neo-neocon

A bit of a problem with the newer blog

2011-06-02T12:31:00.002-05:00

I thought I'd come to the old blog and post a message in case anyone came here looking for an explanation of why my blog is down.

It's connected with the problem that happened a couple of days ago. Apparently, not everything was properly fixed backed then. I am working on it, and it should be up again pretty soon, certainly within 24 hours I'd say. Sorry for the inconvenience.

comments test

2011-02-24T16:51:00.001-05:00

blah!

Notes from Chairman Khomeini

2011-02-24T15:12:00.002-05:00

[NOTE: The problem has been fixed, so you can comment on the new blog once again.]

Because of the problem I've been having with comments on the new blog, here's a place for you to comment on the Khomeini post.

Hello again, folks! It's Chris Christie charisma time

2011-02-24T15:10:00.003-05:00

[NOTE: The problem has been fixed, so you can comment on the new blog once again.]

Because I've been having problems with comments on my blog, here's a place for you to comment on the Chris Christie post.

New blog site

2010-05-14T00:24:00.000-05:00

Neo-neocon has officially transferred to a new blog site. Please update your bookmarks and read me there.

McCain: the honeymoon is so over

2007-03-03T13:08:00.000-05:00

John McCain was once a media darling. The last time he ran for President, long ago and far away in 2000, the press couldn't restrain itself from slobbering over him.

Slobbering? Don't blame me, it's not my word. No lesser light than the august Haley Barbour (former chairman of the Republican National Committee and Bush supporter way back then) declared it to be the case, and former Senator Warren Rudman (McCain's campaign manager at the time) as well as WaPo columnist Mary McGrory, concurred that "slobber" well described the press attitude towards McCain.

It's like looking back at the loving courtship letters of a couple whose marriage ended up in the bitterness of divorce court. Here's Evan Thomas, assistant managing editor of Newsweek at the time:

Yes, [the media] are totally in love with John McCain...He gives great access [to the press]. He gives great quotes. He's funny-he's teasing. He's a fellow subversive in some ways. And they're all sort of united against the establishment. And he's a great story.

(Interesting, by the way, that the press--or at least Evan Thomas--saw [sees?] itself as "subversive.")

So, what's happened to the budding romance? To be blunt, McCain--once so bright-eyed and cuddly--is past his pull date.

Seven subsequent years of sloshing around in DC have meant that, if elected, he'd be the oldest President to ever win. And the years have not aged him like a fine wine (kicking around in Congress rarely does). Some of his pet projects--such as the McCain-Feingold bill--have turned out rather disastrously. And now, to top it all off, he's saddled by being perceived as a sort of Bush Lite on the war in Iraq. It must be galling to him, since there didn't used to be that much love lost between McCain and Bush.

As Peggy Noonan wrote in yesterday's Opinion Journal, McCain's obstinate personality, combined with his support for the Iraq War, may have cost him in subtle ways, even (or perhaps especially) among Republicans, who:

...don't precisely want another W. for president, another man who seems just as convinced, stubborn, single-minded, invested.

I'm not so sure I agree with Noonan, but perhaps she's correct. I think it's important to remember that McCain's biggest support never really came from paleoconservatives; he was perceived long ago as a Republican who leaned more to the middle, and therefore appealed to moderates. And that position in the Republican Party has been taken over by a younger, fresher face: that of Rudy Giuliani.

The two have something in common that most of the other candidates lack: the public perception that they have personal courage. No, "perception" isn't quite the right word--"knowledge" is. Both have been tested under fire--in very different ways--and come through with valor.

McCain's test was much longer and harder (look here under "Vietnam" if you're not familiar with this part of McCain's history). No one can question his extraordinary personal heroism; it's probably the most salient feature of his biography. But it occurred in what's now, politically speaking, the distant past--and was, for the most part, out of the US public eye at the time. Therefore it doesn't seem as relevant as Giuliani's recent performance in the immediate post-9/11 era, a public demonstration of his leadership in the face of terrorism and the threat of chaos following the attack.

It seems that, in psychological terms, Americans nationwide bonded with Giuliani during a time of grave crisis. A person perceived as being an anchor in a ferocious storm, a cool head under pressure, and a reassuring presence in a time of instability engenders trust and affection. Whether or not you like Giuliani's politics, or approve of the way he's led his private life, or think he's an opportunistic SOB, there's still that core truth: he demonstrated extraordinary grit during one of the most difficult times in the life of our nation.

Giuliani's emotional honesty was part of it. He wasn't afraid to show sorrow, and he rose to heights of eloquence time and again in his speeches and eulogies of the time. In sum, he seemed sincere and emotional without ever becoming maudlin, while preserving and conveying a sense of strength. One of the traits Americans are looking for in a President right now seems to be leadership, and Giuliani showed that trait right after 9/11 in a manner that could be felt deep within the gut.

How can McCain compete? And the MSM, in time-honored fashion, which once upon a time jumped on his bandwagon en masse, has now jumped off in unison.

Oh, can I identify: middle ages tech support

2007-03-03T12:51:00.000-05:00

After wrestling with the transfer to my new blog site, I identify very strongly with this You Tube video on middle ages (or perhaps middle-aged) tech support. Whichever side of the tech divide you're on--the puzzled questioner or the patient explainer--it's a hoot.

Tornados and other tragedies: the accidental death of young people

2007-03-02T17:40:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about those who purposely place children’s lives in jeopardy in war.

But children and young people also die accidently, and not only in war. Witness the twin tragedies two schools have just endured.

This morning a bus carrying the baseball team from Mennonite-affiliated Bluffton University in Ohio fell off a bridge, killing four students as well as the bus driver and his wife. And yesterday in Enterprise, Alabama, the high school roof was torn off in a direct hit by a tornado, killing eight students.

The accidental deaths of young people are always tragic, but they usually occur in a seemingly random fashion—a family is hit here, a family is hit there. But with the bus crash of a college team and the collapse of a school buidling, each institution must deal with an especially heartrending group event: the death of a number of young people at one time in a single community. And if there are opportunities for extra support because nearly everyone in that group is bereft of someone known and loved, there are also opportunities for the deepest of grief and the most anguished of questions: why?

Why us, why now, why these particular young people?

Those who are deeply religious answer one way, rationalists answer another. Thornton Wilder gave it a go in his Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of those books that used to be required reading in high schools across the land but probably aren’t any more.

I’m not going to attempt an answer; I don’t have one. But hearing about these events conjured up memories for me--in particular, the first time I ever heard of tornados.

I was very young, perhaps six years old. While watching TV one Saturday morning I saw something on the screen that caught my eye--a bunch of children laughing uproariously at a puppet show. Alone at the time, I sat down to watch, and as the plot progressed (was it a movie? a made-for-TV special? a documentary?), scenes of the laughing children were interspersed with shots of an ominous and darkening sky.

And then, in the middle of it all--boom! What turned out to be a tornado hit those happy children, killing them.

I'd experienced some tragic deaths already in my family, and perhaps that's why this program affected me so deeply. But this was the first time I was made aware of mass tragedy, and especially one involving children. The Pied Piper had made me deeply uneasy, with his luring the children of an entire town to disappear into the side of a mountain. But that was a fairy tale--and, what's more, who's to say what the children found there? Maybe they really experienced the wonderful visions the Piper had promised.

But this was different. This was no fairy tale; even though it was TV, I felt it to be real. And for some time--it seemed nearly forever, but it was probably only a couple of days, if that--I walked around gazing at the cloudy skies and wondering when the tornado would strike. The sensation was particulary vivid in school, when I looked out the window.

A teacher in whom I finally confided dispelled those thoughts by telling me in no uncertain terms, "Nothing to worry about; we don't have tornados here." And, although that turned out not to be true (as a six-year-old I didn't have Google handy to invalidate what she'd said), I breathed a sigh of relief. I was safe.

But the thought of those other children struck down in the midst of laughter remained with me, somewhere deep inside.

Such events are distinguished by their accidental and random, rather than intentional, nature. They are so-called “acts of God” (a term I dislike, not because of its religiousity but because of the image it conveys of a deity purposely wreaking havoc) as differentiated from “purposeful acts of human beings.” Nature’s fury is one thing (although, again, “fury” indicates a malevolence for which there is no evidence whatsoever), human error and/or accident is another. But both are very different from the sort of human malevolence that causes mass murder.

In that sense we can say that another tragedy (although with greater loss of life), the blasting of Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was in some ways similar to the Ohio bus crash and the Alabama tornado (or even that puppet show tornado of so long ago)--but very different in others. It is sometimes forgotten, in the much greater loss of life the Lockerbie incident involved, that thirty-five of those killed on that flight were students from a single college, Syracuse University, returning home for Christmas vacation from time spent abroad.

I vividly recall the news of the Lockerbie explosion. And later, when it was clearly determined that it was the purposeful act of terrorists--and even though I had no special interest in terrorism and no special knowledge of it at the time--the crash seemed an ominous sign of the ever-increasing ruthlessness and scope of terrorist aims.

Although all the Lockerbie deaths were horrible, amidst the general shock and mourning the deaths of the students felt especially horrific to me. Their parents’ grief seemed nearly unendurable--even when glimpsed for only a few brief moments on television.

To this day, nearly twenty years later, Syracuse holds an annual service in honor of its dead students. There’s a somber memorial there as well; I’ve been to it, while visiting a nephew who attended the school:

Time passes, and although they say it heals all wounds, I don’t think these particular wounds really heal at all; they just become less raw. My heart goes out to all who mourn--today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

[For posts on a related topic, see this and this, my series on grieving parents in war.]

Emily Litella here: never mind

2007-03-02T16:07:00.000-05:00

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. I did have a post up earlier today announcing my official move to the new blog site.

But now I get to say "never mind"--at least for now. My tech support has just informed me that in the process of transferring the old posts and comments, there remain a few more glitches to be ironed out, which will delay the move a little bit.

Both sites are operational right now, however.

Weather: housebound

2007-03-02T13:30:00.001-05:00

We're having one of those wretched winter storms in the far northeast, giving those of you who are not living here the opportunity to crow and tell me how much nicer it is where you are. Be my guest.

I tried to take some photos that conveyed how very nasty it is right now, but they just don't (of course, maybe if I suited up suitably and ventured outside to take them it would be different. But I draw the line there).

The front garden:

From the back deck (imagine lots of wind):

Not only howling wind and lots of snow, but little icy pellets on top of it. As you can see, despite the wind the trees are heavily laden, always a worrisome sight where I live because the power goes out if you so much as breath heavily and/or a feather drops on a tree limb.

I'm planning to post on the new blogsite later today. If I don't, it will mean I'm sitting here powerless in the cold and the dark, with only my ipod and a candle to keep me company.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, this site is now officially on New Blogger, for all you techies out there. The transfer was relatively smooth.]

Strategies for children (Part II): killing them

2007-03-01T15:03:00.000-05:00

[Part I, "saving them," is here.]

Children are the future of any society. This makes them a double-edged sword: since most cultures are devoted to the protection and nurturance of their own children, most societies are uniquely vulnerable when those children are threatened; and therefore children can become effective weapons, tools, and hostages.

Today we see an increasing number of children used as soldiers in the traditional sense, especially in Africa. This strange phenomenon is only possible because advances in weaponry make physical strength far less necessary now than it was in the days of Achilles and Hector. But soldiering itself is by no means the only use of children in war.

Children have often been unintended victims in modern wars which (since World War II) have been fought not only on battlefields (now almost obsolete) but through aerial bombardments that have become more and more refined but still unavoidably kill many noncombatants. During World War II children were never purposely targeted (except, of course, by the Nazis when they killed disabled children and Jewish children in an effort to eliminate those groups). So, although plenty of children died during World War II, most of them were considered regrettable collateral casualties of the technique of total war that featured attacks on civilian populations.

In addition, during World War II children were never purposely placed in harm's way by their respective countries--except for Germany and Japan, who needed to recruit younger and younger soldiers as the war went on and their populations of available young men were greatly reduced. But this recruitment was done with reluctance, and was a measure of a desperate situation rather than a decision that drafting children would be a good strategic move in and of itself. The above lithograph, made by the German graphic artist Käthe Kollwitz in 1942--the last one she ever completed--was entitled "Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground," a quote from Goethe referencing the fact that children represent the future and cannot be cannibalized by the present if a society wishes to prosper.

But Islamic totalitarians and terrorists have gone beyond the use of children as conventional fighters, or the killing of the enemy's children in acts of war that have other intended targets or strategic purposes. Islamic totalitarians and terrorists have not invented the practice of purposely using their own children as perpetrators and tools, to be sure; a precedent occurred during the Vietnam War, for example, when children were pressed into service to throw grenades and to lure GIs into various traps. But they have certainly raised it to a fine art.

This fact raises a terrible and ironic paradox: this phenomenon can only arise in a war against a humane fighting force. The value of using children in this way comes solely from the fact that the soldiers involved would hesitate to kill the children deliberately, and would feel terrible guilt about doing so--and he who hesitates is often lost. So, the more humanely a fighting force operates, it seems that the more likely it will be to encounter an enemy willing to sacrifice its own children in an attempt to foil that enemy.

Golda Meir famously said: Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us. And if "love" can be measured as the desire to protect from harm, it could be argued that at this point Israeli society "loves" Palestinian children more than the Palestinians themselves do, since the Israelis kill them only reluctantly, and Palestinians send them and encourage them to purposely kill and be killed (sometimes both simultaneously). I've written about this phenomenon before, likening the Palestinians to the Pied Piper, luring their own children to seek death while promising them beautiful rewards.

It's an almost inescapable but horrifying conclusion that if US and Israeli and other fighting forces were less intent on protecting children, fewer children would be purposely sent into harm's way by the fanatics of the Moslem world. And, likewise, if the western MSM were not so intent on publicizing their deaths and criticizing those who kill them more than than they criticize the people who send those children out to be killed, the propaganda value in the West of the whole operation would be nil, and there probably would be less reason for the adults to put them in harm's way. This represents a conundrum of major proportions.

Of course, their killings would still retain propaganda value in the Arab world; the deaths of children are excellent for stirring up rage against the West in the so-called Arab street; just watch al Jazeera if you don't think so. Thus we have the strange (and, I believe, unprecedented) phenomenon of leaders who sacrifice their own society's children in order to inflame their own populace against an enemy. This could not be done without the cooperation of the mass media in those countries.

But the violent use of children by Islamist totalitarians and terrorists is hardly limited to the above. They also know that most societies--and Israel is certainly an example of this--love their own children and are especially outraged and wounded by their deaths. And so, in recent years, Israeli children have been purposely targeted more and more in suicide bombings. My own recollection of the beginning of this particular strategy was the Sbarro pizza bombing of August 2001, in the first year of the bloody second intifada (and if you follow that link and scroll down a bit you'll find some moving photos and short biographies of the victims of that bombing).

At the time, it seemed an odd and ominous--and puzzling--turn of events to target a pizza place, where families and children were likely to congregate. Now, of course, we've lost whatever innocence we had back then about the intentions of an attack such as this, or its frequency; it now seems to be business as usual, losing none of its horror but most of its surprise through frequent repetition.

What’s the point of such an act? The point, or course, is terror; there are few things more heartbreaking to a society than the loss of its children, and it can demoralize a country.

But terror of this nature—or any nature—is a double-edged sword. The London blitz during World War II, for example, probably served more to stiffen the spine of the British than to cause them to lose heart and think about giving up. The more implacable and heartless an enemy seems to be, the more hated it can become, and the more the public might become mobilized and energized to fight that enemy.

Although aerial bombardment of civilians occurred prior to World War II, it came of age during that conflict and was heavily used by both sides. Some of the bombardment was strategic and aimed at military and industrial targets, but some (on both sides--and the extent of this is on our side a hotly contested issue) was definitely aimed at weakening the will of the civilian population to fight (and see this, an interesting discussion of how the factor of civilian expectations play into this calculus). But no aerial bombardment specially targeted children. At any rate the technique of aerial bombing now has become so refined now that casualties are relatively limited compared to the bad days of World War II.

It appears that modern warfare of the insurgency/terrorist variety, particularly in the Arab world, has brought new features to the use of children's lives as pawns and consolidated some old ones. Advancements in the humaneness of warfare by the West have had the paradoxical effect of leading to a war in which that morality is turned on its head and used against those countries who attempt to practice it.

What's the answer to the dilemma? There is no good one, I'm afraid. The desire to be humane is at odds with the waging of war itself, it would seem. But even that answer --the answer given by pacifists, which is to avoid war--is no solution at all, and allows the strong and immoral to dominate the weak and moral (see this for my thoughts on the subject). Even the international rules of war are designed for a different place and a different time, and for an enemy playing a different game.

Sanity Squad podcast: movies, culture, abortion

2007-03-01T00:36:00.000-05:00

The Squad's new podcast uses the Oscars as a springboard to ponder the influence the movies have had on culture, sexuality, politics, and our perception of history. This segues into a consideration of abortion on demand's effect on society and on the individual.

Join my inimitable Squad colleagues Shrink, Siggy, and Dr. Sanity in our usual freewheeling (and, no doubt, fascinating) discussion.

New blog glitches: oh, how I love this technical stuff!

2007-02-28T16:11:00.000-05:00

Surprise, surprise--the course of designing a new blog never did run smooth (I'm still feeling a trifle Shakespearean, I guess). There'll be a bit of a delay with the new blog's official grand opening while I iron out (or attempt to iron out) some glitches.

Some people have said they are being stopped from commenting on the new blog. Others have complained about problems with the RSS feed. I think I may have fixed the problem that was stopping the commenting, and will be working on the other. I encourage all of you to visit and try to comment: please let me know if you experience any problems.

Due to these technical difficulties and general busyness, "Strategies for Children (Part II): killing them" will be delayed till tomorrow.

Talking to Iran: don't want to stink up the place

2007-02-28T16:07:00.000-05:00

I heard the news with surprise on the radio: the Bush administration has announced that the US will participate in talks with Iran and Syria.

That seemed awfully odd to me, given the administration's previous declarations that this will not happen. And, although politicians are notorious for changing their minds depending on which way the wind is blowing--and although not all changes of mind are bad ones, by any means--this one made me very suspicious, indeed (see this for my discussion on talking with Iran).

The money quote from that post is here:

If by "talk" you mean threats with a big stick to back them up, I'm all for talking. But...[t]he talks that are proposed [at the time the post was written] are to elicit Iran's cooperation in covering a planned retreat from Iraq, to "stabilize" the country. The only stabilization Iran is interested in there is stabilization under Iran's thumb, and they will say anything and do anything to get it. Thus talks are inherently duplicitous and counterproductive.

So, if the present proposed talks contain two elements: (1) a strategically viable "big stick" threat from the US; and (2) Iran's awareness that the talks are not a cover for a planned precipitous US retreat from Iraq--then I think talking to Iran and Syria would not be a particularly dangerous thing to do. Although I still doubt the productivity of any such talks, they would no longer be especially risky, as long as we remain realistic about their chances of success, and continue to pressure Iran in other ways.

Whether these two needed elements are fully in place right now, I'm not sure. The second one appears to be--albeit weakly, albeit temporarily--since the antiwar resolution advocates in Congress don't seem to be winning out (yet). But there's no pretense of a united front on that score, either, and Iran knows that.

As for the first element, take a look at this. It's a very promising development I first heard about at a lecture I attended a couple of months ago: a new form of economic sanctions (under the umbrella of that favorite bete noir of liberals and the Left, the Patriot Act, which appears to be doing some good, after all). The economic effects of these sanctions have already been felt by both Iran and North Korea. Hmmm. Previously (as the article points out), sanctions have been relatively feeble and toothless, but these seem to have a bit of a bite.

Good.

Another point is that the proposed talks are not just between the US, Iran, and Syria. They involve twenty key countries in the region including Iran and Syria. The goal is, apparently, to improve Iraq's relations in the area as a whole, and the US is attending in deference to Iraq's need to establish regional credibility, not necessarily to do a whole lot of negotiating with Iran and Syria.

In a delicate metaphor, Jon Alterman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington says:

The [Bush] administration is still skeptical, but they were not going to be the skunk at the garden party and say we are not going at all.

So, let's retain our skepticism, have some tea and some cucumber sandwiches, and talk.

Who says kids have gone soft?

2007-02-28T14:40:00.000-05:00

As you can plainly see, they're still pretty tough in New England:

Strategies for children: (Part I) saving them

2007-02-27T14:42:00.000-05:00

[This is the first of a two-part series. Tomorrow Part II, "killing them," will appear.]

Last night I was working at my computer when I got a call from a friend telling me to turn on my TV and watch the Oprah Winfrey special called "Building a Dream."

I don't watch much TV to begin with, and Oprah isn't usually on my list. But I trust this friend so I turned it on, even though I'd missed the first twenty minutes. And within a few moments I was surprised to find tears streaming down my cheeks.

The premise? The plans began five years ago, when Oprah went to South Africa to build a boarding school (grades 7-12) for girls who'd shown special scholarship and leadership abilities. These were not children of the elite; she combed the countryside to find girls in out-of-the-way places, children of poverty who'd known terrible privation and yet hadn't been beaten down by it--yet.

Oprah's idea was to make sure that never happened, and in doing so she believes the project could have a transformative effect on the next generation of the whole country--Oprah thinks big. There's no doubt there's something to what she's saying; children are the future of any society and as they go, so goes the nation.

Oprah's got money, scads of it, so she spared no expense in constructing a school with 28 buildings, and began a process that would ultimately select the 152 young girls who would be the members of its first class.

And it was those girls who were the stars of this show, the ones who caused my tears. You can take a look at Oprah's (rather simplistic) website for some information and photos, but I urge you to watch the repeat of the show (I can't believe I'm doing this!), which airs the evening of March 3 on ABC at either 8 or 9 PM (check your local listings).

What was it about these children that was so moving--and yes, so inspiring? Even though they were individuals--some fat, some thin, some quiet, some talkative, some pretty, some plain--they all shared a common charactistic that is actually quite uncommon, at least in my experience, a trait not usually seen in girls in their early teens. They showed remarkable poise and self-possession without a hint of obnoxious arrogance, a sweetness combined with a steely strength. All were well-spoken and almost superhumanly polite, obviously intelligent, with a maturity not only beyond their years, but beyond the years of most people on earth even if they lived to be 100. And yet somehow they retained the lightheartedness of children.

These girls have known hardship, all right. There are Lincolnesque scenes of doing homework by candlelight, no running water, primitive outhouses. And material privations are not the only ones they've experienced; far worse is the amount of violence and death--particularly of parents--in their young lives. But even as they describe these things there is a reluctance to consider themselves victims--or, as one girl, Lesego, says, in her lilting, musical voice (speaking of herself in the third person, but charmingly rather than obnoxiously), "Lesego is a fighter and she'll never give up."

When you hear her say this, you believe it's not just idle boasting. In fact, it's not boasting at all, just a simple statement of fact. She's been through enough already to know whereof she speaks.

There's a famous statement by Ernest Hemingway: The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, many are strong at the broken places." These children are among that "many."

What has given them their phenomenal strength? That certain something is mysterious, but from studies of so-called "resilient" children (also see this), we've learned that it usually includes the loving support of at least one adult. Often, in these cases, it's a grandmother, something Oprah (and I) can identify with. Resilient children also probably have some innate personality traits that predispose them to doing well despite the odds: they usually possess a naturally optimistic and outgoing personality, for starters.

These girls appear to fall into that category. Despite their losses, they all seem to have at least one loving adult in their lives (perhaps even a village of them). You can see it in their faces when they bid good-bye and leave for the school; there are heartfelt tears there. But they know they are going on to a place that will give them opportunities they may have dreamed of, but were impossible--till now.

There's a celebrity presence at the ceremony for the opening of the school. Besides Oprah, of course, there's Nelson Mandela, as well as the usual Hollywood biggies (Spike Lee, Sidney Portier). But the true celebrities are the shining faces of these girls, standing proud and as tall as they possibly can (maybe even taller) in their new uniforms.

The new blog: move imminent!

2007-02-27T13:37:00.000-05:00

I know, I know--I've been saying I'm going to move for a long time now. But it really should be happening very soon--perhaps even tomorrow.

This is the URL of the new blog. Please bookmark it, if you haven't already.

At first, not everything on the new blog will be in its final state. So please bear with me. The blogroll there, for example, is rudimentary, as are a number of other things, and they may take a while to fine tune.

I am also planning to duplicate virtually all the posts on this blog on the new blog, and that won't be done right away, either. For that transfer to take place, this blog will have to go from what's called "Old Blogger" to "New Blogger," among other things. That transition is supposed to go smoothly, and if it does, you won't notice any changes on this blog; it should look the same. We'll see.

The end result--and this could take quite a few weeks to complete--will be that this blog will remain as is, and no more new postings will take place on it. But it will still be possible to read the old ones here. The new blog will go forward with all the new posts, but all the old ones will be imported there, as well.

In addition, there will be an index system on the new blog. All new posts--and, ultimately, all of the old ones from here--will be categorized. For example, if you wanted to take a look at all my posts on "dance," you could just go to that category and you'd find the list of links to all my posts on that subject.

Other improvements (at least, I hope they'll be improvements!) will be happening there as time goes on. But in the meantime, it should be quite functional.

Impending move to new URL

2007-02-26T16:38:00.000-05:00

[I'm going to keep putting this post at the top of the page until I actually make the move.]

Here is the URL of the soon-to-be-unveiled new home of my blog. It's getting closer to being ready.

Lieberman: carrying that big stick

2007-02-26T16:32:00.001-05:00

Senator Lieberman has had a strange year. His ostracism from the Democratic Party failed to stop his re-election, and has paradoxically put him in a stronger position than ever--although, for many reasons, I doubt he'll ever hold national office, even were he to switch parties.

In such an evenly divided Senate he holds the threat of upsetting the balance between the parties were Joe--now an Independent (like me!)--to defect. Despite the fact that he votes with the Republicans on security issues, he's still not officially tied to them, and thus the Democrats hold onto their slim majority and their power over all the committees. Lieberman's rejection by his fellow-Democrats has bought him a certain amount of freedom--and potential power to gum up the works and rain on the Democratic parade, were he to make an outright switch to Republican, a possiblity he has wisely refused to rule out.

With that in mind, Lieberman has written an appeal to Congress. It appeared in today's Opinion Journal, explaining exactly what's at stake and why members of Congress needs to focus on reality instead of playing petty games. The tone strikes me as reasonable and measured, practical and realistic. But it's backed up with an implicit threat of Lieberman's power of defection, nowhere mentioned in the piece:

What is remarkable about this state of affairs in Washington is just how removed it is from what is actually happening in Iraq. There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital.

Congress thus faces a choice in the weeks and months ahead. Will we allow our actions to be driven by the changing conditions on the ground in Iraq--or by the unchanging political and ideological positions long ago staked out in Washington? What ultimately matters more to us: the real fight over there, or the political fight over here?

I fear if the truth be known that many in Congress would answer: the latter.

Lieberman then goes on to detail the differences between the new approach and the old. He agrees that there's no way of guaranteeing the former's success, but:

We are now in a stronger position to ensure basic security--and with that, we are in a stronger position to marginalize the extremists and strengthen the moderates; a stronger position to foster the economic activity that will drain the insurgency and militias of public support; and a stronger position to press the Iraqi government to make the tough decisions that everyone acknowledges are necessary for progress.

Unfortunately, for many congressional opponents of the war, none of this seems to matter. As the battle of Baghdad just gets underway, they have already made up their minds about America's cause in Iraq, declaring their intention to put an end to the mission before we have had the time to see whether our new plan will work.

True, and very shortsighted, as well as cowardly. Lieberman points out their basic lack of bravery in refusing to do what they should do if they really believe what they say: cut the funding. Instead, they are proposing the death of a thousand cuts--the "slow bleed."

Lieberman again:

Many of the worst errors in Iraq arose precisely because the Bush administration best-cased what would happen after Saddam was overthrown. Now many opponents of the war are making the very same best-case mistake--assuming we can pull back in the midst of a critical battle with impunity, even arguing that our retreat will reduce the terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq.

Lieberman then appeals to his colleagues to give peace a chance--peace in Congress, that is. He asks for a moratorium on political squabbling till the end of summer, in order to give General Petraeus and the plan some time to begin to prove itself, or not.

My guess is that his pleas will fall on deaf ears. But don't forget--Lieberman may be walking softly, but he's carrying a big stick--the stick of his potential defection.

Words to the wise

2007-02-26T15:26:00.000-05:00

I had Chinese food for lunch, and this was my fortune:

Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise.

Which may actually have been one of the deeper fortune cookies I've ever gotten.

Random Oscar notes

2007-02-26T13:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I watched the Oscars. In addition to observing the usual self-congratulatory self-righteousness from the very rich and very famous, I observed what's far more important, of course: the fashions.

Since I've seen none of the movies except "Dreamgirls," I had no dogs in most of those races--nor have I really cared much about the Oscars even when I did go to the movies far more often. But fashion and hair--ah, that's another story!

A small digression and small confession: when I was about eleven, I wanted to be a hairdresser (that was a few years after I'd given up my dream to become a roller derby star--but more about that, perhaps, another time). When I announced my hair salon aspirations to my mother she was a bit distressed, "Don't you think that would be--ummm--wasting your mind?" I eventually abandoned the idea, but not after spending quite a bit of time in high school and college cutting friends' hair and applying their makeup for proms and special occasions.

And so you're reading the observations of a semipro here, although a very outdated one. And I'm happy to report that this year's fashions (guys, are you still with me?--thought not) were better than in recent years that had featured the sloppy nightgown look. The gowns this year erred in the other direction: very tightly constructed, almost trussed (although what these skinny ladies need trussing for I'll never know). But rather pretty and much more elegant.

Ann Althouse described Nicole Kidman's dress as "all plastic-y and shiny. She's wearing an impossibly tall, thin red dress." True; she looked less like a human than like a walking larger-than-life Barbie. She's a woman with an unusual body to begin with--very broad shoulders and narrow hips--and her dress emphasized the broadness of the former and the narrowness of the latter (no, it's not just envy speaking and being critical--oh, well, maybe just a teeny tiny bit).

Diane Keaton looked oddly severe; but she's always been a very eccentric dresser. Also, she looked rail thin, which I don't remember before. In fact, "rail thin" was very much in evidence in general; did you take a good look at Kate Blanchett's extra shoulder bones, the little ones that stick up when a person goes down to starvation weight? None of that for Jennifer Hudson, who seemed very revved up, but in a manner that seemed natural for an excited young newcomer.

Helen Mirren set a subdued and dignified tone for the Woman of Certain Age (after all, she played a queen). A bit monochrome for my tastes, though. Al Gore--well, he continues to look stuffy, but he actually did a funny bit when his "announcement" was drowned out by the "time to go" music.

As for Jack Nicholson--whom I think long ago became a parody of himself, a self that was already dangerously close to parody even at the outset--he looked bizarre. The camera kept going to him--why, I don't know: celebrity? disbelief? awe? disgust? To me he looked like a cross between Daddy Warbucks and Lex Luther, but even that is being kind.

I don't get Leonardo di Caprio. A good actor who absolutely doesn't interest me, and he looks like an eternal boy. Peter O'Toole, a good actor who does interest me, looked so shockingly old and frail that I didn't recognize him until he was identified. I've always liked Forrest Whitaker, and his speech seemed very genuine. I want to ask Martin Scorcese to take off the Groucho disguise, but I'm too polite to do so.

And I'd like some information on whatever it is that Catherine Deneuve's been doing to keep herself looking forever young. Of course, it doesn't hurt to start out gorgeous, but that's no guarantee that you'll stay that way, as she has.

Enough fluff, don't you think?

Understanding (and misunderstanding) Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

2007-02-24T11:58:00.000-05:00

One of the most famous misunderstood lines in all of literature is Juliet's balcony query: "Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"

As most of you probably know, the archaic "wherefore" means "why." But the misconception that the word means "where" persists, even though the latter would make no sense in the context of the scene: Juliet is musing to herself and Romeo is eavesdropping, overhearing her words without her knowledge. She's certainly not searching for him at that moment.

Shakespeare is difficult, and it's not just because of his use of outdated words that require explanation in order to understand (well, we can hardly blame him; they weren't outdated at the time). We're simply not accustomed to hearing such sophisticated speech and being able to divine meaning from its poetry, its playful images and complex metaphors. Apparently in Shakespeare's day people were more adept at that, but it's since become a lost art.

Studying Shakespeare with a good teacher can bring the words and their meaning alive in a way that makes the plays the beloved masterpieces that they have been for centuries. I once had such a teacher; we'll call him Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones was an ex-actor with a vaguely British accent crossed with a hint of a Jamaican lilt. He was also a black man at a time when African American teachers weren't all that common, back in my junior high school days. How he ended up at my school I don't know, nor do I know much else about him except that he lived with his elderly mother.

Mr. Jones was very big on reading aloud. He had an old-fashioned over-the-top rhetorical style, a huge voice left over from his days treading the boards of un-miked stages, and a fearless disregard for giggle-prone eighth-graders. He would declaim in that commanding voice, and his presence would stifle any desire to laugh. The sounds would wash over us impressively, even if the meaning eluded us.

But he wanted us to understand the meaning, as well. And to this end we spent months studying Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." One would think that this work would be the best choice among all Shakespeare's plays for a bunch of eighth-graders, and one would be right. After all, Juliet, at fourteen, could have been an eighth-grader herself.

But she wasn't like any eighth-grader we'd ever known. And Romeo was no better. What were they talking about? It seemed an impenetrable thicket of verbiage.

Mr. Jones tackled the whole thing by making us read every single word aloud. He called on some students to act out each part for a few pages, then switched to other students, and on and on, right to the last line. It took months. No matter how embarrassed we were, or what poor actors we were, or how we stumbled and faltered, we had to read those words. And he was big on non-traditional casting, too; he'd sometimes call on the boys to read the female parts and vice-versa. Talk about embarrassment!

One boy, Carl Anderson, who had the platinum hair and fair skin of his Norwegian forebearers, blushed scarlet every time he was called on to read. Then he'd blush even more startlingly scarlet as embarrassing words were revealed ("Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!"). But read he did.

Some read in monotones, some gave it pizazz. And then, after every couple of lines, Mr. Jones would have them pause and try to explain the meaning. If they couldn't guess, the class would tackle it. If all else failed, Mr. Jones would tell us. But, line by line, the wonderful and sorrowful story emerged, and we slowly got better at deciphering it.

As the characters came alive for us, line by line, Shakespeare (and Mr. Jones) managed that feat at which the writers of so many modern movies fail abysmally: making us care about the characters, and making us believe the lovers actually love each other, and showing us why. We loved Romeo and Juliet, too; and we could see that they were exceptionally well-suited to one another, each able to express emotions in ways no other teenagers ever have or ever will.

When Romeo and Juliet first meet at the ball, they have a conversation in which both show an equal adeptness at imagery and playfulness. The whole scene is an extended metaphor that compares the religious (the hands in prayer) with the sexual (the lips in a kiss).

Classier pickup lines were never heard, at least not in my life:

ROM: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Juliet plays hard-to-get with an equally witty rejoinder:

JUL: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Ah, but Romeo is not so easily put off from his goal:

ROM: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

But again, Juliet is equal to the task of parrying him:

JUL: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in pray'r.

But Romeo is not to be dissuaded. He cleverly extends the image in an attempt to get what he's looking for--a kiss (to understand what he's getting at here, think of two hands clasped together in prayer):

ROM: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!
They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Ah, who could resist? Certainly not Juliet, who clearly doesn't even wish to hold him off, although she pays some final lip service (pun intended; after all, Shakespeare likes puns!) to restraint:

JUL: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

And Romeo sees his opportunity:

ROM: Then move not while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg'd. [Kisses her.]

Are they not well-matched? Precocious and intensely emotional, they exude the essence of heady young love, love that has as yet no experience of sorrow or betrayal (although they'll know sorrow soon enough). These two love with all their hearts; they are made for each other, and the audience knows it immediately through their words.

A few years later when I saw the Zefferelli film version of "Romeo and Juliet," I marveled at the scene as it was acted out with suitable hand gestures (oh, so that's the way it works!) by the achingly-young Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting (I can't locate a photo of that scene, but here's a different one--and, by the way, Whiting was a ringer for my boyfriend at the time):

If you've never seen that film, please take a look. Yes, it was roundly criticized for leaving at least half the play on the cutting-room floor. And for including nakedness (as I recall, a rear shot of Romeo during the post-wedding rendezvous in Juliet's bedroom). And for casting unknown actors who were so young they lacked the requisite Shakespearean gravitas.

But for me, the film made the play come alive. You believed they loved each other. You believed their desperation. And in the death scenes, you could not help but cry at the waste of these two beautiful young lives.

In the film, the meaning of all those Shakespearean lines was clear; a testament to the actors' skill. But they wouldn't have been anywhere near as clear to me--or as wonderful-- without those efforts of Mr. Jones.

[ADDENDUM: I'm pleased to report that fellow blogger and Romeo-and-Juliet-aficionado[a?] Fausta has found a photo of the scene I described from the Zefferelli movie, where the lovers use "suitable hand gestures" in their prayer/kiss conversation. Here it is:

And here Fausta elaborates on her own relationship to R&J, as well as how a nun at her Catholic school inadvertantly drummed up business for the movie.]

Thoughts on Hillary and other female heads of state

2007-02-23T15:00:00.000-05:00

The Clinton-Obama Democratic matchup is study in contrasts, so far.

We know Hillary only too well; one of her problems is that of too much exposure. Obama is the proverbial blank slate. They're both trailblazers, demographically speaking, but of different types: she, a woman and ex-First Lady; he, an African-American with a multicultural past. Hillary possesses many interesting and useful traits, but charisma seems not to be one of them. Obama has almost nothing but charisma.

Commonalities are that they are both smart, and they both lean to the Left, as does the party itself these days. Who leans more heavily to the Left is anybody's guess.

If I were forced to choose between the two--and "forced" it would have to be, because I have no interest in voting for either--I think I'd go (albeit very reluctantly) for Hillary's toughness over the sketchy touchy-feely (but so far, empty) "inspiration" of Obama. This, of course, could change, if he fills in the blankness with something of substance.

I've never hated Hillary, and still don't. And yes, I know, that's not a very strong endorsement, nor is it meant to be. But I well understand the hatred for her. She emanates the same vibes that made people hate Leona Helmsley (remember her?), Martha Stewart, and any other woman who is perceived as both coldly ruthless and powerful.

We've had so few female heads of state that comparisons are hard to find. Actually, I amend that thought: there have been many female heads of state, but most of them aren't widely known, and most ascended to power through a sort of inheritance--the death of a husband or father.

Even the very-well-known Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir were somewhat in this mold: Gandhi filled a power vacuum her father Nehru's sudden death left open, and Meir ascended to the office of Prime Minister when chosen by her party after the sudden death of former PM Levi Eshkol. Both were political beings prior to those events, particularly Meir, but there's little question that the openings left by the deaths of prominent men facilitated their rise in an atmosphere in which women leaders were by far the exception rather than the rule.

Interestingly enough, Hillary fits very well into that mold. Her career has been closely linked to that of her more conventionally electable husband. And now, although Bill is still very much alive, he's "dead" in the political sense. Since he can no longer run for President, Hillary has taken on the mantle.

Margaret Thatcher is the one woman leader who seems to have climbed to the pinnacle without the help of a father or husband who was a political predecessor, or the sudden death of a political colleague creating an opportunity that otherwise would not have existed. Of course, she was elected not through a direct process of people voting for her, but voting instead for her party, (as is always the case in Parliamentary systems). But still, she was elected under her own steam.

Thatcher was certainly in the mold of a woman perceived as exceptionally strong and rather cold, and was hated by many in her time. But (at least to the best of my knowledge; and I don't pretend to be an expert on Thatcher) she was not perceived as corrupt or amorally opportunistic, as is Hillary. Instead, Thatcher was hated for her policies, and for her no-nonsense firmness in implementing them. Thatcher was devoted to conservative ideas, and was unusually and rather firmly consistent about them for her entire life. Her iron qualities seemed to be less in service of self-aggrandizement than in service of her political cause. But iron she was.

Hillary's iron has been shown more in the cause of getting first her husband and then herself elected, at least so far. And she's tainted by the brush of her own possible corruption as well as Bill Clinton's moral failings, and her own compromises in service of his career and the preservation of their marriage.

As far as the latter goes, I have some sympathy for the position in which Bill's philandering placed her. Despite his lengthy history of infidelity--of which she no doubt knew--the Lewinsky affair during his Presidency must have violated some important pact between them. I'm not sure of the nature of that agreement (no, they haven't taken me into their confidence), but it certainly must have included refraining from misbehaving in such a way as to get caught and jeopardize both of their political careers. And if she'd left him at the time, her calculation was probably that it would have jeopardized them still further. Call me naive, but I also believe she was wounded in the personal sense, as well.

The idea of Bill in the White House again, if only as a spouse, must fill many with dread--just as it fills many with glee. He's a polarizing figure of great intensity. Perhaps that's why many Democrats prefer the blank slate of Obama. He may seem to be a lightweight, but at least he carries no real baggage.

Venezuela update: is anyone surprised by this? Except Jimmy?

2007-02-23T14:03:00.000-05:00

Chavez may have rigged the referendum of 2004, according to a statistical study by two Venezuelan scientists.

An isolated study or two wouldn't mean much. But there's a lot more evidence that this particular election was rigged.

And is there anyone who doubts Chavez capable of such a thing? In fact, is there anyone who thinks he would think twice about doing such a thing?

And is there anyone who believes that certification of the election results by Jimmy Carter has any meaning whatsoever, except as another example of why he's the worst ex-President in history (and yes indeed, I voted for him--twice).

From the not-particularly disputed Wiki entry on the Venezuelan referendum 0f 2004:

European Union observers did not oversee the elections, saying too many restrictions were put on their participation by the Chávez administration. The Carter Center "concluded the results were accurate." However, a Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) exit poll showed the opposite result, predicting that Chávez would lose by 20%, whereas the election results showed him to have won by 20%. Schoen commented, "I think it was a massive fraud". US News and World Report offered an analysis of the polls, indicating "very good reason to believe that the (Penn Schoen) exit poll had the result right, and that Chávez's election officials — and Carter and the American media — got it wrong".

According to the Center for Security Policy (disclosure: many of those nefarious neoconservatives are affiliated with the group):

"The [Chavez] government did everything—including granting citizenship to half a million illegal aliens in a crude vote-buying scheme and “migrating” existing voters away from their local election office—to fix the results in its favor. The outcome was then affirmed and legitimated by ex-President Jimmy Carter’s near-unconditional support." "Jimmy Carter ignored pleas from the opposition and publicly endorsed the results, despite the fact that the government reneged on its agreement to carry out an audit of the results. Carter’s actions not only gave the Venezuelan regime the legitimacy it craved, but also destroyed the public’s confidence in the voting process and in the effectiveness of international observers."

Voting fraud allegations have become commonplace--almost required--lately. But in this case they seem only too correct. The evidence is strong, plus Chavez's later acts leave little doubt in my mind that voter fraud is exactly what he would have done to hold onto his power and allow him to carry out his plans for becoming dictator of Venezuela. And Jimmy Carter was his willing enabler, either a pious dupe or a fraud himself.

Most ex-Presidents adhere to the Hippocratic oath when they are out of power: first, do no harm. Would that Carter would stick to it, as well.

These fickle and reversing politicos and press, then and now

2007-02-22T15:26:00.000-05:00

I'm reading a fascinating book by Robert Kagan entitled Dangerous Nation: America's place in the world from its earliest days to the dawn of the twentieth century. A mouthful, I know--and that's only Part I, which goes up to the beginning of the Spanish-American war.

I haven't finished it. But I wanted to point out the following passage about the build-up to that war:

Republican newspapers that had been excoriating [Democratic President] Cleveland for his inaction on Cuba right up until the last days of the Democrat's term now reversed themselves [after the election of McKinley, a Republican] and backed McKinley's inaction. The small group of Republican barons who directed affairs in the House and Senate were dead set against intervention in Cuba and war with Spain. When Cleveland had been in office, they had let party members loose to criticize the Democrats for betraying the cause of Cuban freedom. But once in power they preferred Cleveland's course.

So, in terms of hypocrisy and self-serving political wheeling dealing, twas ever thus! When I'm tempted to think that there was a golden age when politics was more civil and profiles in courage were more common, all I have to do is read history to get a corrective lesson.

And don't think we're just talking about Republicans, here. A few sentences later we read this:

The Democrats, meanwhile, released from the burden of defending Cleveland's inaction, now assailed McKinley for pursuing the same course.

So, what else is new?

I hope to write more about this book soon. It makes some fascinating points that indicate certain parallels between the Spanish-American War and the Iraq War--although they may not be the ones you think.

Podcast: the Squad takes on the Presidency

2007-02-21T20:38:00.000-05:00

In honor of Presidents Day (or President's Day, or perhaps Presidents' Day), the Sanity Squad yaks it up about good Presidents and bad, and the office itself. We also discuss the recent terrorist train bombing in India. Please join me, Siggy, Shrink, and Dr. Sanity. And take a look at this, Siggy's intro to the podcast, in which he outs some information about my secret past.

More reasons to visit the blogs of my esteeemd colleagues: Dr. Sanity proves she is a lyrical parodist extraordinaire in her "Rime of the Ancient Socialists," while Shrink has a multi-parter on abortion (just go to his blog and scroll down; I may post something on the topic soon, as well). And Siggy has a personal story of his own to share, in addition to some general reflections on this most weighty and profoundly controversial subject.

Our Iraq allies and spin: past and present, British and otherwise

2007-02-21T15:30:00.000-05:00

As Blair announces and Britain prepares a phased pull out from Iraq, I noticed this list of our allies who are still there.

It's a somewhat varied and lengthy group, considering that basically this has been a US effort. And of course the numbers from most of the countries are small.

But I'm surprised that so many are still there at all, although I'm not surprised that that fact has been kept fairly quiet--perhaps, even, at the behest of those countries, who no doubt have a valid fear of retaliation by terrorist groups.

Critics will say the forces involved are mainly symbolic rather than meaningful. But any support has meaning and carries risk, and some of the countries involved are very small themselves. Note the strong participation of "new" Europe--the eastern, previously Russian satellite, part:

• South Korea – 2,300 troops in northern city of Irbil; plans to bring home 1,100 troops this spring and parliament has called for a complete withdrawal by the end of the year

• Australia – 1,400 troops; Prime Minister John Howard Wednesday called Britain's move “good sense” but reject calls to follow suit

• Poland – 900 non-combat troops, mission extended to end of this year

• Romania – 865 troops, with most serving in the south under British command 460-member contingent from southern Iraq by August and transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi forces.

• Denmark – The country's 460-member contingent will be pulled by August, with security responsibilities transferred to Iraqi forces. During the conflict, six Danish soldiers have been killed in Iraq

• El Salvador – 380 troops doing peacekeeping work in Hillah; no plans for withdrawal

• Georgia – 850 troops serving under U.S. command in Baqouba; no withdrawal plans

• Azerbaijan – 150 troops, mostly sentries on patrol near Hadid

• Bulgaria – 150 troops, including a large number of non-troops guarding a refugee camp north of Baghdad • Latvia – about 136 troops serving under Polish command

• Albania – 126 troops, mostly doing non-combat duty near airport Mosul • Czech Republic – 100 troops

• Mongolia – 100 troops, no withdrawal plans

• Lithuania – 50 troops as part of Danish battalion near Basra; a spokeswoman for the Baltic nation said Wednesday the country is “seriously considering” not replacing the troops with the mission ends this summer, marking the first time the staunch U.S. ally has indicated it would reduce its Iraq commitment

• Armenia – 46 troops, mission extended to the end of 2007

• Bosnia and Herzegovina – 37 troops

• Estonia – 34 troops serving under U.S. command near Baghdad

• Macedonia – 33 troops in Taji, north of Baghdad

• Kazakhstan – 29 troops, mostly military engineers

• Moldova – 11 bomb-defusing experts returned home in December; parliament has yet to decide on a new mission

• Fiji – The South Pacific nation contributed 150 troops, but the contingent was deployed as part of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq

Of course, the US is the main act in Iraq. But Britain has been an ally right along--although the majority of the people there were always against British participation (as best I can recall); and, if not, they certainly are now.

So the British withdrawal is no mystery; it's been an unpopular war there, and Blair is mindful of his party's future. But the removal of these forces has been telegraphed for ages; no mystery there, as well. If you Google some phrase like "Blair forces leave Iraq" you'll find articles going back to 2006 and even 2005 discussing Blair's plans in that direction (this, for example).

The usual suspects claim the usual intrigue around the move, as described in this CNN article. Blair's statement that the withdrawal represents success in Basra (the area in which the British were always concentrated), and Bush's seconding of that motion, are questioned, especially since the surge is on. And everyone is using the move's announcement to score predictable political points.

In one way the timing does seem odd; why leave now, when more troops are supposed to be needed? On the other hand it's not so odd at all: the area is relatively calm at the moment, and Blair's hand has been virtually forced, in the political sense--he's been stalling on this move for years, and it's hard to imagine how he can stall much longer and still preserve any vitality for his party in the next elections.

Australian Prime Minister Howard is singing a different song. He's adamant about the fact the the Aussies are staying for now. Note, by the way, the subtly snarky tone of the linked article from the Sydney Morning Herald, a type of reporting that almost seamlessly merges editorializing with straight news in a way that's become so familiar as to be the rule rather than the exception (thanks, Walter Cronkite!).

In the article, Howard's announcement that Britain's pullout represents success in Basra is immediately characterized as "play[ing] down the importance" of Blair's announcement, and putting "a positive spin" on Blair's move. And this sort of editorializing occurs in the first two sentences of the story, rather than later on in the article, or even (gasp!!) being saved for an opinion piece.

The Sydney Herald piece does indeed contain some straight reporting and useful information, including quotes from Howard and other Australian officials on their opinions of what's involved. But this comes much later, in the second half of the piece (when most people have probably stopped reading, a fact of which the editors are no doubt fully aware). And it also comes after these opinions have been effectively discredited by the earlier parts of the article; whatever Howard and company may say, the Sydney's editors know it's mere spin--and they're not the least bit shy or retiring about telling us so, right up front.

This, by the way, has nothing to do with whether those editors are correct or not. Whether they are or aren't, I want my news straight, and any interpretation and opinion on another page--or at least in another article clearly labeled opinion, thank you very much. But you can't always get what you want, can you?

Howard is quoted in the article as saying, "A reduction has been in the wind (a while), and the reason I understand Mr Blair will give is that conditions have stabilised in Basra." That is certainly undisputed, as I pointed out.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson adds that there's no discrepancy between the British pullout and the surge plans by the US:

"People ought to remember that 60 per cent of the violence comes from Baghdad and al-Anbar province, where al-Qaeda is particularly active," he told ABC Radio. "The rest of Iraq is quite different".

Undoubtedly true. But, with the surge so clearly telegraphed, and many of the terrorists and insurgents fleeing, aren't more troops needed in Basra, not less? So isn't the timing of the pullout a problem?

To know whether it's likely to be, it would help to know where those fleeing insurgents might have been going. Well, we know that al Sadr is likely to be whooping it up right now with his fun buddies in Iran.

But where are the others? To try to answer the question, I did a bit of research, and all I've come up with so far is this and a few other articles like it, which indicate that the fleeing insurgents seem to have gone to an area north of Baghdad and not all that far away from it. Certainly not to Basra.

Ah, here's a bit of news on the subject, embedded as a few words in an AP article found in the Guardian:

Analysts say there is little point in boosting forces in largely Shiite southern Iraq, where most non-U.S. coalition troops are concentrated.

Okay; I assume that the nameless "analysts" aren't of the Freudian type; they're experts on the situation in Iraq, supposedly. I'd love to hear a bit more about that, and about who they might be, but we don't. What we do hear is AP writer David Stringer immediately following it up with this speculation of his own (at least, apparently his own; there's no attribution for the statement):

Yet as more countries draw down or pull out, it could create a security vacuum if radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stirs up trouble.

Interestingly enough, in the very first article I linked in this post (here, from NPR), which features that same AP article, there was another paragraph directly following the above quote about a security vacuum (this extra paragraph was omitted in the Guardian version):

A British withdrawal is not likely to have much effect on the stepped-up U.S. operation in Baghdad or the war against the Sunni-led insurgency focusing on Anbar province west of the Iraqi capital.

So, which is it? Will the British pullout matter, or not? Is it naivete to actually take what Blair says at face value: that the mission is pretty much accomplished in Basra, and that this doesn't represent a huge and terrible break with Washington and with Bush? Well, it's hard to know; but experts seem to believe the British withdrawal and the surge are not contradictory at all.

Wouldn't it be nice if all speculation by journalists would remain where it belongs, in a column or op-ed piece? Or, of course, they're welcome to start their own blogs and spout off like me--but then they'd be letting their biases out into the clear light of day, which could only be a good thing. Ah well, you can say I'm a dreamer.

[NOTE: Apologies for all the song lyric links in this post; my only excuse is I've still got golden oldies on the brain.]

Caution on troll-feeding

2007-02-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

It's tedious work to prepare the new blog, and I don't have a lot of spare time to devote to it. I believe it will be ready in a few days, however.

In the meantime, I would like to reiterate that all commenters here refrain from feeding the trolls. I deleted an entire string of comments yesterday that was just back and forth squabbling. The comments section here is something I really value, and I don't want it to degenerate into childish namecalling on either side.

Peace/love: a golden oldie

2007-02-20T12:33:00.000-05:00

I went out dancing the other night.

No, not ballet. My ballet days are over, I'm afraid.

And no, most assuredly not the tango. My tango days are over, I'm very happy to say.

This was dancing to the music of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Golden oldies, silver oldies, brass oldies, tin oldies. The music of that last decade, the 80s, is a bit unfamiliar to me. But the rest of the songs rang a bunch of pleasant although somewhat rusty bells.

A portion of those bells involved raucous fraternity dances with spilled beer and even cigarettes (yes, yes, I smoked! But never inhaled; I just enjoyed making the most well-formed and longlasting smoke rings on earth.) Other bells rang for even earlier memories--of dancing in somebody's knotty-pine-paneled basement to an old record player with a stack of 45s that dropped, one by one, onto a turntable.

This dance the other night was held in a so-called ballroom, a large hall with one of those revolving globes with mirror fragments that cast moving points of light onto the wooden floor. It was a lot of fun; I think I'll do it again some time (the next day I was only slightly, rather than terribly, sore). I discovered that one of the benefits of getting more--ahem, mature--is that I don't have to worry quite so much about making a fool of myself on the dance floor. I just assume I'm doing so--at least a little bit--and, at this point, who really cares?

You might think, by the way, that being a former ballet dancer would make a person confident as a social dancer. Not so; the two genres are exceedingly different.

This was a Valentine's dance. You could tell that because most of us women--and even some of the men--managed to wear something red. And there was chocolate all around.

And then, as the evening was coming to an end, the youngish DJ came over to me and handed me a gift. Or maybe it was a prize (although for what, I don't know; maybe just for the courage to have gotten out there).

It was a tiny object sealed in a little plastic bag, sort of like something one might find in a crackerjack box. When I opened it, I found this pendant on a chain (those are sparkly blue rhinestones, by the way):

Maybe the DJ was trying to tell neo-neocon the chickenhawk warmonger something or other. Or maybe not; maybe his hawk eye just recognized an ex-semi-hippie-chick when he saw one.

But looking at that peace symbol brought back some other memories. And wouldn't it be wonderful if peace--real peace, meaningful peace, peace because the need to make war had gone away--were possible? That's the only kind of peace I can imagine, not a false peace that happens because we're tired of defending ourselves, or because we're lulled into a false sense of security by the lying words of an enemy.

I remember back when "All we are saying is give peace a chance" actually seemed like all one needed to say on the subject. Would that it had been so then; would that it were so now.

Teflon Don at Acute Politics: a blogger worth noticing

2007-02-20T12:22:00.000-05:00

I came across the writing of milblogger Teflon Don via Pajamas Media, and I've added him to my blogroll. I strongly urge you to take a look at his blog Acute Politics.

There are many excellent milbloggers, but there's something about Teflon Don's work that stands out.

Maybe it's his use of a quote from Robert Frost at the top of his page; you know how partial I am to Frost. But no; it's actually the fine quality of his writing.

It's not merely that he's informative and intelligent--although he's certainly both of those. He doesn't just give us a vivid picture of what it's like to be serving in Iraq at this particular time in history-- although he does that, as well. Teflon Don writes with style and elegance--and eloquence--and combines it all with a great depth of feeling and sensitivity, and a profound emotional honesty. For such a young man (or a person for any age, for that matter), he's got a lot of wisdom--as well as humility, which is part of wisdom.

I wish this courageous man well, from the bottom of my heart.

Tell your friends in the service about this

2007-02-20T12:15:00.000-05:00

Here's a website that might interest you if you're serving in the military, or know anyone who is. It's for military personnel to register an official appeal to Congress called a redress.

Here's the text he/she can sign on to, which will be delivered to members of Congress:

As an American currently serving my nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to fully support our mission in Iraq and halt any calls for retreat. I also respectfully urge my political leaders to actively oppose media efforts which embolden my enemy while demoralizing American support at home. The War in Iraq is a necessary and just effort to bring freedom to the Middle East and protect America from further attack.

"I supported the troops before I cut the legs out from under them"

2007-02-19T15:35:00.000-05:00

On "Face the Nation" yesterday, Tony Snow made what seems to me to be an eminently reasonable request:

What I would say to members of Congress is: Calm down and take a look at what's going on, and ask yourself a simple question: If you support the troops, would you deny them the reinforcements they think are necessary to complete the mission?

What does this business of "supporting the troops" actually mean, anyway? Most of the time, I'm afraid, it's empty rhetoric. And exceedingly condescending empty rhetoric, at that.

"Support" is a nice,touchy-feely word, vague enough to mean almost anything. Here are some definitions, however, for those more inclined towards precision:

# the activity of providing for or maintaining by supplying with money or necessities; "his support kept the family together"; "they gave him emotional support during difficult times"
# give moral or psychological support, aid, or courage to; "She supported him during the illness"; "Her children always backed her up"
# aiding the cause or policy or interests of; "the president no longer had the support of his own party"; "they developed a scheme of mutual support"
# support materially or financially; "he does not support his natural children"; "The scholarship supported me when I was in college"
# something providing immaterial assistance to a person or cause or interest; "the policy found little public support"; "his faith was all the support he needed"; "the team enjoyed the support of their fans"
# back: be behind; approve of; "He plumped for the Labor Party"; "I backed Kennedy in 1960"
# a military operation (often involving new supplies of men and materiel) to strengthen a military force or aid in the performance of its mission; "they called for artillery support"
# hold: be the physical support of; carry the weight of; "The beam holds up the roof"; "He supported me with one hand while I balanced on the beam"; "What's holding that mirror?"
# documentation: documentary validation; "his documentation of the results was excellent"; "the strongest support for this view is the work of Jones"
# confirm: establish or strengthen as with new evidence or facts; "his story confirmed my doubts"; "The evidence supports the defendant"
# subscribe: adopt as a belief; "I subscribe to your view on abortion"
# the financial means whereby one lives; "each child was expected to pay for their keep"; "he applied to the state for support"; "he could no longer earn his own livelihood"
# supporting structure that holds up or provides a foundation; "the statue stood on a marble support"
# corroborate: support with evidence or authority or make more certain or confirm; "The stories and claims were born out by the evidence"
# defend: argue or speak in defense of; "She supported the motion to strike"
# the act of bearing the weight of or strengthening; "he leaned against the wall for support"
# accompaniment: a subordinate musical part; provides background for more important parts
# play a subordinate role to (another performer); "Olivier supported Gielgud beautifully in the second act"
# patronize: be a regular customer or client of; "We patronize this store"; "Our sponsor kept our art studio going for as long as he could"
# any device that bears the weight of another thing; "there was no place to attach supports for a shelf"
# digest: put up with something or somebody unpleasant; "I cannot bear his constant criticism"; "The new secretary had to endure a lot of unprofessional remarks"; "he learned to tolerate the heat"; "She stuck out two years in a miserable marriage"
# financial resources provided to make some project possible; "the foundation provided support for the experiment"

Hard to see the current "slow-bleed" activities of Congress as "support" under any of these definitions: they provide neither money, psychological encouragement, aid to the cause, backup, approval, corroboration, weight-bearing, nor defense of the troops (although I suppose it could be argued that--for the 20,000 troops that would be included in any "surge"--they "defend" those particular troops by preventing them from going to Iraq and risking their lives--even if it is the wish of many of them to do so).

The phrase "we support the troops" uttered by antiwar activists and Congressional leaders is meant to deflect the sort of charges that became commonplace during the Vietnam War, when the conflict over that war was personalized into disrespect towards those who had served in the military. Most of those who declare support for the troops while hating the war are careful not to insult the troops directly, and certainly not to their faces.

But it's often the subtext of their message. And others are not so careful: witness the enormous (and well-earned) flap created by Washington Post "blogger" William M. Arkin's column characterizing our troops as a "mercenary" force who should be grateful to the American people for supporting them. (Please read the comments after his post, as well; many are far more interesting--and intelligent--than Arkin's original piece.)

How can the troops be said to be supported by the "slow bleed" envisioned by the Democratic leadership? One doesn't necessarily have to be a complete Jacksonian in order to see that wars should be waged competently or not at all. The Democrats and their seven Republican supporters refuse to go out on a political limb and cut off funding for the war. The fact that they are allowing troops to remain in harms' way there, and yet refusing to give them the support (actual support, not symbolic and empty words) that commanders think would help the mission, protect the troops, and ultimately help the Iraqis as well, is profoundly hypocritical and short-sighted.

The idea of the troops as naive (Arkin's word), exploited, poor, misguided, and stupid saps is a meme that won't die, despite demographic evidence to the contrary. But if one continues to promulgate (and possibly even to believe) these things, then the term "support" becomes translated into something other than "support what they are doing and what their commanders feel is needed." It becomes "support them by telling the poor misguided little ones what the truth is in order to protect them from their own ignorant perceptions." And what's that truth? "It's what we understand it to be."

The condescension is thick. Here's Arkin again, in a follow-up post:

In the middle of all of this are the troops, the pawns in political battles at home as much as they are on the real battlefield. We unquestioningly "support" these troops for the very reasons that they are pawns. We give them what we can to be successful, and we have a contract with them, because they are our sons and daughters and a part of us, not to place them in an impossible spot.

And yet, strangely enough, one can easily say (and I hereby say it) that those Democrats (and the seven Republicans) who voted for the recent resolution are guilty of using the troops as political pawns and of doing their best to "place them in an impossible spot."

Their condescension is especially misplaced in regards to an all-volunteer military. With a draft, there's a better argument to be made for the reluctance or naivete of troops. Volunteers are presumed to know what they're getting into: they have a choice, and they've chosen the military. That's why Arkin and others have fallen into the "mercenary" charge; it's the best one they can muster to counter the fact of an all-volunteer military, besmirching the motives of those who serve and reducing them to a desire for money.

Of course, being a volunteer in the military doesn't mean a person who serves has chosen this particular war. Although it's also a well-known fact that the majority of the military tend to vote Republican, there's also no question that some who serve would--and will-- vote for Democrats, and would prefer not to go to Iraq. But that's by no means a universal point of view, and reenlistment statistics--as well as interviews with military personnel such as the one that sparked the original Arkin article--certainly tell a different tale.

I'll close with the incomparable Steyn on the entire subject:

So "the Murtha plan" is to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. But of course he's a great American! He's a patriot! He supports the troops! He doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years. As John Kerry wondered during Vietnam, how do you ask a soldier to be the last man to die for a mistake? By nominally "fully funding" a war you don't believe in but "limiting his ability to use the money." Or as the endearingly honest anti-war group MoveCongress.org put it, in an e-mail preview of an exclusive interview with the wise old Murtha:

"Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for not only limiting the deployment of troops to Iraq but undermining other aspects of the president's foreign and national security policy."

And I'll offer a rather simple definition of the word "undermine": it's the opposite of "support."

Making music: on playing the cello

2007-02-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

I used to play the cello.

Well, perhaps "play" is too strong a word. I was chosen for the instrument (no, that's not a typo; I was chosen for it, rather than the reverse) in fifth grade, at the public elementary school I attended in New York back when all such schools had numbers instead of names.

They tested us to see who had some musical aptitude, and for what instrument. Some of these tests were pretty simple. For example, one was as simple as "Are you a boy or are you a girl?" Stringed instruments went only to girls (Jascha Heifetz, eat your heart out), and cellos went only to tall girls.

I was a tall girl back then, although I'm not anymore (no, I haven't shrunk; it's the pictures that got small.) I reached my full height around fourth grade, and so in fifth I was still much taller than average, considered a good candidate for a big instrument like the cello.

And I could differentiate between on key and off, an absolute prerequisite for any stringed instrument. After all, on a cello, you create the notes; they're not ready-made.

A few drawbacks to the cello: carrying it back and forth to school twice a week was an arduous task, especially when I had to carry hefty books as well (this was in that punishing interval before backpacks became standard but when bookbags after first grade were only for nerds.)

And, of course, as with all musical instruments, you had to practice.

I understood practicing in principle. I even liked the gorgeous rich mellow sound a cello makes, and wanted to emulate it. But the gap between that sound and the one I managed to create was too immense to be bridged, even in my imagination. In other words, I wasn't motivated enough to put in the hours required.

Although I never really managed to make a truly pleasant sound, I did learn just enough to saw away at that cello in the junior high school orchestra, and even put in a couple of years with the high school group, where our repertoire leaned heavily towards Sousa marches that had no cello part (we were supposed to play from the trombone sheet music). I didn't make much progress in all that time, and I quit in mid-high school, with no regrets. Listening to the cello was fine, but playing it held no special interest for me, and I haven't really thought about it since.

Until the other evening, that is. I was at a meeting of my book group (great book, by the way: Cry the Beloved Country). A gleaming cello was leaning against the wall in the hostess's dining room, and she told us she was just starting to take lessons, a lifelong dream. She gave a demonstration of what she'd learned so far--basic scales.

Afterwards, the cello was passed around so we all could have a go at it. And as it came close to me I felt a strange sensation, a certain feeling in my arms and hands of being about to start something familiar--and yet almost from a previous life, it seemed so long ago.

My friend who'd taken a couple of lessons had to prompt me even to remember the fingering for a simple scale. I took the cello from her, positioned my left hand on its neck and my right on the bow, placed the bow on the strings, pressed down, and began.

It didn't sound like Yo Yo Ma, but it didn't sound half bad. It sounded as though I'd actually played a cello before, once upon a time. My body memory had kicked in, and all these little habits sprang forth as though they'd only been hibernating all that time: how hard to press, how to move my right wrist back and forth in a wave motion, how to lean slightly on the inside edge of the bow with the downstroke and the outside with the upstroke, and even how to create a bit of tentative vibrato with the left hand.

Probably the sound was better than my old cello for the simple reason that this was a better cello: richer, fuller, more resonant. I'd forgotten what it was like to create music with my own hands, and to feel it vibrate in every cell of my body and every corner of the room. Writing is wonderfully creative, but there's nothing physical about it except the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.

The creation of music is very physical. The most personal and direct form of that physicality, of course, is singing; there, one's body is the instrument (dance, the art I know best, is even more so in that respect). In playing a stringed instrument the body is the medium that evokes and releases the music, but ultimately the creation of the sound depends on the interaction between the two.

I'd forgotten, but it was wonderful to remember.

FIDDLER JONES
----Edgar Lee Masters

The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off to 'Toor-a-Loor.'
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill--only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle--
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

Beware post-Vietnam syndrome

2007-02-16T16:12:00.000-05:00

This is certainly interesting (hat tip: Pajamas Media): a warning to the Democrats not to repeat their errors in Vietnam in the mid-70s.

And just as interesting is the fact that it was written by Lawrence J. Haas, former communications director for Vice-President Al Gore.

Democracy, its spread, and the neocons (Part II: Iraq)

2007-02-16T14:46:00.000-05:00

Neocons are accused of having started the war in Iraq in order to further the naive and unattainable dream of bringing liberal democracy to the Middle East.

But the Iraq War was actually a multi-determined one--although the Left often seems to focus sequentially on whatever cause they might be critiquing at the time, pretending for the moment it was the only cause of the war, or at least the most important one.

I doubt that the goal of imposing democracy, in and of itself, would ever be considered a justification for war, even by neocons. The reasons for this war that were stated most often and emphatically were (in no particular order) (a) defensive: the idea that Saddam actually had WMDs or was developing them shortly and might give them to terrorists and/or threaten neighbors (b) humanitarian: the repressiveness and extreme cruelty of his regime, including sadistic torture and mass murder on a large scale; and (c) legal: his violations of the terms of the Gulf War armistice, including his lack of cooperation with UN arms inspections, which also of course ties in with the first reason.

But critics of the war routinely disregard these reasons—or, rather, they cite them only when trying to debunk them (“no WMDs”). They see the “real” impetus behind the war as having been to control that country's oil (the complaint on the Left) and/or to impose democracy on Iraq (this is a complaint of both the Left and the isolationist wing of the Right, although each group complains for different reasons).

To the isolationists on the Right, neither humanitarian motives nor the goal of making Iraq a democracy would have justified an invasion. Only the idea that Saddam represented a substantial and uncontrolled threat to our security, or that of our allies, would have sufficed.

The Left, however, has traditionally considered that military intervention in other countries can be justified for humanitarian reasons. In fact, humanitarian reasons alone are often considered by the Left as sufficient for such intervention. So, why their objection to overthrowing Saddam?

Saddam's rule was widely acknowledged as tyrannical and murderous; this fact is really not in dispute. So, to the Left, the invasion should have been overdetermined, not underdetermined; the fact of Saddam's butchery of his people ought to have been enough. But the Left opposed the war from the start with such vigor that one can only conclude humanitarian considerations and goals were hollow in this case.

So, was it BDS--anything the nefarious Bush does is automatically wrong? Alliance with internationalism and "old Europe," which had its own reasons for opposing the war (hint: they were not humanitarian)? Or was it the fact that Iraq has strategic importance to the US (unlike, for example, Haiti), and that deposing Saddam could benefit us, making the prospect of doing so a self-interested one as well as a humanitarian one and therefore automatically suspect (only when a war is for purely humanitarian reasons, it seems, does it pass the Left's muster)?

Or is it the fact that the Left likes to make a big to-do about its humanitarian goals, and yet almost always opposes the possible ways to free a people from an oppressive regime, such as military intervention or other means of forced change, such as assassination? (See this, for example.)

Once the decision was made that it was necessary to remove Saddam, the US faced the question of what its role should be in determining what sort of government might replace him. These were the choices: (a) walk away and let things sort themselves out without US help (likely to result in much bloodshed and a new tyrant of some sort, and perhaps a worse one); (b) in the time-honored realpolitik manner, install a dictator friendly to us who would crack down on the opposition in a Draconian way; or (c) try to help establish a functioning liberal democracy.

The Bush Administration choose (c) as the best of a bad lot ("bad" in the case of (c) only because of its difficulty in execution), and in doing so they made the error of underestimating the murderous forces arrayed against them. But those who criticize the decision are comparing choice (c) to an imaginary ideal alternative that simply did not exist.

What about the alternative of not going to war, and leaving Saddam in power (really, the only remaining one)? If that had happened, no doubt his own carnage and obscene cruelty to his people would have continued--and, on his death, would have gone on under the hands of his murderous sons, schooled almost from birth in sadism and power. And, when sanctions against Saddam were lifted (as they would have been--and fairly quickly, at that), all the evidence indicates that he might indeed have assembled a nuclear and/or chemical arsenal and given it to terrorists to use, or threatened his neighbors with it. These arguments about the probable results of inaction in Iraq are pooh-poohed by the Left, of course, who need to ignore them in order to maintain their own stance.

But why were all the alternatives in Iraq either so bad--or, if desirable (democracy), so very difficult to achieve? Some people are of the opinion that Islam is innately incompatible with democracy. But there are countries in the world (Turkey, for example) in which the two coexist, although somewhat tenuously. And Iraq itself has its own history with democracy: a system of constitutional monarchy somewhat resembling the traditional British one, with a bicameral legislature featuring an appointed branch and an elected branch, and a Constitution. This phase lasted approximately 25 years, from 1925 to the early 1950s, and was toppled in 1958 by a military coup that ended the monarchy and abolished the parliament. That ushered in the current era of dictatorships, culminating in Saddam, who had learned from the errors of previous dictators and consolidated his power through a long-lasting reign of terror.

Yes, Islam and democracy are a not an easy match, but they seem to be a possible one. Another--and perhaps more important reason--it's been difficult for democracy to gain traction in Iraq is not any inherent and absolute incompatibility, but that fact that a population as traumatized as the people of Iraq have been under decades of Saddam have had their social contract broken. To use a therapy cliché, the country has become dysfunctional, both structurally and psychologically. Saddam unified the nation through force and through fear, warring against all groups who might be his rivals. Thus, the seeds of great anger and the need for payback were sown on the part of the victims, as well as the creation of a climate of distrust, one in which the use of violence had become the standard way of dealing with differences. And this climate had lasted for decades.

Another factor not to be ignored in the difficulty of establishing an Iraqi democracy is the influence of its neighbors such as Iran, who have a vested interest in causing instability in Iraq to spiral, and who see a golden opportunity to create a sphere of influence there.

The difficult task the Bush Administration took on in Iraq was not impossible, in my opinion. But it required a great deal: commitment to a fairly lengthy period of occupation, knowledge of the best way to go about the task in terms of balancing firm guidance with increasing Iraqi autonomy, the effective sealing of the borders, willingness to suffer US casualties that would be far greater than in a quick operation such as the Gulf War, and a US public who understood the long-term need for commitment and sacrifice as well as the possible payoffs of success.

It's very clear that not all of those necessary elements were in place. Some deficits were the result of errors in judgment or execution in situations that could or should have been anticipated; some were due to the rise of unforeseeable circumstances.

But wars virtually always contain errors and surprises. I remain of the opinion that declaring “failure” in Iraq is premature, and that if the will were there on the part of the American people, Iraq could still--over a period of some years---become a functioning if imperfect democracy, with the ability to defend itself against internal and external threats. But I am not at all convinced that we have this will.

However, I am well aware the task is a difficult one. As far as I know, Iraq is the first time it's been tried under these exact conditions. Can a nation that has been under the lengthy sway of a brutal and divisive dictator who is then violently overthrown by an outside force, a nation with divisive factions and a weak history of democratic institutions, lacking a strong sense of national identity, be rebuilt as a democracy after a war to depose that dictator? A further question, if the answer is in the affirmative, is what the minimal conditions would be for the success of such a transformation.

We need to know the answers, because it is possible that another set of circumstances might arise in the future--especially in this brave new world of rogue nations and international terrorism--in which we find we have no realistic alternative but to invade another country and try to rebuild it. My guess is that we can and should be far more cautious about doing so next time, both in our threshold for invasion and in the comprehensiveness of the plans we make—that is, that we learn greatly from our mistakes.

But, unfortunately, we may again find ourselves in the regrettable and dangerous situation in which all possible choices we face are very bad--and that the neocon agenda is (to paraphrase Churchill)--the very worst of them, except for all the others (although I will no doubt be labeled "warmonger" for even venturing to say it).

But the truth is that developments in recent years have made it possible, for the first time in history, for rogue nations and/or terrorists--or both in league with each other--to wreak havoc on the West. It used to be that such elements either threatened only their own people, or that the destructive power of their aggressive acts were limited by their own undeveloped technology. But technological advances in weaponry combined with modern communications and ease of travel, as well as an influx of money, have it possible for a small and fiercely angry group to obtain weapons with enormous destructive power, and to deploy them against the West, with the help of rogue nations and leaders who feel their own interests lie in such an attack.

Encouraging the growth of liberal democracy in the region would short-circuit that process, if successful. The big question is, of course, can it be successful, and what are the keys to that success.

Do the Iraqi people themselves want a liberal democracy? The high voting turnout in the elections can be seen as a "yes;" or, if one wants to be cynical, as a strategic effort to grab power for one group against another (of course, this is not incompatible with democracy; peaceful elective power struggles are part and parcel of it).

The evidence is that many Iraqis value liberty, however, even if they have no idea how to effectively combat the forces conspiring to deprive them of it. In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, New York Times journalist John Burns, a reporter who has observed and written about Iraq for many years (and who is certainly no neocon), and who has spoken to a large number of Iraqis, said:

...so yes, I do believe, number one, that most Iraqis still believe that for all of the price they have paid, amidst all of this chaos, that the possibility of a different kind of future for the country that was opened by the arrival of American troops was net an advantage....

And then Burns stated the dilemma in all its complexity, including the fact that we don't yet know whether the goal of liberal democracy is possible there:

[M]y sense of it is that if [the Iraq reconstruction] fails, that history may say it was mission impossible from the beginning, which is to say that when you remove the carapace of terror that Saddam had imposed on that society, what was revealed underneath it was an extremely fractured society which had never resolved the question of power, political and economic power...[A]n extremely complex, extremely violence-prone society, a society that has proven to be resistant to, not yet ready for, and maybe will not be ready for a very long time, for Jeffersonian democracy of the kind that the United States hopes to install there. We’ll have to see what history’s verdict is, but my sense is that Iraqis still, in the main, are happy at least that Saddam is gone, very unhappy about other things, but happy to see him gone.

Iraq has been a tragic country for a long time. It remains one today. But history has not yet given its final verdict on whether it will continue to remain so indefinitely.

Oh, those lying neocons

2007-02-15T14:23:00.000-05:00

[Apologies for the delay, but part II of "Democracy, its spread, and the neocons" will be coming tomorrow.]

Commenter TC asserts in yesterday's thread on neocons and democracy that neocons lie for strategic reasons, and that Paul Wolfowitz actually admitted to lying to the American people about the reasons for the Iraq War:

You might recall...that it was Paul Wolfowitz's own admission that the WMD story was simply the most 'convenient' one available - and that regime change, preventative (imaginary) war-was the real rationale.

In the above comment, TC is backing up this earlier comment of his in the same thread, in response to a challenge by commenter Ariel to come up with a specific instance of neocon lies:

It's neoconservative doctrine--Wilsonian stuff--'lying for the survical of the state'.

If you don't know that than you don't know anything about neoconservatism--for the neo-con's the ends jusfify the means.

I don't need to do research for you.

This is a common meme, and one of its favorite illustrations is the Wolfowitz interview statement that TC references, which was widely characterized by the MSM as an admission that the WMD argument for the war was only used because it was "convenient," not because it was believed or was important.

Of course, as it turns out, if one actually does do the research for oneself, that is not what Wolfowitz really said.

Fancy that.

Even though this is very old news, I bring it up now because I think it's both instructive and typical of the sort of distortions I've spoken of so often, and it's also relevant to the series I'm writing at the moment.

Here's a discussion of the issue at Patterico, and here's the acerbic Christopher Hitchens's take on the mischaracterization of Wolfowitz's remarks.

What did Wolfowitz actually say (and see the full transcript of the Wolfowitz interview if you have the patience to wade though the entire thing, which I freely admit I have not done)? This is the statement involved:

The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason.

It is crystal clear that Wolfowitz was saying something quite the opposite of the MSM characterization of his remarks--and that either journalists have no reading comprehension, no ability to express themselves in English, or are purposely distorting his remarks; take your pick.

Wolfowitz is not saying WMDs were a cooked-up excuse or a meaningless one or even--in the widely disseminated headline about his remarks--a merely "convenient" one. He was saying that, in a bureaucracy in which many different departments with understandably different emphases are trying to make a policy statement together, it makes sense to emphasize the policy statement on which they all agree--and in this case it was WMDs. It was a real and important reason at the time (although subsequent events have made it clear that the intelligence relied on was deeply flawed), so real and so important that all involved happened to agree on it. Perhaps it was even the one reason on which they all did agree (and, by the way, count the Clinton administration and most of the world as in on that agreement).

We can--and have--argued about WMDs ad nauseum. The evidence is that Saddam didn't have them, but the evidence is that he wanted to, and that he had the power and the plans to reconstitute his WMD programs as soon as sanctions were lifted. But that's not the point here; the point is what Wolfowitz actually said in his interview and how this reflects on the issue of purported Machiavellian neocon lies.

It's a meme that will not die, and it's both connected to and symptomatic of the demonization of, hatred towards, and misunderstanding of neocons. It also illustrates the typical sloppiness of the work of the MSM, and the use made of that sloppiness by polemicists such as TC in spreading the word.

And now I'm going to quote Winston Churchill again. Yes indeed, I'm sure that, as another commenter pointed out, there are many who despise the man. I don't admire everything he ever did, but I most definitely greatly admire many things about him, and one of them is his way with an aphorism. And it was Churchill who made the following wonderful statement, as true today as it ever was when he first said it:

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Democracy, its spread, and the neocons (Part I)

2007-02-14T17:53:00.000-05:00

Neocons believe that the spread of liberal democracy--democracy with safeguards for human rights and liberties--would be of general benefit to the US, to the citizens of the countries involved, and to the world.

Although I'm sure there are some exceptions, most neocons also believe that the spread of liberal democracy to countries that have not known it before, or that knew it only briefly and/or erratically, is neither inevitable nor easy. But they believe it is possible rather than impossible.

Contrary to the notion of some critics, however, neocons neither prefer nor require that such transformation to democracy be accomplished by force--a peaceful evolution, relatively sudden or relatively gradual, is far superior. However, neocons are unwilling to rule out force under certain circumstances. A circumstance that could justify the use of force would be a country or leader constituting a serious threat to the US or its allies, one that doesn't appear containable by other means. Neocons most definitely do not advocate warring on nation after nation for the sole purpose of installing democracies.

About the desirability of liberal democracy itself, neocons tend to be in basic agreement with Winston Churchill on the subject:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

The authors of the Declaration of Independence thought liberty was both the universal desire of all humanity and an "unalienable right" of all human beings, and that this was a "self-evident" truth. (This fact, by the way, was one of the reasons even the framers knew--and many wrote in their private papers--that ultimately slavery would have to go, and that retaining it at the outset of the establishment of the country was a hypocritical, strategic, and ultimately tragic compromise with the high principles stated in the Declaration).

And, of course, the value of liberal democracy is not all that self-evident to the numerous tyrants who readily deny people liberty--and even life--for their own purposes (as the Grand Inquisitor understood all too well).

Why do I bring all of this up? In my recent discussion of the reasons neocons are so hated, commenter Loyal Achates (not a neocon, to be sure) advanced this critique of the neocon agenda:

Neo wonders why the liberals could be opposed to the advancement of liberal democracy by military means, and comes up with a rather elaborate psychological explanation. A simpler answer might be, I dunno, that so far it hasn't actually led to liberal democracy but chaos and ruin. One might well ask why non-Communists are opposed to providing food for everyone by collectivizing the farms: duh, it doesn't work and people starve.

Actually, I was wondering something quite different, since I disagree with Loyal's notion that neocons predominantly advocate advancing democracy by military means. I certainly don't, and I've not heard of anyone who does. Nor do I think that bringing democracy to Iraq was the only reason--or even the major one--for the invasion of that country.

But let's put aside those arguments for a moment while I address Loyal's assertion that we know that the idea of advancing democracy by military means is wrong in the practical sense because it's already been proven that it just doesn't work.

Loyal compares the promotion of democracy through military means to Communist experiments in collective farming, in that he feels both to be self-evident failures. But that's only true if you define Iraq as a failure at this point (I believe this would be premature) and if you discount post-WWII Germany and Japan, both cases in which liberal democracy was imposed as a result of those countries' defeat in war (they both had a stronger prior tradition of democracy than Iraq did, but in both cases it wasn't all that strong and it wasn't all that liberal).

That's not to say that Iraq and Germany/Japan are similar places; they are not. But there's no denying that the present form of liberal democracy in both Germany and Japan are direct results of their defeat in war, and a subsequent occupation and rebuilding effort spearheaded by the US. So it's at least possible, under certain circumstances.

Loyal's "neocon agenda=collective farms=failure" analogy also breaks down if you consider the fact that we have a great deal of evidence in the case of collective farming, multiple and repetitive failures in both economic and human terms all around the world with no apparent successes; whereas the number of attempts to impose democracy through military means just isn't all that that large. And, among that small number, as I said, only Iraq so far could be arguably counted as an actual or potential failure. The others are successes. (South Vietnam, by the way, doesn't count, since we were not trying to defeat South Vietnam itself and install a liberal democracy, but trying instead to conserve a system already in place in the South--with some rather violent changes of personnel along the way--and to stop the North from taking over and installing a Communist government.)

Another problem with Loyal's argument is the errors made in postwar Iraq. Whatever one believes those errors to have been (in my case, I think that paramount among them was the failure to get the looters under control at the outset, and the kid glove treatment handed al Sadr), there's a general agreement that there were a great many of them. If this is so, how can we measure whether or not any perceived failure in Iraq might have been a result of those errors?

If the occupation in Iraq had been executed flawlessly in terms of tactics and Iraq was still experiencing the kind of sectarian violence that's going on there today--then, paradoxically, this would be a stronger argument against the viability of the endeavor of establishing liberal democracy there in the first place. But the more inept the occupation is seen to be, the more any resultant problems can be regarded as flaws of execution rather than problems with the basic concept itself.

The bottom line is that it's just not possible to tell much of anything from the single example of what's happened in Iraq; as they say in science, the n is too small.

That's not to say that Loyal couldn't be proven right in the end, and that all future attempts similar to the one in Iraq, if tried (and they may never be tried), will inevitably end in failure. Maybe there's just something about the endeavor that goes against the human grain in some basic way--as collective farming seems to--something that will make every effort ultimately fail.

But such a conclusion would be extremely premature. There's not enough evidence at the moment to allow us to decide that all such efforts are doomed to failure, just on the basis of what's happened so far in Iraq. And, in fact. there is some evidence that could lead us to conclude the opposite (post-WWII Germany and Japan). The preliminary answer might be that success depends on a host of conditions, including the previous experience of each country with democracy, whether the country has undergone the exhaustive process of a long war and a resounding defeat, whether it has a pre-existing strong sense of nationhood, how much effort and direction the postwar occupiers are willing to put into the process of reconstruction, how well they understand the particular conditions and demands presented by each country, and how much patience the American people has for the task.

[Part II coming tomorrow.]

Sanity Squad podcast: election creep

2007-02-14T11:14:00.000-05:00

Isn't it a bit early for the 2008 Presidential election? Maybe, but it's not too early for Siggy, Shrink, Dr. Sanity, and myself to say how we feel about the whole thing, as well as what we think of the candidates. Vladimir Putin gets into the running as well--although not for President.

When the mudroom isn't just a place to put your boots, and oxblood isn't just a color:

2007-02-13T14:05:00.000-05:00

I think Hansel and Gretel's house may have had one of them, along with a thatched roof and a cozy hearth. In my student days, I lived in a rented house that had one in the basement.

But these dirt floors are different; these dirt floors are chic and upscale.

Or perhaps I should use their more refined name: earthenware floors. According to that linked New York Times article, they are more popular in California and the Southwest than in the east--well, who woulda thunk it?--although not exactly mainstream yet.

But don't imagine that these are your father's--or your grandfather's, or your great-grandfather's--dirt floors. These are installed by homeowners and/or "natural builders," the greenest of green architects, who specialize in using materials closest to their natural state.

Modern dirt floors are sealed with linseed oil and beeswax to become "theoretically" (the Times's word, not mine) water-repellent. The floors are reputed to reduce heating costs, have an environmentally lighter footprint, and look attractive as well.

The latter quality is where that oxblood comes in--literally, in this case:

Aesthetically, earthen floors are “really special,” said Frank Meyer, a natural builder who has installed 15 in Austin, Tex. “After a while they look like an old cracked leather couch,” he said. “When people walk in, they don’t say, ‘Oh, nice floor.’ Everyone gets down on their hands and knees to admire it.” Mr. Meyer has used natural pigment to create designs in some floors, and he said some builders add the blood of oxen for maroon coloration.

There are a few problems, of course. High heels leave their mark, even though the floors are finished within an inch of their lives. Dirt floors are not recommended for kitchens or bathrooms, for rather obvious reasons. And a certain Ms. Altenbach, enthusiastic owner of an earthern floor who also owns some matching dogs that aren't house trained, indicates that the combination can get a bit rustic; she admits that stains are occasionally left on the floor. But she says the:

...imperfections just add to the character of the floors...Some of the stains show, but it only makes these floors more beautiful, like an aging leather jacket.

Yes, I've often noticed how dog pee adds a wonderful patina to an old leather jacket, haven't you?

The intelligentsia, history, and the existence of evil intent

2007-02-12T13:44:00.000-05:00

Ruth Dudley Edwards has written an article that appeared in the Telegraph, entitled "Sleepwalking With the Enemy." It's about the tendency of so many in the West, especially the intelligentsia, to make excuses for and downplay the threats of Islamist fundamentalist totalitarians such as Iran's Ahmadinejad.

Her personal background, as she outlines it in the article, positions her to see things a bit differently than some of her colleagues in the British writing world:

I grew up in the Republic of Ireland under an authoritarian religion that bossed about submissive governments; as a British public servant, I saw the damage done by pusillanimous jobsworths; as an historian of the 1930s, I learnt how the wishful thinking of the deluded intelligentsia helped Hitler and Stalin; researching a book on the Foreign Office I came to understand the limitations of a diplomacy that believes the best of everyone; and fascination with the wilder shores of Irish republicanism that I encountered at my mad granny's knee led me subsequently – as a journalist and campaigner – to spend many years in intellectual combat with militant Irish republicanism, struggling, with some success, to understand the terrorist mind.

Another example of how personal history colors our political outlook. But the part that really caught my attention was this, her description of her experience studying that instructive first draft of history, the newspaper:

When I left the public service, researching and writing the biography of the publisher Victor Gollancz, creator of the Left Book Club, and then a subsequent history of The Economist, made me realise how many clever people are fools...I read enough Times and Economist leaders written by Oxbridge double-firsts welcoming the encouraging signs of statesmanship emanating from Herr Hitler to disillusion me forever about the wisdom of the commentariat: the default mindset is still to resist the notion that evil exists and that when bad people say bad things, they may just mean them.

It does appear that there's often something about the intelligentsia that makes them especially hobbled in seeing the existence of evil intent. And I say this as a person with some experience in academic life. Perhaps it's some combination of the rather protected lives many intellectuals lead, the insular bubble in which they live; the hegemony of multiculuralism, and postmodernism with its moral relativity; the sincere desire for the world to be at peace, and the need for psychological denial in order to believe that goal is achievable--and, unfortunately, another factor one should least expect in academics, ignorance of history.

Yesterday's winter scene

2007-02-12T13:42:00.000-05:00

Kids resisting the siren call of the computer:

The cold snap has been long enough that the pond is frozen, and that means it's ice hockey time. Around here, even the two-year-olds know how to skate.

Getting Feith: Emily Litella, ace reporter for the WaPo, says "never mind"

2007-02-10T14:05:00.000-05:00

Last night I was in the middle of preparing a piece about the Washington Post article that described the Pentagon's sharp criticism of Douglas Feith for giving too much credence to some faulty prewar intelligence reports of a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Rearching the post was interesting, as research often is. It lead me to read quite a bit of background about Feith and his detractors, including this New Yorker piece by Jeffrey Goldberg, written in May of 2005, which contained the following interesting passage:

[Feith's] detractors see him as an ideologue who manipulated intelligence to bring about the invasion of Iraq. His main nemesis on Capitol Hill, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told me that Feith deceived not only the White House but Congress as well.

Remember, this was written nearly two years ago. Carl Levin has apparently been Feith's Inspector Javert for quite some time. The current WaPo story featured Carl Levin in his new role as Armed Services Committee Chairman, finally able to stick it to Feith via this Pentagon report.

I discovered many other choice tidbits along the way: a much-reported (originally by Bob Woodward in Plan of Attack) quote from Tommy Franks that Feith was the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.

But then, in his own autobiography, Franks had written that he was only quoting others, and that what he actually had said was: Word is going around that Feith is the fucking stupidest..."

The whole tale was replete with that sort of thing. But one fact became crystal clear: Feith had annoyed people--angered them, even--with a personal style described as arrogant. That made him the fall guy for everyone, since there were plenty of mistakes and errors to go around--as there are in any war and occupation, especially one of this complexity. Those in Pentagon, State, the CIA, and the Department of Defense could say, who, me? No, not me; him! And Feith seems to be the favorite "him" to blame.

Perhaps where there's smoke, there's fire. Perhaps Feith really is--if not the fucking stupidest man on the face of the earth (remember, I'm just quoting here)--then perhaps the fucking stupidest man in the Pentagon, State, the Department of Defense, and the CIA.

Somehow, though, I doubt it. I bet there's at least a couple who are stupider (ah, yes, and maybe women, too).

Feith doesn't sound especially stupid to me in the New Yorker article--but then again, I haven't ever worked for him. He's quoted there as saying that, prior to the invasion, his group drew up all sorts of dire contingency plans for postwar Iraq, but that the military didn't listen. For example, he warned them to prepare for serious looting in the aftermath, although his warnings were apparently disregarded by Franks.

Feith also proposed--well, let's hear the stupidest man on earth tell it himself:

...a plan to train five thousand Iraqi exiles to accompany American troops in the invasion. Feith and Perle, who supported the idea, claimed that centcom subverted the plan. “Central Command saw the training of Iraqis as a pain in the ass,” Perle said... Feith did not argue that a force of Iraqi exiles would be a panacea, but he said that they could have aided in translating, in guiding, and in vetting local officials.

Well, although I agree it's no panacea, I've heard stupider thoughts, I must say.

While I was mulling over all this furious buckpassing, I came across another error. This one had nothing to do with Iraq, however. It had to do with the story itself. The Washington Post had printed a correction, and it's a whopper. It turns out that the Pentagon report in question had contained very few of the reported quotes about Feith, and none of the most serious ones.

In a correction almost as long and involved as the original article (okay, that's hyperbole; but it's plenty long and plenty involved) the Post said that the most critical quotes attributed to the Pentagon report had actually been issued by none other than Feith's old nemesis himself: Carl Levin.

It's a little unclear how reporters Walter Pincus and R. Jeffrey Smith could have gotten the story so very wrong. Did Levin make the incorrect attibution himself? Or did they rush to print without exercising due diligence, or even minimal diligence? Or all of the above? How could they have mistaken Levin's report for the Pentagon's? After all, this is the Washington Post, not a blog; I bet they don't work in their pajamas. But this error makes it seem as though they were writing in their sleep.

I'll resist any "stupidest man on the face of the earth" jokes. But I won't resist an Emily Litella reference: "never mind" seems to be the name of the game.

And I wonder how many who read the original story will ever hear of the correction?

Hating those dreadful neocons (Part II): Right and Left unite

2007-02-09T13:50:00.000-05:00

As I wrote yesterday in Part I, neocon-hatred is sometimes connected with poorly-veiled anti-Semtism. But there are many other reasons that some people on both Left and Right hate neocons. This post will, of necessity, contain many generalizations; I don't mean to say that all on the Left or Right hate neocons, or even that all neocon-haters are motivated by the factors I'm about to discuss.

On the Right, paleocons have plenty of ideological disagreements with neocons. There's a certain amount of anti-Semitism among a few paleocons (think Pat Buchanan), but more commonly there's the idea that neocons have perverted the conservative agenda for their own
nefarious and antithetical purposes. In other words, they've hijacked the party and infiltrated the mind of George Bush, wielding undue influence, hypnotizing him into betraying conservative impulses.

Paleocons believe in liberty and justice for all, but the "all" doesn't tend to include anybody outside our borders, at least not though our own direct efforts. They are willing to defend this country--and will do so vigorously--when it is attacked. But otherwise, isolationism is common (although not universal) among paleocons. And, when not isolationist, paleocons tend to be of the school of realpolitik, supporting whatever dictatorship happens to be perceived as best fitting our interests.

President Bush has betrayed paleocons by being a big spender. But their perception of even greater betrayal stems from the fact that Bush listened to the siren song of the neocons, who managed to talk him into a costly and useless war that has, among other things, caused the Party to lose the control of Congress so recently gained and hard fought.

Another factor is that paleocons, unfortunately, don't have much of an answer to the underlying problem of the rise of Islamic totalitarianism. This may be another part of the reason for their anger. Their traditional answer: pulling back, hunkering down--doesn't cut it in the modern world as easily as it did even fifty years ago. This time, the enemy came here; in fact, it probably is here. The world forces that created Islamic totalitarianism are not going away easily, and the other traditional paleocon approach--realpolitik: supporting, dealing with, and in many cases allying with and helping whatever dictator happens to suit our purposes--has failed to contain it.

The neocons offer an alternative that goes against the paleocon grain. As for the justifications behind the Iraq War, the WMD argument is the only one a paleocon would tend to see as valid, and the postwar failure to find actual WMDs only adds to the sense of betrayal.

Some paleocons actually see neocons as liberals by another name. And they're not that far off, in a way; neocons do not tend to share much of the cultural and social conservatism of paleocons; in this, many neocons do have more in common with liberals.

But of course, liberals seem to hate neocons even more strongly and universally than paleocons do. In a way, this is puzzling; after all, the neocon agenda involves the liberation of third-world peoples from tyranny. Is that not a traditional liberal, (and Leftist--although Leftists have different goals for any such "liberation") agenda?

For liberals, though--at least recently--one of the subtexts of liberation around the world is that it must be altruistic and for humane purposes only. That is, our motives need to be pure. The neocons are considered much too bold about our own stake in the matter. Their belief that liberal democracy (meaning: democracy accompanied by guarantees of human and civil rights and liberties) is a desirable thing for those countries themselves is not so bad. The problem is their idea that this is not merely an altruistic principle, but rather that furthering the cause of democracy around the world would benefit the US, and that this could at times be done by military means.

Liberals see the neocon agenda as a form of imperialism and/or colonialism, another big no-no (see here for my previous discussion of colonialism and Iraq). That's the underlying reason that wars of liberation are only defended by liberals if there is no US self-interest involved; that's the only way the war would be free of the "colonialism" taint.

Any hint of self-interest is not only defined as colonialist exploitation in the economic and political sense, it also smacks of the violation of certain sacred cultural relativistic principles. Cultural relativism, originally a corrective to certain racist ideas of innate superiority, has slowly morphed into something quite different: a morally relative inability to make judgments about the actions of any country--with the strange exceptions of the US and Israel, who are always guilty, by definition. That way, the Left asserts its superior tolerance of others.

Liberals and the Left feel they have the corner on nobility and humanitarianism: it's their territory. Those on the Right are defined as heartless red (not blue) meanies. So the motives of those on the Right when they cite humanitarian concerns are always suspect. The Right, by definition, is about money, exploitation, bloodthirstyness. Only when the Left wants a war of liberation can it really be one of liberation.

So we have the odd spectacle of watching liberals twist themselves into pretzel-like contortions trying to fit the old isolationist stance of the Right into the liberal agenda. People are supposed to get whatever dictatorship they deserve, I suppose; that's most respectful of their cultural mores.

For liberals and the left, Bush Derangement Syndrome comes into the mix, as well. Even though he's not a neocon, he listened to neocons. So those who hate Bush anyway hate neocons more because of their connection to him, and those who hate neocons anyway hate Bush more because of his connection to them--in an ever-increasing loop of anger.

This why liberals and Leftists who criticize the Iraq war must downplay the justifications for it given earlier by the Clinton administration, or the fact that it involved vioations of international UN agreements on the part of Saddam. No, it must be a solely neocon war, and its flaws are due to the stupid neocons, not just the flawed (and correctable) execution of a just and correct war that many of them supported when Bill was talking about it (such clips exist, by the way; I've heard them).

And so we have the interesting spectacle of Right and Left united--perhaps temporarily--in the chill grip or realpolitik and/or isolationism, and against the neocons.

Hating those dreadful neocons (Part I): cavils about cabals

2007-02-08T16:21:00.000-05:00

Neocons are the folks so many people love to hate. And hate to love.

To many, "neocon" has become an epithet. And this was true quite some time before the Iraq War.

Some of the people using the term that way haven't any real idea of what a neocon stands for. Some have an idea, but it's vague and/or incorrect. And, no doubt, some who hate neocons know quite well what they stand for.

One of the things that prompted this post is an encounter I had with a good friend of mine recently. She and I hadn't discussed politics in quite a long time, after a few initial forays into the topic hadn't gone well. She's not very political anyway, and it's not something I need to talk about, so we got into the "agree to disagree and leave it at that" mold.

I was stunned, however, when she brought up politics herself, much to my surprise. She was clearly agitated and quite disturbed by something; she was hemming and hawing as she said she needed to ask me a question.

Apparently she'd spoken to another friend of hers who'd insisted that neocons have a pernicious approach to, among other things, freedom of speech--to wit, they wish to end it. "Is that really true?" she asked me.

If I had then gone to my closet, taken out a Klan hood or a Nazi armband and put either (or both) on, I don't think she would have been especially surprised. But instead, I tried to give her a little summary course on what neocons are about, including the fact that neocons actually don't advocate invading country after country to accomplish the spread of democracy and human rights, and that the invasion of Iraq (although I don't particularly want to raise that discussed-ad-nauseum-topic again here) was multi-determined; the goal of spreading democracy alone probably would not have been enough to have gone to war there. I also told her that neocons don't necessarily support the exact ways in which the Bush administration has handled post-invasion Iraq, nor do they always agree even with each other.

And, of course, they're all for freedom of speech. In fact, they advocate it. Because the type of democracy neocons favor--democracy with human rights and constitutional guarantees, so-called "liberal" democracy (ironic, that, is it not?)--includes freedom of speech, naturally.

The conversation ended--she seemed relieved, and asked for a recommendation for something to read to learn more. I mentioned a book I'm about a third of the way into, by Douglas Murray, entitled Neoconservatism: Why We Need It.

It's one thing to disagree with neocons on substantive issues, and especially on strategy. That's not hatred; that's argument and differences of opinion. It's quite another to consider them evil, and ascribe to them positions they do not advocate, although many do. This is an emotional thing; and there's an emotional basis for it--or maybe several emotional bases (that's why this is Part I; there's a Part II coming).

As I said, this antipathy is hardly a result of the Iraq War; it was present beforehand. What's it about?

It takes a different form than the rabid hatred of Bush, referred to in the blogopshere as BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). BDS has to do with a perception of Bush as stupid, theocratically inclined (for the US, that is), anti-science, nuclear-mispronouncing and of course, warmongering (remember, he planned 9/11, at least according to my spam mail).

No, except for the "warmongering" part, the neocons are hated for other reasons. They are considered smarter, though just as evil, if not more (actually, Bush is often portrayed as their clueless dupe).

Neocons are widely perceived as Jewish. Although it's certainly not the case that all of them are, it's true that Jews are overrepresented among them. And so it is impossible to ignore or discount the influence of that perennial favorite--anti-Semitism--on the phenomenon of neocon-hatred, although of course many people who hate neocons will try to do exactly that.

Note, for example, the predominance of the word "cabal" in so many diatribes against neocons. Here's information on the term, which means "a conspiratorial group of plotters or intriguers." And, of course, there's derivation of the word, which is not at all obscure or difficult to figure out:

The term cabal derives from Kabbalah (a word that has numerous spelling variations), the mystical interpretation of the Hebrew scripture, and originally meant either an occult doctrine or a secret. It was introduced into English in the publication of Cabala, a curious medley of letters and papers of the reigns of James and Charles I that appeared in 1654.

But the use of the word "cabal" alone does not an anti-Semite make. One of the many hallmarks of anti-Semitism, however (almost a fingerprint), is a situation in which Jews are not allowed the same sort of leeway others are; when they are held to higher or different standards than the rest. So neocons are not allowed to simply be a group of people who share a particular approach to foreign policy--for example, much as the realpolitikers are--and with whom many happen to disagree. An approach which, like all approaches, is flawed, and leads sometimes to difficulties. An approach advocated by people who are sincere and well-meaning, but perhaps misguided, according to detractors.

No, they are evil plotters, bent on controlling the world for their own nefarious purposes, much like those Elders of Zion we've heard so much about:

...[The Protocals of the Elders of Zion] is an antisemitic literary forgery that purports to describe a Jewish plot to achieve world domination...Scholars generally agree that the Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, fabricated the text in the late 1890s or early 1900s....he Protocols are widely considered to be the beginning of contemporary conspiracy theory literature, and take the form of an instruction manual to a new member of the "elders," describing how they will run the world through control of the media and finance, and replace the traditional social order with one based on mass manipulation....It is still frequently quoted and reprinted by antisemites, and is sometimes used as evidence of an alleged Jewish cabal, especially in the Middle East.

The idea that a small group of plotting Jews are trying to take over the world has a long and illustrious history, I'm afraid. The plotters here are seen as incredibly intelligent and almost magically powerful, not stupid--although evil.

Hitler, of course, was perhaps the best example of one who ascribes wholeheartedly to the "evil Jewish cabal" theory. Here are some words he penned as he was about to kill himself, when all was lost for his glorious Reich. To his dying day, it was still the Jews, the Jews, the evil plotting Jews. This is the form the accusation took, which is the pertinent point:

It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was wanted and provoked solely by international statesmen either of Jewish origin or working for Jewish interests...[F]rom the ruins of our towns and monuments the hatred of those ultimately responsible will always grow anew against the people whom we have to thank for all this: international Jewry and its henchmen.

Am I saying that neocon-haters are Nazis? No, no, a thousand times no. But the idea that neocons are "an evil Jewish conspiracy" rather than "a group of people sincerely trying to come up with a solution to the problem of third world misery as well as the threat angry Islamic totalitarians present to us" is an example of demonization of those with whom one disagrees. Hitler represented an extreme of this same impulse.

One can certainly disagree with the solutions neocons offer in terms of theory or practicality or effectiveness. But that's true of almost every approach to policy. It's hard, however, to see how anyone could disagree with the ultimate desirability of the "neocon agenda," if achieved--democracy and human rights for all, although one can easily disagree with the details of its execution (I certainly have). But demonizing the neocons themselves and their motivations, in the way of the neocon-haters, is quite another story, and indicates that something else is at play here.

[Part II tomorrow: other reasons behind neo-hatred, on both the Left and the Right.]

NASA's advances in personal comfort during those long rides

2007-02-08T16:19:00.000-05:00

Fortunately, Alexandra Gekas has saved me the chore of doing the research on this one: what's up with the diaper worn by Nowak in her long voyage to inner space and Florida?

The fact that she word a diaper for the journey puzzled me only for an instant--of course, NASA and those long space flights! I'd read about the diaper phenomenon in space before, although never such a creative land-based use for one. Click on the link and read all about it. There's a diagram there to study, as well.

Then again, maybe better to skip it. Your call.

Oh Rudy, Rudy, Rudy: Giuliani and LaGuardia

2007-02-07T12:35:00.000-05:00

Giuliani's no Cary Grant (who, by the way, did not actually say "Judy, Judy, Judy"in any movie). But nevertheless, to an electorate starved for somebody to love, he's got a certain rough charm.

John Podhoretz thinks (hat tip: Pajamas Media) that Rudy might just be able to capture the Republican nomination for President in 2008 (although that headline, John, seems to be a case of bad timing: surely "right stuff" can't be the best phrase to use at the moment, in light of recent events).

How long has it been since a New Yorker--a real New Yorker, not a fake one--has had a chance to be President? New Yorkers tend to be out of the running. Too northeastern, too ethnic, too many names that are too hard to spell--whatever. And Giuliani shares those characteristics, including the Republican-primary-unfriendly trait of being a social liberal, at least relatively speaking.

Podhoretz doesn't think this will hamper Giuliani unduly in gaining the nomination, as he explains in the column. I'd like to think he's right, although I'm not at all sure. But after all, I'm a social liberal myself.

I must confess that, prior to 9/11, I thought that Giuliani had long since peaked. His personal life was nothing if not messy, and he was somewhat full of himself (in that respect, probably not too different from most politicians). But he had certainly done yeoman's duty in making New York a far more liveable city than it had been for decades, no small task.

Rudy was a true hero during and immediately after 9/11. He almost lost his life himself that day, but that's not the heroic part I'm talking about. He struck precisely the right emotional tone for the city and the nation in that time of extreme tension and sorrow; the perfect combination of grit, determination, and heart.

And it all seemed sincere, not some phony act from a politician looking for votes. No crocodile tears; Rudy was the real thing. The fact that he wasn't running for anything anymore was part of it, but not a big part. His sincerity was clear from his demeanor and his words--and from his behavior, which included an almost ceaseless attendance at the many funerals of those he had loved, respected, and lost. He didn't have Churchillian eloquence (who does?) but he demonstrated Churchillian courage.

That's not altogether what a Presidency is about, of course; other factors are certainly required. But it's a vitally important trait, especially in these times. And Giuliani, perhaps more than any of the other candidates on either side, has shown us true grit in his public life. His ability to handle difficult and messy executive decisions was demonstrated even before 9/11, in his policies as mayor. But 9/11 cemented the deal, in real time. It also made him famous nationally.

It's early yet, and Giuliani will have many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth and alienate any number of people. But for now, I'm very interested in his candidacy. Full disclosure: I come from a part of New York that was so heavily Italian that names such as "Smith" and "Jones" were exotic and rare. So, Giuliani reminds me of home, as well.

His psychological profile is a fascinating one. Did you know his father was a convicted armed robber? Giuliani's early reputation was cemented by being tough on crime. Hmmm. The stuff with the divorce from his second wife was very messy, however, as well as needlessly cruel to her.

Giuliani reminds me a bit of Fiorello La Guardia, whose acquaintance I first made on those "I Can Hear It Now" records. He was another Italian Republican New York Mayor who was very tough on crime (although his marital history was decidedly better). Not exactly a typical guy, however; in addition to being five feet tall (no, that's not a typo: 5 feet tall), and having that extremely odd name meaning "Little Flower," Fiorello (born in the Bronx):

...was the city's first Italian-American mayor, but LaGuardia was far from being a typical Italian New Yorker. After all, he was a Republican Episcopalian who had grown up in Arizona, and had an Istrian Jewish mother and a Roman Catholic-turned-atheist Italian father. He reportedly spoke seven languages, including Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, and Yiddish.

Fiorello shared another trait with Giuliani: he recognized a Fascist when he saw one, knew what they were up to, and wasn't afraid to say so. In fact, he recognized certain things about Fascism long before others did:

[La Guardia] was also a very outspoken and early critic of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. In a public address as early as 1934, LaGuardia warned, "Part of Hitler’s program is the complete annihilation of the Jews in Germany."

Apparently, Fiorello believed that someone like Hitler tends to mean what he says, and that we ought to pay attention. Too bad all that most people know of Fiorello these days is getting stuck in traffic trying to get to that airport named after him.

The Sanity Squad: it's hot!

2007-02-07T12:19:00.000-05:00

This week the Sanity Squad takes on the weighty topic of climate change and what might be done about it. Please join Siggy, Shrink, Dr. Sanity, and myself for a chat.

Dr. Sanity has a good deal more to say on the subject. And, if you knows Dr. Sanity, she doesn't pull her punches.

Frost on poetry: "the happy discoverer of your ends"

2007-02-06T15:48:00.000-05:00

Here's a little relief from politics and its discontents--excerpts from a discussion by Robert Frost entitled "Conversations on the Craft of Poetry" (1959)." Any aspiring poets in the crowd, please listen to a guy who knows--who really knows.

In response to the comment: "I once heard you say that for a poem to stick it must have a dramatic accent," Frost replied:

Catchiness has a lot to do with it, all of it, all the way up from the ballads you hear on the street to the lines in Shakespeare that stay with you without your trying to remember them. I just say catchy. They stick on you like burrs thrown on you in holiday foolery. You don't have to try to remember them....

And when people say that this will easily turn into--be set to music, I think it's bad writing. It ought to fight being set to music, if it's got expression in it.

And here are some comments of Frost's that especially resonated with me. He's describing the process of writing a poem (even Frost's prose is poetic, isn't it? His "voice" is instantly recognizable here as his and no other's, like a fingerprint):

...I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.

...I have a tune [when writing poetry], but it's a tune of the blend of [meter and rhythm]. Something rises--it's neither one of those things. It's neither the meter nor the rhythm,; it's a tune arising from the stress on those--same as your fingers on the strings, you know. The twang!

...You know, you know that, when I begin a poem I don't know--I don't want a poem that I can tell was written towards a good ending--one sentence, you know. That's trickery. You've got to be the happy discoverer of your ends.

...I've often said that another definition of poetry is dawn--that it's something dawning on you while you're writing it. It comes off if it really dawns when the light comes at the end. And the feeling of dawn--the freshness of dawn--that you didn't think this all out and write in prose first and than translate it into verse.

Those who follow this blog know I've written about Frost before, here and here in particular. Many who are familiar only with his most famous poems think he's a sort of Hallmark Card poet. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To prove it, I'll offer one of his darker poems today, a poem for winter. This one sure isn't happy. But I bet that, when he finished it, he was nevertheless the "happy discoverer" of its end:

DESERT PLACES

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Are all hatreds alike?--becoming "just like them"

2007-02-05T15:46:00.000-05:00

Recently I rented the movie "United 93." The edition I watched included an addendum to the film, interviews with families of some of the passengers on Flight 93 who'd been featured in it.

This was almost as interesting as the rest of the movie--hearing the differing ways people have coped with the almost unimaginably wrenching and violent loss of a loved one at the hands of international mass murderers dedicated to a political cause, occurring (literally) out of the blue on a bright and beautiful day in September.

One of the interviewees was the husband of a woman who died on that airplane. He seems a wonderful man, and loved his wife very much. He was still deeply grieving at the time of the interview, some years after 9/11.

This post isn't about him, though, not really; I mean no disrespect to his feelings, nor to his way of dealing with his dreadful loss. It's a particular thought he expressed that gives me pause, a remark that struck me as representative of a kind of thinking that always brings me up short when I encounter it. It's an example of one possible way people have of coping with grief, and it stems from a genuinely wonderful impulse: forgiveness, compassion, reluctance to rush to judgment, and the banishment of hatred from the heart.

This is the statement, as best I can recall it:

I don't hate Bin Laden; I've never met him. That's their mindset--to hate innocent people they've never met and want to kill them. If I hated him I'd be like them.

Would he? Are all hatreds equal, and all equally abhorrent? And what is the definition of "innocence?"

I've heard this sort of thing from people of intelligence, kindness, and thoughtfulness too often to consider it a singular statement from one man in particular. No, it's a trend of thought that seems to emerge sometimes from a religious sensibility that emphasizes the necessity for forgiveness and love, sometimes from the influence of various psychotherapies and their focus on the healthfulness of forgiveness and the destructive power of hatred for the individual, and sometimes from postmodern pronouncements that right and wrong are mere concepts in an ever-changing narrative.

But unfortunately there's a problem: those who espouse the sort of viewpoints quoted here, in their well-meaning and heartfelt flight from emotions deemed destructive to self and others, may lose sight of the basis for and the ability to make necessary making moral judgments.

And that can be dangerous; as the old Talmudic saying goes: Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind.

In what sense can Osama bin Laden be regarded as "innocent?" My guess--and it's only a hunch--is that the statement relies at least partly on the legal rule of "innocent until proven guilty." That's all very well and good for a court of law. The rule is a protection against certain actions that might follow from an improper judgment of guilt in a court case: the incarceration of an innocent person, the rush to judgment of an individual without a mountain of well-documented evidence. It's a check against sullying the name of a blameless person and restraining his/her freedom merely through the force of rumor and accusation.

That has nothing to do with making a mental moral judgment about the acts of a world figure bent on the mass murder of truly innocent people--random civilians--and even claiming credit for it. A trial isn't necessary in this case to establish a standard of guilt that's high enough to make a moral judgment--and a moral judgment is required, I'm afraid, in order to fight effectively against such things.

But what about the well-known words of Jesus, "Judge not that ye not be judged?" Well, if one looks closely at the context, it seems that the subject was the need to discourage making hypocritical judgments concerning others, jumping to conclusions about their shortcomings without looking at one's own:

Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

This hardly seems to apply to making a judgment about mass murderers who purposely target the innocent.

But what of hatred? The emotion of hatred has gotten a bad press lately, for the aforementioned reasons. Here, however, is a defense of the need to feel hatred in the appropriate circumstances. After all, as the article points out, if we're looking for a religious base for things, Ecclesiastes 3 says:

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.

Both Judaism and Christianity share the "hate the sin but not the sinner" maxim, which originates in a respect for all human life, and the need to keep open the possibility of repentance (take a look at the linked article for a fuller discussion). But Judaism seems to make more allowance than certain strains of Christianity for a vigorous emotional response one might call "hate" towards a person who has moved beyond "ordinary" criminal acts and into the realm of mass murder and power and true evil: a Hitler, a Stalin, a Bin Laden (who, granted, does not rival the first two in terms of numbers, but nevertheless follows the same nihilistic impulses). It is especially appropriate for an unrepetant evildoer.

We can call the emotional response to such acts "hatred," which has earned a bad rep lately. Or. we could rename it "outrage," which might make it more acceptable. Although such an emotion is not the same as "love" for the sinner, it does, in a seeming paradox, stem from love: love for humanity, the need to be "kind to the kind" by not being "kind to the cruel."

Some consider hatred of evildoers to be wrong because they see it as synonymous with the desire for revenge. Not necessarily. Hatred of evil, and of the perpetrators of evil, is one of the emotions fueling the pursuit of justice, which is different from revenge (and also is not limited to the justice of the courtroom). Hatred shouldn't get out of control or it does become counterproductive, both for the psyche of the hater and for the effectiveness of any campaign against evil. But to expunge it entirely from the picture can easily lead to a paralysis of the will to fight evil and a tolerance for it that perpetrators only see as weak, and which empowers their cause.

It would be wonderful if the example of love and forgiveness could lead to the transformation of evil into its opposite. That's the hope. And in same cases I do believe that love and forgiveness can work wonders--but only with those who have not crossed a certain line, only with those who share certain underlying values and assumptions. We need to recognize those who are far beyond its reaches; just as a psychiatrist needs to recognize when he/she is dealing with a sociopath, and all the love and understanding in the world is not enough.

Another problem with the sort of thinking evidenced in the quote about Bin Laden is the idea of becoming "just like" the enemy. Even for those who do believe that it's wrong to feel hatred against someone like Bin Laden, is it really true that an ounce of hatred for a murderous psychopath is the exact equivalent of the evil done by such people and their supporters? Is there no sense of proportion here? Are all hatreds alike, including the one that is harbored in the heart as compared to the one that results in acts of murder? The one that is against the murderer as compared to the one that is against the victim?

This is a good example of a tendency I've noticed in our postmodern world: that the part is the equivalent of the whole. Comparisons of degree seem to be impossible for many people who are making judgments. Bush is Hitler, the Patriot Act is the end of liberty in America--or, as an erudite gentlemen serenely stated at a lecture I attended recently--the US is now a theocracy. This man, like certain other champions of so-called "nuance," seemed unable to make a "nuanced" judgment of relative fault and degree.

Degree matters. Context matters. Not all hatreds are alike. A President whose policies on stem cells is in accord with his religious beliefs does not a theocracy make--ask the Iranians. And hating Bin Laden doesn't make one like him. I wouldn't have thought these things needed to be stated, or would be the least bit controversial. But apparently they do, and apparently they are.

My mother: there's bad news and there's good news

2007-02-03T14:42:00.000-05:00

Those of you who've followed the continuing saga of my 93-year old mother (yes, she just had a birthday) know that she moved back to NY in mid-November. So, how's it going so far?

Well, she hates it.

But she's happy.

And if that seems to be a contradiction--I think I can explain.

My mother complains about the place she lives in. Not her room; that, she admits, is beautiful--high-ceilinged and airy and light and...well, roomy. The bathroom, likewise, and the little kitchenette. No, the physical plant leaves little to be desired.

Her assistants (after all, it is "assisted living") come more or less at their appointed hours, to help her with dressing and getting downstairs and the like. Since her stroke she'd gotten used to having personal caretakers around for about nine hours a day, more or less at her service, and now they come and go only as needed or as called, so I was a bit worried about the change.

But it doesn't seem to be a problem. Actually, she appears to welcome the return of a certain amount of privacy, an unexpected benefit.

So, what is the problem? Two, actually, but they're biggish ones. The first is that she doesn't like any of her fellow residents. What this represents I'm not sure. But I think it's the fact that my mother's mind is (knock wood) basically sound, and most of the others are more--as they say--"cognitively challenged."

And she hates the food. Hates, hates, hates it.

Now, food is an important part of life for most of us, although I hear tell of people who eat to live and don't really enjoy the process all that much. But for the elderly in institutions--even ones as beautiful as my mother's--food assumes an even greater importance in the hierarchy of events than it does for most people. That is to say, mealtimes are a big, big, very big deal.

So if she doesn't like the food, and she doesn't like the company that goes with it, and she doesn't like the activities (too elementary, designed to suit the diminished capacity of so many of the residents)--then Houston, we've got a problem.

Except that we don't, exactly. When I speak to her on the phone, her voice sounds more happy and relaxed than it has in years, with a lilt I haven't heard in a long while. Even her memory--not all that bad to begin with--has improved. She sounds sharper in general.

Reading between the lines, I ascribe her improved mood to the phenomenon I wrote about here: the fact that she's home.

No, it's not her old home. But it's "home" as a community, the place where she grew up, the area she lived in for eighty-eight years before moving to New England to be near me.

And that community--at least so far--has come through for her. She's had lots of visitors (some of them bring the chocolate to which she's become allergic, forcing my brother to confiscate it and take it home with him, poor thing). She's had many more phone calls. She's been out to restaurants--and, what's more, they're not just random restaurants, they're places she knows and loves, with a long and deep history in her life.

Her room looks out over a highway, not the beautiful trees of her previous place, trees that changed with the dramatic New England seasons and offered the spectacle of nature's wonder through her many windows. But my mom's a city gal. Although she appreciated those trees and often remarked on them, now she monitors and reports on the changing traffic and seems happy to do so.

Proving that, in the words of the cliché and Dorothy: there's no place like home-- although the definition of "home" isn't always what you think it will be.

Wintertime and the gardening is easy

2007-02-03T14:41:00.000-05:00

Taken just a moment ago:

Essay: Isn't it Romantic?

2007-02-02T14:45:00.000-05:00

I've got an essay up at Pajamas Media.

Topic: "Isn't it Romantic?: suicide, homicide, terrorism, and Romanticism." That's "Romantic" with a capital R.

Compassionate Europe and the death penalty

2007-02-02T14:42:00.000-05:00

I noticed (hat tip: Pajamas Media) that some Europeans may be reconsidering their near-total abolition of the death penalty.

This is surprising news, if true; the recent history of the death penalty in Europe has only gone one way, and that's in the direction of ending it. It's been an incredibly successful post-World War II campaign, understandable in many respects in light of the carnage that the war represented, and the desire to turn away from killing. The UN and international human rights groups led the way in the late 40s and the 50s, and all the nations of Europe save Belarus have followed suit. One cannot become a member of the EU without abolishing capital punishment.

It's another manner by which Europe distinguishes itself from the US--although it should be remembered that the US had its own fling with the European way, abolishing the death penalty (de facto) for a decade from 1967 till 1977 as a result of Furman vs. Georgia's Supreme Court ruling that the practice was arbitrary and capricious, and cruel and unusual. Technically, the death penalty wasn't abolished by the case, but it effectively generated a moratorium while people tried to figure out just exactly what the ruling meant, and how the states should respond to it.

At any rate, the European poll figures are interesting, because--despite the longing of the EU--Europe is certainly far from unitary. As might be expected, Eastern Europe ("new" Europe) leads the way in death penalty support, with 58% of Poles wanting to bring the death penalty back (Poland only came aboard recently, anyway, in 1997), and 56% of Czechs.

But even in France the numbers seem relatively close, and in England public opinion is virtually tied on the subject. England, of course, has a long and colorful history of historically significant beheadings, with the site of many becoming a tourist attraction. And don't forget the bloodthirsty French Revolution.

But those days are gone in Europe--probably never to return, whatever the people might think. The law, once officially changed, is unlikely to ever change back, despite the fact that the obvious alternative to the death penalty--life imprisonment--is rarely enforced in Europe.

I speak here as a person who is not a strong proponent of the death penalty, although I reluctantly favor it in certain cases. For the individual criminal, its application has been capricious and unfair in too many cases. Life imprisonment--if it actually is life with no possibility of parole--is a decent alternative, often more feared by criminals than death.

But I recognize exceptions, even for individual criminals. For example, a New Yorker article a few years back (can't find the cite right now) described a multiple murderer who was also a brilliant escape artist. No prison could safely hold him, and he seemed to be the sort who would kill again: an argument for the death penalty if there ever was one. And I always knew that mass murderers of the political sort, such as Hitler (and now, Saddam) cried out for a punishment that was definitive. Keeping them alive after their particular crimes seemed more of an obscenity than killing them.

Most of Europe does not agree. And it's especially the elites of many European countries who don't always agree with their people.

In Italy and Spain it's true that the people are overwhelmingly against the death penalty, to the tune of 72% and 80%, respectively (and Italy, by the way, was the birthplace of the modern movement to abolish capital punishment). But take a look at some poll figures from Europe concerning Saddam Hussein's execution, widely condemned by the leaders of Europe and the international groups there:

When the German magazine Stern commissioned a poll on whether Saddam should be executed, it found 50 percent of Germans in favor and only 39 percent opposed. A poll conducted last month for Le Monde found that most Americans (82 percent) favored hanging Saddam — as did most Spaniards (51 percent), most Germans (53 percent), most French (58 percent), and most Britons (69 percent).

But the rulers of Europe widely condemned Saddam's execution--not just the form it took, but the fact of it as well.

Here are some more figures:

“Polls show that Europeans and Canadians crave executions almost as much as their American counterparts do,” wrote Joshua Micah Marshall in The New Republic in 2000. “It’s just that their politicians don’t listen to them.”

The figures Marshall goes on to quote (from a 1997 poll) are even more strongly in favor of capital punishment than the figures cited earlier in this post, which showed much softer death penalty support in Europe. But whatever the numbers mean (and we all know about polls and their vagaries), it's pretty clear that even if the people of Europe were clamoring for a death penalty, the law would be unlikely to change to reflect public opinion. The elites wouldn't have it, and they seem to be in control.

Its lack of a death penalty is one of the things that distinguishes Europe today. It is part of Europe's own self-image as an evolved and pacifist culture, leading the way for the world and especially the American cowboys, who are both bloodthirsty and naive. To be the champions of the right to life for even a mass murderer and sadist such as Saddam Hussein is, they believe, the mark of a culture that will lead the world to a better way, where the lion will lie down with the lamb because that lamb's superior moral force is so extraordinarily compelling.

Would that it were so. Nor do I believe the opposite--that executing someone such as Saddam will dissuade future power-grabbing mass murderers from lusting after the reigns of whatever chaotic and failed countries they can get their hands on. No, I'm afraid that nothing but the proper Constitutional safeguards, and an informed and aware populace, are likely to be sufficient to stop those with such lofty ambitions.

Moving soon: a new neo-neocon address

2007-02-02T00:39:00.000-05:00

The new blog isn't ready yet. But since I've been having so much trouble with posting on Blogger lately, I thought I'd give the link to the new blog here, just in case Blogger shuts me out later on.

Here's the link to the new blog site . The URL for it is http://neoneocon.com.

Simple: no hyphen (some prescient capitalist entrepreneur bought up the hypenated name some time ago, while I wasn't looking).

No need to go to the new site yet. I'll be using the present blog for the time being, until further notice---or until Blogger gets weirder and more feisty. If the latter happens, and a few days go by without a post on this blog, go to the new one to see what's what.

It will take some time to get the new site up and running, and till then there won't be much to see except scaffolding and a few rickety ladders. When it's ready for unveiling, I'll post the news here (assuming I can still get here), and then it will be time to change your bookmarks. The old blog should then remain intact at this URL, in case you want to stroll down memory lane.

Oh, and a question: any features you'd like to see on the new blog that this one doesn't have?

Outdated political definitions: conservatives and liberals unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains

2007-02-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

There was an argument--that is to say, a lively discussion--in Tuesday's comments section in the "Cold hubris" post. The subject was political definitions, such as "conservative" and "Left."

It started about here, and went on--and on and on. Read it if you want some background to the sort of confusion that can reign when trying to pin down what are in some ways outdated and poorly defined political concepts and categories.

I use these terms--liberal, conservative, Right, Left--myself, because they are in such common parlance, but I agree they are misleading. None of these groups are unitary by any means (and hey, whatever happened to that good old epithet from my youth--"reactionary?") "Fascist" is another one that has come to mean, simply, "bad person trying to do something I don't like."

Redefining these terms, or trying to come up with new ones, is a huge undertaking, one I'm not about to tackle this moment.

Besides, plenty of people have done it before me. One of them was Steven Den Beste. Here is his attempt at a comprehensive reordering of the political grid, and here is a description of his own political leanings (he's conservative because he's a liberal--read it and it will make sense. And, for those of you unfamiliar with Den Beste, he was one of the best bloggers ever; my paean to him can be found here.)

What I'd like to focus on now is the commonly offered definition of "conservative" as "one who seeks to preserve the status quo." This definition is wholly inadequate for today's conservatives, and actually leads to quite preposterous results, as stated here by the commenter "a guy in pajamas":

Hmmm.... So every administration is conservative, because they try to preserve their own power. I.e., those in power are always conservative. E.g., Clinton was progressive when elected, but conservative afterwards. Hmmm... methinks this is a simplistic definition of 'conservative.'

Another example: Hitler was progressive when he was trying to change the status quo of the Weimar Republic, but then became conservative when he actually held power and tried to maintain it.

It seems like a joke of sorts--or a meaningless semantic exercise in which a political term "conservative," which was originally derived from the word "conserve," has become defined as almost identical to it, which it most certainly is not.

And, lest you think "guy in pajamas" is setting up a straw man--au contraire. In fact, this is the very definition used by the authors of the seminal study of conservatism cited in the Psychology Today article you've heard so much about, the Jost study (the other part of their definition of conservative was "tolerant of inequality"--and don't get me started on that).

Guy in pajamas is merely paraphrasing Jost, et. al, who actually do state that Stalin was originally a figure on the Left but arguably became a figure on the right because he wanted to preserve the Soviet system. Now, just let that sink in: Stalin was a conservative for supporting an entrenched Communist regime--the important word here being "entrenched."

I think we can all agree--I fervently hope we can all agree--that this is an absurdity. But it's an absurdity into which many fall, because the original definition of "conservative" on which it's based is incorrect.

Oh, it may have once been correct in a certain limited set of circumstances. For instance, way back when powerful monarchs were in vogue, those looking to preserve that status quo against those wanting to limit the divine right of sovereigns would have been called "conservative" at the time. But time marches on--even for conservatives--and those olden-day conservatives have virtually nothing in common with most conservatives of today who tend to believe (note that word "tend;" there are always exceptions) in less central government, not more; and in the importance of individual rights and liberties. Just those things those old liberals were fighting for.

After all, libertarians today are conservatives, and they are fairly radical (as in, "extreme," not "Leftist"--see the quicksand that looms everywhere, waiting to trap us when we try to use these words?) in the changes they advocate. And, of course, no one could accuse neocons of wanting to do business as usual in the international sphere--leave that to the realpolitikers, who now seem to include most of the formerly radical Left. Go figure.

And don't liberals want to return to--or conserve--many aspects of the glory days of the 60s, or the Clinton administration?

Oh yes, but neocons are "conservative" because they champion the spread of old-fashioned pre-modern (is that the opposite of post-modern?) ideas such as liberty and justice for all (that's in the Pledge of Allegiance, so it must be conservative, right?) But didn't liberals used to do that, at least in theory? Once again, you can twist these definitions almost infinitely to try to fit them into a framework where they just don't make much sense without the gyrations. Which means they're not all that helpful.

But they are the only words we have at the moment to use, and they at least have some common meaning that we all think we understand. I strongly urge you to read that Den Beste essay in which he suggests some different ways of ordering things. He's got quite a few dimensions, such as conservative/revolutionary, liberal/autocrat-elitist, realism/idealism, tolerant/conformist/, capitalist/socialist, individual/group, and opportunity/result (yeah, I know, too complicated--it will never replace the old liberal/conservative).

Here's an excerpt:

This is where Michael [Totten]'s argument, based on a single axis, breaks down. The people he refers to as "liberals" aren't liberal. For lack of a better term, we'll have to call them "leftists" for the moment. The vocal leftist movement which has been revealed in the last year in the US manifests as being elitist (i.e. not liberal), idealistic (not realistic) and conformist (not tolerant). There's a lesser dedication to equality (over inequality) but it's not totally consistent because it is a side effect of a basic choice of groups over individuals and to some extent of socialism over capitalism. And within the US right now, they're revolutionaries because they strongly disagree with the status quo. It is because they are revolutionaries that we tend to categorize them as being "leftist"; it has nothing to do with liberalism as such (especially since they aren't liberal)....

And here's still another attempt, by Jerry Pournelle, to redo the political classification system, this time with two axes, statism and rationalism. It's worth a read, as well. And anyone interested in wading into the works of Den Beste (allow a bit of time--his stuff is loooong, but worthwhile), click on any of the above links to his blog, and then look on the right sidebar and click on the "best of" link (I've done this instead of adding a direct link myself, because each time I've tried to do so Blogger goes nuts and messes up this entire post of mine).

So, what do I think? I think conservatives tend towards the following: especially interested in individual rights, identity, and especially responsibility over group rights, identity, and responsibility; and in general favoring smaller government over big, including a more laissez faire approach to capitalism (which they also favor over other economic systems). Liberals tend in the opposite direction, and Leftists even more so in the opposite direction--including a liking for socialism, and an increased dislike for the US and the West in general.

That's it, at least for now.

Oh yes--and bigotry, narrowmindedness, rigidity, self-interest, political wrangling, hypocrisy, lies, and inconsistency know no sides--they are equal opportunity characteristics.

It's that time again: Sanity Squad podcast

2007-01-31T17:45:00.000-05:00

This week the Sanity Squad discusses the phenomenon of equal opportunity victimhood: demands (by the Muslim Council of Britain, for example) for the replacement of Holocaust Memorial Day with the more inclusive "Genocide Day." Along the way we discuss a few other items such as Kerry at Davos, the Holocaust against animals, and Jimmy Carter and his "too many Jews."

Listen to myself, Shrinkwrapped, and Dr. Sanity; and hear Siggy get even more fired up than usual.

Do cry for Venezuela: the vulnerability of an easily amended Constitution

2007-01-31T14:55:00.000-05:00

Castro's not really dead, although most likely dying, despite his TV cameo appearance.

Chavez's star, however, is in the ascendance, and expanding fast. He's the new Castro, with a bigger field to play on than Castro ever had: Venezuela.

Chavez has set the stage by taking on greatly expanded powers to nationalize Venezuela's industries as part of his campaign to "maximize socialism" in Venezuela. He plans to use his newly acquired powers to nationalize and/or control telecommunications, electricity, the oil and gas industry, and:

....dictate unspecified measures to transform state institutions; reform banking, tax, insurance and financial regulations; decide on security and defense matters such as gun regulations and military organization; and "adapt" legislation to ensure "the equal distribution of wealth" as part of a new "social and economic model."

Okey dokey; that's democracy, I guess. After all, as his supporters say [italics mine], "Socialism is democracy," and, "We want to impose the dictatorship of a true democracy and 'power to the people'" (now, just where have we heard that last phrase before?)

I haven't followed every in and out of Chavez's rise to power and his successful grab at more power, but I am under the distinct impression it was done with the appearance of following the rules of democracy.

You might think that, as a neocon, I champion democracy in all its guises. But the type of democracy I support (and I actually prefer a republic, but we'll leave that aside for the moment) is one that includes a constitution that explicitly protects freedoms and individual rights, and features a system by which it is extremely hard to change that constitution and expand a leader's powers as Chavez has done.

If you read the Reuters article carefully, you'll note that Chavez gained his expanded powers through a vote by Venezuela's Congress, which is at present overwhelmingly composed of his supporters. This unanimity was gained because the opposition boycotted the last election, held in 2005.

Why? Why would the opposition boycott the election of a man they knew was bent on becoming a socialist dictator? This seems so counterproductive that it's obvious there's much more behind it. The often-criticized Wikipedia has a lot to say on the matter. The opposition was initially afraid that fingerprint scanners would be used to match voters with results, and even though the scanners were removed the boycott proceeded. Chavez's supporters say that the boycott reflected the fact that the opposition knew it was sunk; others say the opposition distrusted and greatly feared Chavez and his crew.

At any rate, the boycott enabled Chavez to attain--between his own party and allied parties--virtually 100% control of Congress, far more than the 2/3 it would need to amend the Constitution. One thing appears true: the election was controlled by a National Election Council totally sympathetic to Chavez, and the opposition perceived that, even if they participated, the voting would be rigged.

The entire process points out the utmost--and I mean utmost--importance of guarantees against such usurption of powers (which, by the way, Hitler used, as well, in his ascendance to becoming Fuehrer; Germany had a similar clause that allowed dictatorial powers to be given a leader by a 2/3 vote of the Reichstag, which Hitler then proceeded to abolish).

The United States, by the way, does not allow this dangerous and pernicious route to amending the Constitution (see this for our far more restrictive method). But that's not going to help Venezuela.

The AP adds some interesting facts about Chavez's plans:

Chavez...also has formed a commission to rewrite the constitution and expects to hold a referendum on the changes by the end of the year. Among the changes, Chavez has proposed doing away with presidential term limits to allow for indefinite re-election. Term limits currently bar him from running again in 2012.

No surprise, that. He's on his way to becoming President for Life, despite claims that it will all be oh-so-democratic. With the opposition silenced and frightened, the entire legislature in his pocket, and the path cleared for an indefinite reign, the picture seems very ominous indeed.

I've often thought about our own FDR's propensity to grab power by bending the rules, or at least tradition: the attempt to pack the Supreme Court, and his four Presidential terms. But he never changed the Constitution, he merely took advantage of its silence on certain subjects. Congress deflected his first effort, and the US Constitutional amendment process was used to change the law to fill in the gap on the second, by making the two-term limit explicit after FDR.

But back to Chavez. One possible limitation for his plans involves the fact that, paradoxically, most economies based primarily on oil don't seem to do all that well; they are very vulnerable, and in good times have no incentive to diversify, and at the moment oil prices are "softening." And, of course, socialist economies in general don't have a great track record.

Even if the Venezuelan economy ends up tanking, it's hard to see how these trends toward dictatorship can be easily reversed. Once such powers are given--especially when war is not the ostensible excuse--they are rarely taken away, except by the force of arms. That's why, traditionally, the military has been feared by dictators as rivals in such countries--they are often the only ones who can accomplish the removal of a dictator. Unfortunately, they sometimes replace one with another.

Venezuela is a country with a built-in weakness in addition to its social and economic problems: a Constitution that allows for the easy usurpation of basic checks and balances. How many other democracies are vulnerable in this way I don't know, although it would be an interesting thing to research. My guess is that it's quite a few.

[For some fascinating background and eloquent commentary on the Venezuelan situation, Daniel in Venezuela has been watching the downward spiral for quite some time. Take a look at his archives: see this, for example. And here's his description of the 2005 election; here he offers some background to it, and here is his take on how the public lost faith in the voting process in the buildup to the 2005 election.

Daniel's summary statement:

I have written the diary of Venezuela slow descent into authoritarianism, the slow erosion of our liberties, the takeover of the country by a military caste, the surrendering of our soul to our inner demons.]

Cold hubris: like Father (or Big Brother), the Left knows best

2007-01-30T14:25:00.000-05:00

The Left likes to position itself as the champion of the underdog, the third world, the downtrodden, the oppressed.

Until, that is, someone from one of those countries has the temerity to disagree with the party line.

Just as the Left like to think every African-American in America automatically ought to be a Democrat--and, if not, that person is obviously to be ridiculed as a fawning tool of the Right (or, if you like, in less PC terms, an Uncle Tom or Aunt Jemima)--so it believes it has the answers for all the suffering people of color round the world.

That, by the way, is one of the reasons the Left hates--positively hates--neocons. Neocons actually have a competing theory about what to do about the third world, and it runs highly counter to that of the Left: it actually involves freedom, liberty, and protection of their rights within a democracy.

Whether the neocon dream is any more achievable than the dream of the Left (and I happen to think it is, because it is more attuned with the strivings of human nature) or any better morally (and I happen to think it is, because it is more respectful of individual and human rights) I'm not going to discuss here. That's another topic for another time. My point is that it's a vision for the third world that competes with that of the Left, and therefore cannot be countenanced by that Left.

To the Left, there's almost nothing worse than an apostate. Neocons are viewed as apostates (some of them actually are; I personally, was never on the Left but always a mere Democrat of the liberal persuasion). Apostates who originate, or even still live, in third-world countries are a tricky proposition for the Left, as well. One would think that their membership in a minority group or race would get instant approval. But the contrarian nature of their viewpoints trumps race any day, and must be fought against with vigor. The gloves tend to come off.

Witness the following exchange the other day in the comments section, between Leftist commenter and troll DonkeyKong and commenter Huan, a Vietnamese-American. It was lengthy, so I won't reproduce most of it here, but if you want to read the whole thing yourself go to the comments of this post on the State of the Union address.

Huan wrote:

As a Vietnamese expat and refugee from the US betrayal and abandonment of South Viet Nam, and knowing how the press misrepresented the progress of the war, i would say that Neo-Neocon is among the growing number of Americans who actually are coming to understand what really did happened to South Viet Nam 30 years ago.

But DK does not. I would recommend he starts by reading Vo Nguyen Giap.

"Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
If Americans understood, America would weep in shame.

DonkeyKong (DK) responded thusly:

Haun, after the US fought for 10 years, expended 275 billion, and 58,000 of it's countrymen, why did your government fall in 4 months (January 1975-April 1975.)

We did'nt betray you.

Oh I know, if we had only stayed another six months we would have won.

I think DK's comment above encapsulates in a rather dense and representative packet ("dense" in more ways than one) the combination of ignorance and overwhelming arrogance exhibited by many (not all) on the Left.

DK trashes the feelings of a Vietnamese refugee about the American betrayal of Vietnam in 1974-5 (whatever happened to the Left's tender regard for feelings?), as well as Huan's take on history. It's not so much the disagreement--it's certainly possible to disagree with a Vietnamese-American about Vietnam, merely on the merits of the case, and to argue facts.

But do it in a respectful way. The element of juvenile taunting is unmistakable here, and especially reprehensible because--any way you look at it, any side you favor--the subject involves a tragedy of major proportions for the people of Vietnam as well as the US. In fact, more of a tragedy for the former than the latter.

The story of why the South Vietnamese government fell in four months is the point. I've written about it often (also see this for some background). But DK and his ilk aren't interested in looking at that sort of thing. They know, they just know; better than articles by officers who were there, and most definitely better than Huan, an actual Vietnamese refugee but one who--like so many others--isn't cooperating by parroting what DK wants to hear.

DK writes, dripping with sarcasm:

Oh I know, if we had only stayed another six months we would have won.

That's not only a taunt directed at Huan, but at all those very threatening (and deluded, according to Leftist thinking) Vietnam "revisionist" historians--myself, of course, included (please read this post for a fuller discussion of Vietnam revisionist history). The idea that Vietnam might not have been a hopelessly lost cause at the end, worthy only of abandonment, threatens the Leftist "narrative" (love that word!) so strongly that it must be fought off at all costs, no matter where it originates, even from a Vietnamese-American. Or, rather, especially from a Vietnamese-American.

And what's that "we" all about in Donkey Kong's comment, anyway, when he writes "if we had stayed only another six months?" It seems that DK is unaware that the important "we"--our fighting forces--had left Vietnam years earlier (see this post that features a chart illustrating the pace of Vietnamization and the withdrawal of US fighting forces). What precipitated the downfall of South Vietnam was the withdrawal of our money, not ourselves.

After all that time, it really did come down just to money. Filthy lucre. And not a whole lot of it, either. As President Ford wrote at the time:

In South Vietnam, we have consistently sought to assure the right of the Vietnamese people to determine their own futures free from enemy interference. It would be tragic indeed if we endangered, or even lost, the progress we have achieved by failing to provide the relatively modest but crucial aid which is so badly needed there.

"Relatively modest but crucial aid"--that's what it was all about, DK. Money. Money, weariness, and propaganda from the likes of you.

And people like me to listen to it, and to be taken in by it, to my sorrow. Like Huan says, at least I have the decency to weep in shame. What's your excuse? Too young to remember?

This time, I'm not weeping. I'm writing.

I'll leave the final words here to Huan, however, who addresses Donkey Kong in this way:

...but apparently you are incapable of learning from mistake, rather sticking with cold hubris, as you and your ilk are about to repeat the same mistake, abandoning the millions of iraqi to islamofascism and emboldening others to act against the US.

doesn't matter how many suffers, as long as their skin is different, as long as they don't meet your desired standards, as long as it is not in the news.

there is no shame to being ignorant, but it is shameful to cling to blind ignorance and let other suffer instead of you.

Passive-aggressive Blogger on the warpath (important announcement here)

2007-01-29T18:06:00.000-05:00

Twice in the last few days Blogger--the not-so-gracious host of this and all the other "blogspot" blogs--has been playing some games I can only describe as passive-aggressive.

Several times, when I've logged in to post, Blogger directs me to register for another version of Blogger that they've been trying to push for months--called, quite creatively, "New Blogger." And this isn't just a passing thing; when it does this, I can't post on my old blog at all for several hours.

So far it's reverted back spontaneously and allowed me to post at last. But this privilege will not last for long. Blogger has apparently decreed that I and others will be forced make the change.

Till now I'd been perfectly happy with Old Blogger (well, maybe not perfectly, but perfectly enough). And till now Old Blogger had been perfectly happy with me being perfectly happy with Old Blogger.

But since the unnamed, un-emailable, unphonable, basically unreachable Hal-like powers behind Blogger, They Who Must Be Obeyed, have decreed that I must switch to the New, I'm not happy. Why? The bulletin board there is full of complaints about New Blogger, and the bugs haven't been worked out yet. Despite the fact that the service is free, I don't want to be their reluctant guinea pig; I don't want to switch (whether I'd rather fight than switch is another question; I'm a chickenhawk, you know).

As regular readers here know, I've been working on the reorganization of the blog and its move to another server, but that's not quite ready yet.

In the meantime, I can't disable Blogger like the astronauts did Hal (and to do so would cause the immediate demise of this blog anyway, since the two are inextricably entwined). So I thought I'd post this message while I can; I seem to still have access to Old Blogger.

Here's the IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

If I'm forced to make the change before I'm ready to leave Blogger and start up with the new non-Blogger-based server, it's very possible the switch to New Blogger will go so smoothly you won't notice. But if there are any problems, I'll go to a default blog I've set up on New Blogger just for the purpose of posting until the real new one is ready.

Here's the URL of the new temporary blog, neoneoneocon (catchy, isn't it?). Make note of it (and, if for some reason all of Blogger gives up the ghost, tune into Shrinkwrapped's blog; he's not on Blogger and has kindly offered to post a message from me in a crisis).

Remember, I'll only use that new temporary "neoneoneocon" one if anything goes wrong with this one, and only for a little while till the permanent new one is ready. Hopefully, I'll never need to use the temporary one.

Then, when I move to my more permanent site, I'll post the new URL for it--on this blog if it's still functional; on the temporary one if this one goes kaput, on Shrinks' blog if they both are unreachable for some unknown reason. And that will be that (I hope.)

I'm not sure yet of the URL for the new permanent blog. But one thing I do know: the new permanent blog will not be here at Blogger, and therefore will not have "blogspot" in its URL. But all the old posts and archives for the present blog ought to remain undisturbed and readable, even after the new permanent blog opens.

There. Was that complex enough?

Congress: don't blame us, we pass resolutions!

2007-01-29T15:31:00.000-05:00

New bumper sticker: Don't blame us: we're from Congress, and we pass resolutions!

It's reminiscent of the post-Watergate 1974 message that used to be plastered all over the cars in Boston, where I lived at the time: "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts!" That state--you may remember--had been the only one to vote for McGovern rather than Nixon in 1972.

Of course, the bumper sticker was mum on what you might have blamed McGovern for, had he been elected instead. But no matter; it certainly wouldn't have been Watergate.

The current hue and cry in Congress accompanying the race to pass resolution after resolution is an effort that can only give aid and comfort to an implacable and evil (yes, evil) enemy bent on our destruction (yes, destruction). It's inexplicable when looked at with any sort of logic, except the logic of self-preservation--Congressional self-preservation, that is.

For example, Congress thinks the world of General Petraeus; no problem with his confirmation. It's just that everything he says must be bunk, because Congress is trying to undercut his recommendations even as he speaks.

As Robert Kagan points out, why is blocking these 20,000 new troops so important, when there are already so many troops there that will remain for a while, no matter what Congress says? Haven't some of these very opponents been clamoring for more troops anyway, not less? How does Congress choose what Kagan refers to as "the magic number" of troops that should be there right now? Isn't that for that sterling commander they all know and love, General Petraeus, to decide?

And, of course, there's the question of alternatives; opponents to the surge have none. "Just go away, close our eyes, and everything will be okay--or, at least, okay enough" seems to be the gist of it. And, by the way, such stupidity and shortsidedness is an equal-opportunity trait: it's mostly Democrats speaking, but quite a few Republicans have succumbed.

It seems clear that the main force driving this is politics--the politics of short-sighted self-interest. And the "self" involved, I'm afraid, are the members of Congress themselves. Once they've gone down the path of turning on Bush and on this war, they have no other way out (unless coming up with workable alternatives would be a way out--but that, of course, would take work, and thought, and new ideas).

Members of Congress opposing the surge have positioned themselves so that our loss in Iraq would be a "win-win if we lose-lose" situation--for them. This is the way it works:

(1) If they can stop the surge before it has even a chance of succeeding, Congressional opponents of the war will win for sure. Their constituents will like them. Few will blame any ensuing carnage in Iraq on them--even if they manage to force a pullout--and they know it.

If those members of Congress have studied the history of Vietnam, they know that after some initial upsetting "helicopter on the roof" photos (that can be blamed on Bush, no doubt) they'll be pretty much home free. Only some diehards on the Right will assign blame to them for that, or for the deaths resulting from the abandonment of the Iraqis. And what if there are more terror attacks afterwards, here, there, or everywhere? Blame Bush for inflaming Muslim world, and get re-elected.

(2) There's even a possible win for them if the surge does manage to go forward against Congressional opposition, and it doesn't immediately turn the whole thing around. Then those members who are on record as having passed resolutions to oppose it will end up looking prescient. That may indeed be the real thrust behind resolutions, which, after all, are non-binding and Bush isn't going to listen to: getting their names down as opposing it.

This is especially and vitally important for those such as Hillary Clinton--and they are many--who originally voted for the war. The resolutions are meant to undo that error, even if they have no real effect in the real world--except, of course, as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates pointed out, to "embolden the enemy."

One reason it's important for Democrats on the Left in particular to make sure the surge doesn't succeed is that any such success might even cause people to look back at Vietnam and question what happened there in the mid-70s. Maybe those helicopters on the roof would come home to roost in the laps (sorry for the tripley-mixed metaphor) of the Left itself. Maybe (oh, heresy! revisionism!) the Vietnam withdrawal wasn't the Left's finest hour, after all.

(3) But what if the resolution passes but the surge goes forward, and is successful in improving the situation in Iraq? What then? This is the only possible "lose" situation for war opponents at this point.

Well, one possible solution is to count on the MSM to downplay any successes, or even negate them. But it's still a dilemma. Members of Congress who vote for such a resolution will have staked their reputation on a loss in Iraq; a win there, and they're sunk. So the only answer is to stop it before it has even a chance of succeeding.

For proponents of the resolution, the die will have been cast. The biggest risk to them, paradoxically, would be a win in Iraq.

Churchill as orator: I Can Hear It Now

2007-01-27T07:39:00.000-05:00

I got an email the other day asking me why I think Churchill's speeches are more remembered and quoted than FDR's.

The answer isn't immediately apparent. After all, both of them were incomparably better than most politicians today at public speaking. Both of them were wartime Presidents who faced extraordinarily dramatic situations requiring the need to inspire their people, and both had the rhetorical skills to do so.

I've had some personal experience of Churchill's oratorical powers as compared to FDR's. No, I'm not that old--but as a child, I spent many hours listening to a set of records we owned, the "I Can Hear It Now" series by Edward R. Murrow. I'm not much of an auditory learner (see this), but I just couldn't get enough of these records.

There was Harry Truman, imitating H.V. Kaltenborn's premature declaration that Truman had lost the election of 1948. The almost hysterical radio announcer describing the Hindenburg catching fire and burning in Lakehurst New Jersey. Fiorello la Guardia reading the comics to NY children during a newspaper strike.

FDR saying in his resonant, uplifting, slightly British-sounding (at least to my ears) tones, "The only thing we have to fear is..." (and then a wonderful, pregnant pause) "fear itself."

They all entranced me; I'm not sure why. Maybe it was Murrow's voice too, tying the whole thing together with his narration: serious and sonorous, it fairly dripped with History.

But it was Churchill who was the very best of all. His voice may not have been the deepest, but it resonated with power and hard-won wisdom mixed with more than a touch of the weariness of one who has seen horror and yet refuses to give in. Despite his slightly lispy "s's," his moral clarity came through in the clipped tones of his clearly enunciated words, simple enough for a child to understand and yet complex in their resonance and implications.

Churchill was a writer, after all, before he was a politician, and a very successful one at that. He had the writer's appreciation for the turn of phrase, but the actor's knowledge of how to deliver it. If you've ever read William Manchester's riveting two-volume biography of Churchill, The Last Lion, you probably know that Churchill planned and rehearsed the pauses in his speeches--even, if I recall correctly from the book, adding notes to himself such as "slight stammer and hesitation" for dramatic effect.

Churchill knew exactly what he was doing when he gave speeches; he was the perfect combination of intellect, will, vision, writer, and orator. His rule "Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all" was one he followed; he preferred the basic Anglo-Saxon phrases (and I don't mean curses) to the Latinate whenever possible. As he said:

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope.

Listening to Churchill was more like listening to the plays of Shakespeare than anything else, but a Shakespeare who was easier to understand, and in a way even more dramatic--because this was real; this was history itself, and not an imitation of it.

Fun with Blogger--and mountain lions

2007-01-26T15:59:00.000-05:00

I had some trouble earlier today getting onto Blogger. Finally got it straightened out (for now, anyway). I hope to do a more substantive post later today, but for now I'll just say happy fiftieth anniversary to this stalwart couple.

"Stalwart" not only for the wife beating off the mountain lion, and the husband for staying alive--but also for having been married fifty years when they got together at the ages of fifteen and twenty. An unusual duo in more ways than one.

Defeatism feels so good--for now

2007-01-25T14:25:00.000-05:00

This WSJ editorial by Daniel Hettinger clear-sightedly, and with some puzzlement, describes the remarkable defeatism that seems to be spreading throughout the American Congress and public like some easily transmitted virus. Defeatism is the new feel-good emotion; it allows us to lay down the heavy burden we took up on 9/11.

Why is so much of Congress intent on a "you say tomato, I say tomahto" attitude towards President Bush and the surge, even though they have offered no viable alternatives to his plan? Even though the stakes are remarkably high if we abandon Iraq and it falls to greater chaos, and/or more closely into the orbit of Iran?

Well, as Hettinger writes: As a political strategy, unremitting opposition has worked.

Most of today's politicians are pragmatic, rather than principled (perhaps it was ever thus); and their pragmatism tends to focus on a single goal: getting re-elected.

Unremitting opposition--with no need to come up with a better alternative--has defeated the Republicans, put the Democrats in power, and contributed to the lowest approval ratings for Bush of his Presidency (he's done his bit in that endeavor, as well). So it's not surprising that so many Republicans (especially those in somewhat liberal states) are jumping on the oppositional bandwagon as well.

Hettinger's frustration is almost palpable. But the current military leadership has even greater cause for frustration. As Hettinger writes:

On the "Charlie Rose Show" this month, former Army vice chief of staff Gen. Jack Keane, who supports the counterinsurgency plan being undertaken by Gen. David Petraeus, said in exasperation: "My God, this is the United States. We are the world's No. 1 superpower. This isn't about arrogance. This is about capability and applying ourselves to a problem that is at its essence a human problem."

...The mood of mass resignation spreading through the body politic is toxic. It is uncharacteristic of Americans under stress. Some might call it realism, but it looks closer to the fatalism of elderly Europe, overwhelmed and exhausted by its burdens, than to the American tradition.

As I wrote the other day, it's as though we were intent on repeating Dunkirk before there's any need to. Our weariness this time has come when the sacrifice has been relatively light, and the consequences of loss are great.

In relation to this loss of will, commenter "Unknown Blogger" asked an interesting question on another thread. He (or she?) first quoted my statement:

I wonder whether the unrelentingly gloomy prognostications in the press, the short attention span of modern life, the lack of knowledge of history, and the frivolity reflected in the overheard comments with which I began this piece don't make it impossible to sustain anything like the sort of mindset we are going to need for this battle.

Then he asked:

I think what you describe above may be play a role in why the President is having trouble sustaining political support for this war, have you also considered the following?:

1. The changing nature of the mission - from removing a "grave" WMD threat to nation-building.

2. The Administration's relentless public insistence for years that everything was going fine even when it obviously wasn't, the endless "turning of corners" that just led to more blind alleys (the "gloomy prognostications" haven't been coming only from the press - the DOD's own reports have been showing it for years, among other sources), the implicit (and even explicit) assumptions before the war that it wouldn't *really* be so hard, and wouldn't take *too* long.

3. The acknowleged unpreparedness for and mishandling of the occupation and insurgency: Why should the public be convinced that *now* they'll get things right?

4. The uncertainty of the consequences for US security after even the most positive of outcomes: Given all the other actors (and potential actors) in the world, how exactly a free and democratic Iraq, even after a guerilla war lasting many years and costing tens of thousands of lives and billons of dollars, will decisively reduce the likelihood of another major terrorist attack on the US remains unclear.

Excellent questions all, each perhaps worthy of a separate post. But I'll take them briefly here:

(1) I've been thinking about my next couple of "change" posts (yeah, yeah, right, they say; we'll believe it when we see them), which will cover--among other things--the buildup to the Iraq War.

I recall that I always assumed some form of nation-building would be part of the task. If you go back and look at the speeches Bush gave, one of our goals was the freeing of the people of Iraq from Saddam's clutches. I don't have the time right now to do the research and look at what he actually said on the subject of nation-building itself--my recollection, however, is that he didn't say anything like "we will need to fight an insurgency for years."

The original hope of the administration seemed to be that, somehow, the Iraqi people--with the help of former expat Iraqis who would return--would get their act together more quickly. I remember hearing that and not really believing it to be so--hoping that it would be so, certainly, but assuming the way would be much longer and harder.

Perhaps that's just a sort of natural pessimism on my part--or realism--but I assumed that it was clear that the aftermath of the war could be a lot harder than that, and that our intervention meant we might have to stay there for a long while. In fact, I believed the "hot" part of the war itself would probably go on for years, with street and guerilla fighting far worse than it has been, both for American troops and even for the Iraqi people.

But that's just me, perhaps. And I'm not saying it to show my prescience; I wish I had been more wrong, as it turns out. But I do not understand those who thought otherwise--and that includes the Bush administration, if they really did think otherwise. I would have hoped they had been more ready for the sort of thing we are facing than they apparently were, and this was a big disappointment to me from the start--beginning with my profound unease about the way they handled the looting.

I understand, however, why the war wasn't presented in that light at the outset, and why the WMDs and the "flaunting the UN inspections" arguments became paramount. After all, the latter was true, the former was thought to be true, and they both were solid arguments that would appeal to supposed "allies" whose help we wanted to get. Why not emphasize them, then, rather than some lengthy and difficult occupation that might or might not be necessary in the process of rebuilding the country?

What's more difficult to understand--and to forgive--is the lack of preparedness of the administration for the very real possibility of a lengthy and difficult occupation.

But UB's first question was a different one, and the answer is this: I do think the perceived changing nature of the mission (at least in emphasis) was part of the reason the public has lost faith in this war.

Which brings us to:

(2) Once again, perceptions are strange. I never really heard a simple message of "everything is fine" from the administration. What I heard was that things were improving there--and for quite some time they seemed to be. The turning point was more recent; the bombing of the Shiite shrine and the increase in sectarian violence. I do believe this has been a turning point, as well, in public perception of the way the war is going, and in the spread of the idea that the situation is hopelessly chaotic.

Although I agree that this trajectory and direction in Iraq is a bad one, I don't see it as hopelessly chaotic. I see is (as General Keane said) as a problem we can apply ourselves to.

That's really the heart of the difference, not the events themselves. As I've written many times before, virtually all wars have setbacks when it would be easy to give up. Until Vietnam (or perhaps, arguably, until Korea), Americans didn't give up so easily. And that (at the risk of being repetitive) is a matter of will, not of these particular facts on the ground. There is nothing about these events that says "all is lost."

(3) I've given my answer in (1), and it is this: yes, our unpreparedness for the occupation was definitely a factor. So, why should the public think we'll get it right now? Because, once again, the history of almost all wars represents just such a learning curve. The public today wants instant gratification, even in war. Not possible, except in the first Gulf War--whose unfinished nature, paradoxically (although it pleased the public--easy in, easy out) was a significant part of what led to the need for this one.

(4) This is not a factor for me at all. I think those who would have expected a successful resolution of the Iraq War to have decisively reduced our terror risk are living in a dream world, and are underestimating this enemy to an almost fatal degree. Such wishful thinking is misplaced and dangerous; Islamist totalitarians will not be so easily deterred, I'm afraid. They take the long view of history, and see their rewards as taking place not just in this world, but in the next. They have more than enough of the patience we lack.

For me, one of the major reasons for this war was to set a standard for what would result when nations repeatedly defy weapons inspections. If one is to be serious about not letting WMDs fall into the hands of regimes such as Saddam's (or Iran's, or North Korea's), and if there was to have been any hope for the UN at all in that role (I now believe there is none), then the Iraq War was a pivotal moment in firmly declaring to all who would do as Saddam did that they'd have to answer for it. I believe that the power vacuum and confusion in Iraq today has not only empowered Iran to have greater influence locally, in Iraq itself; but that our losing heart with Iraq has signaled to Iran to go right ahead and develop WMDs, because we (and of course the UN) won't do a thing about it. Same for North Korea.

Defeatism is painless, I guess. For now. The only thing is--it might end up being suicide.

Oh, no: could he flip again?

2007-01-25T14:23:00.000-05:00

I didn't think of this one. But Jules Crittenden did.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

State of the State of the Union 2007: late and getting later

2007-01-24T15:44:00.000-05:00

Overheard in the locker room last night before the President's speech, from some twentysomethings:

I'm not going to watch Bush tonight. It offends me to hear him. I'll just listen to Al Franken tomorrow and he'll tell me all I need to know.

Okay, moving right along--

Maybe Bush should give a State of the Union speech once a month; this seems rather surprising, a positive reaction from viewers. My guess is that this initial public response will probably fade, if it exists at all. And perhaps the people polled--who, after all, were the ones already watching Bush's speech, unlike the young woman quoted above--were predisposed towards Bush in the first place (even though they consisted of equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents).

As for the speech itself--I'm not a big fan of State of the Union speeches as a whole. They tend to be laundry lists. But this one showed that Bush still has some fight in him--and, if not Churchillian eloquence, at least some ability to state the sobering facts of our current situation, and the consequences of a pullout (consequences barely mentioned by his opponents).

Jules Crittendon is impressed by what he sees as a sort of eloquence in Bush, at least about the all-important topic of the war. He writes of Bush:

But let’s let this great American orator, finally coming into his own, with quiet confidence and determination even in lonely leadership so deep into this war, tell it himself.

And then he quotes words which, if not exactly Churchillian, could--if America would listen, really listen and take them in--inspire the absolutely vital and necessary will to see this battle through:

This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we’re in. Every one of us wishes this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. Let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory. Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq, because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching.

Many understand that; many do not. Many act as though they do not care. I was listening to Bush's speech for the most part rather than watching, only glancing up every now and then, so I didn't notice this myself (although Crittenden disagrees and says even the Dems applauded):

As the president asked for a chance to make his Iraq policy work, Republicans leaped to applaud. Pelosi and the Democrats remained seated.

Speaking of leaping, some previously quoted words of Bush's leapt out at me, and I repeat them for emphasis:

...it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned...

Unfortunately, one of the reasons we are facing the situation we're in today is that, in recent decades, too often it has been exactly "like us" to do just that. Vietnam, for example. The aftermath of the first Gulf War. And now the constant drumbeat in Congress about Iraq. Our enemies are neither blind, deaf, nor dumb. That's why Saddam played footage of those helicopters on the Saigon roof before our recent invasion of Iraq. He knew that America lacked patience, and he wanted his people to know it. And he was correct.

Can Bush's rhetoric infuse the country with the requisite will? I don't think so; the will itself has to be there in the first place, even for Churchill and the British. I wonder whether the unrelentingly gloomy prognostications in the press, the short attention span of modern life, the lack of knowledge of history, and the frivolity reflected in the overheard comments with which I began this piece don't make it impossible to sustain anything like the sort of mindset we are going to need for this battle.

And need it we will, no matter who is in charge next time, Democrats or Republicans. Because, as Bush said last night:

We know with certainty that the horrors of that September [11th] morning were just a glimpse of what the terrorists intend for us--unless we stop them.

Reflections on being in the stretch of a two-term Presidency

2007-01-24T15:36:00.000-05:00

Seeing Bush's face last night and hearing his voice, I got the feeling that he's fighting, not only the Islamic totalitarians or his opponents on the Hill, but an exhaustion that comes with the fact that he's spent almost all of his six years as President under a degree of stress and attack (foreign and domestic) that is unusual even for that pressured office. It's often remarked how much Presidents age during their terms, and although it doesn't come across as lines in the face for Bush (at least, I don't see them), it comes across as a diminishment of energy and more than a trace of bitterness that wasn't there at the beginning.

This makes sense. Perhaps it's almost normal for Presidents in the last two years of their second terms--but, funny thing, I haven't seen too many Presidents in the last two years of their second terms in my lifetime. The only Presidents who fit that bill were Eisenhower (barely remembered by me) and Reagan (well, he always looked good--he was a movie star, after all). Clinton qualifies, I suppose, with his last two years taken up by Monicagate--which had a certain stress of its own, but it wasn't the usual stresses of office. Nixon and Johnson didn't quite make it, and the others were all one-termers.

I cannot truly imagine the pressures of being President, but they are formidable, to say the least. To be a successful President and not buckle under that stress, one must have intense confidence in one's own decisions. And yet it's best not to be a narcissist, a character trait that often goes along with both politicians and surface (although not true) confidence in decisions.

And speaking of narcissists--this is one of the best news items of the day. Too bad we won't have Kerry to kick around anymore in the 2008 Presidential race.

Sanity Squad Podcast: let's carry a toothpick

2007-01-23T20:43:00.000-05:00

The latest Sanity Squad podcast is up. We discuss gloomy prognostications on Iran and what might be done about the situation there, paranoia vs. denial, Congress and its message to the Arab world, and the West in general as the enabler of its own enemies.

As always, we have Dr. Sanity, Shrinkwrapped, and Siggy.

Will and vision: where is our Churchill?

2007-01-23T14:36:00.000-05:00

Here's a hard-hitting article to mull over before listening to tonight's State of the Union address. The author, J. Peter Mulhern, may be unduly pessimistic, but he's certainly profoundly skeptical about both sides of the fence in American politics today, and I believe his skepticism is mostly warranted, unfortunately.

About the Democrats, Mulhern writes:

Democrats are gearing up to make a lot of noise in support of ignominious withdrawal from Iraq before gracelessly accepting the inevitable reality that the Commander in Chief calls the shots in wartime. This way they hope to appease their defeatist constituency without having to take the fall for yet another surrender and the blood bath that would certainly ensue.

And Republicans fare hardly any better; Mulhern points out that they are ignoring the wider scope of the enemy we are fighting (Iran, Syria) and pretending that we can fight Iraq successfully without facing the huge role other countries play in the region. He writes:

The surreal debate about Iraq is a thin veil covering the real political preoccupation of our time - the competition to assign blame for the next terrorist attack to somebody else. Democrats are setting themselves up to argue that the Republican administration is at fault because it hasn't been diligent enough about homeland security and because it has fanned the flames of Islamofascism by fighting in Iraq. Republicans are setting themselves up to argue that Democrats are at fault for refusing to take militant Islam seriously and working to frustrate our every effort to confront it....[O]ur entire political class has been indulging itself in meaningless partisan disputes when it should have been teaching our Arab and Persian enemies a bitter lesson about the consequences of messing with the eagle.

I disagree with him somewhat in that I think that if we had fought the post-Iraq War occupation(and been unashamed to call it that, by the way) with greater clarity and firmness--shooting looters, stopping Sadr, securing borders--we already would have sent the requisite message to "our Arab and Persian enemies" about the consequences of "messing" with the US

But that opportunity is gone. We can't go back to those days, we can only go forward. That's why I think the current stance of almost all Democrats in Congress (and, yes indeed, some Republicans) sends a terrible message to our enemies.

What is that message? That we lack the will to see anything difficult through. Just wait it out. After Bush, the deluge.

And "after Bush" will arrive in only two rather hamstrung and seemingly short years. The enemy is banking on his successor being less determined to fight them. The mullahs don't lack determination, however; they've been waiting since 1979 for their opportunity to fatally undermine the US and the West, probably longer. Some have waited since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922--whether or not they were actually alive at that time.

Mulhern ends his essay with a question: Where is our Churchill?

He's not just expressing the desire for a leader of more eloquence. He's referring to the fact that Churchill spent the decade of the 30s (the era that seems to most resemble our present one) warning his country against the scope and nature of the peril they faced and ultimately could not avoid. He was ridiculed at the time, but when subsequent events proved him right, he was the obvious choice for Britain's leader.

We don't seem to have a similar political figure. I can't think of anyone in government who's been warning us to prepare on a big enough scale. Perhaps such a person will arise to fit the occasion, if the occasion does arise (and I sincerely hope it does not). Or perhaps that person is here already, and just hasn't gotten the publicity and coverage enough for us to know who he/she might be.

Churchill was eloquent, yes, and he saw the nature of the enemy clearly and early. But to me perhaps his most important and consistent message to the British people was one of patience, fortitude, and will in the face of the terrible and lengthy struggle ahead. In speaking to them, he spoke to the world, and let it--enemies and allies alike--know that Britain's will was indominable, its people unified, its patience almost infinite. And it was so in part because Churchill willed it to be so, and set the example in his own person.

Read, for example, this speech of Churchill's after Dunkirk in 1940, one of the lowest times for the Allies in the war, a year and a half before the US even entered it. The situation was far, far more grim than any we face today (including the possibility of the capitulation of most of Europe, and an imminent Nazi invasion of Britain itself). Of course, in a way, the extreme direness of the situation made things clear; Churchill no longer had to try to persuade the people about the dreadfulness of the enemy, as he had for so many years. No one was mocking him now; Germany itself had made believers out of them.

In his post-Dunkirk speech, Churchill did not whitewash the picture. Perhaps if you read it today things don't seem quite so dreadful because, after all, we have the supreme advantage of knowing how it all turned out. But at the time the future was unknown--as it always is--and Churchill led a nation that could easily have given up, considering what it faced.

This is the genius of Churchill [emphasis mine]:

[W]e shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Note the end of the speech--the reliance on the help of the United States, and the sure knowledge that it would be forthcoming because we would inevitably be drawn into the battle.

Today we face no Dunkirk; no need to evacuate against a superior enemy bent on conquering us. And yet we are acting as though a Dunkirk-like evacuation is the only option left. The situation, as I said, is more analogous to the 30s, when Europe faced a threat that it could have more easily deflected if if had heeded Churchill's Cassandra-like warnings.

Nor is the threat itself analogous; Iran and Syria don't have the military or economic strengths of Nazi Germany. But they have certain things Nazi Germany lacked. One is the capacity to develop and use nuclear weapons, either against Israel, or to threaten their neighbors, or to give to surrogate terrorists to use against any nation they wish--including, of course, the Great Satan (that's us). They also have more potential allies worldwide in the populous Muslim community than Germany ever did in the case of Nazism, or than the Japanese had for their war aims (both movements, after all, were phenomena more national than international in their appeal, although not in their power of conquest). It would require only a relatively small percentage of Muslims to be adherents of the cause of Islamist totalitarian supremacy to achieve a greater number of supporters than the population of Nazi Germany.

Patience and will were Churchill's strong suits. Patience and will are the strong suit of this particular enemy, as well, although in different ways, and for different reasons. Patience and will are most definitely not our strong suits, and this enemy knows it--because we ourselves have made that fact crystal clear.

Churchill understood the overwhelming importance of these traits. Do we? I wonder.

If we don't, another Churchill quote may help us remember (and, lest trolls accuse me of paranoid fearmongering--although I know they will anyway--let me just say that I believe we are more or less in Churchill's first stage regarding Iran, the one in which we can win without bloodshed, although probably not "easily"):

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

Support

2007-01-23T14:33:00.000-05:00

Talk about supporting the troops!

Scientists are political people too: changing minds about climate change?

2007-01-22T15:02:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a break from writing about research on the personality traits of liberals vs. conservatives. I need a rest after this magnum opus, although one of these days I may take one more swipe at the topic.

No, this time it's global warming that's sparked a few thoughts on science and bias in general.

You may have noticed that global warming is a subject I ordinarily don't get into. There's a reason for that,and it's not lack of interest. I've actually read about global warming in some depth--on both sides, as usual (and in this case the Joni Mitchell song with its lyric "I've looked at clouds from both sides now..." is unusually apropos).

My conclusion is that it's a very technical and specialized subject about which I'm unfortunately unable to come to any firm conclusion at the moment, despite having tried, because I lack the specific in-depth scientific background that would enable me to come down on one side or another.

That doesn't stop most people from having a firm opinion. And it's true that, if the global warming alarmists are correct, we need to have opinions--to decide, take a stand, and act. But that "if" is the problem. Because another truth is that the scientists are hardly immune to bias, and this colors their work, despite disclaimers to the contrary.

It's not surprising--after all, scientists are people, too. The "harder" the science the more protection there is against bias (that's why the social sciences are notoriously--and perhaps fatally--susceptible to it). Climate change, although a "harder" science than the social sciences, is still relatively "soft"--a new and poorly understood discipline, complex and fraught with unknowns, especially in the all-important area of computer simulations of climate models. Here's a quote from a recent discussion of some of the problems (hat tip: Pajamas Media):

...for predicting the future climate, scientists must rely upon sophisticated — but not perfect — computer models.

"The public generally underappreciates that climate models are not meant for reducing our uncertainty about future climate, which they really cannot, but rather they are for increasing our confidence that we understand the climate system in general," says Michael Bauer, a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York.

In general, the simpler a system is, and the fewer the variables, the more confidence we can have in the applicability of the results of scientific studies. But climate (like humanity) is a notoriously complex and poorly-understood system, and models for either are inherently unreliable. Therefore predictions are exceedingly suspect in both areas.

And yet policy must be made. So, how to decide? Are sites such as this or this reputable? Without specialized knowledge, how can we know?

One can go by the majority opinion, and it certainly appears that the majority of scientists believe not only that global warming is real (the less controversial part of the equation), but also that it is caused at least in good part by human-generated CO2 emissions (the far more controversial part). But, historically and conceptually speaking, science is not a democracy in which the majority opinion ends up being correct in the end. And what are the political biases of these scientists? And does it matter--how much is their research affected by those biases, especially in an area such as climate change with profound political repercussions and implications? How openminded are scientists to data that threatens their point of view, the hypotheses and theories on which their reputations have been based?

The danger of bias--in science and elsewhere--is present on both sides of the political spectrum, by the way. There's a reason my "change" series (and one of these days I plan to get back to it, by the way!) is entitled, "A mind is a difficult thing to change." It's not easy to reverse one's opinion, and most people resist and defend against data that challenges it, even scientists.

The history of science is replete with theories that have had their day in the sun and then departed, to be heard of no more (except in History of Science courses). As evidence amasses and knowledge grows, old theories are discarded and new ones take their place. We don't know when that tipping point will occur in any particular scientific discipline, but I do know that almost every theory in its earlier stages (especially in the "softer" areas of science) has areas of confusion and data that don't fit into the big picture. As time passes, either the theory is able to explain that data, or it collapses in the face of it. Global warming is an area replete with these anomalies at the moment.

In other branches of science that aren't so tied into policy recommendations, it's fine to wait until more data comes in. The problem with global warming is that, if the alarmists are correct, we need to act soon. And the actions required aren't minor, they are major and involve a certain amount of sacrifice. People are naturally resistant to that sort of thing, as well, and want the danger to be clear and present before they are willing to give up certain pleasant aspects of modern life to which they're become accustomed.

And that's one of the reasons that proponents of the point of view that global warming is dangerous, imminent, and manmade might be tempted to sound the alarm more vociferously than they should based on the evidence at hand, as this article claims. The idea is to get with the program and sound the clarion call.

So beware, those who might want to give a more "nuanced" message, even if they agree with the general thrust. Sometimes the pressure on them isn't so subtle:

Shaman says some junior scientists may feel uncomfortable when they see older scientists making claims about the future climate, but he's not sure how widespread that sentiment may be. This kind of tension always has existed in academia, he adds, a system in which senior scientists hold some sway over the grants and research interests of graduate students and junior faculty members.

"I can understand how a scientist without tenure can feel the community pressures," says environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., a colleague of Vranes' at the University of Colorado.

Pielke says he has felt pressure from his peers: A prominent scientist angrily accused him of being a skeptic, and a scientific journal editor asked him to "dampen" the message of a peer-reviewed paper to derail skeptics and business interests.

And remember, Pielke isn't a climate-change skeptic, he's just not a true enough and strident enough believer. This state of affairs ought to give everyone pause.

The psychology of Psychology Today (about those liberals and conservatives)

2007-01-20T14:25:00.000-05:00

I want to say more about that Psychology Today article on fearful conservatives vs. rational liberals, the one the Sanity Squad discussed in its latest podcast.

But oh, where to begin, where to begin?

I'll start by disclosing my personal association with the article. Back in July, I got an email from an intern at the magazine, inviting me to be interviewed for a piece on political conversions. According to the email, the article was be entirely even-handed and nonpartisan, and would incorporate stories from both sides of the political spectrum about people whose viewpoints had changed. It sounded like fun, and definitely right up my alley.

But if you read the finished product, it turns out that the "change" stories have boiled down to just one, that of journalist and blogger Cinnamon Stillwell, plus four short and superficial blurbs containing a couple of sentences apiece about four famous "changers" (yes, this part was an attempt at even-handedness, at least by the numbers: there were two righty-to-lefties and two lefty-to-righties: Brock, Huffington, Reagan, and Hitchens).

During my rather lengthy telephone interview with author Jay Dixit, he asked me many times whether my post-9/11 political change had been motivated by fear. I repeatedly explained that it had not, referring to my blog articles on change, and describing the process involved in some detail.

Certainly, I said, there had been brief moments of fear, but they were not predominant, and didn't last very long. Instead, it seemed to me that 9/11 had acted initially as a sort of shock to the system, a signal to me that there was a lot that I didn't understand about the world, and that learning more would be of vital importance and would help me know what actions to support as a response to the attack.

I said that reading had been a huge part of the process for me--and in due course I'd encountered books and articles from the conservative side, a point of view I hadn't studied in any depth up to that point (I was already familiar, of course, with the liberal point of view). I emphasized that for me the process of change was not sudden at all; it took several years, and was far more cognitive than emotional.

Looking back, it's clear to me that the questions Jay Dixit asked were designed to get me to focus on fear as a motivator. That's fine, since it turns out to be the main topic of the article. But it hardly seems unbiased or balanced to leave out a story (mine) that challenges the article's conclusions.

I can't know for certain what motivated the author to leave me out of the article entirely. Nor do I know whether there were others who were similarly left on the cutting room floor. But I can't help but wonder whether my interview was eliminated from the final product because I repeatedly gave answers that didn't fit in with the message the author wanted to deliver: that those who became more conservative were motivated by fear rather than rational thinking.

In addition, are fear and rationality mutually exclusive, anyway? As the Squad said on the podcast, fear is often adaptive and functional. After all, it evolved to warn us of dangers, so that we can respond appropriately. The real question is this: even if most post-9/11 "changers" were motivated by fear (and the article presents no data on that particular question; I don't think anyone's done the research), was the danger realistic? If so, fear would be a rational initial response, and could lead to taking appropriate action to eliminate the danger. Denying the existence of a real danger is not only irrational, it can lead to the destruction of the denier.

Nowhere in the article are any of these issues dealt with, even on a superficial basis. And yet they are absolutely vital.

But the bulk of the article had nothing to do with this. The article as published was predominantly a summary of research studies purporting to study the differences between conservatives and liberals; to associate fearfulness and other (mostly negative) character traits with the former, and openness and flexibility (and, ultimately, rationality) with the latter; and to show that fear motivates people to become slightly more conservative in their responses.

I might have written that the finished piece represented an analysis rather than a summary of such research, but that didn't seem to be the proper word. In fact, the Psychology Today article made no real attempt either to evaluate the research or critique it, nor to mention any research that might counter or negate it.

As I went through the article, flaws in the reasoning behind every piece of research cited came to mind. But to really understand the quality of a piece of research and to effectively critique its flaws, it's necessary to go to the source, the original paper itself. To do this for all the research cited in the article would be enough work for a small Ph.D. thesis. So, even though I'm known for my long posts, I'm not about going to be doing that today (sighs of relief all around).

Fortunately, the internet has come to my rescue, as it has so many times before. Someone known as IronShrink has done some of the work for me, and for us.

IronShrink critiques one of the main pieces of research relied on in the article: Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway's review of some 88 previous studies on conservatism. Finding fault with their study seems to have been a bit like shooting fish in a barrel for those well-versed in research methodology (here's another take-down of the same Jost, et. al. article, this one written by Colorado State professor C. Richard Jansen--who, by the way, is a research chemist and nutritionist rather than a social scientist).

Read both pieces, if you're interested in the details. Even in the slippery world of social science research, the Jost review's methodology seems particularly elusive (or perhaps the proper word would be "illusive"). Among other things, as both articles point out, the Jost researchers fail abysmally in their most elementary task, the basic definition of the terms they are studying--conservatism and liberalism.

Just to get a bit of the flavor of what we're talking about here, the Jost review apparently says that Stalin, although on the left, could be considered as a figure on the right because he wanted to defend and preserve the Soviet system. "Conservative," get it?

Other methodological flaws are enumerated in some detail in both articles. Here's Jansen on the subject:

Jost and his colleagues carried out a meta-analysis of 88 studies involving 22,818 individual subjects in which approximately 27 discrete psychological variables were examined, according to the authors, in terms of the political orientation of the subjects...The methodology and software employed were not described, indeed in this paper there is not even a section entitled methodology or methods. Meta-analysis to be even valid much less successful should be based on a systematic review of the available literature, definition of terms, and a complete unbiased collection of original high quality studies that examine the same, not 27 variables in terms of 12 other variables.

This clearly was not done...[A] hodgepodge of variables were examined in studies involving mostly undergraduate students. The subjects, other than undergraduates were not adequately described, either qualitatively or quantitatively. Gender, age, race or ethnicity were not addressed. The authors describe no efforts to attest to the quality of the studies examined, or the biases potentially involved in the studies themselves or by the investigators, not to mention their own biases. Many of the studies quoted apparently were not peer reviewed since they were in monographs book chapters and conference papers.. The impression of statistical rigor is more apparent than real...

I'm no expert on research; I haven't got a Ph.D. in the field. But I had to take courses at the graduate level in statistics and in designing and critiquing research, and I worked for a while as a research associate on a large project under some fairly well-known social science researchers. So I know enough to know that you shouldn't leave out important data--and if you do, it usually means you're covering up some more basic flaw in that data itself.

IronShrink goes into even greater detail than Jansen in his piece about the Jost review article. I didn't read the original Jost research (it doesn't appear to be available online), but IronShrink has, and he's not impressed.

I did, however, read another piece of research discussed at length in the Psychology Today article, the Block and Block study. You can find it online here.

I've mentioned that I'm familiar with reading psychology research. I'm also well aware that it's almost spectacularly difficult to design it well, and easy to find fault with most such studies that are done. But even give that caveat, the Block research is almost shockingly poorly designed, especially in terms of sample.

This is the basic design: taking nursery school students in Berkeley and Oakland, California; testing them at the age of three (1969-1971) for certain personality traits; and then comparing the personalities of those judged to be liberal against those judged to be conservative years later, (around 1989), at the age of twenty-three.

So, what's wrong with this picture? Quite a bit, I'm afraid. The most serious problem is the nonrepresentativeness of the sample population. Then, as now, conservatives in Berkeley and Oakland were and are scarcer than hen's teeth. And these were twenty-three-year-old conservatives in Berkeley and Oakland, growing up in the late 60s and 70s--an especially unusual bunch, I'd imagine. There is absolutely no reason to imagine that any conservatives found by this study would be typical or representative of conservatives as a whole; on the contrary. So the generalizability of the study would be highly suspect, to say the least, even if it were otherwise impeccably designed.

But it's actually much worse than that. When I looked at the figures, I encountered what I'll call the mysteriously missing data problem. There were 95 subjects, and when I looked to find one of the most elementary facts about them--how many had been defined as conservatives and how many as liberals--I discovered that Block and Block had failed to report the answer.

How odd. Because the authors had written in the body of their article that, "The LIB/CON [Liberal/Conservative] score distribution in this sample leans toward liberalism, with relatively few participants tilting toward conservatism."

Get that, folks? In this supposedly seminal study on the personality traits of conservatives, not only can we conclude that any youthful conservatives found in Berkeley and Oakland might be atypical in terms of the conservative population as a whole, but it appears possible that the authors found hardly any conservatives at all. At any rate, they're not telling.

Note the authors' careful wording: there were "relatively few participants tilting [my emphasis] towards conservatism." If you read the rest of the paper, it continually speaks of "relatively liberal" and "relatively conservative" [my emphasis again] subjects. Every now and then the authors slip into use of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" without the modifier, but for the most part the authors use the term "relatively." That fact, coupled with the glaring absence of the relevant data involved, leads me to conclude that it is entirely possible that the study featured no conservatives at all.

There's no way to know, of course. But the authors' careful hedginess about terminology such as "relatively," their mentioning the paucity of conservatives in the study, and, above all, the missing figures, make me very suspicious indeed. And, if there were few or no conservatives in their population, then what were the Blocks actually studying and comparing? The liberal and the less liberal, perhaps? The Left and the liberal? A worthy task, no doubt, but one that cannot possibly shed much light on conservatives. Because a relatively less Leftist liberal does not a conservative make--even in Berkeley.

But the point is not to attack Block. The point is that Psychology Today, which should know better, breathes not a word of any of these problems or criticisms.

Social science research about politics needs to be especially rigorous because of its potential to reflect the bias of the researchers, whatever side they may be on. Such research is especially amenable to being used (and misused) to score political points, as propaganda. And that's something Psychology Today ought to have been well aware of, and to have guarded assiduously against. Unfortunately, the editors appear to have failed abysmally at that task.

[NOTE: Here's a great email another blogger, Asher Abrams, sent to Dixit. And here's Cinnamon Stillwell's own take on the article. Others speaking out are Fausta, Shrink, and Dr. Sanity. And here's a discussion at Eugene Volokh's by a researcher named Jim Lindgren, who agrees with me on the problem of sample representativeness in the Block study.]

The surge and the Sadrists and the Sunnis (and the AP)

2007-01-19T13:37:00.000-05:00

When I read this article, entitled "Iraqi rebel army expressing siege mentality," I found myself doing a double-take: this is the AP?

The piece seemed relatively upbeat about, of all things, the "surge," the new commanders of US forces in Iraq, and their plan.

Far more important than the AP and its editorial politices, of course, is the actual information contained in the article. It touches on a concern of mine about whether the announcement of our plan might possibly give the enemy enough warning to be able to evade the net more easily (see here and here).

According to Steven R. Hurst, author of the article, the Sadrists are running scared. Something about this one's got them worried--that is, if we can believe what they are saying:

[Sadrist commanders'] account of an organization now fighting for its very existence could represent a tactical and propaganda feint, but there was mounting evidence the militia is increasingly off balance and has ordered its gunmen to melt back into the population. To avoid capture, commanders report no longer using cell phones and fighters are removing their black uniforms and hiding their weapons during the day.

The key to the new notion the Sadrists have of the potential seriousness of this particular campaign? President Maliki sounds as though he might be on board this time against them, instead of providing them protection.

And why? According to the article, Maliki told Bush at a meeting in November that he would no longer stand in the way of our going against Sadr. And what's behind that change of heart? Well, one begins to wonder whether Psychology Today might be correct after all, at least about certain political conversions to conservatism being motivated by fear--someone seems to have put the fear into Maliki, at least.

And whom might that be? Here's the money quote:

Jordan's King Abdullah II was said by al-Maliki confidants to have conveyed the increasing anger of fellow Sunni leaders in the Middle East over the continuing slaughter of Sunni Muslims at the hands of Shiite death squads.

That just may be the most important sentence in the entire article. It's becoming increasingly apparent that the surrounding Arab nations with their largely Sunni populations are not at all cheered by the possibility of a Shiite (read: Iranian-allied) ascendance in Iraq.

Jordan has always been an interesting nation among the group--the most clearly moderate and Western-friendly of all (or what passes for moderation in that neck of the woods). What's more, Jordan has not been at all shy in the past about using power against other Arab states or peoples when its own survival warrants (see Black September).

As noted before, what the Sadrists are telling the AP might be the equivalent of a psych-op. Hard to tell. But here is some more:

The third commander, who also spoke anonymously to protect his identity, said U.S.-led raiding parties were now also engaged in massive sweeps, having rounded up what he said was every male old enough to carry a gun in south Baghdad's Um al-Maalef neighborhood Tuesday night.

As for the US, the military seems to be aware of the potential for running and hiding on the part of the enemy, and to have prepared for this eventuality:

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said the security strategy and the additional American forces would allow the crackdown to be sufficiently broad to sweep up those who try to escape Baghdad and operate elsewhere.

"On the militia, the Baghdad plan itself is integrated to a holistic, countrywide plan that the multinational corps is developing. And security for Baghdad won't just come from securing the inside of Baghdad," Casey said at a briefing on Monday.

"It comes from the support zones around the outside as far away, as you suggest, Baqouba and Ramadi and Fallujah. It goes all the way out to the borders to stop the flow of foreign fighters and support coming in there."

Again, one wonders about the motivation for the Sadrist commanders in divulging the following news to the AP, but here it is:

The Mahdi Army commanders said they were increasingly concerned about improved U.S. intelligence that has allowed the Americans to successfully target key figures in the militia.

With this as background, I say "give the surge a chance." But just tell that to Congress. Many of its members seem determined to stop a program that represents the only present hope we have to get these people.

But I suppose some of them consider it more important to "get" Bush, and to get themselves re-elected. And if I sound a bit cynical about that, it's because I am.

[NOTE: Tigerhawk has some further thoughts about Maliki's motivations.]

Sleeping with Saddam, the lesser enemy?: realpolitik vs. the neocon agenda

2007-01-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

Leftists often criticize our present intervention in Iraq by bringing up the point that the US supported Saddam back in the 80s against Iran in the ill-fated--and ultimately stalemated--war that cost many Iraqi and Iranian lives. For example, see this comment in a recent thread:

Are you [Neo} arguing that it's ok if the US practically created Saddam and supported him throughout much of his reign of terror, and eventually had to spend billions and sacrifice thousands to undo the damage, because we are, after all, but mere "imperfect players in an imperfect world."

First of all, I wonder at the logic of the point being made--obviously, if we really did create and support the monster Saddam, then we certainly have a deep obligation to take him out, and even to sacrifice thousands to undo the damage, regrettable though that would be. What's the alternative? Say "Oops, sorry!" and let his regime fester, uncorrected, forever?

Of course not. If the critics were sincere about their argument, it would be used to justify our more recent intervention, not to blast it. But somehow, I've never seen it used that way--odd, isn't it? It does me make wonder whether their argument might just be sophistry.

However, I'll assume this commenter's motivations were sincere, and respond to his/her argument on its merits.

The United States has choices about its actions in the world. The first choice is whether to act at all--not that total inaction is really possible, but relative inaction is. That's the course isolationists have advocated for years, if not centuries. It used to be more possible back when the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans represented huge gulfs of space and time, but it wasn't really possible even then.

And in the last century and this, it most certainly has become less possible. One of the reasons, of course, is that both action and inaction have consequences, although we are able to see the consequences of action more clearly. So, the US cannot help but act--even by refraining from action.

Initially, our attitude towards Saddam was largely shaped by the Cold War, and rightly so. Back then all third-world countries had a choice themselves--and that was, essentially, whether to ally with us, with the USSR (and/or China), or whether to play both sides against each other. In the real world--and that is the one in which we live (after all, we're talking about "realpolitik" here, are we not?) those alliances mattered greatly, and third-world countries were somewhat like chess pieces in the power play of the large states that were struggling with each other for dominance.

The Soviet Union was rightly seen as an evil empire, not only cruel and repressive, but openly interested in amassing as many "satellites" (remember that word?) as it could. Rumor from those old retired CIA agents with the loose lips has it that Saddam was originally supported by the US in 1959 in attempting the assassination of Iraqi ruler Qassim, who was allying with the Soviets at the time.

Whether or not it's true that the CIA recruited Saddam for such a plot--and again, let's assume for the sake of argument that it is--it was the way of the world in 1959. I don't like it at all, to tell you the truth. I wish the world were different. I wish we had found more of an Ataturk to support, someone who would reform and modernize the country with a strong but not an overwhelmingly harsh hand.

But would it have been better to have kept our hands clean, isolated ourselves from the world, and left the field to the Soviets? As I said, both inaction and action have consequences, and some of the consequences of either or both are always going to be bad. And nations must choose, given incomplete information.

What was the incomplete information here? Well, if you read that Wikipedia article on Saddam (and here it is again, in case you missed it the first time) you'll see who Saddam appeared to be back in the early 70s, when he first amassed power in Iraq as right-hand-man to his cousin al Bakr, the President. Not unusual for that time and area of the world, they already had a repressive security apparatus in place to deal with their enemies.

But there seemed to be quite a bit of good, as well. During the 70s, the amount of repressive violence there wasn't anywhere near the reign of terror it became under Saddam, who officially came to power in 1979. Saddam was Vice-President under al Bakr, whose regime in the 70s:

...was providing social services that were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. Saddam established and controlled the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq," and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels...The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

To diversify the largely oil-based economy, Saddam implemented a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and developing other industries. The campaign revolutionized Iraq's energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, and many outlying areas.

On the basis of this, I don't think the US can be faulted for not having seen what was to come later, under Saddam's own watch as head of the country. Yes indeed, the Baath Party under al Bakr silenced many opponents in various harsh ways, including killings at times. But it was, unfortunately, nothing so out of the ordinary for the time and place.

Saddam began to show his true colors and to stand out in this regard only after he became President himself in 1979. I've referred before to the video he made of his early chilling and Stalinesque move to nakedly stamp out anyone who threatened his power.

But shortly after Saddam was flexing his newly-acquired muscles, we had a much greater problem on our hands: Iran. In fact, we still have that great problem on our hands, over a quarter of a century later, and the problem has only grown.

From their ascendance to power in 1979, the mullahs made it clear that their goal was to war against us in any way they could, and to dominate the Muslim world with a new type of totalitarian regime, one based on religious fundamentalism rather than a secular worldview such as Communism. But the goal was the same: "We will bury you.

Iraq's war against Iran started shortly thereafter, in 1980. At first we stayed out of it, but a few years later, when it seemed that Iran was actually going to win, we secretly helped Saddam with intelligence and facilitated Iraq's acquisition of arms from other countries. And yes, we even winked at his use of chemical weapons against the Iranians, and later against the Kurds (one of our very darkest hours):

Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.

It seemed a no-brainer at the time to back Saddam. Not only did he appear to lack designs on us (unlike the Iranians), but it seemed back then that his regime--bad though it was in many ways--was one of the better (or at least the less dreadful) ones in a region not known for its enlightened rulers.

Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation."

Yep.

We dumped Saddam when he invaded Kuwait; dumped him for good. The rest of the history is more familiar than the earlier years; I won't bother to reiterate it here.

So what are we are left with? A messy business, the choices a country must make in the real world.

I'm not whitewashing how bad it was. But those who require moral perfection in our actions on the world stage are either hopelessly idealistic and out of touch with the consequences of what acting on that idealism would have wrought (in this case, the triumph of the Soviets, and later the Iranians), or they are cynically mouthing arguments they don't even believe.

I wish the world were otherwise. But it's not, and pretending the lion has already lain down with the lamb is an absurdity, or worse. There are plenty of lions out here, about to devour huge herds of lambs, and sometimes all we can do is back the lion who seems less voracious.

The funny thing about the whole thing (and I mean funny-strange, not funny ha-ha) is that it is the neocon philosophy that represents one of the only strategies offering a possible way out of the realpolitik dilemma. And yet those who criticize our realpolitik decisions to back dictators also criticize our neonconnish decisions to overthrow them and try to institute a better and more democratic form of government. Odd, isn't it?

Make no mistake about it, however: the neocon notion that we should attempt actions designed to transform these countries into something better is not an easy one to execute, as Iraq has demonstrated (and, by the way, it does not always involve our waging war--sometimes it involves our supporting internal forces within the country itself, as suggested presently for Iran).

I'm disappointed in the missteps of the Bush administration while occupying Iraq (examples: not stopping the looters, not taking Sadr out, way back when). But I don't believe any of these to be insurmountable even now--if we had the political will in this country to understand how important it is to succeed at the task.

This is the stark choice we face: (1) realpolitik business as usual, "he's a thug but at least he's our thug;" (2) inaction, allowing totalitarian Islamism (or Communism before it) to take over most of the world; or (3) trying to transform these regions into functioning democracies that protect human rights.

The latter is the neocon agenda, and I'm all for it. I consider it the best alternative of the lot. But I don't consider myself naive about how difficult it is to do this and how much of an investment in time, energy, money, blood, and will it would cost to succeed. But the alternatives would ultimately demand a greater human sacrifice, and entail even more suffering.

Take your choice.

Sanity Squad psychs Psych Today

2007-01-17T14:41:00.000-05:00

The lastest Sanity Squad podcast is up at Pajamas. The Squad takes aim at a recent issue of Psychology Today purporting to analyze the difference between liberals and conservatives. Well, Dr. Sanity, Shrinkwrapped, and Siggy analyze the analysis.

And even though I don't do links all that often, the aformentioned blogs of my Squad colleagues are always well worth visiting.

[ADDENDUM: I'm planning a further post on the subject of the Psychology Today article.]

Good grief: what about the Iraqi dead?

2007-01-17T13:43:00.000-05:00

In my recent post about how poorly our own Civil War had been going for the North even as late as the spring of 1864, I mentioned the incredibly high casualties in that war compared to what we've suffered so far in Iraq.

A commenter named Global Citizen wrote:

Good grief, what about the Iraqi dead?

A timely observation; Global's comment was written on Monday, and it was on Tuesday (yesterday) that two pieces of news came through the wires almost simultaneously: an especially blood-curdling bombing that killed at least sixty people at a university in Baghdad (yes, a graphic demonstration of how the terrorists eat their own young); and the announcement by the UN that, by their calculations, more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died in violence last year.

The UN figures are disputed by the Iraqi government:

Death tolls in Iraq are controversial because they vary so widely and because there is no uniform, transparent system of tabulating killings throughout the country. The 2006 civilian death toll of 34,452 provided by the UN -- drawn from the Health Ministry, hospital reports and the Medico-Legal Institute of Baghdad -- exceeded official government figures.

Iraq's ministries of defense, health, and interior said in early January that there were 13,896 violent deaths of civilians, police officers, and soldiers last year. An Interior Ministry spokesman, Abdul Kareem al-Kinani, said yesterday's UN figures were "incorrect, unsuccessful, and very exaggerated."

The truth is we don't know the truth, and probably will never know. Both the Iraqi government and the UN are suspect as reporters, and those giving them the data on which any such figures would be based probably have agendas, as well. The expression "the fog of war" covers civilian casualties in a chaotic and violent country in which many sides have a powerful motivation to distort the truth.

But one thing I do know: the murderers are relying on our reporting of the carnage to help their cause by inflaming US public opinion against our mission there.

So, what's the MSM to do? Ignore such a big story? Of course not.

And the killers know that. They also know if they kill enough innocent people with a big enough bang, it will become ever more likely that America will get fed up with our intervention there and leave them alone to do the rest of their dirty work in peace (ironic word, that).

And therein lies the rub for people such as Global--if, that is, they bother to think about what would happen after we leave. I'm afraid that, to many who espouse such an argument, the only Iraqi deaths that really matter are the ones that take place on our watch.

The truth is that Iraq has been a bloody killing field for decades. Back in the years when Saddam and his boys were murdering and torturing Iraqis for fun and profit, did we see the daily death toll printed on the front pages of our newspapers? No, of course not; those deaths slid into the general background noise, the hum of all the other third-world deaths perpetrated by murderous dictators against their own people. Non-Western killers against non-Western victims? For the most part, to the MSM--not our problem, not our news. Relegated to the back pages.

And now, every tally of Iraqi deaths that's published would do well to include a comparison to the deaths under Saddam (which would most likely have continued, unabated, had we not invaded)--or the deaths that are predicted to occur if we leave prematurely. But, of course, they don't. And the left doesn't talk much about these things, either.

It's a bit like the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The suffering perpetrated on the South by the North during that lengthy conflict; the re-education camps and with torture and murder afterwards; and the boat people, so many of whom died in their efforts to escape the regime after we abandoned them--there was hardly so much as a whisper of sorrow from the Left on that score.

Global uses the phrase "good grief" to begin his comment. He/she means it merely as an exclamation of astonishment. But it seemed an apt one to me. Because, to much of the Left, the only good grief to feel is about casualties caused by the US.

The deaths caused by regimes the US is trying to topple? The grief over them isn't nearly as good. And the deaths caused by our abandonment, at the urging of the Left, of a country we had pledged to defend? That's really un-good grief.

In the present conflict in Iraq, the US military has cared more about the number of dead civilians, and tried harder to avoid causing any such deaths, than any fighting force ever has before. And the "surge" policy is meant to flush out and kill the killers of such people.

That, of course, is not enough for the Left. Their remedy for the murders going on now is to leave. And, were we to listen to them, and the aftermath was a huge increase in the number of dead, would the Left ever take any responsibility for that particular bloodbath?

[NOTE: I'm well aware that the far Left often ascribes all casualties, before or after US intervention, as being caused by the US and/or the West in general. According to the Left, damaged third-world countries with murderous dictators are really the result of Western colonialism. Saddam's crimes are on our hands since we supported him now and then because of realpolitik (against the greater threat of Iran, for example). And of course any killings after we leave are our fault as well, because we shouldn't have gone there in the first place.

There is always at least a kernel of truth in these accusations, although they are simplistic and ridiculously reductionist. The US, like all nations, is an imperfect player in an imperfect world. Most of the time we face, as I've written before, "choices among crazinesses."

The validity of the causes for our intervention in Iraq has been rehashed ad nauseum: in a nutshell, I still consider them valid, although our execution has been faulty. The topic of this post, however, is how the MSM shortsightedly picks and chooses which casualties in Iraq to pay attention to, and how the Left uses that information to suggest actions likely to cause more of those innocent Iraqi casualties it purports to care so much about.]

Iraq: lost in translation?

2007-01-16T09:56:00.000-05:00

I've written before about Peter Braestrup's book Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington. It describes how the media got the Tet Offensive wrong.

Braestrup's conclusion is that the press errors were mostly multidetermied, and that most of them were not necessarily the result of press bias, but rather misperceptions, misinformation, and ignorance. But the whole thing added up to an error of major proportions, one that had a huge effect on American public opinion.

Granted, Amir Taheri's latest NY Post column is no Big Story. For starters, it's a short essay, not a book. Perhaps we'll call it "Small Story." But that's only because of its length, not its importance. Because there's nothing little about press distortions concerning Iraq, nor about their importance in influencing the course of this war and our will to fight it.

Like Braestrup, Taheri doesn't ascribe all the errors of Iraq reportage to bias or intent. Some are simply the function of reporters' lack of knowledge of the language. Dependent on translators, they don't always get the correct information--especially in the early years, translators often had agendas. Journalist isolation is part of the problem, as well. Both hazards are inherent when trying to cover events in a unfamiliar country that has been blocked from significant contact with the West for decades. Then there's the fact that news of bombings and death is easy to report, and has the old "if it bleeds, it ledes" sensationalistic appeal.

Bias does come into play as well, however. According to Taheri, many papers predicted chaos and failure in Iraq and don't want to be proven wrong, and thus they naturally skew their coverage to the negative. Whether or not this motivation is conscious and deliberate, or subtle and hidden, perhaps even from the journalists themselves (I happen to believe the latter is the case), is unknown.

Taheri also gives us some of the Iraqi good news that we usually don't hear too much about:

Last month, Iraq received the U.N.'s special environmental prize for reviving parts of the marshes drained by Saddam, thus saving one of the world's most precious ecological treasures. Almost no one in the media noticed.

Also last month, the Iraqi soccer squad reached the finals of the Asian Games - beating out Japan, China, South Korea and Iran. Again, few in the West noticed.

In 2006, almost 200 major reconstruction projects were officially completed and 4,000 new private companies registered in Iraq. But few seem interested in the return of private capitalism after nearly 50 years of Soviet-style control.

Iraq's new political life is either ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. The creation of political parties (some emerging from decades of clandestine life), the work of Iraq's parliament, the fact that it is almost the only Arab country where people are free to discuss politics to their hearts' content - these are of no interest to those determined to see Iraq as a disaster, as proof that toppling Saddam was a modern version of the original sin.

Iraq may still become any of those things - but right now it is none of them. When the real history of the Iraq war is written, posterity might marvel at the way modern media were used to manufacture that original sin.

Let's hope Taheri never has to write that sorrowful sequel to Braestrup's book: The Bigger Story.

Cat-and-mouse, jihadis and the "surge:" they can run, but can they hide?

2007-01-15T15:17:00.000-05:00

I wondered about it a few days ago: what's to stop the terrorists/jihadis/insurgents in Iraq from running away in the face of the proposed surge, and living to fight another day?

The answer seems to be "nothing, at least for the moment." It's been reported that that's exactly what's happening--the jihadis are dispersing to areas other than Baghdad.

The terrorists are many things, but they're certainly not dumb (although I often think that false perception allowed us to soothe ourselves into our state of torpor during the 80s and 90s). And, despite the frequent characterization by the Left of our own military as poverty-stricken dupes, ignorant victims and tools of the Rovian Right, those leading our armed forces are not stupid, either. It's almost a certainty that this jihadi movement had to have been anticipated by the US.

One of the hallmarks of any successful military campaign is the ability to adjust to changing circumstances. It's good to anticipate events as much as humanly possible; but, realistically speaking, this can't be done perfectly, and the idea is to adapt to changes faster than the enemy.

The comments section of the previous thread on this subject contains many shrewd observations. I excerpt a few here:

(1) The primary strategic weakness is the close margin of support for continued fighting in Iraq. This weakness is telegraphed daily by the NYT and major media.

Tactically, the insurgents would know almost immediately when the surge started.

The strategic strength of this message [Bush's speech] is the commitment of forces itself, even if for a limited period of time, and changes in the rules of engagement.

There will be tactical surprises in the actual mission, and on balance, the telegraphing of the surge and change of ROE more than offsets any benefit of surprise.

(2) Strategies that depend on surprise are not strategies, they are tactics and operational details.

This is almost a matter of definition, because strategies are not executed over the course of hours or days, they are executed over the course of months, years, or in some cases, even decades. As such, if your strategy requires your opposition to be surprised month after month by your strategic approach, your strategy is doomed to failure. In that case, you are implicitly assuming that your opponents are stupid, in which case, why do you need a strategy in the first place?

(3) What can terrorists do differently now that they know? They can't go hiding. Why? Because as the newest Counter Insurgency Manual just told us, insurgencies acquire power by creating chaos and then doing the extortion-protection racket game. But when they succede in doing that as the first part of the insurgency, this means THEY are in Power. This means they are now responsible for security. They can't run anymore. They can run when they have no strongholds. But Sadr? Those Baghdad Sunnis? Their enclaves have been safe from American attack for a long long time now, given the limitations placed on American soldiers.

This post at Iraq the Model, discussing the cut-and-run tactics of the jihadis who are leaving Baghdad for parts somewhat unknown, sheds further light on the matter. Right now, the jihadis' situation somewhat resembles that of an animal who's built a cozy nest for the winter but has been flushed out by a hunter. It takes some time for it to build a new and safe place to dwell, and in the meantime there's increased vulnerability.

It seems that not everyone in Iraq wants the honor of housing these new visitors as they build new homes-away-from-home, despite the highly vaunted Arab virtue of hospitality. According to Iraq the Model, locals are already alerting authorities on the movements of the jihadis.

Unfortunately, there are areas in Iraq, particularly Diwaniya, where the Sadrists have already established cozy nests:

...Diwaniya is not far away from Baghdad, and the past few months had shown the level of the Sdarists strength in that city when order was restored only after reinforcements were summoned from neighboring provinces.

The Sadrists feel they are very strong in Diwaniya and what their man in the city said yesterday shows the level of extremism of the Sadr followers in this city...

...the bad guys are adjusting their plans as the government and US military adjust theirs. The clear and hold tactic means militants will have little chance to maneuver within Baghdad like they used to do to work around previous crackdowns so now they are planning to make long-range maneuvers in provinces outside Baghdad.

The cat-and-mouse game continues. As the cats, we have to be craftier than the mice. And much of that craft depends on anticipation, flexibility, and above all, the quality of the intelligence we receive.

Iraq War changes: maybe it's a Civil War in more ways than one (see 1864)

2007-01-14T15:19:00.000-05:00

Recommended reading on a Sunday: this article by Barry Casselman, comparing Bush and his new proposals for the Iraq war to the situation Lincoln faced in the spring before the 1864 election.

Bush, Lincoln--huh? you say.

Well, read it. Casselman is clear that Bush lacks Lincoln's eloquence, and even much more basic communication skills; those are certainly not the similarities he's suggesting between the two. But he points out that, even as late as 1864, many in the North considered the Civil War a lost cause, and the antiwar movement was strong and included violent draft riots.

The opposition candidate in the election, McClellan, was a "peace now" advocate. And the peaceniks of the time had a lot more to complain about than today's in terms of bloodshed; the casualties in the Civil War (all of them, of course, were US casualties, like it or not--and the Southerners didn't like it) were far greater than today, both in actual terms and compared to the smaller population of the time. Follow the link if you're not familiar with the figures; they are shocking.

Lincoln changed course with a new Supreme Commander in the West, General Sherman, who was promoted to that post in the spring of 1864 and began the relentless campaign that resulted in Union victory. Sherman was:

...ordered by Grant to "create havoc and destruction of all resources that would be beneficial to the enemy."

A year later the South had surrendered, roundly beaten in one of the first total wars.

We look at history from the viewpoint of--well, of history. We have the advantage of the passage of many years and the knowledge of where events were leading. But if a history of the Civil War and evaluations of Lincoln had been written in early 1864, they would look awfully different.

A good recent example of the perspective that comes with time are the lovefests that attended the deaths of Presidents Reagan and Ford, with appreciations galore of administrations that had been excoriated by many in their own time (and are excoriated by many still, to be sure, especially Reagan's).

Whether or not Bush's new Iraq campaign will be successful remains to be seen, of course. Whether or not General Petraeus will be the turn-around general that Sherman was also remains to be seen (he certainly is no advocate of total war, however).

Whether Congress will allow us to find out remains to be seen, as well.

The return of the missing: two kidnapped boys found

2007-01-13T13:02:00.000-05:00

This is the sort of story that can easily make any parent's--or nearly any human being's--eyes mist up. I know it did mine.

One of the worst things on earth to imagine--and, fortunately, for most parents, it's an event that remains in the realm of imagination--is the disappearance of a child. For the Akers, 15-year old Shawn Hornbeck's family, it's been a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, four-year struggle in which they've dedicated their lives to finding their kidnapped son, and to other missing children. And now their faith, hope, prayers, and work have been rewarded.

For 13-year old Ben Ownby's family, it was "only" a week of suffering. A week that probably lasted twenty lifetimes, all of them bad.

Amidst the joy, one caveat: the reentry, especially for Hornbeck, will probably not be smooth. I am reminded of another story, that of Steven Stayner, who was kidnapped in the early '70s at the age of seven (much younger than these boys) by a pedophile, and kept for over seven years.

Stayner's captor used sophisticated methods of "re-education" on him, convincing the boy that his parents had forgotten about him and didn't want him back, sexually abusing him, and encouraging him to regard him as his new father. Stayner was only found when his kidnapper hauled in new prey, a young child for whom Stayner developed a feeling of compassionate protectiveness. He planned to guide the boy to a police station, but the child was fearful and wanted Stayner to go in with him. In doing so, Stayner himself was detained, and the entire story ended up spilling out.

But Stayner's re-entry into his joyful family was fraught with psychological problems for all concerned, some of them detailed in an unusually fine made-for-TV film entitled, "I Know My First Name Is Steven" (the words Stayner voiced to the police when he was first being interrogated.) There was a book, as well.

The problems were not surprising considering the dreadful trauma and dislocation all had endured--the fact that they had lost a young child and yet a teenager was returned to them, one who'd seen and endured things no child should ever have to face.

Stayner married young and had two children, but tragically, was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was only twenty-four. But the tragedy doesn't end there.

Decades later, his brother Cary Stayner was found guilty of the 1999 murders of four women in Yosemite National Park, where Cary worked at the time. The vicious murders had gripped the nation, and I was glad to hear the news that the killer had been found. But when I heard the perpetrator's identity, I couldn't help but think of Stayner's parents as well, who had emerged from one long nightmare only to enter another, and then another.

It is highly unlikely that the present case will lead to anything remotely like that. I make no excuses for serial murderers, but one still wonders just how much the kidnapping of his brother and the family trauma affected the elder Stayner boy. It certainly is not the case that something like that causes a person to become serial murderer; that much is certain. But it is also true that those who kidnap children harm far more people than those children themselves. They set up a ripple effect with a long reach.

But today is a day of rejoicing. And I add my hopes that these two kidnapped boys have a smooth and relatively trouble-free re-entry into their families, and that they all resume their lives so that this incident fades away into distant memory, except for the added preciousness it gives the rest of their days together.

Nyamko Sabuni: an Afro-Swedish breath of fresh air

2007-01-13T12:11:00.000-05:00

Who's Nyamko Sabuni? She's the new Swedish Minister for Integration and Gender Equality.

Sounds awfully PC, doesn't it? But Sabuni is anything but. In fact, she's already raised a storm of controversy in Sweden with her statements on the subject of assimilation.

Sabuni herself has impeccably PC credentials, a fact that probably infuriates her enemies, much as the African-American-ness of Condoleezza Rice or Bill Cosby infuriate their Leftist critics in a special way. Her father was a political refugee from the Congo to Zaire and then Sweden, jailed in his native country for opposing the government. Sabuni was twelve when she made the journey to Sweden with her family, learned the language, and thrived in her new environment.

Her father is Christian and her mother Muslim, but Sabuni herself was raised without religion (although Wikipedia's entry on Sabuni has a different tale to tell than the NY Times on her parents--it says both are Muslim).

What has Sabuni done to ruffle so many feathers? Oh, just a couple of little things: called for a ban on wearing the veil for girls under fifteen, proposed that schoolgirls be checked for evidence of genital mutilation, criticized "honor culture" mentalities, and asked that arranged marriages and the state financing of religious schools be banned.

It's hard to argue with the fact that the institution of such policies might indeed foster "integration and gender equality" in Sweden. Nor do they run counter to the prevailing customs of Sweden. But argument most certainly has been mounted; Sabuni is considered unsympathetic to the plight of immigrants (read: Muslim immigrants), despite her own status as an immigrant and daughter of Muslim[s].

Sabuni, who calls herself "Afro-Swedish, maybe," answers her critics thusly:

We have a society that has failed to adapt to new times. We don’t offer people their rights, but we are also unclear about their obligations. So people end up in a kind of no man’s land, where they are neither Swedes, nor Turks nor Congolese.

Hmmm--with rights come obligations. And immigrants to Sweden should end up becoming--Swedes! How revolutionary is that?

{NOTE: Peaktalk wrote an interesting post on Sabuni back in October.]

About cutting off those war funds: beware the veto

2007-01-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

The news is replete with stories about how the Democrats and some moderate Republicans are against Bush's "surge." And many articles also suggest that Congress might even be prepared to cut off funding for the military, or specific funding for that mission, in order to stop it.

This article, more detailed than most, explains some of the legal ramifications of such an act. It's certainly possible to do it, as evidenced by what Congress did during the 70s vis a vis Vietnam (see here for some of that history).

However, one rather large difference between Then and Now is the size of the support in Congress for such a tactic. Since any such cutoff of funds would of course be vetoed by President Bush, therefore its sponsors would need two-thirds support in Congress for an override.

If they don't have that, they might try it anyway, of course--just to get everyone on record as "pro" or "con" for use in the next election. But it would not be implemented; the vote would be an act of protest that would have no repercussions as far as funding itself (the only repercussions would probably be the satisfaction the enemy would feel in the knowledge that, once Bush is gone, they'd be relatively unopposed by a weary US).

In the 70s President Nixon, and then President Ford who followed him, were facing a Congress more strongly Democratic (and even more antiwar on the Republican side, as I recall) than Bush faces at the moment (see here for the history of the composition of the House, and here for the Senate). They knew that acts of such Congresses were practically veto-proof.

I've not noticed any head counts in present-day articles to indicate whether the votes are there for an override. My guess is that they are not. But I'd be interested on any information on that score.

The MSM and the not-so-subtle art of writing the lede

2007-01-12T13:05:00.000-05:00

I could probably spend all my time on this blog just analyzing the myriad variations on one theme: how the MSM skews the news by editorializing when it should just be reporting.

Sometimes it's done overtly. Far more often, though, it's a relatively subtle use of language and--if you'll forgive the expression--nuance. But once you know where/how to look--well then, like Chickenman, it's everywhere, it's everywhere (those who were anywhere near Chicago and a radio in the late 60s know what I'm referring to by that phrase).

Here's today's example from the NY Times: an article about Tony Blair (the first one I looked at when I clicked on their website) entitled "Blair Urges Europe to Stay Aggressive Abroad." The headline is actually one of the better ones (although I'd prefer the substitution of the words "vigilant" or "militarily prepared" for "aggressive").

It's the lede that's so "interesting." Here it is:

As he seeks to define his legacy and stamp his imprint on the future, Prime Minister Tony Blair urged his successors today to maintain the warlike foreign policy that he promoted, sending troops into battle in Africa and the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

An excellent example of the approach the media has used for some years now, what I'll call the "what's in it for me?" outlook. A prime minister or president is always regarded as a self-serving, narcissistic politician rather than a statesman (is this word even in the vocabulary of the MSM any more?).

Of course, politicians do tend to be narcissists, and concerned with their own images. It goes with the territory. But to report, in a straight news article, on a speech by Blair about the central defining worldwide issue of our times--the current war against Islamist totalitarianism--as though Blair's primary concern is his himself and his legacy (oh, how I've grown to hate that word!) is a profoundly cynical and destructive way of looking at things.

It would be different if the article were actually about Blair's self-aggrandizement, or offered any evidence of it. That would at least explain the focus of the lede. But it isn't; it's a straight news article, or purports to be. And there isn't even a hint of any support for the premise of self-concern, at least in the body of the article. On the contrary; Blair's speech is a serious one that focuses on the need for Britain to maintain the ability to fight against the threats that face it today.

Does this sound like the speech of a guy obsessed with himself?:

The frontiers of our security no longer stop at the Channel. What happens in the Middle East affects us. What happens in Pakistan, or Indonesia, or in the attenuated struggles for territory and supremacy in Africa for example, in Sudan or Somalia--the new frontiers for our security are global...It has taken a generation for the enemy to grow. It will, in all probability, take a generation to defeat.

Sounds like a reasonable assessment of a sobering situation, by a man concerned with the future, yes--the future of his country, Western civilization, and the world.

Telegraphing the plan

2007-01-11T15:08:00.000-05:00

This is my question: doesn't a speech like Bush's, in which a strategic plan is outlined, give the enemy the advantage of knowing in advance what the approach will be, and take away any element of surprise? True, the details aren't known; but the broad outline is.

Democracies demand such things, especially modern democracies. But it seems to be a potential problem of some magnitude in waging any war, conventional or assymetrical, does it not?

Bush's talk: we can and will, if we can and will

2007-01-11T14:34:00.000-05:00

[NOTE: The full text of Bush's speech can be found here.]

Bush's speech last night was a tight and subdued performance in terms of rhetoric and delivery. But, what else is new? Although a Churchillian sweep and grandeur would be awfully nice, it's not going to be forthcoming, not from this guy. That's not my main concern.

In content, it sounded okay to me. But what do I know? I'm just an evil bloodthirsty Bush-worshipping neocon warmonger, out to kill as many Iraqis and members of the US armed forces as humanly possible.

Seriously, folks (and no, the third sentence of the above paragraph of mine was not serious, although some would take issue with me on that), what Bush has proposed seems more than a simple "surge." Those who hate and distrust him will consider his speech mere words, just more of the same old same old. And it's true, speeches are always "mere words;" the only thing that matters is action and results.

But those of us (myself included) who believe that although Bush and his generals have made errors, such errors are not only common in all wars, but especially unavoidable in a counterinsurgency/assymetrical-warfare/nation-building situation such as that in Iraq, and will give the plan the benefit of the doubt and let it play out.

Because, make no mistake about it, it is exceptionally important that the situation in Iraq be stabilized. As Bush said, if we withdraw:

Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and...would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people.

There are some interesting possibilities hidden in the speech as almost throwaway lines. One is this:

[Previously t]here were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes.

Without actually using the phrase "rules of engagment," it sounds as though these restrictive and controversial rules have been--or are about to be--expanded and changed. This is huge, if it happens.

What's different about the counter-insurgency methods? According to Bush, now we will have enough forces to stay and hold after clearing neighborhoods; before we could not. (After the speech, I watched Major-General Bob Scales explain details of force ratios, and why this plan has a decent chance of succeeding where previous ones failed.) There was also a suggestion by Bush that troop levels will be increased across the board, not just in Iraq.

For me, one of the strongest parts of the speech was this:

This new strategy will not yield an immediate end to suicide bombings, assassinations, or IED attacks. Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering.

Sadly, he is correct there. The strength of our enemy is that it has realized our deep susceptibility to casualties and media reports of bloodshed. We are a compassionate society, not a hardened one, and such sensitivity is ordinarily a good thing. But in this war against an enemy that cares not one whit about such bloodshed and even feeds on it, these emotions on the part of Western society are cynically exploited and turned against us. Our compassion has become (to borrow a phrase from Churchill) our "soft underbelly," the very best way to attack us.

Bush asks for patience and resolve on the part of the nation. I doubt he'll get it, especially from those Democrats bound and determined to oppose him and withdraw ASAP. Consequences of such an abandonment? They don't need no steenking consequences.

After the speech, I was watching a Fox News interview with Newt Gingrich, not one of my favorites for his role as Speaker in the 90s. But I liked this: when asked "What part should polls play in military strategy decisions?" Newt answered (correctly, I believe), "None," and cited appropriate historical references (Lincoln, for example). He then went on to say that, when the people are fed a steady diet of despair, they respond to what they've heard; and that, if this approach brings victory, a year from now the polls will be quite different.

Bush's speech was sobering and comprehensive: he acknowledged mistakes, made it clear how important success is, described details and strategy, was realistic about the long hard fight ahead, attempted to define success, and declared limits on what we'll give Iraq if they don't cooperate. But, as Bill Kristol said in an interview later (paraphrasing here): the plan is more important than the speech, and the implementation of the plan is more important than the plan.

As for me, I deeply wish Bush had done this before. What took him so long? Why did it require the Republican loss of the election to motivate him to hatch a new plan? That's one of Bush's biggest flaws. Call it loyalty, call it stubbornness, call it whatever you want--he waited too long. I hope the wait has not been fatal to victory; it certainly has hampered and delayed it.

One of Lincoln's strengths was that he was able to change a strategy that was not succeeding. His grasp of military matters was apparently unusual for a civilian. Like all wars, the Civil War differed in some respects from those that had gone before it, and innovations were required to meet new challenges. But it was still essentially a conventional war, with armies arrayed on battlefields, and territory lost and won.

The current war, featuring assymetrical warfare against this particular enemy, seems as though it may be more profoundly different than what's gone before in the long sweep of history, although in some ways it does resemble other long-drawn-out conflicts such as Vietnam and Algeria (especially in the terrorist tactics of the enemy). Those who expect an easy or textbook victory will be disappointed and angry, ready to pull out and abandon Iraq as good riddance to bad business. As Bush said:

It can be tempting to think that America can put aside the burdens of freedom... Now America is engaged in a new struggle that will set the course for a new century.

And then he added:

We can and we will prevail.

We will, if we have the will to do so.

Sophia's available: now get in line, all you guys of a certain age

2007-01-11T13:11:00.000-05:00

Sophia Loren's husband Carlo Ponti has died at the age of 94 (hat tip: Pajamas Media).

Sophia made my list of ten all-time favorite movie stars back in May of 2005. She was (well, I suppose she still is, but I haven't seen a movie of hers in decades) that rarest of rara aves: a sex symbol, a comedienne, and a serious actress, all in roughly equal measure.

Apparently she's an intelligent and witty woman, as well. Her marriage to Ponti--one most people would not have bet on for longevity, back when she was 23 and he, at 45, had left his first wife and defied Italy's restrictive divorce laws to wed Loren in Mexico by proxy--withstood the test of time.

Ponti and Loren were one of those odd couples whose attraction to each other was somewhat opaque to outsiders (that is, of course, hers to him. His to her was plain enough). He must have been a charming and charismatic man, however, at the very least.

I especially liked the Loren-Mastroianni cinema combination. In "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," as well as the wonderful-but-virtually-unobtainable-on-video "Marriage, Italian Style," she showed her comedic talents as well as her physical assets.

But it was her Oscar-winning performance in "Two Women" (produced by Ponti, as were so many of her films) that was a revelation. I saw it when I was very young--perhaps too young. But I couldn't help but be awed by the deeply emotional and yet utterly naturalistic performance of Loren as a mother trying (and failing) to protect her daughter from the chaos of war.

At any rate, the statuesque Loren and the diminutive Ponti had been married for nearly fifty years when he died, a record unusual for anyone these days, and almost unheard of for a star. One thing is certain: Loren's loyalty to Ponti wasn't for lack of opportunity: Cary Grant fell head over heels in love with her, to name just one of many.

But I think this sums it up best, found at Loren's Wikipedia biography:

The Archbishop of Genoa once said that although the Vatican opposed human cloning, "an exception might be made in the case of Sophia Loren."

[ADDENDUM: By the way, when I was looking up Mastroianni I discovered in the Wiki article that he himself was married close to fifty years, to one women. However, in classic marriage, Italian-style, he had a longtime mistress, with whom he had a child. The name of said mistress? Catherine Deneuve. Poor guy.]

"Some Iraqis Express Doubts About New US Strategy:" why, who woulda thunk it?

2007-01-10T14:33:00.000-05:00

Here's a wonderful headline that caught my eye, from, of all things, the Voice of America: "Some Iraqis express doubts about new US strategy."

Why, goodness gracious me my, they do? I'm so astonished I hardly know where to begin. But I'll try.

I've noticed lately (and by "lately," I don't mean in the last few days, I mean during the last decade or so) a growing propensity for the media to chew, swallow, digest, and excrete a story before it has even happened. A good example of the genre was the ISG report--remember that? Heard much of the report lately? No; despite the pre-report hype, it died a merciful death shortly after its release because it was so--to be blunt--profoundly stupid and misguided in its suggestion of negotiation with Iran and Syria, the biggest of a couple of whoppers that didn't sit well most segments of US public, political, or pundit opinion.

And now it remains to be seen whether Bush's new plan for Iraq, when announced tonight, will be the same one the media has been discussing endlessly. My guess, by the way, is that at least the broad outlines will be similar; I'm not sure about the details. Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't it be awfully nice to wait and see what the man actually says before we get incessant, 24-hour a day, worldwide coverage of the reaction to it?

In addition, this particular story struck me as especially meaningless, and transparently so. It is the quintessential "dog bites man" story--after all, a certain segment of a population is going to have an opinion pro or con virtually anything. Just listen to the late-night program "Coast to Coast" (I seldom do, but every now and then I turn it on for a moment) to get an idea of how many people believe, oh, in just about any wacky theory anyone can dream up.

Now, don't get me wrong. Having doubts about the new US strategy is most definitely not akin to thinking the earth is flat, that we never got to the moon, or that Jesus was a mushroom (the latter was the subject of one especially flabbergasting "Coast to Coast" segment I happened to flip onto late one night. Ten minutes were quite enough, thanks you, but they were memorable.)

And as for doubts--well, even I have doubts about Bush's strategy, whatever it might be. Doubts are part of human existence, especially in war. I've quoted Helmuth von Motke the Elder's (love that name!) famous dictum before, but I'll do it again: No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

And I am certain that the average Iraqi has plenty of doubts at this point about a plan he/she doesn't know the details of yet, that hasn't been implemented, and that follows so many dashed hopes raised by previous campaigns and promises. This is news?

The Voice of America article hits some sort of reporting low--at least, I hope it's a low. It quotes three average unnamed Iraqis as expressing some rather reasonable-sounding reservations, then mentions the official Iraqi government line that states the plan will succeed (surprise, surprise!).

Why am I picking on this particular obscure story? Well, for one thing, I found it in the first place because it was highlighted by Google as one of its top stories for today, so it's getting an awful lot of attention relative to any merit it might have. For another, even though it's an extreme example, it shows the naked media tendency towards shaping the news in a negative and often meaningless way: write a headline that makes it look as though Iraqis have already rejected Bush's plan (and perhaps they have, but you wouldn't know it based on the evidence in this story), do a cursory job of interviewing a couple of people who subscribe to the views you're seeking, and call it a day.

They say there's no bad publicity: Pajamas makes the Times (sort of)

2007-01-10T14:32:00.000-05:00

In this story about how bloggers won't let go of the controversy over the existence of quoted AP source Jamil Hussein, Maria Aspen writes (in the business section of the NY Times):

In a reference to a memorable swipe that Jonathan Klein, CNN’s head of domestic operations, once took at bloggers who work from their living rooms, Ms. Wagner wrote in an e-mail message: "Our reporters are not 'pajamas media.' "

She added, "Our reporters tell what they’ve seen and heard to editors who ask tougher questions than many of these bloggers might imagine."

Oh, I dunno; I can imagine some pretty tough questions, although not maybe NY Times-tough or AP-tough. "Have you stopped beating your wife?" for example. Or even, "Do you have independent corroboration of this source?"

Be that as it may, I have a sneaking suspicion that, unbeknownst to Ms. Aspen, Ms. Wagner's reference was a double one--not just to Klein's original memorable (and sexist!! Let's not forget sexist!) statement ("You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.") , but to the media group of which I'm a proud member, Pajamas Media.

They say there's no bad publicity, but unfortunately, Ms. Aspen doesn't seem to have heard of Pajamas; my guess is that Ms. Wagner has.

The Squad tees off...

2007-01-10T14:31:00.000-05:00

...on Congress's reaction to Bush's Iraq plan (before he's announced it), utopia and tyranny, self-defense, and a myriad of other assorted issues. It's me, sans cold; Siggy; Dr. Sanity; and Shrink. Join us.

Now, here's a Democrat who makes sense

2007-01-09T16:40:00.000-05:00

I like Joe Donnelly's style.

Who's Joe Donnelly? A very freshman US Congressman from Indiana, one of the Blue Dog Democrats (in fact, being a freshman, Donnelly might better be called a "blue pup"--and no, I didn't make the term up, as you'll see if you follow the link).

Donnelly isn't all that pleased with Nancy Pelosi. Nor is he--despite his "pup" status--all that awed by Ms. Speaker:

If Pelosi "goes too far one way or another, we're not coming back," Donnelly says. He sees his party's victory in the November elections as less an endorsement of its agenda than a rejection of Republican rule: "People just got real tired of this bunch, and they fired them."

It turns out that there are thirty Blue Dogs in the House right now. And it also turns out that the Democrats outnumber the Republicans there by a margin of thirty-one. So you don't need to be a math wizard to see that those Blue Dogs are the key to the whole thing for the Democrats.

In recent decades it seems that, more and more, each party's leaders tend to come from the more extreme wings of their respective parties. And it's the nature of such politicians to look on any victory as a mandate for their point of view. But--as I've said before--ignore the law of thirds at your peril.

Pelosi may be in the act of making the Newt Gingrich error. Coming on so strong against whatever plan Bush announces for Iraq might not only be counterproductive in terms of the war itself, and the world's perception of our will and our ability to keep our word--but it may even be counterproductive in terms of what Pelosi really seems to care about, victory for the Democrats in '08.

I'll let Donnelly, no Bush sycophant (Donnelly refers to the war in Iraq as a "disaster"), have the last word on this one:

[Donnelly] doesn't support the fixed timetable for withdrawal proposed by Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha that Pelosi, 66, has endorsed. Instead, like Bush, he opposes any withdrawal until Iraq is ``stabilized.''

"My goal is to help the president," he said in an interview. "I am not going to rip him to shreds. If he does a better job, then our soldiers can be more successful, Iraq can be stabilized and our troops can come home."

Works for me.

"A Jewish veneer for the annihilation of Jews"

2007-01-08T16:09:00.000-05:00

They're a fringe, it's true--but a fringe that detractors of Israel have made much of.

I'm speaking of the ultra-orthodox religious Jews who are anti-Zionist. That's their prerogative, of course; eveyone's entitled to his/her opinion, yada yada yada.

But some of them go further then that; in fact, it turns out that six of the delegates to the mid-December 2006 Iranian Holocaust denial conference were such Jews. Collaborating with an Iran bent on the destruction of Israel and Jews is quite a stretch.

And, amidst the hatefest that the conference represented, you can be sure that those Jews were not ignored by the press. In fact, they were highlighted in many instances. Granted, it's a sort of "man bites dog" story, inherently both fascinating and shocking--but still.

For example, several British papers had articles on the conference that featured only one photo illustrating the event. What visuals did they see fit to show? You guessed it; only the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews (see this, for example).

It's hard to know quite what to say about this one. I'll start by simply quoting it:

[Austrian rabbi Moshe Friedman] noted, "We should focus on the reality that the behind-the-curtain individuals and financial providers as well as perpetrators of some of the World War II crimes had been Zionists themselves." Now another Holocaust has taken place, this time involving Palestinians and Arabs -- something unprecedented in history, he added.

The Austrian Rabbi also thanked Iran as the best venue for the conference on the Holocaust because it used to remain neutral during the World War II and was not involved in the event.

Friedman described Iran as a model country in dealing with and tolerating religious minorities.

I recall reading that the motivation for people such as Friedman is the idea that Israel's establishment should only happen when the Messiah came, not through political maneuvering or the UN. So they regarded Israel as illegitimate from the very first.

And here's a letter explaining this group, and likening them to the Judenrat in the Nazi era:

...the Muslims who thirst for Jewish blood are using the Neturei Karta [the orthodox anti-Zionist group] as the Nazis once used the Judenrat (a Nazi-organized system of "Jew Councils" staffed by local Jews and established for the purpose of liaising between the Nazis and the ghettoized Jewish population pending their deportation to the death camps) -- namely, to provide a Jewish veneer for the annihilation of Jews.

A perfect way to put it: a Jewish veneer for the annihilation of Jews.

Here's a discussion of the horrific dilemma that was faced by those tapped to become part of the Judenrat; the situation was not always a simple one of collaboration or self-centeredness. And the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists by no means represent an exact parallel.

These modern day ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists are part of an ancient tradition, however, that of the "useful Jew" (somewhat akin to the "useful idiot"). It's true that, under threat of death (as in the World War II Judenrat), the normal human desire to save one's own skin operates in all groups. But what's Friedman's excuse?

[[NOTE: I was reminded of this phenomenon when I read Siggy's post of the day, in which he likened the so-called "religious progressives" and their complicity with anti-Semitism to the Judenrat of World War II. He also discusses some of the moral complexities of the Judenrats' dilemma.]

5 things you don't know about me

2007-01-07T14:27:00.000-05:00

I've been tagged for one of those meme things by my friend Fausta, "five things you don't know about me."

Ah. what to divulge? I have an unusual breadth of choice, since some of the most basic facts about me are unknown on the blog (real name and specific place of residence, for starters). So I suppose I could take this as an opportunity for a huge unveiling.

I don't think so. But I will reveal the following:

(1) Sometimes I do toy with the idea of "coming out," and divulging my actual name and un-apple-shielded photo. Maybe some day.

(2) I am a fabulous cook, if I do say so myself (and I do say so myself). Maybe my trolls would like it if I put more recipes up here. Nope, suppose not.

(3) Doing the podcast was a big deal for me because I've always been a bit sensitive about my voice. Not my voice in private life--that seems okay--but as a public vehicle for getting points across. I have always been more comfortable writing; I prefer the ability to craft and to contemplate, although on a blog I rarely get the chance or the time to craft things as much as I'd like. Other times, when I've performed, I've been voiceless; a dancer. So the podcast has been a real stretch for me, but I've enjoyed it more than I imagined I would.

(4) I have small feet, hands, and ears. In fact, when I buy gloves, I need to go to the children's section, and this despite the fact that I'm of more or less average height. I mourn the fact that gloves no longer come in sizes other than small, medium, large--the "small" being jumungous, as far as I'm concerned. I think I used to be a size 5, which they actually used to make, and they actually used to fit.

(5) I'm a wonderful friend. Ask any of my friends.

Oh, and here's a sixth: a posed photo from my dancing days, just turned sixteen. I look exactly and precisely the same now, of course.

[ADDENDUM: I forgot to pass the meme baton. Take it or leave it, folks, as you wish: Sisu, Alexandra, Shrinkwrapped, Dr. Sanity, and Varifrank.

No surge, Dems urge: beware those helicopters!

2007-01-06T07:00:00.000-05:00

You think I sing a repetitious dirge
“Iraq, Vietnam; please let the two diverge!”
But here’s some news: the Democrats they urge,
“Oh Mr. Bush, don’t recommend a surge!”

And why? They say we’re surely on the verge
Of failure. It’s inevitable. A scourge
Successor Pres (a Dem?) will have to purge
As copters on the roof, they re-emerge.

Yes, you might accuse me of becoming a bit obsessed about this Vietnam/Iraq bitter end comparison. But it keeps surfacing in the news, even if I try to avoid it.

For example, in the article in the NY Daily News that inspired my poem, this is the statement by Senator Joseph Biden that I found especially infuriating in light of history:

In an obvious reference to Vietnam, Biden said Bush intended to leave it to the next President to land "helicopters in the Green Zone, taking people off the roof."

Okay, Joe, you brought it up. And, if you want to be partisan about it, Vietnam was a war in which the major escalation and commitment of US combat forces was the decision of two successive Democratic Presidents and solidly Democratic Congresses (controlled by the Democrats with substantial majorities for the entire duration of the war).

The Republican President who succeeded the two Democrats, Nixon, presided over the drawdown of US troops known as Vietnamization. Those helicopters on the roof were the direct result of the abrupt and sharp reduction of funding voted by a Democratic-led Congress, which made the defeat of the South virtually inevitable and rather sudden, as well. A new Republican President, Ford, was left holding that bag—but the bag was filled mostly by Democrats.

President Bush is a stubborn man, it’s true. He has no intention of abandoning Iraq, although if the Democrats (and some Republicans, to be sure) have anything to say about it they will force him to. But to suggest, as Biden has, that President Bush’s motivation for wanting a surge is to delay things in order to screw the new administration (Biden probably hopes and expects it to be a Democratic one) that will succeed Bush is one of the lowest statements I’ve heard in a good long while, even from a Senator.

The article in the Daily News mentions that Harry Reid has said Bush's commanders aren't in favor of a surge, and so he's "shuffling them in and out" till he finds one who agrees with him. This article in the NY Times describes the situation as far more complex (of course) than Reid indicates. The military has long been divided into two disagreeing camps on that score. The new commander, General Petraeus, labeled as "articulate," is one of the strong advocates of the surge approach. He has overseen the drafting of a recent new counterinsurgency manual, an area in which he seems to be expert.

This doesn't mean the new effort will succeed, even if it manages to clear the Congressional hurdles being set up for it. After all, it's a military truism that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. But it's not surprising that Bush has chosen a general who believes in the same approach that Bush favors, and who represents a different point of view than those who have gone before. And it's no surprise, either, that this point of view is not in line with the defeatist stance of Democrats such as Biden, with visions of helicopters on the roof dancing in his head.

Interestingly enough, it was Saddam Hussein who presciently foresaw this course of events. As I wrote at the time of our November elections:

...no one's ever accused Saddam of being dumb. Here's an interesting tidbit that shows how smart he really was: in the buildup to the Iraqi war in 2003, Saddam was already making the Vietnam analogy:

In the days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, television stations there showed 1975 footage of U.S. embassy support personnel escaping to helicopters from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. It was Saddam's message to his people that the United States does not keep its commitments ...

Too bad he isn't around to see it all, isn't it?

Could Congress pull off a 1974-1975 redux, after all?

2007-01-05T15:38:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about the limitations Congress might face in opposing a "surge" of American troops in Iraq if--as rumor would have it--such a surge is part of Bush's new Iraq policy to be unveiled next week.

Today I read this article by E.J. Dionne, which describes some more creative solutions contemplated by Democratic leaders such as Biden.

As I wrote yesterday, at this point the only direct way to oppose the surge would be some sort of vast reduction in military funding as a whole--as opposed to the mere cutting back of foreign aid to a specific country, as was done to the South Vietnamese at the tail end of 1974, when US combat forces had departed years earlier.

But there are indirect ways, as well--for example, a Congressional resolution which could, according to Biden:

...have a powerful effect if it drew support from the significant number of Republican senators who are increasingly alienated from Bush's policies. An anti-surge resolution might not bind the president, says Biden, but it would exert considerable pressure on him to reconsider his approach.

I'm not sure he doesn't underestimate (or "misunderestimate") Bush's ability to resist such pressure. After all, as I pointed out yesterday, it's not as though Bush is up for re-election. And I'm not sure he cares all that much, either, about the re-election prospects of those Republicans in Congress who might be anti-surge, especially when weighed in the balance against what he sees as the importance of fighting the insurgency and terrorists in Iraq.

But Biden has a few more tricks up his sleeve. And in this, he's also aided by (what else?) the ghost of Vietnam:

Biden is studying whether Congress might reconsider the original Iraq War resolution, which is now as out of date as the news stories of 2002, the year it passed. The resolution includes references to a "significant chemical and biological weapons capability'' that Iraq didn't have and repeated condemnations of "the current Iraqi regime,'' i.e., the Saddam Hussein regime that fell long ago. In effect, the resolution authorizes a war on an enemy who no longer exists and for purposes that are no longer relevant.

Dionne also points out that Senator Carl Levin has high hopes for the passage of a resolution he has crafted with another Democratic Senator, Jack Reed, calling for benchmarks and a withdrawal plan.

It remains to be seen what effect such resolutions might have on this particular President. But the drawback of any such "benchmarks and a withdrawal plan" is that they would make our schedule public and transparent not only to US citizens but also to the enemy, who would be more than willing to lay low during any "surge," wait it out, and take over after we left.

The inherent telegraphing to our enemy of our lack of intent to--in that hackneyed, overused, but still important phrase, "stay the course"--would probably be a fatal blow to any campaign we might mount at this point. To put the kindest face on it, I wonder whether Biden, Levin, and their colleagues realize how important it is to communicate motivation and resolve to any enemy.

The consequences of the pullout in Vietnam were not only huge for those who suffered thereafter in Vietnam and Cambodia, but for the perception of American will and strength in the world. Our words and our promises were considered hollow; we were now a paper tiger. The same would be true--only perhaps more so--for an abandonment of Iraq.

The sharp cutoff in funding to South Vietnam that I mentioned in yesterday's post was only one of several efforts by Congress back then, however, to tie the hands of the US in prosecuting the Vietnam War, even after our combat troops had been withdrawn. Vietnam timelines indicate the following, as well, acts which served to clearly telegraph our lack of intent there:

June 24, 1970 - The U.S. Senate repeals the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. [Perhaps a precedent for Biden's current plans outlined above?]

June 19, 1973 - The U.S. Congress passes the Case-Church Amendment which forbids any further U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia, effective August 15, 1973. The veto-proof vote is 278-124 in the House and 64-26 in the Senate. The Amendment paves the way for North Vietnam to wage yet another invasion of the South, this time without fear of U.S. bombing.

This amendment was passed after all US combat troops had been withdrawn. It also would have tied Nixon's (or any subsequent President's) hands in any efforts to fulfill Nixon's "secret promise" to South Vietnam at the time of the Peace Accords that the US would come to their aid militarily if the North violated the terms of those Accords in the future. Because of Congress, both the North and the South knew that was not going to happen.

Here's another move by Congress from the timeline:

November 7, 1973 - Congress passes the War Powers Resolution requiring the President to obtain the support of Congress within 90 days of sending American troops abroad.

This somewhat controversial resolution, whose constitutionality has been debated, remains in force today. It's an example of the constant tension between the executive and legislative branches of government on the question of the powers to wage war, especially limited actions that fall short of a full declaration of war.

If you go back to that Vietnam timeline and read about events during the year 1972, you'll get a deeper appreciation of what was happening there as Vietnamization progressed. As US fighting forces withdrew, the South Vietnamese were not doing badly against the North. However, there were heavy Vietnamese casualties on both sides (although not US ones) and the international community was protesting.

Crucial US support at the time consisted not just of military and technical aid, but of bombing Hanoi and Haiphong and mining harbors in the North. Note, especially, that the various Linebacker operations had been fairly successful against the North. The Case-Church amendment, passed not long after as a result of outrage against the casualties involved, made it a certainty that no more such operations could be launched.

Read, also, the years 1973 through 1975. The Peace Accords represented a strange compromise that allowed Northern forces to remain in the South, against the will of the South Vietnamese, who were powerless to object because of their fear that the US would cut assistance (which, of course, ended up happening anyway). The successive acts of Congress mentioned above, even before the final financial blow at the end of 1974 (particularly the Case-Church amendment), effectively curtailed the US ability to respond, and the North and South both knew it.

The history of struggle between Congress and the President for control of war powers reached a head during Vietnam. Iraq and Vietnam are different, but they are linked in certain ways. The next few months will see a repeat, not of the specific details, but of the general principles of the jockeying for power between the two branches.

The consequences were huge back in the 70s. This time they will be even larger, no matter which way it goes.

Ford's veto?

2007-01-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's post of mine was linked at Dean Esmay, and my old friend mikeca wrote a critique in the comments section there.

I've already debated mikeca's viewpoint about whether or not the South Vietnamese ARVN might have held off against the North if our support had continued, here, so there's no need to take that question up again. But I was intrigued by his assertion that Ford did not veto the late-1974 bill that pulled the financial plug on the ARVN.

It's an interesting question, although not an especially important one, because I'm actually in agreement with mikeca's contention that it was not only the Democrats who were for abandoning Vietnam; some Republican members of Congress were in favor of it, as well. Ford, only a few months into his unelected Presidency, most definitely didn't have the stomach necessary for the fight, either. He saw his mission as a healing, uniting one, although he himself would have preferred the funding continue.

I went to the links mikeca gives on the subject, as well as doing a number of new searches of my own, and it's still not clear what actually happened. There's no question the funding was cut substantially, and that what was appropriated was woefully inadequate, and that this led to the unraveling of the morale and the fighting ability of the ARVN, as well as the opposite for the North--a conviction, quite correct, that they would now be able to achieve their goal of conquering the South, which occurred in short order.

But the rest of the details are murky. I got my original information that Ford had vetoed the bill from Wikipedia (see under the heading "South Vietnam Stand Alone, 1974-1975"), but no source was given there, nor could I find one.

Vietnam timelines state that the fund cuttoff occurred in Congress in September of 1974, which would have been a month after Nixon's Watergate-inspired resignation. And yet Ford's signing statement for the bill, which mikeca links to, occurred on December 30, 1974.

If I were more familiar with how long it ordinarily takes bills to go from passage to signing, I'd be more able to analyze what the four-month delay might have meant. One possibility, however, is that the bill was indeed initially vetoed by Ford and then overridden, and that he signed it after the override. That's mere speculation, however; I could find nothing else on the subject other than assertions such as that in Wikipedia that there had been a veto, without citations or sources.

We do have the evidence of what Ford thought about the cutoff, however, in his words in the signing statement:

In South Vietnam, we have consistently sought to assure the right of the Vietnamese people to determine their own futures free from enemy interference. It would be tragic indeed if we endangered, or even lost, the progress we have achieved by failing to provide the relatively modest but crucial aid which is so badly needed there. Our objective is to help South Vietnam to develop a viable, self-sufficient economy and the climate of security which will make that development possible. To this end, the economic aid requested represented the amount needed to support crucial capital development and agricultural productivity efforts. The lower amount finally approved makes less likely the achievement of our objectives and will significantly prolong the period needed for essential development.

The understatement of the century.

New Sanity Squad podcast

2007-01-04T13:41:00.000-05:00

Well, we had a Christmas hiatus, and we're back. The Sanity Squad, that is, discussing the reactions to the Saddam execution, plus Somalia. Have a listen.