Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the largest newspaper in Iran during the 1970s. Ever since, he's been writing about the Middle East and Iran for a wide variety of Western papers, as well as the Arab News and the pan-Arab daily Asharq Alawsat. You might say he's well-versed in the region.
Taheri sees the Islamist totalitarian jihadis as jubilant after last week's US election. In fact, as Taheri describes them, our enemies of that ilk from Baghdad to Tehran to Beirut--and everywhere in-between--are probably far more gleeful right now than even the Democrats in Congress. The former view the election as a sign of America's weakness, and are convinced the fix is in for Iraq: it's cut and run time. Showing those films of American helicopters on the roof in Saigon seems awfully prescient for Saddam, who even as he marches off to the gallows may get to shout a triumphant "I told you so!" to his former subjects.
Or maybe not.
Maybe one of the reasons the Democrats aren't feeling so sanguine is that they realize, as Taheri says; it's one of those "be careful what you wish for" things:
Some Democrats may have promised cut-and-run. But, once in power, the party as a whole may realize (to its horror) that, this time, those from whom Americans run away will come after them.
Leaving Iraq precipitously is by no means a foregone conclusion, even with the Democrats in power in Congress. The jihadis make an error if they automatically assume that it is. Although there's no denying that Taheri is correct--this election sends a very bad message regarding American resolve--as he also points out, the Democrats might surprise the Arab world by countermanding that message.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Thursday, November 16, 2006
RIP Milton Friedman
It seems as though it must have been an awfully good life: a long one filled with accomplishments, a happy marriage, and countless friends. Milton Friedman, who died today, was the economist nearly everyone's heard of, the architect of libertarian economic theories followed by Reagan and Thatcher, predictor of the inflationary problems of the 70s ("stagflation"), and hero of former Communist nations struggling to become capitalist.
Friedman believed that government should interfere as little as possible in the economy except for taking a hand in controlling the supply of money. His ideas were revolutionary at the time, since Keynes held sway, but they harked back to earlier thinkers such as Adam Smith.
I'm interested, as usual, in what factors about Friedman's life may have formed him. The shaping of a human being is always, at heart, a mystery, but here are a few clues:
Mr. Friedman’s father died in his son’s senior year at Rahway High School. Young Milton later waited on tables and clerked in stores to supplement a scholarship he had earned at Rutgers University. He entered Rutgers in 1929, the year the stock market crashed and the Depression began.
Mr. Friedman attributed his success to “accidents”: the immigration of his teenage parents from Czechoslovakia, enabling him to be an American and not the citizen of a Soviet-bloc state; the skill of a high-school geometry teacher who showed him a connection between Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn” and the Pythagorean theorem, allowing him to see the beauty in the mathematical truth that the square of the sides of a right triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse; the receipt of a scholarship that enabled him to attend Rutgers and there have Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones as teachers...
In his first economic-theory class at Chicago, he was the beneficiary of another accident — the fact that his last name began with an “F.” The class was seated alphabetically, and he was placed next to Rose Director, a master’s-degree candidate from Portland, Ore. That seating arrangement shaped his whole life, he said. He married Ms. Director six years later. And she, after becoming an important economist in her own right, helped Mr. Friedman form his ideas and maintain his intellectual rigor.
After he became something of a celebrity, Mr. Friedman said, many people became reluctant to challenge him directly. “They can’t come right out and say something stinks,” he said. “Rose can.”
In 1998, he and his wife published a memoir, “Two Lucky People” (University of Chicago Press.
His wife survives him...
Lucky people, indeed--but not blind luck. Friedman was obviously brilliant, but with a creative mind able to synthesize, some experience with the school of hard knocks as well as academia, and a heart that recognized a good potential spouse when he saw one plus the good sense to stick with her for what must have been something like seventy years.
Friedman had the ability to earn the grudging respect even of his opponents, and sometimes even their reluctant acquiescence in the end. That's the mark of a formidable thinker, one whose theories had predictive value. It's also the mark of an honest and open-minded opponent:
Mr. Samuelson...of M.I.T., [who often disagreed with Friedman], who was not above wisecracking himself, had a standard line in his economics classes that always brought down the house: “Just because Milton Friedman says it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily untrue.”
But Professor Samuelson said he never joked in class unless he was serious — that his friend and intellectual opponent was, in fact, often right when at first he sounded wrong.
Mr. Friedman’s opposition to rent control after World War II, for example, incurred the wrath of many colleagues. They took it as an unpatriotic criticism of economic policies that had been successful in helping the nation mobilize for war. Later, Mr. Sameulson said, “probably 98 percent of them would agree that he was right.”
Friedman's major achievement, the one for which he received the Nobel prize, was linking rising unemployment to rising inflation. He also suggested a remedy, one that's generally been followed: to have the Federal Reserve keep the money supply growing steadily.
Here are some visuals for the imagination (I've seen Galbraith in person, by the way, and though far be it from me to doubt the veracity of the Times, he appeared even taller than this, if possible):
In forums [Friedman] would spar over the role of government with his more liberal adversaries, including John Kenneth Galbraith, who was also a longtime friend (and who died in May 2006). The two would often share a stage, presenting a study in contrasts as much visual as intellectual: Mr. Friedman stood 5 feet 3; Mr. Galbraith, 6 feet 8.
But--in a metaphor that's almost inescapable--Friedman was a giant of a man.
[NOTE: Liberals and leftists have criticized Friedman for giving economic advice to the government of Pinochet in Chile. I wouldn't doubt it if some commenters here feel like doing the same (criticizing him, that is, not giving advice to Pinochet). Friedman's pragmatic answer was this:
...if he could help reestablish a free market in Chile, political freedom would eventually triumph there as well.
For a fuller explanation by Friedman, see this as well.]
Friedman believed that government should interfere as little as possible in the economy except for taking a hand in controlling the supply of money. His ideas were revolutionary at the time, since Keynes held sway, but they harked back to earlier thinkers such as Adam Smith.
I'm interested, as usual, in what factors about Friedman's life may have formed him. The shaping of a human being is always, at heart, a mystery, but here are a few clues:
Mr. Friedman’s father died in his son’s senior year at Rahway High School. Young Milton later waited on tables and clerked in stores to supplement a scholarship he had earned at Rutgers University. He entered Rutgers in 1929, the year the stock market crashed and the Depression began.
Mr. Friedman attributed his success to “accidents”: the immigration of his teenage parents from Czechoslovakia, enabling him to be an American and not the citizen of a Soviet-bloc state; the skill of a high-school geometry teacher who showed him a connection between Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn” and the Pythagorean theorem, allowing him to see the beauty in the mathematical truth that the square of the sides of a right triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse; the receipt of a scholarship that enabled him to attend Rutgers and there have Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones as teachers...
In his first economic-theory class at Chicago, he was the beneficiary of another accident — the fact that his last name began with an “F.” The class was seated alphabetically, and he was placed next to Rose Director, a master’s-degree candidate from Portland, Ore. That seating arrangement shaped his whole life, he said. He married Ms. Director six years later. And she, after becoming an important economist in her own right, helped Mr. Friedman form his ideas and maintain his intellectual rigor.
After he became something of a celebrity, Mr. Friedman said, many people became reluctant to challenge him directly. “They can’t come right out and say something stinks,” he said. “Rose can.”
In 1998, he and his wife published a memoir, “Two Lucky People” (University of Chicago Press.
His wife survives him...
Lucky people, indeed--but not blind luck. Friedman was obviously brilliant, but with a creative mind able to synthesize, some experience with the school of hard knocks as well as academia, and a heart that recognized a good potential spouse when he saw one plus the good sense to stick with her for what must have been something like seventy years.
Friedman had the ability to earn the grudging respect even of his opponents, and sometimes even their reluctant acquiescence in the end. That's the mark of a formidable thinker, one whose theories had predictive value. It's also the mark of an honest and open-minded opponent:
Mr. Samuelson...of M.I.T., [who often disagreed with Friedman], who was not above wisecracking himself, had a standard line in his economics classes that always brought down the house: “Just because Milton Friedman says it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily untrue.”
But Professor Samuelson said he never joked in class unless he was serious — that his friend and intellectual opponent was, in fact, often right when at first he sounded wrong.
Mr. Friedman’s opposition to rent control after World War II, for example, incurred the wrath of many colleagues. They took it as an unpatriotic criticism of economic policies that had been successful in helping the nation mobilize for war. Later, Mr. Sameulson said, “probably 98 percent of them would agree that he was right.”
Friedman's major achievement, the one for which he received the Nobel prize, was linking rising unemployment to rising inflation. He also suggested a remedy, one that's generally been followed: to have the Federal Reserve keep the money supply growing steadily.
Here are some visuals for the imagination (I've seen Galbraith in person, by the way, and though far be it from me to doubt the veracity of the Times, he appeared even taller than this, if possible):
In forums [Friedman] would spar over the role of government with his more liberal adversaries, including John Kenneth Galbraith, who was also a longtime friend (and who died in May 2006). The two would often share a stage, presenting a study in contrasts as much visual as intellectual: Mr. Friedman stood 5 feet 3; Mr. Galbraith, 6 feet 8.
But--in a metaphor that's almost inescapable--Friedman was a giant of a man.
[NOTE: Liberals and leftists have criticized Friedman for giving economic advice to the government of Pinochet in Chile. I wouldn't doubt it if some commenters here feel like doing the same (criticizing him, that is, not giving advice to Pinochet). Friedman's pragmatic answer was this:
...if he could help reestablish a free market in Chile, political freedom would eventually triumph there as well.
For a fuller explanation by Friedman, see this as well.]
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
And now for some good news: repealing sharia rape law in Pakistan
Pakistan has taken a step forward after taking several steps backward. Yesterday Pakistan's legislature voted to end the sway of sharia in dealing with the crime of rape.
Ah, sharia. That famous Muslim legal system, steeped in a religion that's so very respectful of women and human rights. But it's not, you say? Ah, but we need to respect a different culture, as the British imperialist warmongers so famously did not regarding the quaint and ancient Hindu practice of suttee:
When General George Napier was governor of Sind province in India in the 1840s, he vigorously enforced the ban on suttee, the practice of throwing a Hindu widow on to the funeral pyre of her husband. A delegation of Brahmins came to him to explain that he must not prohibit the practice at the funeral of a particular maharaja, as it was an important cultural custom.
“If it is your custom to burn a widow alive, please go on,” Napier responded.
“We have a custom in our country that whoever burns a person alive shall be hanged. While you prepare the funeral pyre, my carpenters will be making the gallows to hang all of you. Let us all act according to our customs” The Brahmins thought better of it, and the widow lived.
Old-fashioned imperialism is dead--at least, of the Western variety--despite leftist claims that we are the worst imperialists ever. So Napier's solution is not available to us.
But even Leftists and feminists ought to be privately rejoicing in their publicly multi-cultural hearts at the news from Pakistan. No longer does a raped woman require the corroborative testimony of four Muslim men to confirm her account of a sexual assault. And, praise be, judges are now able to consider forensic and circumstantial evidence of rape, as well. Not only that, but flogging and stoning to death will no longer be on the books for consensual sex outside marriage.
But all is not well in Pakistan for those who want to mess around; far from it. All extramarital sex is still punishable by five years in prison and fines. And we only got a tongue-lashing from our parents, and fear of pregnancy (although I seem to recall that, when I was in college, the crime of fornication was still on the books in several states).
Members of Parliament from Islamist parties boycotted the vote, but it still passed. And President Musharraf, who has pushed for this change for years but always backed off in the past when Islamist groups threatened protests, seems to have gotten his way this time.
Why success now? Perhaps the key was international embarrassment:
Pakistan's rape laws came under international scrutiny when last year when a high court overturned the convictions of five men accused of gang-raping villager Mukhtar Mai, as a form of punishment for an adulterous act by her brother and another woman. She had to flee the country because of the backlash against her.
I'm not sure whether pressures like that would work in a country less Westernized than Pakistan. It's also interesting to note that sharia has not held sway there for very long; these laws were part of a legal "reform" movement that was introduced in 1979. It was a very good year--for turning back the clock to a medieval version of civil rights: 1979 was also, of course, the year of the Iranian revolution.
Ah, sharia. That famous Muslim legal system, steeped in a religion that's so very respectful of women and human rights. But it's not, you say? Ah, but we need to respect a different culture, as the British imperialist warmongers so famously did not regarding the quaint and ancient Hindu practice of suttee:
When General George Napier was governor of Sind province in India in the 1840s, he vigorously enforced the ban on suttee, the practice of throwing a Hindu widow on to the funeral pyre of her husband. A delegation of Brahmins came to him to explain that he must not prohibit the practice at the funeral of a particular maharaja, as it was an important cultural custom.
“If it is your custom to burn a widow alive, please go on,” Napier responded.
“We have a custom in our country that whoever burns a person alive shall be hanged. While you prepare the funeral pyre, my carpenters will be making the gallows to hang all of you. Let us all act according to our customs” The Brahmins thought better of it, and the widow lived.
Old-fashioned imperialism is dead--at least, of the Western variety--despite leftist claims that we are the worst imperialists ever. So Napier's solution is not available to us.
But even Leftists and feminists ought to be privately rejoicing in their publicly multi-cultural hearts at the news from Pakistan. No longer does a raped woman require the corroborative testimony of four Muslim men to confirm her account of a sexual assault. And, praise be, judges are now able to consider forensic and circumstantial evidence of rape, as well. Not only that, but flogging and stoning to death will no longer be on the books for consensual sex outside marriage.
But all is not well in Pakistan for those who want to mess around; far from it. All extramarital sex is still punishable by five years in prison and fines. And we only got a tongue-lashing from our parents, and fear of pregnancy (although I seem to recall that, when I was in college, the crime of fornication was still on the books in several states).
Members of Parliament from Islamist parties boycotted the vote, but it still passed. And President Musharraf, who has pushed for this change for years but always backed off in the past when Islamist groups threatened protests, seems to have gotten his way this time.
Why success now? Perhaps the key was international embarrassment:
Pakistan's rape laws came under international scrutiny when last year when a high court overturned the convictions of five men accused of gang-raping villager Mukhtar Mai, as a form of punishment for an adulterous act by her brother and another woman. She had to flee the country because of the backlash against her.
I'm not sure whether pressures like that would work in a country less Westernized than Pakistan. It's also interesting to note that sharia has not held sway there for very long; these laws were part of a legal "reform" movement that was introduced in 1979. It was a very good year--for turning back the clock to a medieval version of civil rights: 1979 was also, of course, the year of the Iranian revolution.
Post-election blues? Try the Sanity Squad
For those of you with post-election letdown (and everyone else, as well) here's a dose of the Sanity Squad. It may not be the talking cure, but it sure is a lot of talking.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Government lies, press lies: finding the truthtellers on that island
Since last week's election, I've been thinking about Vietnam. Again.
Back in earlier installments of my "A mind is a difficult thing to change" series (and no, readers, I've not given up on composing new installments; they're just so lengthy that I have to find a huge chunk of free time in which to tackle them), I wrote at least four pieces on the subject: here, here, here, and especially here.
A deja vu feeling engendered by this post-election week harks back to the early seventies, the time of Vietnamization and the phased withdrawal of US troops, and then the final pulling of the financial plug on the South Vietnamese in 1975. That war ended, for most Americans, not with a bang but a whimper, as well as a sigh of relief.
Back then, my thoughts about Vietnam--and therefore many of my opinions and feelings--were formed mainly by reading what we now call the MSM but what at the time was simply the press, the newspapers, the papers of record, all the news fit to print. Part of my revisiting of the Vietnam story has been to re-evaluate some of the information and impressions I and many others swallowed at the time, and to look at them in the harsh light of a new day.
There's nothing easy about that process. How does one evaluate what is truth, what is lies, and what is the bias and subtle shading in between? On the island of the truth tellers and the liars, how can you tell the difference, when knowing the answer could be a matter of life and death?
One way, of course, is to look at the track record for accuracy and the known biases of the presenter of such "truths" Another, and my favorite, is to read on both sides and then try to decide. But in the end, the reader is faced with the fact that truth is an elusive beast to stalk.
But it's not a unicorn. I'm not one to throw up my hands in despair and decide that all truths are equally equal and equally unknowable, so why bother. I believe we can--and must--try to learn history as best we can, or be condemned to repeat it. Sometimes I fear that even if we do learn it, we'll still be condemned to repeat it, simply because human nature doesn't change.
Which brings us (in laborious fashion; I know, I know!) back to Vietnam.
One of the constant themes of many critics of the US role in Vietnam was that our government lied. There's no question this was a watershed experience for many Americans who lived through it; for them, ever afterwards, a deep and bitter skepticism towards our government replaced an earlier too-naive trust. For many such people, there was a concomitant attitude change towards members of the press, who were now seen as heroic giant-slayers and (pardon the word) crusaders, bravely exposing those government lies.
I was never one who saw it in such very stark terms. But yes, early on, it became evident that Vietnam was one of the most complex endeavors in American history, one in which the government did appear to lie (or at least bend the truth) about some key issues, such as, for example, the possibilities of actually ever "winning" the conflict. But it's also become clear that the press also had a horse in that race, and wasn't adverse to some shady doings of its own.
Anyone who's read my "change" series knows that a goodly part of my post-9/11 thinking has been a process of evaluating press lies, truth-shadings, and biases. One reason the press can get away with this so easily is because of human laziness: how many people are going to make it their business to become the MSM's fact-checkers? That would be far more than a full time job, although it's become a bit easier with advent of the internet.
Take the Pentagon Papers. We all know the drill: fearless Daniel Ellsberg, at the risk of prosecution, spirits away classified information (not in his pants a la Sandy Berger--the Papers were originally 7,000 pages long, and Ellsberg was a skinny guy) and gives it to the press, who publish it in brave defiance of government efforts and a Supreme Court case trying to enjoin them from doing so. But Ellsberg's--and the Times and Post's--devotion to truth won out, the American people were informed of the government's deceptions, and we finally disengaged from an unwinnable battle.
We can forever debate the Vietnam war itself--its morality, justification, execution, and results; I'm trying not to do that in this post. This is about the sorting through of information.
So, what about the press lies about the government lies? Who will tell that story, and who has the patience to listen? It's a marathon, not a sprint; to tell it requires a laborious wade through a mind-numbing number of documents, and to even read about it requires a bit of work, as well, and a troubling rethinking of old perceptions.
For example, just for the Pentagon Papers alone, the task of evaluation would require actually reading the original Papers, and then reading all the major press stories about them, sorting through the excerpts from the Papers that were published in newspapers at the time, and seeing how they compare to the Papers as a whole. It's something I must confess I've never done, and probably never will do. But others have, and they report some curious goings-on.
A fascinating piece on the subject of war coverage by the MSM--both then and now--was written by James Q. Wilson and appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal. Take a look at this, on the Papers:
Journalist Edward Jay Epstein has shown that in crucial respects, the Times coverage was at odds with what the documents actually said. The lead of the Times story was that in 1964 the Johnson administration reached a consensus to bomb North Vietnam at a time when the president was publicly saying that he would not bomb the north. In fact, the Pentagon papers actually said that, in 1964, the White House had rejected the idea of bombing the north. The Times went on to assert that American forces had deliberately provoked the alleged attacks on its ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify a congressional resolution supporting our war efforts. In fact, the Pentagon papers said the opposite: there was no evidence that we had provoked whatever attacks may have occurred.
In short, a key newspaper said that politicians had manipulated us into a war by means of deception. This claim, wrong as it was, was part of a chain of reporting and editorializing that helped convince upper-middle-class Americans that the government could not be trusted.
We're not on that island of the truth-tellers and the liars, where a single cleverly-worded question can discern the truth. Would that we were; our task would be a great deal easier. But it's plain that there were enough lies to go around, and that the MSM's lies must lead every thinking person to question the earlier version of history that was learned back when events were happening, and when newspaper and television coverage combined to give us our primary perception of the blooming buzzing confusion around us.
In writing this post, I went back and read a few of the comments to my earlier Vietnam essays. I happened across this one, that deals with the very subject at hand: media coverage of the Pentagon Papers:
The NYT and WaPo reporters (Neil Sheehan, et al) who provided a highly abridged (paraphrased and quoted) version [of the Pentagon Papers] to the public of that era ('71) distorted the originals in sundry and fundamental ways in order to imply or more directly state that Pres. Johnson and others employed deceptions at critical junctures in the conflict when in fact (as stated in the original document as well as the scaled down version) they did not. A specific example (and a critical one in that era) taken from Michael Lind's Vietnam: The Necessary War:
The June 14, '71 NYT edition of their edited version of the Pentagon Papers indicates Pres. Johnson had virtually concluded his decision to initiate a bombing campaign against the North by Nov. 3, 1964. (If true this would have made Johnson out to be deceitful toward the American public at an early and critical stage in the conflict.) However the Pentagon Papers itself states: "... the President was not ready to approve a program of air strikes against North Vietnam, at least until the available alternatives could be carefully and thoroughly re-examined." That quote, reflecting November, 1964 circumstances, can be located via a search in this section of the Pentagon Papers.
This single distortion may not appear to be dramatic in and of itself, but there were other overt and more subtle distortions in the NYT's and WaPo's paraphrased versions of this document. In sum they always and consistently distorted the picture in a manner which eroded Pres. Johnson's (and others) reputation, broadly characterizing him as being willfully deceitful; that general mischaracterization is what proved to be critical at the time rather than any single aspect of the paraphrased report.
I'm not trying to absolve Johnson of all wrongdoing; there's enough blame to go around. And some of it most definitely goes to our old friends, those dragon slayers in the MSM.
Back in earlier installments of my "A mind is a difficult thing to change" series (and no, readers, I've not given up on composing new installments; they're just so lengthy that I have to find a huge chunk of free time in which to tackle them), I wrote at least four pieces on the subject: here, here, here, and especially here.
A deja vu feeling engendered by this post-election week harks back to the early seventies, the time of Vietnamization and the phased withdrawal of US troops, and then the final pulling of the financial plug on the South Vietnamese in 1975. That war ended, for most Americans, not with a bang but a whimper, as well as a sigh of relief.
Back then, my thoughts about Vietnam--and therefore many of my opinions and feelings--were formed mainly by reading what we now call the MSM but what at the time was simply the press, the newspapers, the papers of record, all the news fit to print. Part of my revisiting of the Vietnam story has been to re-evaluate some of the information and impressions I and many others swallowed at the time, and to look at them in the harsh light of a new day.
There's nothing easy about that process. How does one evaluate what is truth, what is lies, and what is the bias and subtle shading in between? On the island of the truth tellers and the liars, how can you tell the difference, when knowing the answer could be a matter of life and death?
One way, of course, is to look at the track record for accuracy and the known biases of the presenter of such "truths" Another, and my favorite, is to read on both sides and then try to decide. But in the end, the reader is faced with the fact that truth is an elusive beast to stalk.
But it's not a unicorn. I'm not one to throw up my hands in despair and decide that all truths are equally equal and equally unknowable, so why bother. I believe we can--and must--try to learn history as best we can, or be condemned to repeat it. Sometimes I fear that even if we do learn it, we'll still be condemned to repeat it, simply because human nature doesn't change.
Which brings us (in laborious fashion; I know, I know!) back to Vietnam.
One of the constant themes of many critics of the US role in Vietnam was that our government lied. There's no question this was a watershed experience for many Americans who lived through it; for them, ever afterwards, a deep and bitter skepticism towards our government replaced an earlier too-naive trust. For many such people, there was a concomitant attitude change towards members of the press, who were now seen as heroic giant-slayers and (pardon the word) crusaders, bravely exposing those government lies.
I was never one who saw it in such very stark terms. But yes, early on, it became evident that Vietnam was one of the most complex endeavors in American history, one in which the government did appear to lie (or at least bend the truth) about some key issues, such as, for example, the possibilities of actually ever "winning" the conflict. But it's also become clear that the press also had a horse in that race, and wasn't adverse to some shady doings of its own.
Anyone who's read my "change" series knows that a goodly part of my post-9/11 thinking has been a process of evaluating press lies, truth-shadings, and biases. One reason the press can get away with this so easily is because of human laziness: how many people are going to make it their business to become the MSM's fact-checkers? That would be far more than a full time job, although it's become a bit easier with advent of the internet.
Take the Pentagon Papers. We all know the drill: fearless Daniel Ellsberg, at the risk of prosecution, spirits away classified information (not in his pants a la Sandy Berger--the Papers were originally 7,000 pages long, and Ellsberg was a skinny guy) and gives it to the press, who publish it in brave defiance of government efforts and a Supreme Court case trying to enjoin them from doing so. But Ellsberg's--and the Times and Post's--devotion to truth won out, the American people were informed of the government's deceptions, and we finally disengaged from an unwinnable battle.
We can forever debate the Vietnam war itself--its morality, justification, execution, and results; I'm trying not to do that in this post. This is about the sorting through of information.
So, what about the press lies about the government lies? Who will tell that story, and who has the patience to listen? It's a marathon, not a sprint; to tell it requires a laborious wade through a mind-numbing number of documents, and to even read about it requires a bit of work, as well, and a troubling rethinking of old perceptions.
For example, just for the Pentagon Papers alone, the task of evaluation would require actually reading the original Papers, and then reading all the major press stories about them, sorting through the excerpts from the Papers that were published in newspapers at the time, and seeing how they compare to the Papers as a whole. It's something I must confess I've never done, and probably never will do. But others have, and they report some curious goings-on.
A fascinating piece on the subject of war coverage by the MSM--both then and now--was written by James Q. Wilson and appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal. Take a look at this, on the Papers:
Journalist Edward Jay Epstein has shown that in crucial respects, the Times coverage was at odds with what the documents actually said. The lead of the Times story was that in 1964 the Johnson administration reached a consensus to bomb North Vietnam at a time when the president was publicly saying that he would not bomb the north. In fact, the Pentagon papers actually said that, in 1964, the White House had rejected the idea of bombing the north. The Times went on to assert that American forces had deliberately provoked the alleged attacks on its ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify a congressional resolution supporting our war efforts. In fact, the Pentagon papers said the opposite: there was no evidence that we had provoked whatever attacks may have occurred.
In short, a key newspaper said that politicians had manipulated us into a war by means of deception. This claim, wrong as it was, was part of a chain of reporting and editorializing that helped convince upper-middle-class Americans that the government could not be trusted.
We're not on that island of the truth-tellers and the liars, where a single cleverly-worded question can discern the truth. Would that we were; our task would be a great deal easier. But it's plain that there were enough lies to go around, and that the MSM's lies must lead every thinking person to question the earlier version of history that was learned back when events were happening, and when newspaper and television coverage combined to give us our primary perception of the blooming buzzing confusion around us.
In writing this post, I went back and read a few of the comments to my earlier Vietnam essays. I happened across this one, that deals with the very subject at hand: media coverage of the Pentagon Papers:
The NYT and WaPo reporters (Neil Sheehan, et al) who provided a highly abridged (paraphrased and quoted) version [of the Pentagon Papers] to the public of that era ('71) distorted the originals in sundry and fundamental ways in order to imply or more directly state that Pres. Johnson and others employed deceptions at critical junctures in the conflict when in fact (as stated in the original document as well as the scaled down version) they did not. A specific example (and a critical one in that era) taken from Michael Lind's Vietnam: The Necessary War:
The June 14, '71 NYT edition of their edited version of the Pentagon Papers indicates Pres. Johnson had virtually concluded his decision to initiate a bombing campaign against the North by Nov. 3, 1964. (If true this would have made Johnson out to be deceitful toward the American public at an early and critical stage in the conflict.) However the Pentagon Papers itself states: "... the President was not ready to approve a program of air strikes against North Vietnam, at least until the available alternatives could be carefully and thoroughly re-examined." That quote, reflecting November, 1964 circumstances, can be located via a search in this section of the Pentagon Papers.
This single distortion may not appear to be dramatic in and of itself, but there were other overt and more subtle distortions in the NYT's and WaPo's paraphrased versions of this document. In sum they always and consistently distorted the picture in a manner which eroded Pres. Johnson's (and others) reputation, broadly characterizing him as being willfully deceitful; that general mischaracterization is what proved to be critical at the time rather than any single aspect of the paraphrased report.
I'm not trying to absolve Johnson of all wrongdoing; there's enough blame to go around. And some of it most definitely goes to our old friends, those dragon slayers in the MSM.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Homeward bound
She sits on her bed in a room empty of all else save a modest suitcase and a wicker nightstand with a note taped to it that reads, "Give to Paula the hairdresser." The bed's going to Pam, one of her caregivers.
In the closet rests a single pair of empty sneakers, for tomorrow; a few stark wire hangers dangle above. The living room holds another suitcase, larger, next to a wheelchair and two walkers instead of the usual sofa. Otherwise, just an expanse of wall-to-wall beige carpet, holes in the walls where the pictures used to hang, and the large windows that gave her a view of the trees in all seasons.
My mother's going home. What can "home" mean, at the age of nearly nine-three?
Not the home where she grew up as the only child surrounded by four adults, the large Victorian by the harbor with the rose garden that her grandfather lovingly tended. They dressed every evening for dinner there; he wore spats on his shoes and a carnation in his buttonhole.
Not the home she lived in for forty years while she raised her children and had parties where thirty sharply-dressed couples danced in the basement, and where she was widowed still young enough to be vigorous and healthy.
Not the apartment where she lived for eight happy years with my stepfather, whom she'd met when she was eighty and he eighty-five. He'd taken one look at her at a Florida get-together and said, "That's for me," and they were together till shortly before he died a few weeks after 9/11.
Nor is it the home she's lived in for the last five years, an independent living facility for the elderly in this northern New England town where I reside. It's far away from the New York City borough where her family settled a hundred and sixty years ago, and where she'd lived her whole life prior to coming here. No, this place has never been--could never be--home to her, despite its familiarity and elegant comfort.
This town isn't even home to me, although I thought it might become one when I moved here six years ago during one of those "times of transition" (translated: upheaval and heartbreak) in life. I thought it would most likely be a resting place for some small time before I'd move on. But instead my stepfather died, my mother couldn't live alone, and there was no place that suited her needs close to home.
So she came here, and I became the person who saw to it that things went relatively smoothly; who found the doctors for her (although she kept switching them without telling me), who took her out for dinner every Sunday night (her residence didn't serve dinner on Sundays), who raced over in a crisis and tried to make things better.
A year and a half ago my mother had a stroke, a crisis beyond my power to soothe. And though she's made all sorts of "progress" since then, she's reached a shaky equilibrium where she still needs a certain amount of help, and still has a great deal of fear.
Two months ago a friend of hers from New York told her that an assisted living facility was being built in the community where my mother had lived most of her life. My mother made inquiries, my brother visited the model room and talked to the management, and a few weeks later she announced that in early November, when the place opened, she was moving.
And now that day has come, and my nephew is driving her down to her new room in a new building filled (or soon to be filled) with new people. She's anxious; that much is clear. But a powerful urge to go home is driving her, as well.
At ninety-two, even though she once knew thousands of people, a far greater number of them are now dead than are alive. But since she knew so very many, there's still a surprising number left. They're not necessarily the people she would have chosen if she'd had her pick; but she didn't, and none of us do. The survivors are a random bunch, but they call her on the phone and they swear they'll come visit her now that she'll be nearby. I hope they remember their promises.
I place her pills in plastic compartments as I talk to her. I could almost do this in my sleep by now: the beta blockers in the ones marked "morning" and "evening," the coated aspirin in the "lunch" slots, the vitamins everywhere, the Lipitor and the this and the that in their allotted places. I've got enough containers for one month's worth; after that a nurse or nurse's aide will be doing this.
She already relies on the kindness (and competence) of strangers. In her new place there'll be a new bunch of strangers who will become, if not friends, at least trusted and familiar helpers. She's said goodbye to the crew who've been taking care of her for the past year and a half, wonderful women all. She's said goodbye to her fellow residents, too, but she never made good friends here and is focused on the ones to whom she'll soon be saying hello.
And I? It may be time for me to move on, as well. If she hadn't been here, tying me to this place, I might have moved years ago. Probably to a larger city, one with more action and more choices--or the illusion of more action and more choices. Soon I'll be writing more about this, and maybe have some sort of contest, with a list of desired characteristics: choose the perfect city for neo.
But that's another post for another time. Right now I'm thinking about my mother, hoping she finds what she's looking for in her new place--if she doesn't, I imagine I'll hear about it soon enough.
But in one way she's blessed: she knows where home is. How many of us can say that, any more?
In the closet rests a single pair of empty sneakers, for tomorrow; a few stark wire hangers dangle above. The living room holds another suitcase, larger, next to a wheelchair and two walkers instead of the usual sofa. Otherwise, just an expanse of wall-to-wall beige carpet, holes in the walls where the pictures used to hang, and the large windows that gave her a view of the trees in all seasons.
My mother's going home. What can "home" mean, at the age of nearly nine-three?
Not the home where she grew up as the only child surrounded by four adults, the large Victorian by the harbor with the rose garden that her grandfather lovingly tended. They dressed every evening for dinner there; he wore spats on his shoes and a carnation in his buttonhole.
Not the home she lived in for forty years while she raised her children and had parties where thirty sharply-dressed couples danced in the basement, and where she was widowed still young enough to be vigorous and healthy.
Not the apartment where she lived for eight happy years with my stepfather, whom she'd met when she was eighty and he eighty-five. He'd taken one look at her at a Florida get-together and said, "That's for me," and they were together till shortly before he died a few weeks after 9/11.
Nor is it the home she's lived in for the last five years, an independent living facility for the elderly in this northern New England town where I reside. It's far away from the New York City borough where her family settled a hundred and sixty years ago, and where she'd lived her whole life prior to coming here. No, this place has never been--could never be--home to her, despite its familiarity and elegant comfort.
This town isn't even home to me, although I thought it might become one when I moved here six years ago during one of those "times of transition" (translated: upheaval and heartbreak) in life. I thought it would most likely be a resting place for some small time before I'd move on. But instead my stepfather died, my mother couldn't live alone, and there was no place that suited her needs close to home.
So she came here, and I became the person who saw to it that things went relatively smoothly; who found the doctors for her (although she kept switching them without telling me), who took her out for dinner every Sunday night (her residence didn't serve dinner on Sundays), who raced over in a crisis and tried to make things better.
A year and a half ago my mother had a stroke, a crisis beyond my power to soothe. And though she's made all sorts of "progress" since then, she's reached a shaky equilibrium where she still needs a certain amount of help, and still has a great deal of fear.
Two months ago a friend of hers from New York told her that an assisted living facility was being built in the community where my mother had lived most of her life. My mother made inquiries, my brother visited the model room and talked to the management, and a few weeks later she announced that in early November, when the place opened, she was moving.
And now that day has come, and my nephew is driving her down to her new room in a new building filled (or soon to be filled) with new people. She's anxious; that much is clear. But a powerful urge to go home is driving her, as well.
At ninety-two, even though she once knew thousands of people, a far greater number of them are now dead than are alive. But since she knew so very many, there's still a surprising number left. They're not necessarily the people she would have chosen if she'd had her pick; but she didn't, and none of us do. The survivors are a random bunch, but they call her on the phone and they swear they'll come visit her now that she'll be nearby. I hope they remember their promises.
I place her pills in plastic compartments as I talk to her. I could almost do this in my sleep by now: the beta blockers in the ones marked "morning" and "evening," the coated aspirin in the "lunch" slots, the vitamins everywhere, the Lipitor and the this and the that in their allotted places. I've got enough containers for one month's worth; after that a nurse or nurse's aide will be doing this.
She already relies on the kindness (and competence) of strangers. In her new place there'll be a new bunch of strangers who will become, if not friends, at least trusted and familiar helpers. She's said goodbye to the crew who've been taking care of her for the past year and a half, wonderful women all. She's said goodbye to her fellow residents, too, but she never made good friends here and is focused on the ones to whom she'll soon be saying hello.
And I? It may be time for me to move on, as well. If she hadn't been here, tying me to this place, I might have moved years ago. Probably to a larger city, one with more action and more choices--or the illusion of more action and more choices. Soon I'll be writing more about this, and maybe have some sort of contest, with a list of desired characteristics: choose the perfect city for neo.
But that's another post for another time. Right now I'm thinking about my mother, hoping she finds what she's looking for in her new place--if she doesn't, I imagine I'll hear about it soon enough.
But in one way she's blessed: she knows where home is. How many of us can say that, any more?
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Garden, late fall
Those of you who follow this blog know that when I bought my house I bought the responsibility of gardening, and I've tried to step up to the plate and do right by it.
I've posted photos of the garden bed in the front, the sunny one--in spring, in summer (can't find those, so no link), and in fall. It's always beautiful.
And here it is now, in very late fall, before being cut down and put to sleep for the winter. Although you might say it's dead, it's really not; it's just resting.
Even in this brown and faded state, it seems quite beautiful nonetheless, in a sad and subtle way. At least, I think so. And strangely enough, the roses are still in bloom.
Last year I published this same poem around this same time. It's Robert Frost's "Reluctance," very appropriate to the season:
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
I've posted photos of the garden bed in the front, the sunny one--in spring, in summer (can't find those, so no link), and in fall. It's always beautiful.
And here it is now, in very late fall, before being cut down and put to sleep for the winter. Although you might say it's dead, it's really not; it's just resting.
Even in this brown and faded state, it seems quite beautiful nonetheless, in a sad and subtle way. At least, I think so. And strangely enough, the roses are still in bloom.
Last year I published this same poem around this same time. It's Robert Frost's "Reluctance," very appropriate to the season:
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Recommended reading: Bill Whittle
I just got around to the new Bill Whittle essay, and all I can say is: read it.
Well, that's not all I can say. Whittle is one of those thinkers rather than linkers, and he publishes very seldom, so when he does it's an event. And it's looong.
So I won't add too much to it, except to say that Whittle has a way of getting to the heart of a number of matters (chickenhawks, US imperialism, "no blood for oil," Bush's intelligence or lack thereof, pacifism, and the "Bush lied" meme, to name just a few). Plus a colorful way of writing that keeps it all interesting.
In case you're not up to The Whole Thing--and I sincerely hope you are--here are a couple of excerpts that don't even begin to do justice to Whittle's opus:
Doves think the choice is between fighting or not fighting. Hawks think the choice is between fighting now or fighting later.
If you understand this, you understand everything that follows. You don’t need to think the other side is insane, or evil. Both hawks and doves are convinced they are doing the right thing. But it seems to me there is a choice between peace at any price and a peace worth having.
We cannot undo the invasion and compare that timeline to the one we have. The only data we can use to compare these philosophies is embedded in the pages of history. What does history show?
I cannot think of a single example where appeasement – giving in to an aggressive adversary in the hope that it will convince them to become peaceful themselves – has provided any lasting peace or security. I can say in complete honesty that I look forward to hearing of any historical example that shows it does....
So, contrary to doomsayers throughout history, the destruction of the Barbary Pirates did not result in the recruitment of more Pirates. The destruction of the Barbary Pirates resulted in the destruction of the Barbary Pirates.
And it is just so with terrorism. When the results of terrorism do the terrorist more harm than good, terrorism will go away.
Well, that's not all I can say. Whittle is one of those thinkers rather than linkers, and he publishes very seldom, so when he does it's an event. And it's looong.
So I won't add too much to it, except to say that Whittle has a way of getting to the heart of a number of matters (chickenhawks, US imperialism, "no blood for oil," Bush's intelligence or lack thereof, pacifism, and the "Bush lied" meme, to name just a few). Plus a colorful way of writing that keeps it all interesting.
In case you're not up to The Whole Thing--and I sincerely hope you are--here are a couple of excerpts that don't even begin to do justice to Whittle's opus:
Doves think the choice is between fighting or not fighting. Hawks think the choice is between fighting now or fighting later.
If you understand this, you understand everything that follows. You don’t need to think the other side is insane, or evil. Both hawks and doves are convinced they are doing the right thing. But it seems to me there is a choice between peace at any price and a peace worth having.
We cannot undo the invasion and compare that timeline to the one we have. The only data we can use to compare these philosophies is embedded in the pages of history. What does history show?
I cannot think of a single example where appeasement – giving in to an aggressive adversary in the hope that it will convince them to become peaceful themselves – has provided any lasting peace or security. I can say in complete honesty that I look forward to hearing of any historical example that shows it does....
So, contrary to doomsayers throughout history, the destruction of the Barbary Pirates did not result in the recruitment of more Pirates. The destruction of the Barbary Pirates resulted in the destruction of the Barbary Pirates.
And it is just so with terrorism. When the results of terrorism do the terrorist more harm than good, terrorism will go away.
Friday, November 10, 2006
On withdrawal from Iraq: heed the Law of Thirds
Here's another demonstration of the Law of Thirds (via Pajamas Media)
It's a post by Bill Roggio that analyzes what the midterm election might mean in terms of future policy on the Iraq War. He cites STRATFOR analyst Fred Burton, who mentions polls suggesting that, whereas two-thirds of US citizens "disapprove" of the war in Iraq, only one-third seems to favor a full withdrawal of troops.
Polls are polls, of course, and subject to all sorts of criticism. In my training and experience as a social science researcher, I learned just how easy it is to find flaws in all such studies. However, I've also noticed--over and over--the Law of Thirds operating. And here it is again; only a third seem to advocate the most radical solution, while two-thirds are more moderate. Which group will be heeded by our new Congress?
For myself, I can't quite imagine answering "approve" to a question about the war. One can agree with the decision to go to war given the facts we had at our disposal and the alternatives. One can think things are going better there than the MSM regularly reports. I fall into both these categories, and yet even I would not have answered "approve" if polled--war is too terrible, and there are too many ways in which the war could have been executed better (or at least we think so, with the benefits of 50/50 hindsight and the knowledge that, since we have no authority to implement our suggestions, our thoughts on the matter will never be subjected to the harsh light of reality. )
Like most of the two-thirds who answered "disapprove" to that poll, I've had quarrels with the conduct of the aftermath. It started with a terrible disquiet I felt at the outset, when widespread looting occurred and was allowed to continue. It set a tone of anarchy and lawlessness when a crackdown would have sent a different message. Yes, I understand the troops were busy fighting a war and wanted to ingratiate themselves with a population that they thought was only giving vent to anger at Saddam. Yes, they wanted to avoid the appearance of an occupation. But it seemed to give the wrong message, which was that anything goes.
As I've said many times before, I never expected this war to be easy or short. Actually, I fully expected it to be much worse than it has been; both in terms of initial casualties, and the subsequent battle. Whether you want to call that subsequent battle an insurgency, guerilla war, civil war, or terrorist war, I expected it to go on for a long time and to cause a great deal of suffering, as all such conflicts do.
As for mistakes in planning, failure to anticipate future events, and whether the administration expected the war and its aftermath to be easy or difficult, I've written at some length, here and here, about these questions, including the "cakewalk" issue. Please read both pieces; I have no wish to reiterate what I said then. Suffice to say that it's impossible to anticipate these things fully, and of course the administration did not.
What I never expected, however (and should have expected) was the way the media--and some Democrats and Republicans, just to be bipartisan--demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the nature of war and wars. We've been spoiled, both by our ideals (who doesn't want a cleaner war, one in which hardly anyone gets hurt? Count me in on that one) and our recent history (the Gulf War as the template, rather than World War II).
There is no question that if we expect perfection and give up if the going gets hard, we will become unable to fight any war. Some would say that's wonderful. If we give up on war, all will be peace and light. I say: tell it to the jihadis.
In a piece found at The Corner, a reader sounds a warning:
It seems to me that Americans believe wars end when we say they end. Whether we win (WWII), lose (Vietnam), or draw (Korea), our wars have ended when we said they ended. The defeated Germans, victorious North Vietnamese, or stalemated North Koreans never came after America when hostilities ended. But the jihadists are coming, no matter what happens in Iraq. Make no mistake..
Have we lost the will for any fight that's difficult or at all uncertain, that takes longer than a few weeks, that involves ambiguities and unknowns? I think we have. I hope we have not.
I hope the words of David Warren aren't true:
...in trying to build a secular democracy over the ruin of Saddam’s regime, the Americans tried something they had not the stomach for. From the outset, they imposed upon themselves restrictions that would make that fight unwinnable. As in Vietnam, they adopted a purely defensive posture.
So far as President Bush can be blamed, it should be for showing insufficient ruthlessness in a task that could not be accomplished by half-measures. Alternatively, for failing to grasp that America was psychologically unprepared for real war, not only by the memory of Vietnam, but by the grim advance of "liberal" decadence in domestic life over the generation since.
Read the whole thing. Read the whole thing. And then read it again. And then hope and pray that Warren is a lousy prognosticator:
If Iraq is abandoned, the credibility of America and the West is lost. Iran's hopes of regional hegemony are assured. The Americans will have cut and run after enduring less than one-twentieth of the casualties they suffered in Vietnam; and from a battle more consequential, for it is against an Islamist enemy that is rising, instead of a Communist enemy in decline...
...the consequences of abandoning Iraq will come home to the United States and the West, in a way Vietnam never touched us.
[ADDENDUM: I don't mean to imply that decisions in war ought to be made by reading polls. However, since the majority of Americans don't appear to want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, if the Democratic leadership thinks they do and acts on that supposition, they may find themselves out of office next time round.
Many people (even among those who don't want an immediate pullout) seem to have lost touch with the difficulties and uncertainties, as well as the inevitable mistakes, that are part and parcel of any war, and demand that wars be easier and faster than they ever are. This means that many wars--and the Iraq war is among them--are fought with half measures, and with the knowledge that public opinion is fickle and that people don't have the stamina for the long haul. This can lead to decisions that are not strategically sound, because of knowledge of the impatience of the public. And our enemies know that, and count on it, and act accordingly.]
It's a post by Bill Roggio that analyzes what the midterm election might mean in terms of future policy on the Iraq War. He cites STRATFOR analyst Fred Burton, who mentions polls suggesting that, whereas two-thirds of US citizens "disapprove" of the war in Iraq, only one-third seems to favor a full withdrawal of troops.
Polls are polls, of course, and subject to all sorts of criticism. In my training and experience as a social science researcher, I learned just how easy it is to find flaws in all such studies. However, I've also noticed--over and over--the Law of Thirds operating. And here it is again; only a third seem to advocate the most radical solution, while two-thirds are more moderate. Which group will be heeded by our new Congress?
For myself, I can't quite imagine answering "approve" to a question about the war. One can agree with the decision to go to war given the facts we had at our disposal and the alternatives. One can think things are going better there than the MSM regularly reports. I fall into both these categories, and yet even I would not have answered "approve" if polled--war is too terrible, and there are too many ways in which the war could have been executed better (or at least we think so, with the benefits of 50/50 hindsight and the knowledge that, since we have no authority to implement our suggestions, our thoughts on the matter will never be subjected to the harsh light of reality. )
Like most of the two-thirds who answered "disapprove" to that poll, I've had quarrels with the conduct of the aftermath. It started with a terrible disquiet I felt at the outset, when widespread looting occurred and was allowed to continue. It set a tone of anarchy and lawlessness when a crackdown would have sent a different message. Yes, I understand the troops were busy fighting a war and wanted to ingratiate themselves with a population that they thought was only giving vent to anger at Saddam. Yes, they wanted to avoid the appearance of an occupation. But it seemed to give the wrong message, which was that anything goes.
As I've said many times before, I never expected this war to be easy or short. Actually, I fully expected it to be much worse than it has been; both in terms of initial casualties, and the subsequent battle. Whether you want to call that subsequent battle an insurgency, guerilla war, civil war, or terrorist war, I expected it to go on for a long time and to cause a great deal of suffering, as all such conflicts do.
As for mistakes in planning, failure to anticipate future events, and whether the administration expected the war and its aftermath to be easy or difficult, I've written at some length, here and here, about these questions, including the "cakewalk" issue. Please read both pieces; I have no wish to reiterate what I said then. Suffice to say that it's impossible to anticipate these things fully, and of course the administration did not.
What I never expected, however (and should have expected) was the way the media--and some Democrats and Republicans, just to be bipartisan--demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the nature of war and wars. We've been spoiled, both by our ideals (who doesn't want a cleaner war, one in which hardly anyone gets hurt? Count me in on that one) and our recent history (the Gulf War as the template, rather than World War II).
There is no question that if we expect perfection and give up if the going gets hard, we will become unable to fight any war. Some would say that's wonderful. If we give up on war, all will be peace and light. I say: tell it to the jihadis.
In a piece found at The Corner, a reader sounds a warning:
It seems to me that Americans believe wars end when we say they end. Whether we win (WWII), lose (Vietnam), or draw (Korea), our wars have ended when we said they ended. The defeated Germans, victorious North Vietnamese, or stalemated North Koreans never came after America when hostilities ended. But the jihadists are coming, no matter what happens in Iraq. Make no mistake..
Have we lost the will for any fight that's difficult or at all uncertain, that takes longer than a few weeks, that involves ambiguities and unknowns? I think we have. I hope we have not.
I hope the words of David Warren aren't true:
...in trying to build a secular democracy over the ruin of Saddam’s regime, the Americans tried something they had not the stomach for. From the outset, they imposed upon themselves restrictions that would make that fight unwinnable. As in Vietnam, they adopted a purely defensive posture.
So far as President Bush can be blamed, it should be for showing insufficient ruthlessness in a task that could not be accomplished by half-measures. Alternatively, for failing to grasp that America was psychologically unprepared for real war, not only by the memory of Vietnam, but by the grim advance of "liberal" decadence in domestic life over the generation since.
Read the whole thing. Read the whole thing. And then read it again. And then hope and pray that Warren is a lousy prognosticator:
If Iraq is abandoned, the credibility of America and the West is lost. Iran's hopes of regional hegemony are assured. The Americans will have cut and run after enduring less than one-twentieth of the casualties they suffered in Vietnam; and from a battle more consequential, for it is against an Islamist enemy that is rising, instead of a Communist enemy in decline...
...the consequences of abandoning Iraq will come home to the United States and the West, in a way Vietnam never touched us.
[ADDENDUM: I don't mean to imply that decisions in war ought to be made by reading polls. However, since the majority of Americans don't appear to want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, if the Democratic leadership thinks they do and acts on that supposition, they may find themselves out of office next time round.
Many people (even among those who don't want an immediate pullout) seem to have lost touch with the difficulties and uncertainties, as well as the inevitable mistakes, that are part and parcel of any war, and demand that wars be easier and faster than they ever are. This means that many wars--and the Iraq war is among them--are fought with half measures, and with the knowledge that public opinion is fickle and that people don't have the stamina for the long haul. This can lead to decisions that are not strategically sound, because of knowledge of the impatience of the public. And our enemies know that, and count on it, and act accordingly.]
Bolton: the people's ambassador? Pass the hat
Here's an interesting suggestion from a reader:
I'm just an ordinary middleaged housewife who is very upset that our country might lose John Bolton's service at the UN because of partisan politics. I read that if Pres. Bush went the recess appt. routine again, then Bolton would have to work in a capacity were he does not receive an official salary. Well, it occurred to me that if 2000 citizens made only a $100 contribution, we could cover a year's compensation. I really think this is doable for those of us in the blogosphere and I am writing to my regularly read bloggers to see if they would add their voice to this idea.
I'm just an ordinary middleaged housewife who is very upset that our country might lose John Bolton's service at the UN because of partisan politics. I read that if Pres. Bush went the recess appt. routine again, then Bolton would have to work in a capacity were he does not receive an official salary. Well, it occurred to me that if 2000 citizens made only a $100 contribution, we could cover a year's compensation. I really think this is doable for those of us in the blogosphere and I am writing to my regularly read bloggers to see if they would add their voice to this idea.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Bush: playing politics
I found this via Pajamas Media today, with the following tagline: Question: “If President Bush had [fired Rumsfeld] two, three, four months ago would [the midterms] have been different?” (RCP)
I clicked on the link, hoping to find a discussion that might be a jumping-off place for a post of my own about the subject. But all I saw there was a single sentence, an echo of the question.
So I'll take up the gauntlet and give a nice, hedgy answer: maybe.
I don't think things would have been substantially different. Despite the sound bite of "this was all about the war," it really wasn't. It was about the war and the people's perceptions of it, to be sure. But it was about a lot of other things as well, including corruption in Congress and inadequate handling of it (so, what else is new?), conservative disgruntlement with the current administration and Congress, the usual historical change of Congress during a President's second term, relentless media spin, and Britney Spears's impending divorce (oops, I guess that didn't get announced till after the election. My bad.)
But if Bush had canned Rumsfeld earlier, it might have made a partial difference, and that might have been enough to change the outcome of a few close races here and there.
I don't think it's because of Rumsfeld himself, either, although he certainly had become a highly criticized and polarizing figure. I think it was more the perception given by Bush's retention of Rumsfeld--and I believe it's a correct perception--which is that Bush is one stubborn and unresponsive fellow.
That's not just a perception; it appears to be the truth, a truth that's been known for a long time. Bush digs in, he is very loyal to people and doesn't switch horses easily, and of course he's not the great communicator. That stubbornness of his is a double-edged sword; it makes him resolute but inflexible. He is the antithesis of someone like Clinton, for example, who almost never met a principle he couldn't change if the polls indicated it might be politically expedient for him.
Bush's natural tendency towards stubbornness and decisiveness--not a bad thing in a leader, unless it's carried to extremes, as it has been at times in his case--may also be a reaction to Clinton, and reflect Bush's deep desire to be the Un-Clinton. That he is, but it's an overcorrection. And almost nowhere is that fact in greater evidence than in his handling of the timing of the actual Rumsfeld firing.
Not only did Bush not do what would have been politically expedient, which is to have gotten rid of Rumsfeld at least three or four months ago (to go back to RCP's question), but he didn't even let the press and the people know that Rumsfeld was on his way out even after it actually had been decided, which was apparently before this election.
This is, if you believe Bush's story; I'm sure many don't. I do, because it's consistent with his personality. It tells you that Bush was willing to shoot himself (and his fellow Republicans) in the foot in order to demonstrate both loyalty and his un-Clintonian, non-pandering-to-politics, bona fides. That sort of behavior has cost him votes, approval ratings, the epithet "nonresponsive," and the ire of fellow Republicans.
Now that the other shoe has dropped and the Democrats are in charge of Congress, Bush seems to have changed his tune a bit. So has the media, in a subtle but noticeable way. Now that they have gotten what they wanted--a Democratic victory--they can afford to be ever so slightly magnanimous towards Bush, who's seen as mortally wounded. At least, that's what I discern in articles such as this one form today's San Francisco Chronicle, entitled, "An immediate and dramatic change in Bush's tone." The article states:
In words and tone, Bush conveyed an unfamiliar flexibility and rare willingness to work with his political adversaries Wednesday on his war strategy.
It goes on:
On Wednesday, [Bush] lamented that "somehow it seeped into (people's) conscience that, you know, my attitude was just simply stay the course.''
It could be because Bush himself used the phrase "stay the course'' dozens of times to explain his administration's steadfast determination not to abandon the mission in the face of catastrophic circumstances in Iraq.
These two sentences sum up the problem between Bush and the people, and between the media and Bush. It's true that it did seep into people's conscience (sic: consciousnesses?) that Bush was inflexible. The problem wasn't so much his oft-repeated desire to stay the course, but the perception that he couldn't (or wouldn't) adjust the details of that course in order to find a more effective way of getting from point A to point B. The media had a role in getting that perception across, but Bush didn't do anywhere near enough to counter it.
And then there's the phrase "catastrophic circumstances in Iraq." The Chronicle takes it as a given that the situation in Iraq warrants that particular adjective rather than one a bit less--well, less catastrophic. I'd hate to have seen how the current-day writers and editors of a paper such as the Chronicle would have dealt with the early years of World War II, or the Civil War, or any number of other conflicts. Fortunately, they weren't around then.
I clicked on the link, hoping to find a discussion that might be a jumping-off place for a post of my own about the subject. But all I saw there was a single sentence, an echo of the question.
So I'll take up the gauntlet and give a nice, hedgy answer: maybe.
I don't think things would have been substantially different. Despite the sound bite of "this was all about the war," it really wasn't. It was about the war and the people's perceptions of it, to be sure. But it was about a lot of other things as well, including corruption in Congress and inadequate handling of it (so, what else is new?), conservative disgruntlement with the current administration and Congress, the usual historical change of Congress during a President's second term, relentless media spin, and Britney Spears's impending divorce (oops, I guess that didn't get announced till after the election. My bad.)
But if Bush had canned Rumsfeld earlier, it might have made a partial difference, and that might have been enough to change the outcome of a few close races here and there.
I don't think it's because of Rumsfeld himself, either, although he certainly had become a highly criticized and polarizing figure. I think it was more the perception given by Bush's retention of Rumsfeld--and I believe it's a correct perception--which is that Bush is one stubborn and unresponsive fellow.
That's not just a perception; it appears to be the truth, a truth that's been known for a long time. Bush digs in, he is very loyal to people and doesn't switch horses easily, and of course he's not the great communicator. That stubbornness of his is a double-edged sword; it makes him resolute but inflexible. He is the antithesis of someone like Clinton, for example, who almost never met a principle he couldn't change if the polls indicated it might be politically expedient for him.
Bush's natural tendency towards stubbornness and decisiveness--not a bad thing in a leader, unless it's carried to extremes, as it has been at times in his case--may also be a reaction to Clinton, and reflect Bush's deep desire to be the Un-Clinton. That he is, but it's an overcorrection. And almost nowhere is that fact in greater evidence than in his handling of the timing of the actual Rumsfeld firing.
Not only did Bush not do what would have been politically expedient, which is to have gotten rid of Rumsfeld at least three or four months ago (to go back to RCP's question), but he didn't even let the press and the people know that Rumsfeld was on his way out even after it actually had been decided, which was apparently before this election.
This is, if you believe Bush's story; I'm sure many don't. I do, because it's consistent with his personality. It tells you that Bush was willing to shoot himself (and his fellow Republicans) in the foot in order to demonstrate both loyalty and his un-Clintonian, non-pandering-to-politics, bona fides. That sort of behavior has cost him votes, approval ratings, the epithet "nonresponsive," and the ire of fellow Republicans.
Now that the other shoe has dropped and the Democrats are in charge of Congress, Bush seems to have changed his tune a bit. So has the media, in a subtle but noticeable way. Now that they have gotten what they wanted--a Democratic victory--they can afford to be ever so slightly magnanimous towards Bush, who's seen as mortally wounded. At least, that's what I discern in articles such as this one form today's San Francisco Chronicle, entitled, "An immediate and dramatic change in Bush's tone." The article states:
In words and tone, Bush conveyed an unfamiliar flexibility and rare willingness to work with his political adversaries Wednesday on his war strategy.
It goes on:
On Wednesday, [Bush] lamented that "somehow it seeped into (people's) conscience that, you know, my attitude was just simply stay the course.''
It could be because Bush himself used the phrase "stay the course'' dozens of times to explain his administration's steadfast determination not to abandon the mission in the face of catastrophic circumstances in Iraq.
These two sentences sum up the problem between Bush and the people, and between the media and Bush. It's true that it did seep into people's conscience (sic: consciousnesses?) that Bush was inflexible. The problem wasn't so much his oft-repeated desire to stay the course, but the perception that he couldn't (or wouldn't) adjust the details of that course in order to find a more effective way of getting from point A to point B. The media had a role in getting that perception across, but Bush didn't do anywhere near enough to counter it.
And then there's the phrase "catastrophic circumstances in Iraq." The Chronicle takes it as a given that the situation in Iraq warrants that particular adjective rather than one a bit less--well, less catastrophic. I'd hate to have seen how the current-day writers and editors of a paper such as the Chronicle would have dealt with the early years of World War II, or the Civil War, or any number of other conflicts. Fortunately, they weren't around then.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Not our first rodeo
I caught the second half of Bush's post-election press conference today.
Say what you like about politicians, but one thing they almost always display is an uncommon ability to pick themselves up and dust themselves off, and to do it on what must be almost no sleep at all. Oh, and to at least mouth words, post-election, that make it sound as though working together will be possible, no matter what foul mud has been slung beforehand.
In addition to that, Bush seemed especially--and I know some of you might find this word odd in relationship to that particular person--but especially articulate and focused. His speech pattern, for example, was much more rapid than usual. Virtually gone was the strange hesitation that often ties and muddles his tongue. He spoke rapidly and forcefully, somewhat impatiently, mostly very graciously, and decisively. I heard more off-the-cuff humor than I usually do when he speaks.
Sometimes when bad blows finally come after a period of trying to avoid them, there's a calm that sets in. It's over; now move on. And this election must have been a pretty bad blow, although not a totally unexpected one (in a phrase that is sure to be trumpeted by the MSM, he called it a "thumping" despite the closeness of many of the races).
As most of you know, the focus of my support for Bush is his general approach to the war on Islamic jihadi totalitarianism. I have some quarrels with his domestic agenda, and some disagreements with details of how the aforementioned war has been handled. So I was heartened by two things: one was the resignation (and the acceptance thereof) of Secretary Rumsfeld, who's become a lightning rod for criticism. The other is that Bush is determined not to become a Gerald Ford.
Why the reference to Ford? He presided over the pulling of the plug in funding Vietnam, although "presided" is hardly what he did in terms of leadership. He abdicated, barely making any effort to stop Congress from cutting off all support from the South Vietnamese when a little (relatively speaking) might have gone a long way.
That's the only Vietnam analogy I tried to make here. I'm aware of vast differences between Vietnam and Iraq, and the bottom line is that Iraq is far more strategically important. I don't have quotes from Bush's press conference, but he made it clear that he is dedicated to staying the course in Iraq with a different approach. What a different approach means remains to be seen, and what Congress will do about it is unclear, but there's no question a course correction is needed.
Bush indicated we've been correcting our course right along. That's true, but we need more visible success. It's also true that the milblogs have been trumpeting our successes there right along, but most of America doesn't read milblogs (or blogs at all, for that matter). The nature of the beast is that people need something more visible to counter the body daily count, some measure of success that they can perceive and understand.
My biggest fear with this election has been that the Democrats in the "cut and run" camp will dominate. I'm hoping much of that was just campaign rhetoric, and that more sober minds will prevail now that the Democrats have won. After all, as Bush himself said when asked whether he could work with people like Pelosi who've dissed him previously in such vicious terms: that's politics; this isn't "my first rodeo."
A rodeo's a tough game. But it's a game. Politics may appear to be a game, and it's a rather nasty one at that. But it influences affairs of state and global events, which are more than a game. And after the rough and wild rodeo of a political campaign, the cowboys who have been thrown by the bucking broncos, as well as the ones who haven't, have to get up and get to work.
[ADDENDUM: Austin Bay makes some interesting points about what the change at Defense might signify. And I agree with this that Rumsfeld's "resignation" would have been more strategicially sound had it been accomplished before the election rather than after. It's been a while since much of anyone has been a Rumsfeld supporter--except for Bush, it seems, and the latter's loyalty to him in the face of bipartisan opposition has caused bipartisan resentment.]
Say what you like about politicians, but one thing they almost always display is an uncommon ability to pick themselves up and dust themselves off, and to do it on what must be almost no sleep at all. Oh, and to at least mouth words, post-election, that make it sound as though working together will be possible, no matter what foul mud has been slung beforehand.
In addition to that, Bush seemed especially--and I know some of you might find this word odd in relationship to that particular person--but especially articulate and focused. His speech pattern, for example, was much more rapid than usual. Virtually gone was the strange hesitation that often ties and muddles his tongue. He spoke rapidly and forcefully, somewhat impatiently, mostly very graciously, and decisively. I heard more off-the-cuff humor than I usually do when he speaks.
Sometimes when bad blows finally come after a period of trying to avoid them, there's a calm that sets in. It's over; now move on. And this election must have been a pretty bad blow, although not a totally unexpected one (in a phrase that is sure to be trumpeted by the MSM, he called it a "thumping" despite the closeness of many of the races).
As most of you know, the focus of my support for Bush is his general approach to the war on Islamic jihadi totalitarianism. I have some quarrels with his domestic agenda, and some disagreements with details of how the aforementioned war has been handled. So I was heartened by two things: one was the resignation (and the acceptance thereof) of Secretary Rumsfeld, who's become a lightning rod for criticism. The other is that Bush is determined not to become a Gerald Ford.
Why the reference to Ford? He presided over the pulling of the plug in funding Vietnam, although "presided" is hardly what he did in terms of leadership. He abdicated, barely making any effort to stop Congress from cutting off all support from the South Vietnamese when a little (relatively speaking) might have gone a long way.
That's the only Vietnam analogy I tried to make here. I'm aware of vast differences between Vietnam and Iraq, and the bottom line is that Iraq is far more strategically important. I don't have quotes from Bush's press conference, but he made it clear that he is dedicated to staying the course in Iraq with a different approach. What a different approach means remains to be seen, and what Congress will do about it is unclear, but there's no question a course correction is needed.
Bush indicated we've been correcting our course right along. That's true, but we need more visible success. It's also true that the milblogs have been trumpeting our successes there right along, but most of America doesn't read milblogs (or blogs at all, for that matter). The nature of the beast is that people need something more visible to counter the body daily count, some measure of success that they can perceive and understand.
My biggest fear with this election has been that the Democrats in the "cut and run" camp will dominate. I'm hoping much of that was just campaign rhetoric, and that more sober minds will prevail now that the Democrats have won. After all, as Bush himself said when asked whether he could work with people like Pelosi who've dissed him previously in such vicious terms: that's politics; this isn't "my first rodeo."
A rodeo's a tough game. But it's a game. Politics may appear to be a game, and it's a rather nasty one at that. But it influences affairs of state and global events, which are more than a game. And after the rough and wild rodeo of a political campaign, the cowboys who have been thrown by the bucking broncos, as well as the ones who haven't, have to get up and get to work.
[ADDENDUM: Austin Bay makes some interesting points about what the change at Defense might signify. And I agree with this that Rumsfeld's "resignation" would have been more strategicially sound had it been accomplished before the election rather than after. It's been a while since much of anyone has been a Rumsfeld supporter--except for Bush, it seems, and the latter's loyalty to him in the face of bipartisan opposition has caused bipartisan resentment.]
New Democrats: listening to the middle third
I'm encouraged by the following:
The complexion of the Democratic presence in Congress will change...Party politics will be shaped by the resurgence of ``Blue Dog'' Democrats, who come mainly from the South and from rural districts in the Midwest and often vote like Republicans. Top Democrats such as Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., see these middle-of-the-road Democrats as the future of the party in a nation that leans slightly right of center.
I'm in the center myself. And I'm for parties that don't ignore the Law of Thirds.
What's the Law of Thirds? Take a look here. It still holds, I believe, and I'm glad of it:
Basically, my law refers to the fact that the populace of the US seems to be divided roughly into thirds, at least in the political sense: one-third on the entrenched left, one-third on the entrenched right, and one-third in between. It was something I'd noticed over and over in public opinion polls, and it seemed to be stable over time.
You all know where I stand--in that middle third. I think it's actually where I've always stood, although I used to be positioned towards the leftish end of that middle, and now I stand pretty much in the very middle of that middle. It's from this moderate middle third that elections are generally decided...
And here's my warning to those on either side who ignore that all-important middle third:
Those who are considerably to the right or left often seem to have another thing in common: when their party happens to get into power, they believe it means that the Law of Thirds has been repealed, just for them. It hasn't. As far as I know it's still in operation, and has been for quite some time. Anyone from either radical third who thinks the American people will be happy to give his/her third a permanent ascendance in American political life is quite wrong, IMHO, and that person will be soundly rejected by said American people if he/she arrogantly and openly displays the hubris of thinking so--whether that person's name be Howard Dean or Newt Gingrich or whomever else would be an even better example of the genre.
So the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party begins. Or continues.
One more thing: I'm heartened by the re-election of Lieberman and the defeat of Lamont in Connecticut. It's a signal from that middle third; let's hope the Democrats heed it.
The complexion of the Democratic presence in Congress will change...Party politics will be shaped by the resurgence of ``Blue Dog'' Democrats, who come mainly from the South and from rural districts in the Midwest and often vote like Republicans. Top Democrats such as Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., see these middle-of-the-road Democrats as the future of the party in a nation that leans slightly right of center.
I'm in the center myself. And I'm for parties that don't ignore the Law of Thirds.
What's the Law of Thirds? Take a look here. It still holds, I believe, and I'm glad of it:
Basically, my law refers to the fact that the populace of the US seems to be divided roughly into thirds, at least in the political sense: one-third on the entrenched left, one-third on the entrenched right, and one-third in between. It was something I'd noticed over and over in public opinion polls, and it seemed to be stable over time.
You all know where I stand--in that middle third. I think it's actually where I've always stood, although I used to be positioned towards the leftish end of that middle, and now I stand pretty much in the very middle of that middle. It's from this moderate middle third that elections are generally decided...
And here's my warning to those on either side who ignore that all-important middle third:
Those who are considerably to the right or left often seem to have another thing in common: when their party happens to get into power, they believe it means that the Law of Thirds has been repealed, just for them. It hasn't. As far as I know it's still in operation, and has been for quite some time. Anyone from either radical third who thinks the American people will be happy to give his/her third a permanent ascendance in American political life is quite wrong, IMHO, and that person will be soundly rejected by said American people if he/she arrogantly and openly displays the hubris of thinking so--whether that person's name be Howard Dean or Newt Gingrich or whomever else would be an even better example of the genre.
So the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party begins. Or continues.
One more thing: I'm heartened by the re-election of Lieberman and the defeat of Lamont in Connecticut. It's a signal from that middle third; let's hope the Democrats heed it.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Election central...
...I'm not.
If you want a lot of updates, though, you might want to go to Pajamas Media, as well as Kesher Talk.
Earlier, Blogger was being uncooperative and wouldn't let me post. I've had a busy day; just got back home and will be doing other things for much of the evening. But I've got the TV on in the background. I've been channel surfing, and so far it's going more or less as expected: the Dems are having a very good evening indeed.
Years ago this would have been happy news for me. Now it's not really news at all. The real news will be whether the Democrats get control of the Senate as well as the House, and what they do or don't do with their victory.
I voted today, marking my little paper ballot in black--no newfangled voting machines here! Strangely enough, for the first time in memory (unless memory is playing tricks on me), there were no curtains on the voting booths. But no one seemed to be looking over my shoulder. Plus, there's a new gadget that takes the ballots. It's something like those gizmos that grab a dollar (if you put it in just right) and give you change, only this one doesn't give you change. In the past we used to fold our ballots in half and put them in a slot.
I always find voting to be a moving experience. It's a cliche to say so, but voting is a privilege. The white-haired ladies (they are always white-haired ladies) who man (is that a mixed metaphor?) the polls are calm and polite, and have their poker faces on. Voting took all of three minutes today; no lines.
And now we wait. But I'm going to make a prediction: Democrats take both House and Senate.
If you want a lot of updates, though, you might want to go to Pajamas Media, as well as Kesher Talk.
Earlier, Blogger was being uncooperative and wouldn't let me post. I've had a busy day; just got back home and will be doing other things for much of the evening. But I've got the TV on in the background. I've been channel surfing, and so far it's going more or less as expected: the Dems are having a very good evening indeed.
Years ago this would have been happy news for me. Now it's not really news at all. The real news will be whether the Democrats get control of the Senate as well as the House, and what they do or don't do with their victory.
I voted today, marking my little paper ballot in black--no newfangled voting machines here! Strangely enough, for the first time in memory (unless memory is playing tricks on me), there were no curtains on the voting booths. But no one seemed to be looking over my shoulder. Plus, there's a new gadget that takes the ballots. It's something like those gizmos that grab a dollar (if you put it in just right) and give you change, only this one doesn't give you change. In the past we used to fold our ballots in half and put them in a slot.
I always find voting to be a moving experience. It's a cliche to say so, but voting is a privilege. The white-haired ladies (they are always white-haired ladies) who man (is that a mixed metaphor?) the polls are calm and polite, and have their poker faces on. Voting took all of three minutes today; no lines.
And now we wait. But I'm going to make a prediction: Democrats take both House and Senate.
Troll IDs
By the way, for all who are interested in this sort of thing, "spotter" and "just a guy" are one and the same person, originating from Auckland, New Zealand. For those whose memories here go back a ways, probligo the troll hailed from the same place.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Pre-election musings on Vietnam and Iraq: the bitter end?
Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to hanging. Nothing is likely to save him, not even the antics of lawyer Ramsey Clark, who was thrown out of the courtroom yesterday for disrespect.
But despite all the charges against him, 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 ...
Of course, Saddam's enemies in Iraq had already learned that particular lesson the hard way--from bitter personal experience after the Gulf War, when they were encouraged to revolt against Saddam by the US, which then looked the other way when they were slaughtered. But Saddam wanted to remind them, complete with visuals, that this was a recurrent US pattern.
Tomorrow's election has been billed as a referendum on the Iraq war, and the Democrats feel poised to win. But they are divided and planless, with some fearing an early pullout in Iraq and others desiring one. The former probably have studied the bitter lessons of the end stages of the Vietnam War, while the latter probably consider those end stages to have been a victory for their side.
Here's an article describing the debacle of the end game in the Vietnam War. Worth noting: once the US had withdrawn its forces, the North Vietnamese correctly surmised that we hadn't the stomach to return, no matter what the provocation. So they decided they could violate the terms of the Paris (how apropos!) Accords with impunity. When they did just that, the US responded by doing essentially nothing, giving the de facto green light to the North's final offensive against the South.
In a fascinating although lengthy article by Nixon's former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, published about a year ago in Foreign Affairs, Laird writes:
Mine is not a rosy view of the Vietnam War. I didn't miss the fact that it was an ugly, mismanaged, tragic episode in U.S. history, with devastating loss of life for all sides. But there are those in our nation who...wait for opportunities to trot out the Vietnam demons whenever another armed intervention is threatened...
...during [1973-1975, when US combat forces had withdrawn], South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy. Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun. We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973....
Vietnam gave the United States the reputation for not supporting its allies. The shame of Vietnam is not that we were there in the first place, but that we betrayed our ally in the end. It was Congress that turned its back on the promises of the Paris accord.
Laird supervised the slow withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, known as Vietnamization. It took four years. He makes it clear that it's not Congress that should be setting some sort of artificial timetable in such a process, it's the executive branch that should be responding to conditions in the field:
In those four years of Vietnamization, I never once publicly promised a troop number for withdrawal that I couldn't deliver. President Bush should move ahead with the same certainty. I also did not announce what our quantitative standards for readiness among the South Vietnamese troops were, just as Bush should not make public his specific standards for determining when Iraqi troops are ready to go it alone. In a report to Congress in July 2005, the Pentagon hinted that those measurable standards are in place. However, it would be a mistake for the president to rely solely on the numbers. Instead, his top commander in the field should have the final say on how many U.S. troops can come home, commensurate with the readiness of Iraqi forces.
Sounds reasonable to me. But I don't have confidence that a Democratic Congress won't try to force the issue and bring the troops home as soon as possible. After all, they may feel they won the election on that platform, and that their constituents demand it. As a USA Today article points out:
Bush has said repeatedly that he refuses to end the war according to an artificial timetable set by politicians in Washington, but if the polls are borne out in Tuesday's elections, the public will be setting timetables, and they will only accelerate if the situation inside Iraq continues to deteriorate.
This would be a tragedy of major proportions, both for the Iraqis, the US, and our reputation for staying the course. My hope is that, if the Democrats do win control of the House, enough of them will have learned all the lessons of Vietnam, including that of the bitter end:
Just days before his execution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodian statesman Sirak Mitak penned a final note to the U.S. ambassador refusing his offer of evacuation.
"I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty....You leave and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.
"But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we all are born and must die one day. I have only committed this mistake in believing in you, the Americans."
[ADDENDUM: What those serving in Iraq think, according to the Washington Post.]
But despite all the charges against him, 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 ...
Of course, Saddam's enemies in Iraq had already learned that particular lesson the hard way--from bitter personal experience after the Gulf War, when they were encouraged to revolt against Saddam by the US, which then looked the other way when they were slaughtered. But Saddam wanted to remind them, complete with visuals, that this was a recurrent US pattern.
Tomorrow's election has been billed as a referendum on the Iraq war, and the Democrats feel poised to win. But they are divided and planless, with some fearing an early pullout in Iraq and others desiring one. The former probably have studied the bitter lessons of the end stages of the Vietnam War, while the latter probably consider those end stages to have been a victory for their side.
Here's an article describing the debacle of the end game in the Vietnam War. Worth noting: once the US had withdrawn its forces, the North Vietnamese correctly surmised that we hadn't the stomach to return, no matter what the provocation. So they decided they could violate the terms of the Paris (how apropos!) Accords with impunity. When they did just that, the US responded by doing essentially nothing, giving the de facto green light to the North's final offensive against the South.
In a fascinating although lengthy article by Nixon's former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, published about a year ago in Foreign Affairs, Laird writes:
Mine is not a rosy view of the Vietnam War. I didn't miss the fact that it was an ugly, mismanaged, tragic episode in U.S. history, with devastating loss of life for all sides. But there are those in our nation who...wait for opportunities to trot out the Vietnam demons whenever another armed intervention is threatened...
...during [1973-1975, when US combat forces had withdrawn], South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy. Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun. We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973....
Vietnam gave the United States the reputation for not supporting its allies. The shame of Vietnam is not that we were there in the first place, but that we betrayed our ally in the end. It was Congress that turned its back on the promises of the Paris accord.
Laird supervised the slow withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, known as Vietnamization. It took four years. He makes it clear that it's not Congress that should be setting some sort of artificial timetable in such a process, it's the executive branch that should be responding to conditions in the field:
In those four years of Vietnamization, I never once publicly promised a troop number for withdrawal that I couldn't deliver. President Bush should move ahead with the same certainty. I also did not announce what our quantitative standards for readiness among the South Vietnamese troops were, just as Bush should not make public his specific standards for determining when Iraqi troops are ready to go it alone. In a report to Congress in July 2005, the Pentagon hinted that those measurable standards are in place. However, it would be a mistake for the president to rely solely on the numbers. Instead, his top commander in the field should have the final say on how many U.S. troops can come home, commensurate with the readiness of Iraqi forces.
Sounds reasonable to me. But I don't have confidence that a Democratic Congress won't try to force the issue and bring the troops home as soon as possible. After all, they may feel they won the election on that platform, and that their constituents demand it. As a USA Today article points out:
Bush has said repeatedly that he refuses to end the war according to an artificial timetable set by politicians in Washington, but if the polls are borne out in Tuesday's elections, the public will be setting timetables, and they will only accelerate if the situation inside Iraq continues to deteriorate.
This would be a tragedy of major proportions, both for the Iraqis, the US, and our reputation for staying the course. My hope is that, if the Democrats do win control of the House, enough of them will have learned all the lessons of Vietnam, including that of the bitter end:
Just days before his execution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodian statesman Sirak Mitak penned a final note to the U.S. ambassador refusing his offer of evacuation.
"I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty....You leave and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.
"But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we all are born and must die one day. I have only committed this mistake in believing in you, the Americans."
[ADDENDUM: What those serving in Iraq think, according to the Washington Post.]
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Another rhyme of history: military service and family strife
During the Vietnam years, it wasn't unusual for fathers and sons to stop talking to each other over issues connected with the war and military service. Most often the father, usually a veteran who'd served in World War II, couldn't understand or accept the son who felt his conscience dictated leaving the country or faking an illness.
Now the worm has turned. Certain fathers--perhaps in some cases those very same sons of long ago--are rejecting children who enlist:
My brother is an Army Ranger in Afghanistan...His choice to join after 9/11 was not easy. He was one year away from graduating from ASU with a law degree, and he believed the nation needed another soldier more than it needed another lawyer. His choice did not come without consequences, though.
His choice was not supported by our father, and his reaction to my brother’s choice was typical of a 1960s throwback; my brother is no longer welcome in my parent’s home.
My brother told me that he can understand our father’s reaction to the decision. They come from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.
There are many tragedies in war, and one of them is this estrangement of the generations. Note that in this particular case, the son seems to have an unusually mature--you might almost say "liberal," in the generic sense of the word--reaction to the father.
[ADDENDUM: Austin Bay, whose radio request for responses from military members to John Kerry's recent gaffe led to the letter I've quoted in this post, has written an eloquent soliloquy on Kerry. Hint: Austin is not one of Kerry's biggest fans.]
Now the worm has turned. Certain fathers--perhaps in some cases those very same sons of long ago--are rejecting children who enlist:
My brother is an Army Ranger in Afghanistan...His choice to join after 9/11 was not easy. He was one year away from graduating from ASU with a law degree, and he believed the nation needed another soldier more than it needed another lawyer. His choice did not come without consequences, though.
His choice was not supported by our father, and his reaction to my brother’s choice was typical of a 1960s throwback; my brother is no longer welcome in my parent’s home.
My brother told me that he can understand our father’s reaction to the decision. They come from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.
There are many tragedies in war, and one of them is this estrangement of the generations. Note that in this particular case, the son seems to have an unusually mature--you might almost say "liberal," in the generic sense of the word--reaction to the father.
[ADDENDUM: Austin Bay, whose radio request for responses from military members to John Kerry's recent gaffe led to the letter I've quoted in this post, has written an eloquent soliloquy on Kerry. Hint: Austin is not one of Kerry's biggest fans.]
Friday, November 03, 2006
An atom of meaning: the Lurçat trial (Part II)
That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet, said the King, rubbing his hands; so now let the jury--
If any one of them can explain it, said Alice, (she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn't a bit afraid of interrupting him,) I'll give him sixpence. I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.
The jury all wrote down on their slates, She doesn't believe there's an atom of meaning in it, but none of them attempted to explain the paper.
If there's no meaning in it, said the King, that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any.
[Part I can be found here. More background information here.]
(So far in the trial the identity of the defendant has been established, and two witnesses for the defense who have seen the videotapes in the possession of France 2 have testified that their content clearly indicates France 2 and Enderlin both lied, establishing truth as a defense to the charges against Lurçat. The witnesses were neither cross-examined nor challenged.)
Now it was time for the attorney for the plaintiffs--a blond women of some elegance-- to speak. The main thrust of her argument was twofold: it started with a short bit to state that Lurçat was indeed responsible for the content on his website, and then came a fairly lengthy hymn of praise to the great and powerful Charles Enderlin.
Most of her speech was ad hominem; it had to do with who Enderlin is, not with refuting anything that had been said in court against him. Her stance: how can they say these horrible things about a man so great? One must make a serious investigation before saying something against such a renowned journalist!
As I wrote here, in France one of the elements a defendant must prove in a successful defense against a claim of defamation of a famous person is that the defendant launched a "thorough investigation" before making the allegedly defamatory statements. So his attorney's emphasis on Enderlin's fame was an important part of establishing the case; Enderlin's highfalutin status required that any accusations against him be more tightly researched than a Harvard doctoral thesis.
The attorney went on to say that proof that Enderlin and France 2 lied was weak, and it's bad to say this against such important people without very strong proof. But it's hard to know what would have constituted proof strong enough to have convinced this court. True, there were only two witnesses, but both gave very strong testimony that went unchallenged. And, of course, there's the mystery (still unsolved, despite my questioning various people about it) of why the tapes themselves had not been viewed by the court.
The entire trial had been downplayed, it's true, despite the overwhelming importance of the issues therein (and despite--or perhaps because of--the great prestige of the great Enderlin), Keeping the videotapes under tight wraps went along with that tendency. Or perhaps it's just part of the general downplaying of courtroom evidence in the French system.
Then again, perhaps it wouldn't have mattered even if there'd been a plan to show the tapes. You may recall from Part I that this courtroom wasn't equipped with a functioning video player.
For me, there were certain moments that crystallized the absurdity of the case. One was when the attorney for the plaintiff discussed Richard Landes's testimony. Landes, a medieval history professor at Boston University and author of the website Second Draft devoted to the al-Durah case, and the blog Augean Stables focusing on related issues, gave what appeared to be cogent, clear, and compelling testimony that certainly riveted the judge (and, once again, I must issue a disclaimer: I'm an acquaintance and friend of Landes's).
What appeared to be the sum total that the attorney for the plaintiffs had to say about Landes's testimony? "If you can understand Landes's explanation--well, I can't."
Okay then, moving right along. The attorney criticized the Israeli investigation of the site that later showed that the gunfire could not have come from the Israeli position, as Enderlin had originally claimed. The experts involved were not "real experts." Even the Israeli paper, Haaretz, had criticized them!
The latter argument was of a type that apparently featured heavily in the first trial. It goes as follows: Israeli sources are considered biased by definition, unless they are criticizing Israel in some way, in which case they are the best authorities. Of course, this indicates a failure (perhaps understandable from the French point of view, coming as it does from a country where the press is under the thumb of the state and quite monolithic) to comprehend the free-for-all of argument in the Israeli media, with Haaretz being a newspaper that is so far to the left that it's sometimes accused of being a Palestinian mouthpiece.
As for the lack of blood in the videotapes--well, plaintiff's attorney indicated, sometimes people get shot without there being any blood. Okay, lady, if you say so. Forget having to introduce expert witnesses on the subject, forget evidence--forget the fact that this was allegedly a stomach wound, which are known to bleed freely and copiously.
The attorney went on to throw in the fact that Lurçat's organization had been banned in Israel as being too extreme (at which point my interpreter, a young Frenchwoman who has lived in Israel, went quietly ballistic, whispering furiously to me in English, "But that's a lie! That's not true at all!" But alas, she hadn't been called as a witness.)
(This tendency of plaintiff's attorney to slip in allegations that hadn't come up in the trial was a puzzlement to me, and remains a puzzlement. Experts on French law, please come forward and explain; I'd love to understand.)
The procurer is a special figure in the French legal system who is supposed to represent the interest of the people. At the first France 2 trial she apparently spoke out eloquently for the importance of freedom of speech, and recommended a ruling on behalf of the defendant, although her suggestion was mysteriously ignored (well, perhaps not so mysteriously--after all, France 2 is a state-run organization). This time the procurer--a different person than before--spoke briefly on matters concerning Lurçat's identity (he is who he is) and the definition of defamation (the words in question fit the bill). And then she reiterated what seems to be the main point here, that charges such as "disinformation" and "lies" are a big thing against a journalist especially, and we have to be very careful how we talk about these images.
Then the lawyer for the defense spoke. His first argument was that Lurçat didn't actually write the supposedly defamatory words on the website. His second argument actually mentioned liberty, however (remember that sign on the facade of the courthouse? Liberte? Ah, yes, liberty!) He mentioned that the right to criticize and to demonstrate (the words on the website had called for a demonstration against France 2) is a very important liberty. In a democracy, you have a right to criticize a journalist.
At this point the body language of all three judges seemed to tell the tale. They all looked down, and they held their arms in a tight and closed position. The procurer was leaning back a bit in her seat with her eyes closed; she appeared to be snoozing, although maybe she was just deep in thought.
Lurçat's attorney went on to say that the video had none of the scenes Enderlin had said it contained, and on that point it was clear that he had lied. (But of course, since the court had never looked at the videotape, this became a case of "he said she said," another unprovable assertion against the great man).
It may be true that every country gets the system of justice it deserves. Legal systems are not arbitrary; they reflect the values of the cultures from which they emerge, rather than being imposed on that culture; then, in turn, they further influence that culture. The French have a legal system that, like most civil law systems (vs. our common law system), emphasize[s] social stability, while common law countries focus on the rights of an individual.” The same could certainly be said of France itself.
As for the wording of the decision, to be issued about a month hence, we can expect something rather perfunctory (I'm still awaiting a translation of the ruling in the first trial, which I should receive soon). After all:
...common law opinions are much longer and contain elaborate reasoning, whereas legal opinions in civil law countries are usually very short and formal in nature. This is in principle true in France, where judges cite only legislation, but not prior case law.
As for the verdict itself, I will go out on a limb--and I think it's a thick, heavy, extremely sturdy limb--and predict that the ruling will go in favor of plaintiffs France 2 and Charles Enderlin. With French law's presumption of guilt on the part of the defendant, even if the trial had been lengthy and much evidence had been amassed, it would have been an enormous undertaking to try to legally prove that the defendants were absolutely correct in their assertions that France 2 and Enderlin were lying.
Of course, in the somewhat similar David Irving trial in England, where defendent Lipstadt was sued for defamation by "historian" Irving for having called him a liar and holocaust denier, defendant Lipstadt won her case against great odds. As I previously wrote:
British libel laws are notoriously skewed in favor of the plaintiff, and Irving fully expected to win or to force Lipstadt to settle for a tidy sum. But Lipstadt's publisher Penguin, to its everlasting credit, decided to spare no expense to defend her, and itself.
Historian Richard J. Evans was hired by Penguin as a consultant, and became the star witness for the defense, which was ultimately victorious. They mounted the risky strategy of asserting that everything Lipstadt said about Irving was in fact true, which meant that the burden of proof was on them to prove it to be so. And yet they succeeded, and a verdict was rendered that stated unequivocally that Irving was indeed everything Lipstadt had alleged, and more (or, one might say, less).
What's the difference between the Irving-Lipstadt trial and this one? After all, the British defamation law under which the Irving trial was held shares with French law the (in my opinion abominable) presumption of guilt in the defendant. The difference between the two is the gravity with which the British court approached the case, and the built-in relative fairness of the British laws of discovery.
Of course, it didn't hurt that Lipstadt's defense had access to contributions of money in addition to the funds Penguin was willing to spend--fighting Holocaust denial apparently being a more popular cause than fighting modern-day blood libels--and there were famous lawyers on their side. But part of the credit for the positive outcome of the trial is due to the British court system's emphasis on evidence and discovery--for example, Irving was forced to enter his private papers into evidence, and they became a pivotal part of the defendant's case.
But back to Lurçat; the irony abounds. I couldn't help but think this was truly a topsy-turvy Alice in Wonderland world. It's a world in which the famous journalist is forgiven his errors, for making statments--such as the one about the IDF doing the killing, or saying he had videotape of the boy's death throes when no such tape exists--that are either markedly negligent (the first) or outright lies (the second). And the consequences have not just been on the order of hurt pride and reputation (the supposed results of Lurçat's defamation of Enderlin)--oh no!--but death and mayhem of innocent people, and the turning of public opinion even further against Israel.
No thorough investigation is demanded from Enderlin. No, it's Lurçat who needs to launch the thorough investigation--against Enderlin, before calling him a liar.
I've been accused of stirring a tempest in a teapot by writing about this. After all, why all this verbiage about an insignificant trial in a place like France, where everyone knows justice is compromised and the status quo is protected by the legal system? I'll tackle the answer in Part III.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
And more fear...
A few more thoughts (in addition to these) about fear as a motivator for political stances:
I think one reason this "fraidy cat" accusation is such a persistent charge towards me is the pre-eminence of feelings among liberals and the Left. So, when looking for a reason for something as puzzling as my terrible apostasy, it's easy to ascribe it to feelings (especially a feeling they can be condescending about, such as fear), rather than reason or cognition.
Anyone who actually reads my "A mind is a difficult thing to change" series (links on the right sidebar, folks) should understand that I've thought long and hard before reaching my conclusions. You may not agree with them, but the path was a mainly cognitive one--mixed with some emotion, as almost all cognitions are. But the main emotion was not fear.
What was the main emotion? I think perhaps outrage, which is more anger than fear, and betrayal, which is sorrow crossed with anger. The outrage is mainly towards the Islamic jihadists, the feeling of betrayal is mainly towards the press. I'm not going to go into it all over again; the "change" series discusses it almost ad nauseam, with more segments to come whenever I get enough time to write them (they're all written in my head, but I know that doesn't do my readers any good).
I think one reason this "fraidy cat" accusation is such a persistent charge towards me is the pre-eminence of feelings among liberals and the Left. So, when looking for a reason for something as puzzling as my terrible apostasy, it's easy to ascribe it to feelings (especially a feeling they can be condescending about, such as fear), rather than reason or cognition.
Anyone who actually reads my "A mind is a difficult thing to change" series (links on the right sidebar, folks) should understand that I've thought long and hard before reaching my conclusions. You may not agree with them, but the path was a mainly cognitive one--mixed with some emotion, as almost all cognitions are. But the main emotion was not fear.
What was the main emotion? I think perhaps outrage, which is more anger than fear, and betrayal, which is sorrow crossed with anger. The outrage is mainly towards the Islamic jihadists, the feeling of betrayal is mainly towards the press. I'm not going to go into it all over again; the "change" series discusses it almost ad nauseam, with more segments to come whenever I get enough time to write them (they're all written in my head, but I know that doesn't do my readers any good).
The only thing we have to fear...
[Certain remarks about fear as a motivator for people such as myself (such as this comment, found in this thread), got me to thinking about writing a comprehensive response. I had that response all set in my mind, but then I realized it sounded familiar, and not just because I'd had those thoughts before. It turns out that I'd written those thoughts before, in this post entitled, "Fraidy cats and fear itself: Left and Right."
And so I'm reposting it.]
There's been a longstanding meme on the Left about the Right, one I've written about before. It's a twist on the old schoolyard taunt, "Fraidy, cat, fraidy cat!"
The allegation is that the Right is motivated by fear--and unrealistic and wildly exaggerated fear, at that. My esteemed colleague Shrinkwrapped has written a recent and excellent piece on the subject.
Funny; when I look about me on the Right, I don't see a whole lot of fear. Anger, perhaps, both at the Left and at the Islamist totalitarian enemy. But on the whole, the Right seems to me to be realistically facing and evaluating the threat before us, taking the enemy at its word about what it intends to do, and trying to learn the lessons of history. The Right wishes to take action against that enemy rather than wait in passive denial, wring its hands in fear, or pursue the false hope of appeasement.
One can disagree with the methods and approach of the Right without disagreeing about the degree of threat represented by the enemy. The Left, however, in choosing the "fraidy cat" argument, appears to be thinking along the following lines (excerpt from that previous post of mine about fear):
The legacy of Vietnam is that the left has a lingering mindset that considers national security concerns to almost always be mere excuses for government spying...The left, and many liberals, seem to feel that the raising of security issues in these situations is almost always bogus--a sort of screen, used by a proto-totalitarian government to cover its own misuse of power, with the goal of getting away with domestic spying on its enemies, and the further consolidation of its own power. If this is the conception, then national security concerns must be downplayed in almost all cases, and the role of fear as motivation for those concerns exaggerated instead.
I see the Right as motivated by realism about the goals of Islamist totalitarianism, and this leads to calls for action to block the enemy before the threat it represents becomes even greater, and the possibility of even more devastation looms larger.
But even if we are willing to grant, for the sake of argument, the Left's charge that the main motivation on the Right is fear, we can say two things. The first is that in facing an enemy bent on one's destruction and willing to purposely kill as many innocents as possible with all the weapons at its disposal, some element of fear (as in "apprehension of a danger") is certainly warranted. The real question is whether the fear is realistic or whether it is exaggerated, and whether the person is paralyzed by that fear, or whether he/she takes appropriate action to forestall the feared consequences.
The left has its own fears, of course, and they are potent motivators, as well. As previously stated, they fear abuse of power by our own government in the pursuit of national security more than any foreign threat. To parse it even more finely, sometimes it seems that they fear abuse of power by a Republican executive branch more than anything; back in the days of FDR they liked a powerful federal government well enough, when it was run by a Democrat.
Speaking of FDR, it was he who famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The context in which he made that statement is interesting; take a look at his First Inaugural Address, delivered in March of 1933, when the nation faced the Great Depression, the subject matter of FDR's speech.
FDR does indeed say, "The only think we have to fear is fear itself" (and, by the way, listen to the audio; what a speaker he was!). But this is the message in which his quote was embedded:
...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory...In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties [he follows with a long list of the problems the nation faced at the time]...Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Then, as now, the danger of fear is not really fear itself. It is, as FDR stated [emphasis mine], "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts."
I submit that those words define the stance of the Left today far more than that of the Right--in fearing, for example, warrantless NSA wiretapping of calls with terrorist foreign nationals more than the consequences of not using reasonable tools in our arsenal in order to fight an implacable and vicious enemy (and see here if you wish to revisit the complexities of the legal arguments concerning these wiretappings).
And I agree, along with FDR, that "only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment." I happen to think the Left fits the definition of "foolish optimist" in denying the dark realities of the present-day Islamist totalitarian threat. The Left, of course, thinks people such as myself to be foolish optimists in denying the dark realities of the threats posed by the would-be dictators Bush and Rove, and that we are timid and cowering fraidy cats in assuming that people such as Ahmadinejad mean exactly and precisely what they say.
[NOTE: And speaking of fear...]
And so I'm reposting it.]
There's been a longstanding meme on the Left about the Right, one I've written about before. It's a twist on the old schoolyard taunt, "Fraidy, cat, fraidy cat!"
The allegation is that the Right is motivated by fear--and unrealistic and wildly exaggerated fear, at that. My esteemed colleague Shrinkwrapped has written a recent and excellent piece on the subject.
Funny; when I look about me on the Right, I don't see a whole lot of fear. Anger, perhaps, both at the Left and at the Islamist totalitarian enemy. But on the whole, the Right seems to me to be realistically facing and evaluating the threat before us, taking the enemy at its word about what it intends to do, and trying to learn the lessons of history. The Right wishes to take action against that enemy rather than wait in passive denial, wring its hands in fear, or pursue the false hope of appeasement.
One can disagree with the methods and approach of the Right without disagreeing about the degree of threat represented by the enemy. The Left, however, in choosing the "fraidy cat" argument, appears to be thinking along the following lines (excerpt from that previous post of mine about fear):
The legacy of Vietnam is that the left has a lingering mindset that considers national security concerns to almost always be mere excuses for government spying...The left, and many liberals, seem to feel that the raising of security issues in these situations is almost always bogus--a sort of screen, used by a proto-totalitarian government to cover its own misuse of power, with the goal of getting away with domestic spying on its enemies, and the further consolidation of its own power. If this is the conception, then national security concerns must be downplayed in almost all cases, and the role of fear as motivation for those concerns exaggerated instead.
I see the Right as motivated by realism about the goals of Islamist totalitarianism, and this leads to calls for action to block the enemy before the threat it represents becomes even greater, and the possibility of even more devastation looms larger.
But even if we are willing to grant, for the sake of argument, the Left's charge that the main motivation on the Right is fear, we can say two things. The first is that in facing an enemy bent on one's destruction and willing to purposely kill as many innocents as possible with all the weapons at its disposal, some element of fear (as in "apprehension of a danger") is certainly warranted. The real question is whether the fear is realistic or whether it is exaggerated, and whether the person is paralyzed by that fear, or whether he/she takes appropriate action to forestall the feared consequences.
The left has its own fears, of course, and they are potent motivators, as well. As previously stated, they fear abuse of power by our own government in the pursuit of national security more than any foreign threat. To parse it even more finely, sometimes it seems that they fear abuse of power by a Republican executive branch more than anything; back in the days of FDR they liked a powerful federal government well enough, when it was run by a Democrat.
Speaking of FDR, it was he who famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The context in which he made that statement is interesting; take a look at his First Inaugural Address, delivered in March of 1933, when the nation faced the Great Depression, the subject matter of FDR's speech.
FDR does indeed say, "The only think we have to fear is fear itself" (and, by the way, listen to the audio; what a speaker he was!). But this is the message in which his quote was embedded:
...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory...In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties [he follows with a long list of the problems the nation faced at the time]...Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Then, as now, the danger of fear is not really fear itself. It is, as FDR stated [emphasis mine], "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts."
I submit that those words define the stance of the Left today far more than that of the Right--in fearing, for example, warrantless NSA wiretapping of calls with terrorist foreign nationals more than the consequences of not using reasonable tools in our arsenal in order to fight an implacable and vicious enemy (and see here if you wish to revisit the complexities of the legal arguments concerning these wiretappings).
And I agree, along with FDR, that "only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment." I happen to think the Left fits the definition of "foolish optimist" in denying the dark realities of the present-day Islamist totalitarian threat. The Left, of course, thinks people such as myself to be foolish optimists in denying the dark realities of the threats posed by the would-be dictators Bush and Rove, and that we are timid and cowering fraidy cats in assuming that people such as Ahmadinejad mean exactly and precisely what they say.
[NOTE: And speaking of fear...]
Lurçat trial Part II is in the works
I thought I'd have it out earlier, but "real life" and duties intervened. I plan to get Part II of the Lurçat trial up either this evening or tomorrow.
This is what it sounds like when narcissists apologize
They say things like this:
I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted...
A general rule of thumb is that narcissists talk a lot about themselves; "I" this and "I" that--but rarely as the subject of the action verb in an apology. It's unusual for narcissists to apologize at all, and ordinarily they only do so after a great deal of vigorous arm-twisting. One can only imagine how sore Kerry's is right now.
In the above sentence Kerry appears to be apologizing for something he did when he starts with the laudable words, "I sincerely regret." But that's just a decoy. He's actually talking about how he feels about the controversial action, not making himself the subject of the action itself.
In Kerry's sentence, the locus of the offensive action is actually in the listener, not the speaker. The problem is that the listener "misinterpreted" Kerry's words. A better way to put it would have been for Kerry to have said something like this:
"I sincerely regret that my words led listeners to believe that.... ,"(or)
"I sincerely regret that I used an awkward phrase that conveyed something different than I intended...", (or)
"I sincerely regret that the words I used sounded as though I meant..."
But if the American Legion accepts his apology, then so do I.
And, by the way, for the record, I believe Kerry's assertion that what he actually intended was to make a joke about Bush (albeit a lame one, and a "stupid" one, given the fact that Kerry's college grades were apparently worse than GW's) rather than to put the troops down for stupidity. I also happen to believe that Kerry does share the common liberal/left belief that the majority of troops are composed of the downtrodden, exploited masses (I've discussed such beliefs on the part of liberals and the Left here and here).
But I think Kerry's an equal-opportunity condescender--he looks down on everyone. Like Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado," he can't help it; he was born sneering:
NANKI-POO: But how good of you, for I see that you are a nobleman of the highest rank, to condescend to tell all this to me, a mere strolling minstrel!
POOH-BAH: Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. But I struggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pride continually. When all the great officers of State resigned in a body because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, did I not unhesitatingly accept all their posts at once?
PISH-TUSH: And the salaries attached to them? You did.
POOH-BAH: It is consequently my degrading duty to serve this upstart as First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral, Master of the Buckhounds, Groom of the Back Stairs, Archbishop of Titipu, and Lord Mayor, both acting and elect, all rolled into one. And at a salary! A Pooh-Bah paid for his services! I a salaried minion! But I do it! It revolts me, but I do it!
NANKI-POO: And it does you credit.
POOH-BAH: But I don't stop at that. I go and dine with middle-class people on reasonable terms. I dance at cheap suburban parties for a moderate fee. I accept refreshment at any hands, however lowly. I also retail State secrets at a very low figure. For instance, any further information about Yum-Yum would come under the head of a State secret.
[Nanki-Poo takes his hint, and gives him money]
POOH-BAH: [Aside] Another insult and, I think, a light one!
[NOTE TO TROLLS: No, I don't think Kerry took any bribes or divulged any state secrets, about Yum-Yum or otherwise.]
[ADDENDUM: For those who've read the comments section of this thread and are interested in further elaboration on my response to the "you're motivated by fear" charge, please see this and this.]
I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted...
A general rule of thumb is that narcissists talk a lot about themselves; "I" this and "I" that--but rarely as the subject of the action verb in an apology. It's unusual for narcissists to apologize at all, and ordinarily they only do so after a great deal of vigorous arm-twisting. One can only imagine how sore Kerry's is right now.
In the above sentence Kerry appears to be apologizing for something he did when he starts with the laudable words, "I sincerely regret." But that's just a decoy. He's actually talking about how he feels about the controversial action, not making himself the subject of the action itself.
In Kerry's sentence, the locus of the offensive action is actually in the listener, not the speaker. The problem is that the listener "misinterpreted" Kerry's words. A better way to put it would have been for Kerry to have said something like this:
"I sincerely regret that my words led listeners to believe that.... ,"(or)
"I sincerely regret that I used an awkward phrase that conveyed something different than I intended...", (or)
"I sincerely regret that the words I used sounded as though I meant..."
But if the American Legion accepts his apology, then so do I.
And, by the way, for the record, I believe Kerry's assertion that what he actually intended was to make a joke about Bush (albeit a lame one, and a "stupid" one, given the fact that Kerry's college grades were apparently worse than GW's) rather than to put the troops down for stupidity. I also happen to believe that Kerry does share the common liberal/left belief that the majority of troops are composed of the downtrodden, exploited masses (I've discussed such beliefs on the part of liberals and the Left here and here).
But I think Kerry's an equal-opportunity condescender--he looks down on everyone. Like Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado," he can't help it; he was born sneering:
NANKI-POO: But how good of you, for I see that you are a nobleman of the highest rank, to condescend to tell all this to me, a mere strolling minstrel!
POOH-BAH: Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. But I struggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pride continually. When all the great officers of State resigned in a body because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, did I not unhesitatingly accept all their posts at once?
PISH-TUSH: And the salaries attached to them? You did.
POOH-BAH: It is consequently my degrading duty to serve this upstart as First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral, Master of the Buckhounds, Groom of the Back Stairs, Archbishop of Titipu, and Lord Mayor, both acting and elect, all rolled into one. And at a salary! A Pooh-Bah paid for his services! I a salaried minion! But I do it! It revolts me, but I do it!
NANKI-POO: And it does you credit.
POOH-BAH: But I don't stop at that. I go and dine with middle-class people on reasonable terms. I dance at cheap suburban parties for a moderate fee. I accept refreshment at any hands, however lowly. I also retail State secrets at a very low figure. For instance, any further information about Yum-Yum would come under the head of a State secret.
[Nanki-Poo takes his hint, and gives him money]
POOH-BAH: [Aside] Another insult and, I think, a light one!
[NOTE TO TROLLS: No, I don't think Kerry took any bribes or divulged any state secrets, about Yum-Yum or otherwise.]
[ADDENDUM: For those who've read the comments section of this thread and are interested in further elaboration on my response to the "you're motivated by fear" charge, please see this and this.]
Law-abiding
Whatever the Dem-Repub split in next week's election, Lieberman may just end up being the beneficiary of the law of unintended consequences (via Pajamas Media).
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
The Sanity Squad: women as meat, and elections again
The Squad's latest podcast is now available at Pajamas Media.
Dr. Sanity, Shrink, Siggy, and I discuss the Mufti of Australia's remarks likening immodest women to uncovered meat left out in the street (oh, what a charmer that Mufti is!), as well as the logistics of the election and why voting reform is so difficult.
And please wish Dr. Sanity well with her upcoming knee replacement surgery.
Dr. Sanity, Shrink, Siggy, and I discuss the Mufti of Australia's remarks likening immodest women to uncovered meat left out in the street (oh, what a charmer that Mufti is!), as well as the logistics of the election and why voting reform is so difficult.
And please wish Dr. Sanity well with her upcoming knee replacement surgery.
He's baaack: Kerry opens mouth, inserts foot; opens mouth, inserts foot; opens...
I've been quite happy with John Kerry's relative absense from the political scene ever since a certain November day two years ago.
On the other hand, that joy is tempered with just a teeny bit of sorrow at not having him to kick around any more. But like Nixon, he's back, if only for a little while (please, please, let it be for only a little while).
By now you probably know what happened: first Kerry dissed members of the military, saying they'd ended up in Iraq because they hadn't done well in school. Then he refused to apologize and released an over-the-top attack on Republicans for playing politics with his flatfooted remarks. He said the whole thing was a misfired joke in which he'd meant to say that it was Bush who hadn't done well in school and therefore had led us into a stupid venture such as Iraq.
Kerry's the talk of the blogosphere, leading me to believe that he might be a poster boy for the contention that to narcissitic people, bad attention is better than no attention at all. The Democrats might well wish they'd never seen the man; it's hard to believe he ever was nominated for President and actually almost won but for a few votes in Ohio.
What strikes me about Kerry's remarks is what's struck me so many times before: something about this man is very, very weird.
I didn't open this post with a comparison to Richard Nixon for nothing. Nixon was another man in public life who always struck me as profoundly weird on a personal level. Most politicians have a sort of ease with people, and even charm--for example, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush possess it, although in very different versions, as did JFK and FDR.
Kerry is (and Nixon was) profoundly ill at ease within himself. With forced and awkward affect, it's as though he's studied what real people look and sound like, and is desperately trying to imitate it but can never get it quite right.
Both Kerry and Nixon seem(and seemed) to have trouble telling jokes, for example. If this recent fracas was a joke that backfired, as Kerry has claimed, then it's another example of his tin ear for humor. And even if he'd delivered the lines right, the joke just isn't funny. Stranger still is his overwhelming self-puffery and self-righteousness, almost to the point of caricature.
It's as though Kerry's a very bad actor playing the part of--himself.
Here are some excerpts from his response. Let's begin at the beginning, with a classic opening line that's funnier than any of Kerry's intentional jokes:
Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how.
Which is, of course: not very.
Kerry follows with:
My statement yesterday--and the White House knows this full well --was a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops. The White House's attempt to distort my true statement...
Now, how on earth could the White House have known full well that it was a botched joke? And how could Kerry know full well that the White House knew full well? It's one thing for Kerry to claim ex-post-facto that it was a botched joke, and to let people decide for themselves. But to contend that it's botched-jokeness was so exceedingly obvious that the White House knew it "full well?" Bizarre, absurd, and nonsensical.
But Kerry doesn't even seem to understand this; all he knows is he must go on the attack. It's a mark of his narcissism that he's incapable of stepping outside himself, of hearing his own words as others hear them, of putting himself in their places and trying to imagine what meaning they'd glean from what he originally said.
And then there's the odd phrase (Kerry specializes in odd phrases, and they're often the most telling part of his utterances): The White House's attempt to distort my true statement [emphasis mine]. Any other person would have said, "my statement."
Which "true statement" is Kerry talking about? The joke about the President doing poorly in school and thus leading us into Iraq? That "true statement?" Or is Kerry referring to the other "true statement" (we'll call it the true true statement) the one that seems to have been the original meaning of his remarks, that only stupid people who did poorly in school go into the military? Will the real "true statement" please stand up?
It goes on and on. The allegation that McCain, as well the White House, knew full well what Kerry actually meant by his little joke. The macho posturing. The swagger that he can't quite pull off. The accusation that the Republicans are about politics, whereas he isn't. The reference to how America knows his "true feelings" about veterans. This from the man who launched the controversial Winter Soldier investigation, and whom many veterans detest because they feel he told defamatory lies about their service in Vietnam, all for the sake of his own glory.
Kerry knows--he must know, unless he's even more delusional than I think he is--that he's vulnerable on the issue of his Vietnam service and his criticizing veterans. And I fear he doth protest too much.
Smart Democrats are distancing themselves from Kerry, saying "thanks but no thanks" to his backing on the campaign trail. Perhaps if enough do so, even a narcissist like Kerry will finally get the hint.
But I wouldn't lay money on it. A while back, Roger Simon pointed out Kerry's remarkable resemblance to a stock commedia dell 'arte figure known as "il Capitano," or the braggart soldier.
The braggart soldier doesn't ever get it. Next thing we know, Kerry will be offering the classic excuse il Capitano offers for his lack of an undershirt:
I used to be an exceedingly fierce and violent man, and when I was made angry the hair which covers my body in goodly quantity stood on end and so riddled my shirt with holes that you would have taken it for a sieve.
On the other hand, that joy is tempered with just a teeny bit of sorrow at not having him to kick around any more. But like Nixon, he's back, if only for a little while (please, please, let it be for only a little while).
By now you probably know what happened: first Kerry dissed members of the military, saying they'd ended up in Iraq because they hadn't done well in school. Then he refused to apologize and released an over-the-top attack on Republicans for playing politics with his flatfooted remarks. He said the whole thing was a misfired joke in which he'd meant to say that it was Bush who hadn't done well in school and therefore had led us into a stupid venture such as Iraq.
Kerry's the talk of the blogosphere, leading me to believe that he might be a poster boy for the contention that to narcissitic people, bad attention is better than no attention at all. The Democrats might well wish they'd never seen the man; it's hard to believe he ever was nominated for President and actually almost won but for a few votes in Ohio.
What strikes me about Kerry's remarks is what's struck me so many times before: something about this man is very, very weird.
I didn't open this post with a comparison to Richard Nixon for nothing. Nixon was another man in public life who always struck me as profoundly weird on a personal level. Most politicians have a sort of ease with people, and even charm--for example, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush possess it, although in very different versions, as did JFK and FDR.
Kerry is (and Nixon was) profoundly ill at ease within himself. With forced and awkward affect, it's as though he's studied what real people look and sound like, and is desperately trying to imitate it but can never get it quite right.
Both Kerry and Nixon seem(and seemed) to have trouble telling jokes, for example. If this recent fracas was a joke that backfired, as Kerry has claimed, then it's another example of his tin ear for humor. And even if he'd delivered the lines right, the joke just isn't funny. Stranger still is his overwhelming self-puffery and self-righteousness, almost to the point of caricature.
It's as though Kerry's a very bad actor playing the part of--himself.
Here are some excerpts from his response. Let's begin at the beginning, with a classic opening line that's funnier than any of Kerry's intentional jokes:
Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how.
Which is, of course: not very.
Kerry follows with:
My statement yesterday--and the White House knows this full well --was a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops. The White House's attempt to distort my true statement...
Now, how on earth could the White House have known full well that it was a botched joke? And how could Kerry know full well that the White House knew full well? It's one thing for Kerry to claim ex-post-facto that it was a botched joke, and to let people decide for themselves. But to contend that it's botched-jokeness was so exceedingly obvious that the White House knew it "full well?" Bizarre, absurd, and nonsensical.
But Kerry doesn't even seem to understand this; all he knows is he must go on the attack. It's a mark of his narcissism that he's incapable of stepping outside himself, of hearing his own words as others hear them, of putting himself in their places and trying to imagine what meaning they'd glean from what he originally said.
And then there's the odd phrase (Kerry specializes in odd phrases, and they're often the most telling part of his utterances): The White House's attempt to distort my true statement [emphasis mine]. Any other person would have said, "my statement."
Which "true statement" is Kerry talking about? The joke about the President doing poorly in school and thus leading us into Iraq? That "true statement?" Or is Kerry referring to the other "true statement" (we'll call it the true true statement) the one that seems to have been the original meaning of his remarks, that only stupid people who did poorly in school go into the military? Will the real "true statement" please stand up?
It goes on and on. The allegation that McCain, as well the White House, knew full well what Kerry actually meant by his little joke. The macho posturing. The swagger that he can't quite pull off. The accusation that the Republicans are about politics, whereas he isn't. The reference to how America knows his "true feelings" about veterans. This from the man who launched the controversial Winter Soldier investigation, and whom many veterans detest because they feel he told defamatory lies about their service in Vietnam, all for the sake of his own glory.
Kerry knows--he must know, unless he's even more delusional than I think he is--that he's vulnerable on the issue of his Vietnam service and his criticizing veterans. And I fear he doth protest too much.
Smart Democrats are distancing themselves from Kerry, saying "thanks but no thanks" to his backing on the campaign trail. Perhaps if enough do so, even a narcissist like Kerry will finally get the hint.
But I wouldn't lay money on it. A while back, Roger Simon pointed out Kerry's remarkable resemblance to a stock commedia dell 'arte figure known as "il Capitano," or the braggart soldier.
The braggart soldier doesn't ever get it. Next thing we know, Kerry will be offering the classic excuse il Capitano offers for his lack of an undershirt:
I used to be an exceedingly fierce and violent man, and when I was made angry the hair which covers my body in goodly quantity stood on end and so riddled my shirt with holes that you would have taken it for a sieve.
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