Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 198

Correction Of The Day II

I expressed disbelief in some Gaza photos. I stand corrected http://t.co/gEt0AieXxz

— David Frum (@davidfrum) July 30, 2014

It’s an honorable apology and correction. But it’s hard not to see in the eight tweets that David sent out questioning the integrity of these harrowing images of grief and murder a desperate need not to see what is in front of our noses. The mind-boggling trauma and terror that Gazan civilians are now experiencing is so very hard to watch, when this country is partly financing it. For those attached to Israel, the experience must be particularly wrenching. Denial is a perfectly understandable response when confronted with nearly 250 dead children.

Best Cover Song Ever?

From the latest round of nominees:

Faith No More’s “Easy”, a Lionel Richie cover. The deadpan, the guitar solo, the bored drag queens … Love it:

Another adds:

The ironic thing about this cover? It’s not really that ironic. A little tongue-in-cheek perhaps, but it really is a tribute from a band as far removed from the R&B/soul genre as could possibly be.

The next nominee also avoids irony:

If you’ve never heard this before, prepare yourself. Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is so beautiful that it gives me chills. I’m not a fan of re-imagined versions of childhood favorites, but this is transcendent:

Another adds, “There’s no way a 500 pound Hawaiian dude should have the voice of an angel.” Another elaborates a bit:

It may certainly seem cliche’ at this point to put in this entry, especially nearly a decade after his death and this song’s exposure in a few Hollywood films, but the song still resonates something very beautiful. First off, Bruddah Iz was not exactly your typical “American Idol” wannabe pop icon. He lacked the looks – indeed, he had an untimely death due to his health problems related to his obesity – YET he remained true to his very smooth and mellow style, that was still able to capture the hearts and minds of so many people in the world … and in turn introducing much of us to a then largely unknown and small aspect of local/regional music in our country.

How? Not by any real big commercial push from the local Hawaiian music producers, but rather appearing in a few popular films and TV shows during some of their most memorable moments. Who does not remember hearing this song during Dr. Mark Greene’s final moments in “ER?” The song hit the top 40 in 10 countries around the world, and the album itself went double to triple platinum in 3 – not through any creative use of an autotune, a sexy/controversial music video, nor even by showing any cool/slick dance moves. All it took was a very humble man, with a voice and heart that was bigger than the island from which he was raised, and accompanying himself with an instrument that was shorter than one of his upper limbs.

Finally, his message still has a lot of meaning for us today, especially in light of the recent international crises we are facing; It helps us believe that despite all this, there are still many people and aspects about our world that will always be “wonderful.”

One more fan concedes:

Yes, it’s overly sentimental, but, in times like these, I need this.

So It Really Is All About Sex Then, Rod?

The compulsively readable and admirably honest blogger, Rod Dreher, had an epiphany the other day. He was trying to define what he means by “traditional Christianity.” And what he means by the term is the following:

It seems to me that “traditional Christian” is political code for “Christians who adhere to traditional teaching about sex and sexuality.”

That is a really striking statement – though not one that exactly comes as a surprise to those familiar with Rod’s evolution over the years. It’s striking because it doesn’t actually concern itself with doctrine, the critical content of a faith tradition, like, say, the Resurrection of Jesus or the doctrine of the Trinity. It is not about a literal reading of Scripture as the only avenue to truth; it is not about whether doctrine can evolve; it is not about a belief in a personal, intervening God as opposed to a more distant and absent one. It is entirely about how one manages one’s private parts. Rod is pretty frank about that:

When I deploy the phrase “traditional Christians” in my writing, I’m not thinking about ecclesiology, sacramental theology, or any other thing that separates Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy. What I’m thinking about — what we are all thinking about — is this: what separates “traditional Christians” from “modern Christians” (or “progressive Christians”) in our common discourse is their beliefs about sex. Nothing else, or at least nothing else meaningful.

He later clarified that he was talking about Christianity as it relates to the public square. And I can certainly see how, as an empirical matter, the sex issue has become central to public debates over abortion, homosexuality, marriage and so on. But the difference between me and Rod – and what I’d argue is the actual dividing line between modern and traditional Christians in the public square – is that I do not regard sexual matters to be that important in the context of what Christianity teaches about our obligations as human beings in the polity and the world. The difference between moderns and trads is that the trads see sex as the critical issue, and we moderns see a whole host of other issues.

My mum once told me as a kid that “sex outside marriage is a sin, but not that big a sin.” That remains my position. It’s up there with over-eating, excessive consumerism, the idolatry of money and profit, and spoliation of our environment – except the powerful sex drive in humans and the absence of any direct harm to another, gives sexual sin, I’d argue, a little more lee-way. The sexual obsession among trads, in other words, can be deeply distortive. It elides and displaces other vital issues. Access to universal healthcare and asylum for children escaping terror, for example, matter far more in traditional Christianity than whether my long-term relationship is deemed a civil marriage or a civil union. Torture is exponentially more sinful than a pre-marital fling – and yet it is embraced by evangelical “traditional” Christians most of all. The Catholic hierarchy has devoted far far less time and effort to combating torture than to preventing birth control as part of the ACA – to its eternal shame. And the centrality of sex to celibate traditional Christians has a lot to do with it.

I’d go further and argue that placing sex as the critical, core rampart of traditional Christianity is a very dangerous game. It’s dangerous because sexual repression is a very potent psychological tool. A key part of traditional religion’s success in luring and keeping adherents can be by leveraging sexual sacrifice into a greater collective sense of belonging and meaning. If people have to give up sex to be a faithful adherent to religion, they are much more likely to attach themselves strongly to that faith, if only to justify their sacrifice. They are also more likely to want others to join in – to help buttress their commitment. I think that’s where Rod’s point is strongest.

But it’s also where it’s weakest. Faith should surely not be a function of sexual repression. And sexual repression should not be a tool for religious faith.

Introduce that element as the critical one, and you are using social and personal pressure to buttress religious claims that should stand or fall on their own merits. And when sexual restraint or repression is what defines your religious experience, you’ve lost your way. Within religious institutions the sexual repression can also have terrible effects. It is not an accident that cults use sexual control as ramparts of their enterprise. The mind plays games with us on this subject – so powerful and so close to home.

That doesn’t mean that traditional arguments about sexuality should be dismissed. The glibness with which some gay activists now scorn traditional sexual moral codes as mere bigotry is deeply depressing. Damon Linker makes a good point about the scale and novelty of the West’s experiment in sexual freedom over the last half a century or so. And there are obvious developments – like the rise of single parenthood and children outside marriage – that can be shown to harm people’s prospects in life.

But is it a harbinger of social collapse? I look around me and see a sexually liberated society with much lower crimes rates, boundless cultural innovation, declining divorce rates and more stable gay couples. I do not see catastrophe. This “Family Week” in Provincetown I see some of the worst excesses of sexual novelty, as far as trads are concerned – gay couples with children everywhere. But I fail to see the ominous social implications of happy children playing on the beach, or of their two dads’ often super-vigilant parenting. I see a pretty healthy model of family life. And when I look back on the great era of sexual repression, I see evidence of horrifying sexual abuse of children by priests and many others, women treated as prisoners of their husbands, and homes for illegitimate children with mortality rates far higher than average. What I see today, in contrast, is a society not less open to Jesus’ core commandments to love one another, but rather a society less willing to excuse the abuse, distortion and repression of the deepest human longings in inhuman and cruel ways.

I see, actually, in the demise of what Rod calls traditional Christianity the emergence of a calmer, gentler Christianity less obsessed with social control and more open to divine truth. I see hope where Rod only sees calamity. Well, I guess we’ll both find out soon enough.

Gaza Goes Dark

Israeli shelling hit the fuel depot of the Gaza Strip's only power plant. (Photo via Reuters) http://t.co/2PHhPi4v2r—
ABS-CBN News Channel (@ANCALERTS) July 30, 2014

How can you punish a people more than bombing their schools, hospitals and playgrounds? Knock out their only power plant:

The plant’s general manager, Jamal Dersawi, told NBC News that the loss of the structure is a “major disaster” for Gaza’s 1.8 million residents, whose electricity has already been limited by damage to power lines from Israel. According to Reuters, the plant provides two thirds of the energy in Gaza, including the area’s water sanitation facilities and pumps. (Residents are now being told to be careful with their water consumption.) The structure could be out of operation for up to a year.

Jesse Rosenfeld doubts it was an accident:

This is not the first time Israel has knocked out Gaza’s power plant and targeted essential infrastructure. Indeed, this is almost part of a standard playbook. Following Hamas’ kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006, Israel plunged Gaza into darkness with a retaliatory strike on the power plant. The bombing and escalation in Gaza set off a series of events that led to a full-on war in Lebanon as well as Gaza. …

It is people like the al Wakeel family who pay the harshest price for this military duel. They fled the Al Shajaya neighborhood under intense shelling last week, and 55 family member are now crammed into a three bedroom apartment in Gaza City. With little water and only a few hours of electricity a day they were unable to shower or bathe the 25 children in the apartment. Now that the power plant has been hit, they have no water and no electricity.

Noting that the power outage also curtails the flow of information out of the strip, Juan Cole attempts a tally of the destruction:

Israel has completely reduced to rubble some 5,000 homes and damaged 26,000. If you figure that Palestinians in Gaza live on average 5 in a dwelling, there would be roughly 340,000 domiciles in Gaza. Israel has therefore destroyed or damaged about ten percent of the housing stock. This is on top of past campaigns of indiscriminate and wanton bombing campaigns. Since Israel keeps Gaza under blockade, it won’t receive the necessary materials to rebuild. The Israelis, having bald-facedly stolen the homes and farms of the people of Gaza, won’t be satisfied until they are forced to sleep in open fields.

Israel has forced some 200,000 Palestinians to flee their homes. But since the Gaza Strip is so small, they have no place to go. Israel won’t let them leave the Strip, but is intensively bombarding it. Some of the places they have taken shelter, including schools and UN refugee shelters, have themselves been bombed by the Israelis.

Another UNRWA school in the Jabaliya refugee camp was bombed this morning. Hayes Brown passes along the news:

For the second time in as many weeks, a United Nations-run school in the Gaza Strip was hit with with artillery fire, with reports that as many 90 Palestinians were wounded in the attack that killed an estimated 19 people. The shelling that struck in Jabaliya landed around 5 a.m. early Wednesday morning, reportedly falling in rapid succession. Around 3,300 Palestinians had been using the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) school for shelter from the Israeli campaign to root out Hamas and other militant groups in the strip when the explosions began. “One hit the street in front of the entrance, according to several witnesses,” the New York Times reported. “Two others hit classrooms where people were sleeping.” …

Meanwhile, the death toll continues to escalate, according to the latest report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (OCHA). So far in the three week war, 1,118 Palestinians have been killed — including “at least 827 civilians, of whom 243 are children and 131 are women” — and 56 Israelis. More than 240,000 Palestinians are currently displaced, or more than ten percent of the Gaza Strip’s population of 1.8 million. “UNRWA has exhausted its absorption capacity in Gaza City and northern Gaza, while overcrowding at its shelters raises concerns about the outbreak of epidemics,” OCHA wrote.

Ringing In The Post-Peace Process Era?

This time-lapse video purports to show the Israeli military flattening a Gaza neighborhood over the course of an hour. In Rashid Khalidi’s take, Israeli leaders have done the same to the peace process:

What Israel is doing in Gaza now is collective punishment. It is punishment for Gaza’s refusal to be a docile ghetto. It is punishment for the gall of Palestinians in unifying, and of Hamas and other factions in responding to Israel’s siege and its provocations with resistance, armed or otherwise, after Israel repeatedly reacted to unarmed protest with crushing force. Despite years of ceasefires and truces, the siege of Gaza has never been lifted.

As Netanyahu’s own words show, however, Israel will accept nothing short of the acquiescence of Palestinians to their own subordination. It will accept only a Palestinian “state” that is stripped of all the attributes of a real state: control over security, borders, airspace, maritime limits, contiguity, and, therefore, sovereignty. The twenty-three-year charade of the “peace process” has shown that this is all Israel is offering, with the full approval of Washington. Whenever the Palestinians have resisted that pathetic fate (as any nation would), Israel has punished them for their insolence. This is not new.

Contrary to Netanyahu’s purposes, Khaled Elgindy argues, the war has united the Palestinian factions and made a third intifada more likely:

Hamas’ relative success on the battlefield has boosted the group’s popularity while highlighting Abbas’ perceived impotence. According to one recent poll, since the Gaza crisis began, popular support for Hamas has outstripped support for Fatah for the first time in several years. Even so, most Palestinians understand the limitations of engaging in armed struggle against a formidable military power like Israel. As a result, despite the recent collapse of U.S.-led peace talks, Abbas’ negotiations agenda remains relevant.

More significantly, the ongoing devastation in Gaza has forced all Palestinian factions for the first time in many years to close ranks on a major political issue (as opposed to procedural or administrative matters, which were at the heart of the recent reconciliation agreement). Indeed, one of Hamas’ chief demands was that Israel respect its reconciliation agreement with Fatah. During previous conflicts in Gaza, the leadership in the West Bank had been reluctant to side openly with Hamas. Those calculations clearly no longer apply.

But Steven Cook is not optimistic about the prospect of rescuing Abbas from irrelevance:

Almost from the start of the conflict in the Gaza Strip, the commentariat has been seized with the idea of “empowering [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas” as the only way out of the recurrent violence between Israel and Hamas. The discovery of this idea in Washington (and Jerusalem for that matter) is rather odd, not because it does not make sense, but rather because the idea is so reasonable and obvious that one wonders why — ten years after he became the Palestinian leader — it took so long to recognize it. Almost from the moment of Yasser Arafat’s death, Egypt sent high-level emissaries to the United States, warning that the new Palestinian president needed help lest he gradually cede the political arena to Hamas. He did not get it then and now it is likely too late to salvage Abbas. …

Over the last decade the combination of American and Israeli political pressure, missteps, and disingenuousness have consistently left the Palestinian president in a bind, forced to take part in negotiations that he and his advisors knew would never go anywhere, and then hung out to dry when they failed.

And that’s about as bullish as Michael Totten feels about the peace process:

Nobody can know how the next attempt will play out in detail, but none of the actors at this point is optimistic. And that’s without factoring Hamas into the equation, which rejects both negotiations and peace out of hand and vows to wage a decades- or even centuries-long war to the finish. Hamas will gleefully sacrifice a thousand Palestinian lives to kill a few dozen Israelis because its leaders truly believe that if life becomes too precarious and nerve-wracking for Jews in the Middle East that they’ll give up and quit the region forever. It’s a fantastical bloody delusion, but it’s what they believe and they are not going to stop any time soon.

I hate to be too cynical about this myself, but as I’ve said before, the Middle East is a great teacher of pessimism. A few years ago I asked Israeli writer and researcher Hillel Cohen what he expected to see in Jerusalem 50 years in the future. “Some war,” he said, shrugging. “Some peace. Some negotiations. The usual stuff.”

That niggling concern, that the peace process is finally dead, will be keeping political scientists busy long after this war is over, Marc Lynch predicts:

What happens if there is no peace process? There’s a plethora of articles about the vicissitudes of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, but far fewer on how to think about their absence. It has probably been more than a decade since anybody seriously believed in the possibility of a negotiated two-state solution, but most diplomats and pundits continue to go through the motions out of fear of contemplating the alternatives. After the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry’s team, it is hard to imagine anyone else putting much effort in to them any time soon.

Some long-standing assumptions seem ripe for testing. What happens now that peace talks seem unlikely to resume? What is the universe of comparable cases, and how did they end up? Is it really true that Israel cannot sustain the status quo indefinitely? Does the commonly-invoked tension between being a Jewish state and a democracy still really matter to Israelis, given the ongoing changes in Israel’s demographics and the shift rightward in its political culture?

The Best Of The Dish Today

A reader says it best about where I’m now at with respect to Israel/Palestine:

You quote Goldblog:

“A moderate-minded Palestinian who watches Israel expand its settlements on lands that most of the world believes should fall within the borders of a future Palestinian state might legitimately come to doubt Israel’s intentions.”

This is really the whole Israeli-Palestinian problem in a nutshell. For 47 of my 56 years, Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza. (Yes, Israel “withdrew” from Gaza some time ago, but it is still very much Israel’s captive.) In modern times, there is no single other example of a nation that supposedly shares “western” values sustaining such a long occupation of another people. Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself. Yes, Israel has every right to question whether it has a partner to make peace. Of course I don’t trust Hamas. Of course the rockets merit a vigorous no nonsense response. But one question sticks in my mind about the position of Israel: If Israel really wanted peace, why does it keep building those darn settlements?

Every answer I’ve ever heard – the irrelevant “there never really was a Palestinian state on this land”, the hopeless “even if Israel did that what makes you think they’d suddenly change their stripes?”, or the more limited “construction is for the most part only expansion of existing settlements anyway”, whatever – all of them only go so far as to try to justify why Israel should be permitted to continue to build. It doesn’t explain why it is a good idea for Israel to continue to build.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. And in that sense, there is no justification I have ever heard for the settlements that one can reconcile with trying to make the two state solution a reality, or indeed even with leaving it open as a possibility. Just the opposite. Until there is an answer to that question, in my mind, Israel cannot and will not be guilt free. Maybe if those of us who love Israel but think it has lost its way focused on that one simple question until it is answered, we might get somewhere.

That’s where I’m at as well. At some point, the denials and equivocations and diversions and distractions fade away to that core reality: why are they continuing to settle the West Bank? It empowers Hamas, it weakens the Palestinian Authority, it is a constant grinding of salt into an open wound.

The Israelis had a golden opportunity with Barack Obama’s presidency to make a historic peace; and they didn’t just throw it away, they treated the US president with contempt for even trying and now cast ugly, public insults at the secretary of state. If the settlements had been reversed, if Abbas and Fayyad had been given the autonomy they needed, this war in Gaza would appear as something very different. It would be much simpler to condemn Hamas’ extremism, if there was clearly another way forward. But Netanyahu – because of the settlements – has blocked any way forward. The Palestinians have two options: bombardment and blockade or the humiliation of more settlements. Which is why I have come to the conclusion these past six years that Greater Israel is the goal, that nothing else really matters, and anyone who doesn’t see that is a useful idiot.

Today, in non-war-and-dead children coverage, we looked forward to an app that will guide you to a scenic route across town; we celebrated the better late than never endorsement of legal weed by the NYT (by the way, try watching the David Gregory segment on the question yesterday without needing to toke from the instant nausea); and cheered a new study on sponsored content that proves it’s deceptive to readers, great for advertisers for only a while, and damaging to publications for ever. I also happened to love the window view today – from Buffalo.

The most popular post of the day was The Lie Behind The War; followed by Why Am I Moving Left?

A few of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them here. You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 19 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. Gift subscriptions are available here. One writes:

Andrew, you and I don’t always agree. But today I became a paid subscriber. This post alone – “Why Am I Moving Left?” – was worth the $20. It is what I have been posting and commenting on, over and over, to anyone who will listen, for three years. As someone who once would have been considered a pro-business Centrist and registered Independent, there is absolutely no way I can comprehend anyone can feel any sense of pride and honor in identifying as a Republican in the current climate. Just the thought causes a disconnect. And like you, it isn’t me that changed. Thanks for speaking for me.

See you in the morning.

(Photos: Yeoman Serjeant Bob Loughlin admires a section of an installation entitled ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ by artist Paul Cummins, made up of 888,246 ceramic poppies in the moat of the Tower of London, to commemorate the First World War on July 28, 2014 in London, England. Each ceramic poppy represents an allied victim of the First World War and the display is due to be completed by Armistice Day on November 11, 2014. After Armistice Day each poppy from the installation will be available to buy for 25 GBP. By Oli Scarff/Getty Images; Smoke trails over Gaza city after Israeli shelling on July 25, 2014. By Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.)

Dish Shirts Are Here!

[Re-posted from earlier today]

Finally – after lots of your input – we’re psyched to offer you a choice of four custom Dish shirts. If you’re dying to take a look and want to skip the descriptions below, head straight to our storefront and buy your shirt now!

We thought we’d start our store simply enough by offering two t-shirts. The first is a light blue one emblazoned with the Dish logo across the chest (see above on the left). Or if you prefer the baying beagle by herself, check out the gray Howler Tee (modeled by the dashing bear on the right). I love the lone howler myself – only other Dishheads will get it.

We picked American Apparel t-shirts that use high-quality screen-printing and a higher quality tri-blend fabric that’s super soft, durable, and has a bit of stretch that retains its slim shape. There are sizes for both men and women – no generic “unisex” option this time around, as you insisted. We’ve also lowered the price by half compared with the t-shirts we did a few years ago.

Want something a little more formal you can wear to the office, church, or restaurant? Check out the polo shirts, which come in white (see below left) and navy blue (see above right). Both of these classic polos are made with a “Silk Touch” poly-cotton fabric and embroidered with the familiar Dish beagle on the left breast. The polos run a little large, and the high-quality fabric is shrink resistant, so keep that in mind when you pick your size. For the perfect fit, consult the sizing chart.

Because we’re doing the higher-quality screen-printing option with a bulk-ordering process, in order to keep prices down, these particular shirts will only be available for a limited time, so you need to order very soon to be part of the first printing. So if you’re interested in a shirt, don’t hesitate – buy now!

As always, we welcome your feedback in the in-tray. And send us a pic of you wearing your new shirt! You may see it appear on the blog.

But first go here to grab your new t-shirt or polo. It’s one critical way to keep the Dish independent and running for years to come. And they’re pretty sweet as well.

Book Club: Your Near-Death Experiences

Readers continue the conversation over Sarah Bakewell’s How To Live:

Montaigne‘s near-death interval is very interesting – it makes me wonder how generalizable his description is to other peoples’ experiences. The pleasantness is an interesting surprise, because his physical behaviors manifest unpleasantness during this time. I can’t help but think of a friend of a friend, who, described the feeling accompanying beholding her newborn as “just like tripping on DMT.” There’s definitely some writing hypothesizing a connection between near death experience and DMT release; it does occur in some amounts in mammals. And it does seem that Montaigne‘s “out of body experience” allowed him to avoid the suffering associated with the experiences of the body at the time.

Another shares his own story:

What would someone 500 years ago, when people lived without indoor plumbing, have to say? And wouldn’t the writing be filled with difficult words, clumped together in long, flowery paragraph-free chunks? That’s what I thought, so before buying the book, I downloaded a sample and while reading it, remembered something I’d completely forgotten.

During sixth grade, I contracted Valley Fever. I was so sick for so long and nobody knew what was wrong with me. I found myself floating above myself, looking down, finally pain-free. I could hear the oldies (“These Boots Were Made For Walking”, “King of the Road”) playing on the radio that someone put beside my bed. But I simply let go and became more relaxed than anything I’d ever experienced in my uber-Protestant-work-ethic-running-around-in-circles-as-fast-as-you-can family. I knew I was close to death, but at eleven, what does that mean?

Montagne’s account of his own near-death experience brought this feeling back as if it were yesterday. The feeling of relief, of letting go, is beyond words, particularly when you are naturally tightly-wound. My adult kids hate it now when I tell them I look forward to death, as there is a peace you can never describe, and the opposite of competitive, hurry-hurry life trying to get ahead (of what?) in San Francisco. Fine, I tell them. They can join my parents in extreme FoxNews-like fear of death, which, when they talk about it, sounds more like they’re afraid of not controlling everything and everyone, and what will we do without that?

Think I’ll share a little Montaigne, particularly the chapter entitled, “Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted.” It’s about as far as you can get from our family’s Mission Statement (“what are you doing reading when you could be doing something?”).

The book is available here if you’d like to join in. Think of it as a blast of sixteenth century sanity for a crazy 21st century world.

Next up: was Montaigne a closet atheist? Or a very modern kind of Christian? I’ll weigh in – but check out this Mark Lilla essay first.

(GIF of Dimethyltryptamine, aka DMT, via Wiki)

Small Arms, Big Problem

Apparently, we’re missing a lot of guns in Afghanistan and have no idea where they are:

“We’re not talking just handguns and M-16s and AK-47s,” [John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction] told TIME correspondents over lunch on Friday. “We’re talking some high-powered stuff — grenade launchers, RPGs, machine guns — anything that one person could use.” His new report says the U.S. recorded improperly, or simply failed to record, the serial numbers of 43% of the nearly half-million small arms the U.S. has supplied Afghanistan over the past decade. Sloppy U.S. record keeping is compounded by Afghanistan’s indifference to the congressionally mandated U.S. oversight of the weapons’ whereabouts.

Dana Liebelson has more on the inspector general’s report:

According to SIGAR, the US is also supplying Afghanistan with too many weapons.

It estimates that the Afghan security forces have a surplus of over 80,000 AK-47s, 5,800 grenade launchers, and 2,500 Russian PKM machine guns. Defense Department officials told investigators they do not currently have the authority to repossess excess weapons, but they said that “DOD will remain engaged in addressing these critical weapons accountability issues.” The Pentagon did not respond to comment for Mother Jones.

SIGAR concludes that, without confidence in the Afghan government’s ability to account for weapons, “there is a real potential for these weapons to fall into the hands of insurgents, which will pose additional risks to U.S. personnel, the ANSF, and Afghan civilians.” It’s certainly happened before—in 2009, the New York Times reported that “of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces.”

Face Of The Day

RAF Jawans stand guard during Curfew at Ambala road after violence broke out between two groups who reportedly clashed over a patch of disputed land in Saharanpur, India on July 28, 2014. Curfew has been relaxed for a few hours today in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, where three people were killed and 24 injured in riots two days ago. 38 people have been arrested and nine first information reports or FIRs have been registered at various police stations for rioting, arson and conspiracy. Local BJP and Congress leaders have accused each other for instigating mobs. By Virendra Singh Gosain/Hindustan Times via Getty Images.