and Syrian plan, could they prevent them?

hackoff.com by Tom Evslin renewed the great tradition of serial stories. But unlike Charles Dickens stories, Hackoff.com was publish first on a blog platform.  I got hooked to the story pretty much from the beginning and every day at 8:00 am I checked, in my RSS reader, the new episode.  

I have to admit that in the begging I was very skeptic that the book will be sold, since so many can read it for free. However as time passed I felt  that since  I enjoy the book I need to pay for it, and since I’m old fashion guy I wanted to actually hold the book. So I obviously pre order the book. I’m sure that many felt like I did and bought the book not despite the fact that they read it online but because of it.  

Tom Evslin was, once again, proved that being visionary isn’t something new for him.

The Claremont Institute published a very interesting review on Stephanie Gutmann’s book: “The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy”.
Gutmman’s Analyses mark 3 main reasons for Israel disadvantage in the Media war: Israel’s free society and freedom of speech, the lack of freedom in the Arab world and media convention itself. These present a very hard to win, if not impossible, war.
Gutmman also present two very famous case studies that demonstrate her analysis:

Although it seems that Gutmman believe that Israel’s efforts are successfully reversing the tide I’m much less optimistic.

Steve McConnell’s book “Rapid Development ” was, and still is, a must read book to anyone who manage software development.

Dealing with software development and with software project management this book is one of the best guides I ever had (together with PMBok ). Yesterday I discovered Steve’s web site with references to his books and articles. I recommend adding it to your favorite bookmark list.

In the “Rapid Development” section Steve McConnell provide very useful excerpts. Here for example the summary of classic mistakes done in software development, and other type of, projects. As one that made more than one of these mistakes, and was witnessed for other making a handful of them too I can attest to the usefulness of this list.