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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Friday, May 7, 2004
Iraq and Beyond
A story on the reactions of Iraqis to the prison atrocity, saying opinion is divided. Victor Davis Hanson on the strange war being waged:
So our enemies realize that the struggle, lost on the battlefield, can yet be won with images and rhetoric offered up to alter the mentality and erode the will of an affluent, leisured and consensual West. They grasp that we are not so much worried about being convicted of being illiberal as having the charge even raised in the first place.
The one caveat they have learned? Do not provoke us too dramatically to bring on an open shooting war, in which the Arab Street hysteria, empty threats on spec, and silly fatwas nos. 1 through 1,000 mean nothing against the U.S. Marines and Cobra gunships. Instead, their modus operandi is to push all the way up to war — now provoking, now backing down, sometimes threatening, sometimes weeping — the key being to see the struggle in the long duration as a war of attrition, if you will, rather than a brief contest of annihilation.
These rules of the strategy of exhaustion are complex, and yet have been nearly mastered by the radicals of the Middle East. First, shock the sensibilities of a Western society into utter despair at facing primordial enemies from the Dark Ages. The decapitation of a Daniel Pearl; the probing of charred bodies with sticks, whether in Iran in 1980 or Fallujah in 2004; the promise of torturing Japanese hostages — all this is designed to make the Western suburbanite change channels and head to the patio, mumbling either, "How can we fight such barbarians" or — better yet — "Why would we wish to?"
If, on occasion, an exasperated and furious West sinks to the same level — renegade prisoner guards gratuitously humiliating or torturing naked Iraqi prisoners on tape — all the better, as proof that the elevated pretensions of Western decency and humanity are but a sham. A single violation of civility, a momentary lapse in humanism and in the new world of Western cultural relativism and moral equivalence, presto, the West loses its carefully carved-out moral high ground as it engages not merely in much needed self-critique and scrutiny, but reaches a feeding frenzy that evolves to outright cultural cannibalism.
For someone in a coffee-house in Brussels the idea that Bush apologizes for a dozen or so prison guards makes him the same as or worse than Saddam and his sons shooting prisoners for sport — moral equivalence lapped up by the state-controlled and censored Arab media that is largely responsible for the collective Middle East absence of rage over the exploding, decapitating, and incinerating of Western civilians in its midst.
Key here is our own acceptance of such moral asymmetries. Storming the Church of the Nativity is a misdemeanor in the Western press; shelling a minaret full of shooters is a felony. Blowing up Westerners in Saudi Arabia or Jordan is de rigueur; asking Muslims to take off their scarves while in French schools is a casus belli. If Afghanistan has roads, a benevolent man as president, and al Qaedists on the run, call it a failure because Mr. Karzai has not been able, FDR-like, to tour the countryside in a convertible limousine waving to crowds.
Since the journalistic priesthood insists that context is everything, let's get some context. The investigation into these abuses was long and well-underway before CBS's 60 Minutes II broke the story. In fact, it was the U.S. military that really broke the story by putting out a press release.
In January, the U.S. Central Command announced, "An investigation has been initiated into reported incidents of detainee abuse at a Coalition Forces detention facility." Other investigations were well underway by the time CBS ran its story.
Some "cover up" when you're scooping the press in reporting the issue. Here's a little "yah, what I said":
Lost is the fact that in America torturers get punished, while in the Arab world they get promotions.
Not just the Arab world, though. Parts of Africa and Asia (North Korea, Burma, China) promote such people instead of punishing them. And then there is this good point:
Now before you get all pious with table-thumping sermons about the glories of the First Amendment and the need to publish news without fear and all that, consider a few facts.
In 1994, ten Belgian peacekeepers were horribly mutilated alive (castrated, their Achilles tendons slashed, etc.) in Rwanda. The full extent of the barbarity wasn't disclosed for a long time for fear of reprisals.
Just a month ago, television news networks agonized about how much they should show of the butchery of Americans in Fallujah. They opted for very, very little.
Within 48 hours of the 9/11 attacks, the major news networks and leading newspapers were settling on a policy to stop showing images of victims leaping to their death from the World Trade Center. NBC ran one clip of a man plunging to his death, and then admitted it was a mistake. An NBC News v.p. told the New York Times, "Once it was on, we decided not to use it again. It's stunning photography, I understand that, but we felt the image was disturbing."
In fact, post-9/11 coverage illuminates an interesting cultural cleavage in the media. When shocking images might stir Americans to favor war, the Serious Journalists show great restraint. When those images have the opposite effect, the Ted Koppels let it fly.
In 2002, Salon.com — the left-wing web magazine — ran a finger-wagging story full of condescending quotes and observations about how America was too obsessed with 9/11. The author, Michelle Goldberg (no relation), wrote that the appetite for documentaries about the attacks "suggests a voyeuristic impulse cloaked in patriotic piety."
Maybe what stoked America's appetite wasn't pious voyeurism but the decision of the networks to withhold the footage in the first place?
Regardless, now Salon asks another question. The lead story by Eric Boehlert on May 6 asks: "The media are finally showing the war in its full horror. What took them so long?"
That's a fair, if slightly creepy, question. But it underscores my point: The media decide which images are too disturbing, too sensational, too dangerous all of the time. Ms. Goldberg, for example, spoke for the establishment media when she declared that the Danny Pearl murder-video was "too sickening to broadcast even once."
"I'm all for the ongoing insistence on showing those prison images as long as the media begins showing the World Trade Centers being immolated again. When was the last time we saw those? Think we'll see them again, even once, on the mainstream media before November? No, that kind of visceral shock wouldn't serve the left's agenda." We also need to see the full scope of the murder of Daniel Pearl, the corpses outside Fallujah, and the severed hands and bodies of those murdered by suicide bombers. Those victims deserve no more privacy than the victims of abuse at Abu Ghraib. And they can no longer be humiliated, because they're dead.
And of course there will be no apologies forthcoming from those who did such things to Americans. Indeed, there is pride. But that's the difference between the "Great Satan" and its enemies. We are ashamed of the things they take pride in.
"The United States is perplexed and dismayed by the decision to put forward Sudan -- a country that massacres its own African citizens -- for election to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights," said U.S. representative Sichan Siv before storming out of a U.N. conference hall before the vote. "With credible reports continuing to come out of Sudan regarding the most serious human rights violations in Darfur, Sudan's membership on the commission threatens to undermine not only its work, but its very credibility."
But of course nothing undermines the credibility of the fine institutions of the international community, only U.S. credibility suffers for engaging in high-handed behavior like this, failing to accept that standards vary - one for the U.S., another for everyone else. The presence of the government of Sudan as a member of the UN Human Rights Commission perfectly embodies what the UN is all about.
Check out this UPI piece on tech jobs. Outsourcing doesn't seem to be slowing people down. . .except maybe in other countries:
Helms, a former semiconductor manufacturing executive, said the news media has blown the impact of outsourcing out of proportion but the perception probably does impact the thinking of students considering a career in computer science.
"If you look carefully at the numbers in terms of the kind of jobs and the numbers, it's a small factor, but to the extent it gets overplayed that certainly weighs on the minds on the 18-, 19-, 22- year-olds we have coming into UTD," said the former president of International SEMATECH, an Austin-based consortium of semiconductor manufacturers.
Although the gloom surrounds U.S. jobs going overseas there is a different twist in the Telecom Corridor because many of the high tech manufacturers are foreign-owned, such as Ericsson, Alcatel, Nortel, and Fujitsu, noted a leading Texas economist.
In other words, they are outsourcing jobs to the United States, said Dr. Bernard Weinstein, director of the University of North Texas Center for Economic Development. He emphasizes again that offshoring is nothing new in a global economy.
"While we're talking right now about the loss of IT jobs, Toyota is talking about building a new plant in San Antonio," he said.
Construction is scheduled to begin later this year on a $800 million Toyota plant that will produce 150,000 Tundra trucks each year. Once operational in 2006, it will employ 2,000 people and generate a $100 million annual payroll.
(Emphasis added). Of course, to some, it is only "outsourcing" when jobs leave the U.S. for other countries - not when jobs leave other countries to come into the U.S..
It's important for the American people and the world to know that while these terrible acts were perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military, they were also brought to light by the honorable and responsible actions of other military personnel.
There are many who did their duty professionally and we should mention that as well. First, Specialist Joseph Darby, who alerted the appropriate authorities that abuses were occurring. Second, those in the military chain of command who acted promptly on learning of those abuses by initiating a series of investigations, criminal and administrative, to assure that abuses were stopped and the responsible chain of command was relieved and replaced.
However, terrible the setback, this is also an occasion to demonstrate to the world the difference between those who believe in democracy and in human rights, and those who believe in rule by terrorist code.
We value human life. We believe in individual freedom and in the rule of law. For those beliefs, we send men and women of the armed forces abroad to protect that right for our own people and to give others who aren't Americans the hope of a future of freedom.
Part of that mission, part of what we believe in, is making sure that when wrongdoings or scandal do occur, that they're not covered up, but they're exposed, they're investigated, and the guilty are brought to justice.
Mr. Chairman, I know you join me today in saying to the world, judge us by our actions, watch how Americans, watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes and our own weaknesses.
And then, after they have seen America in action, then ask those who teach resentment and hatred of America if our behavior doesn't give a lie to the falsehood and the slander they speak about our people and about our way of life. Ask them if the resolve of Americans in crisis and difficulty, and, yes, in the heartbreak of acknowledging the evil in our midst, doesn't have meaning far beyond their hatred.
RUMSFELD: Above all, ask them if the willingness of Americans to acknowledge their own failures before humanity doesn't light the world as surely as the great ideas and beliefs that made this nation a beacon of hope and liberty for all who strive to be free.
In 1998 the Clinton administration, with GOP support, abolished the United States Information Agency, which did this work, often ably, from 1948 onward. It was a Cold War operation waging what we used to call the "war of ideas." With the Cold War over, history ended, ideas passé and Congress in need of budget cuts that touched no member's pork, Washington terminated USIA as an independent agency and folded it into the State Department. There, like any rock in water, it sank to the bottom.
State's diplomatic culture doesn't much like competitors for its turf (its unmediated tensions with the Pentagon may yet lose the war in Iraq and sink the Bush presidency), and so the sharp edges of the U.S. public information effort were sanded smooth. For example, the Voice of America radio into the Middle East airs mostly music (its "ratings" are good).
Indeed, in recent years we closed formerly USIA-run American libraries and centers in such delightfully settled places as Yugoslavia, Ankara and Islamabad. America's image in all three places today is largely in the dumpster.
Now, we hear ad nauseam, the world "hates us." How could it not? . .
Official ambivalence now about "getting our message out" with a successor agency to the USIA is tied to fear of being seen as producing propaganda, a dirty word today. But that's a bit odd. The media world we inhabit is without exception a world of "spin." Most people, having given up on getting a set of unadorned facts, align themselves with whichever spin outlet seems comfortable.
The U.S. government isn't even in the game of shaping world opinion. And so the Bush administration gets spun by whichever ill wind is blowing through the media. This week it's the prison pictures. More to come.
We need to do a much better job of getting our side of the story out - whatever that story is. I've written before that it's high time we bring back the United States Information Agency.
It's been forever since I've done a "roundup". No real time or inclination for a full one now. But two pieces worth checking out, one by Amir Taheri on the UN's power grab in Iraq, and a news piece on Marine action in Afghanistan; very brief and vague but worth reading. Check 'em both out.
Evidently you are not familiar with siege warfare.
A siege is an attempt to keep the enemy from getting new supplies while making him consume his current ones (men, material). Fallujah is not a failure but a success.
Siege warfare is patient warfare.
Evidently most pro-war people do not have the patience for siege warfare. It is just what our enemies are counting on.
This is Tet all over again where the winners convince themselves they have lost.
Maybe I'm not familiar with siege warfare and maybe I don't have the patience for it.
However, I'd like to think that I understand different situations and when a go-slow approach is appropriate and when it is not. I haven't criticized our handling of al Sadr and Najaf, which could be described in the same way. We held back and waited for a consensus to form among the Shi'ite community that left al-Sadr and his supporters isolated. That approach was, in my belief, the proper one in that context. It's paid off and assaults can now begin. Most sieges end in one of three ways: with either the enemy's capitulation; an assault on a weakened, isolated foe; or in defeat of the besiegers.
Najaf was one situation. Fallujah is another, and they are not identical. The enemy will of course portray any conflict where that they are not decisively and obviously defeated in as a victory for themselves. That's not just the Tet model, that's the Mogadishu model as well. There they took crippling casualties but were able to spin it later as a victory for themselves and defeat for us, and political decisions in Washington confirmed that portrayal.
I agree with Max Boot when it comes to our handling of Fallujah (but not Najaf). Patience in a siege can work both ways and those conducting the siege are not always successful - the besieged can win as well. That is more common than people sometimes think, as the most memorable sieges end with the victory of the attacker. Those conducting a siege also need to use judgement and know when an assault is necessary. Relatively few successful sieges end without one.
The problem is that the "supervisory class" in Iraq has been, for centuries, largely Sunni. Recruiting and training police and security troops was done in haste to get these guys on the job, and on the payroll, as quickly as possible. There were not enough non-Sunni with any police or management experience. You have plenty of entrepreneurs in Iraq, but a real shortage of modern, reliable managers. The corruption is pervasive and leads to a rather different style of management, one that pays more attention to the managers welfare than that of the society as a whole. Most of the guys who know modern management techniques are Sunnis, and often former (or even current) Baath Party members. Since Saddam took over, guess who was favored when it came to college admissions, or study overseas? If you let too many Sunnis back into the management positions, guess who is going to have a great deal of control over the country, way out of proportion to their numbers? The Shia and Kurds notice this, they constantly look for then, and get very upset if they see the Sunnis sneaking back into power.
Nearly all the violence in Iraq is coming from the twenty percent of the population that are Sunni Arabs. Thousands of violent Sunnis have been arrested and interrogated and it’s pretty clear from those interrogations that the violence in Iraq comes from several sources. There are the members of Saddam’s security and intelligence organizations carrying out a pre-war plan for creating violence and disorder if Iraq is occupied. There are also many Sunni Arabs acting on their own to oppose those foreigners who would allow the majority Shia and Kurds to rule the nation. And then there were the foreign fighters, who saw Saddam as a great Arab hero and the Sunni Arab cause worthy of support.
And then there are some less violent habits and customs in Iraq which make rebuilding the country and establishing a government very difficult. The biggest problem is corruption in public and private affairs and the large number of Iraqis who will not take responsibility for their actions. These self-destructive customs has been around for a long time and result in a general lack of personal responsibility for corrupt acts.
Which is all too true. The problem of "Iraqis who will not take responsibility for their actions" is a serious obstacle to the transition of sovereignty. In this, they are similar to EU elites who want power without responsibility and accountability - they want to be in charge but have others (especially the U.S.) pick up the tab and serve as a scapegoat for anything that goes wrong.
But a culture of accountability means, for example, we take responsibility for what happened in Abu Ghraib and punish those involved. We don't point fingers and say the devil made us do it, that this wouldn't have happened if only someone else somewhere else had done what they should do. In large parts of the world, a culture of rationalization has taken hold - for example, the Palestinians aren't responsible for the violence they commit, the Zionists and America push them into it and are really to blame. Corruption and vice here? It's the legacy of humiliation at the hands of America that causes it.
Too many in the Western world, in Europe but also America, are willing enablers of attitudes that create obstacles to self-rule. Ironically but unsurprisingly it is those who claim the most compassion for the plight of developing countries and present such views as understanding that do the most harm. By setting up excuses they encourage people to follow self-destructive paths. Blame-shifting that would not be tolerated when it comes to our government should not be tolerated elsewhere, either. It does no one any favors and is really a form of racist condescension masquerading as progressive multicultural understanding.
Sure, the world's full of crap and there are reasons why people do the things they do. A letter to Andrew Sullivan highlights the conditions that the U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghuraib lived under. Those should be corrected as well, to the extent humanly possible. But none of that is an excuse for mistreatment of prisoners, nor is the fact that similar things happen in the civilian prisons of some of America's greatest European critics. Tu Quoque is not an excuse. The whole world could use a lesson in democratic accountability, internal review, and the limits of rationalizing bad behavior. Then there might be more understanding about why the America they have so much contempt for manages to be so successful and powerful none the less.
Our mistakes are open for all to see and point at. It is not as if there are no efforts at cover-ups here, but they are rarely successful and ultimately problems and crimes get exposed, with the attempted cover-up likewise revealed for critics to point to. But this process allows for such things to be corrected. In much of the world, including much of the developed world, misbehavior is more successfully downplayed and the consequences for those involved are slight. That allows people to get away with things that shuoldn't be condoned and reduces the chance that corrective action will be taken.
THREE days ago, a pregnant Israeli woman and her four young daughters were shot to death at point-blank range by two Palestinian murderers. Each child - ages 11, 9, 7 and 2 - received another bullet to the head, and the mother was shot again directly in the abdomen.
It is useful to remember this incident and compare the dead silence it has elicited from those same human-rights organizations, media outlets and America-bashers involved in the feeding frenzy accompanying the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The disparity of outrage is quite revealing.
The feeding frenzy demonstrates that even those who hate America - and never miss a chance to express that hatred - expect us to adhere to a certain standard of decency. The dead silence demonstrates that no similar expectations apply to societies that produce baby killers and homicide bombers, or use women and children as "human shields" in combat.
Why? Because behind the "high-mindedness" of "universal" human rights is a hypocritical prejudice which allows certain cultures more "leeway" when it come to murder and mayhem.
The United States has expressed regret over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal - even as several Palestinian militant groups wanted credit for murdering a pregnant women and her four young daughters.
Yes, but we must remember that the leaders of the later groups are described as "spiritual leaders" throughout most of the civilized world, in particular Western Europe. So their behavior is unquestionable.
Is James Yee a innocent man wrongly accused, as Andrew Sullivan has concluded based on the dismissal of charges? Or this war's Aldrich Ames, as Ryan argues? I haven't posted on this subject because I have no way of knowing.
It's a cop-out. It's possible that given what he had, he looked guilty to someone but didn't do anything wrong? Or was he fighting for the other side in the intelligence war? All I know for sure is the charges against him have been dropped, which doesn't mean he's innocent but does mean there is no case. Yee is innocent until proven guilty. Until there is a case that shows otherwise, he should be treated as innocent.
This weekend I wrote that the expanded EU would lead to greater efforts by the "vanguard" to control the whole project, not increased internal democracy. John Rossant writes on the pernicious rise of "core Europe". Key graph:
Core Europe's precepts? First, a kind of protectionism lite, which promotes national champions and, when necessary, uses market methods to advance its dirigiste goals. . .The other traits: a determination to keep U.S. influence at bay and bend EU rules to promote the interests of the core, even at the expense of the periphery. Witness how France and Germany got away with breaching rules on budget deficits last November. Or how Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder have coddled Russian President Vladimir V. Putin -- despite the European Commission's more critical stance on Russia.
Check it out.
Yes, I know, a lot of "Yah, What I Said" posts this week. Just a bit distracted getting ready to go &tc.
A good letter to Glenn Reynolds and a good response from him. I agree with all the letter writer said and all of what Glenn wrote as well, including this part:
That's true, and I agree with it all. There are dark moments, however, when I wonder if the world doesn't hate us because we hold the moral high ground, and if many wouldn't breathe a secret sigh of relief if we started living down to their standards.
But what the rest of the world thinks is really irrelevant. Our integrity depends upon our own behavior. The fact that others are full of ill-will does not alter our integrity, only what we do affects it.
These soldiers wore the uniform of our country. The vast majority of our soldiers have behaved impeccably and are above reproach. That gets scant attention. But the fact that this is getting much more attention than all the decent soldiers in Iraq do does not alter the fact. Sure, our soldiers and America's efforts on behalf of Iraq deserve far more attention than will ever be given in a hostile world. But that does not mean that this vile episode deserves less attention than it is getting.
Much of the attention it is receiving is propagandistic and meant to smear all of America. That says far more about those pointing fingers than it does about this country. But how we handle this, investigate it, get to the bottom of it, and punish those responsible of whatever rank they may be, that will reveal the truth about the nature of this country.
Yes, on the scale of torture this might classify as "mild" compared to other vicious and sadistic things that are done to people. But that is no excuse either, and rationalizations that it "really wasn't so bad" should not be given any weight. It was bad enough.
In any military, as in any society, there are criminals and crimes. We should be proud that there are as few among our servicemen and women as there are, without in the least condoning or rationalizing that which does occur. Criminals should be treated as they deserve. That also said, I will note that many of the same people who loudly proclaim "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to other crimes, no matter how ironclad the evidence of guilt might be, are not singing that tune now.
But again, the hypocrisy of others is not a reason for those of us who strive to be principled to become hypocrites ourselves. The difference between America and many of these other countries is we punish rather than reward this sort of behavior, and the European nations that often believe we take too hard a line on the abuses in other countries are only too happy to condemn us, their “allies”, more stridently than they would the worst regimes on the planet. That’s just the way it is in the Looking Glass Universe. Get used to it, get over it, and retain our principles in the face of it.
While the depraved activities of a few American soldiers are banner news around the world, a lot gets ignored. It's difficult to raise comparisons without seeming to minimize the atrocious nature of what was done to Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
But. . .
But one has to, because this episode is being seized upon by opponents of the war and those who don't like America for its propaganda value. It does not sweep this under the rug to note that this is not representative of the behavior of American troops in Iraq, but in many quarters it is being portrayed that way. How prominently do they report the reconstruction and civic outreach and aid efforts being done by Americans in Iraq, especially American soldiers? Those people and countries who opposed the war and wanted to keep doing business with Saddam are now claiming Bush = Saddam (well, they were already claiming Bush = Hitler, but never thought comparisons of Saddam to Hitler were appropriate). Most of those who are highly outraged over this episode were unmoved at the torture of Americans or the desescration of four Americans in Fallujah.
Another relevant thing to keep in mind is that many of the people and nations invoking this episode to criticize America as a whole are the same ones who believe that Ba'athists should be involved in the governing of Iraq. That is, members of the same regime that slaughtered and tortured for years. The difference between America and the Ba'athists are that we will punish rather than reward and promote those who do things like this. Where was the outrage among opponents of the war when mass graves were found? Tapes of Saddam's minions torturing and murdering people?
It is appropriate to be outraged over the malevolent behavior of some American soldiers in mistreating Iraqi prisoners. I'm outraged, sickened, disheartened, and disgusted by it. But the selective outrage that many are displaying shows that their indignation is not moral, it is political. They are not so moved to wroth and anguish over far worse that happens in the world. Some want Iran and Syria, as neighbors of Iraq, to be involved and the U.S. role minimized. The UN continues to turn a blind eye to horrors and does not get pilloried for it as America does. As Glenn Reynolds notes, bad news about the UN doesn't get reported - it doesn't serve political purposes. Sudan's government murders millions and is assured a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission by the international community. How much objection is there to that?
So while there cannot be enough condemnation of the soldiers involved in such deplorable behavior, it's obvious that for many this is just a tool to paint the U.S. as a whole. They reserve their outrage not for the behavior, but for America itself. But none dare call them anti-American.
There are no perfect correlations in history. But there is a suggestive relationship between the duration of American military presence and the success with which occupied countries have achieved economic growth and the transition to enduring democratic institutions. For this reason, there have been grounds for uneasiness about the Bush administration's proposed timetable for Iraq's transformation.
That timetable was always going to be tight. Bush made this clear in a pre-war speech to the American Enterprise Institute. "We will remain in Iraq as long as necessary," he declared, "and not a day more."
Mark Steyn reminds us that our enemies, and Ted Koppel, are betting we won't have the sticking power:
Here's where it's worth considering more broadly the cost of Ted Koppel. Our enemies have made a bet — that the West in general and America in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span; that the "sleeping giant" Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto rightly feared he had wakened at Pearl Harbor can no longer be roused. If he could, he would be a problem. But he is paunchy and effete and slumped in his Barcalounger, and he's defining decadence down.
In Vietnam, it took 50,000 deaths to drive the giant away. Maybe in Iraq, it will only take 500. And maybe in the next war the giant will give up after 50, or not bother at all. He has the advantage of the most powerful Army on the planet, but he doesn't have the stomach for war, so it's no advantage at all.
He's like the fellow with the beautifully waxed Ferrari he doesn't dare take on the potholed roads. If you're predisposed, like many Islamists and many Continentals, to this stereotypical soft American, the lazy, ersatz pacifist mawkishness of the "Nightline" gimmick pretty much confirms it: That's the cost of Mr. Koppel reminding us of "the cost of war." . .
It's unbecoming of a great power, and very perilous. The cost of war is the cost of losing it measured against the cost of winning it. We can reach our own conclusions about which the coalition's dead would opt for.
To be sure, this policy reversal, nearly a year after the United States drove the Ba'athists from power, is risky. It could make matters much worse by alienating key U.S. allies among the long-oppressed Kurds and Shia Arabs. The Shia community, in particular, concerned about a resumption of Sunni minority rule, could feel betrayed and become willing to throw its lot in with Iran.
The best-case scenario, however, is that the recruitment of Ba'athist fighters becomes the key to quelling the rebellion by Saddam loyalists in the Ba'athist stronghold of the Sunni Triangle. A look at British military history shows that turncoats can be an effective tool in counterinsurgency.
It was by transforming hardened enemies into allies that Britain defeated insurgents in Oman in the 1970s. The historical parallels are instructive: Oman, like Iraq, was strategically located, was threatened by a domestic insurgency that had some foreign support and was a battle that the free world could not afford to lose.
I'd be more comfortable - well, a little less uncomfortable - with this risky strategy if we were also hitting the Fallujah insurgents hard. But we aren't, we're taking the "soft" approach and that has never worked with the "dead-ender" types. I'm willing to patiently work for victory but I get impatient when we're not doing what it takes to win. I feel I must point out again that it will save lives in the end.
Before the 2002 elections, I made one significant prediction. Again, it wasn't a profound insight, it was a keen grasp of the blindingly obvious. Set the Wayback Machine to November 3rd '02:
I've always opposed term limits, and I still do, but if incumbents keep protecting each other through things like the Political Speech Regulation Act of 2002 and incumbent-friendly partisan redistricting that effectively eliminates risk of losing, I might have to reconsider. One of the reason that far more Senate seats are "in play" than House seats is because no one can use a computer to carefully craft the boundaries of States in order to rig things in advance to guarantee the seat is "safe" for whoever (or whichever party) currently holds it.
In other posts I've called this problem one of politicians selecting their voters rather than voters selecting their representatives.
But redistricting plays a huge part. Though voting patterns change over time, new technology allows politicians to draw lines with more confidence than ever that they are creating safe Republican or Democratic seats. Sharper partisan divides give them more incentives to do so, and laws in most states offer no obstacles. . .
And often the two parties conspire to deprive voters of a choice. In Northern Virginia, for example, Rep. Jim Moran has been an embarrassment. But he enjoys a district so Democratic that no serious Republican challenge is likely. Republicans were happy to give him this comfortable home because it meant they could pack Republicans into two comfortable districts for their own Reps. Tom Davis and Frank Wolf.
Good news for the congressmen: The only costs are that voters become irrelevant, voting becomes superfluous and politicians have no incentive to form coalitions or reach out to those in the minority. . .
. . .most of us -- more and more of us -- have almost no chance of replacing our representatives at election time, which you'd think would be the defining characteristic of democracy.
He has a solution, or at least a potential improvement:
At a recent Brookings conference, redistricting expert Lisa Handley said that most Western democracies have no trouble doing the job more fairly than the United States. In the United Kingdom, for example, civil servants redraw lines to reflect population changes, and they do not take into account where incumbents live or which party will benefit. "In most of the rest of the world, redistricting is not nearly as partisan or as contentious as it is here in the United States," she said. "We really are quite different than other Western democracies."
Of course, "first catch the rabbit" as they say. The problem with any proposed change is that it runs up against the fact that it will have to pass the legislature, or legislatures if done at the State level. In what is aptly described as an Incumbent Protection Racket, it's easier for Hiatt or myself to propose fixes than get the very politicians who would be affected to pass it into law. Their ability to insulate themselves from the electorate is what we aim to negate, but they strive to advance that by whatever creative means they can. Redistricting is just one example, the Political Speech Regulation Act of 2002 was another - its provisions intended to protect incumbants from effective political challenge.
Almost a year ago Joe Wilson made banner headlines for over a month claiming that he went to Niger and found no evidence that Saddam ever tried to acquire uranium from that country. This was seized upon by the "Bush Lied!" crowd as proof that, well, Bush was a liar.
But in his new book, Wilson changes his story and now says that, yes, Saddam did try to buy uranium from the African nation, but nevermind - it doesn't mean Bush didn't lie when he said Iraq tried to get uranium from Africa. Objective observers might conclude that it was Wilson and his friends who were distorting things when they claimed otherwise, but remember we're living in the bearded Spock universe. So when it turns out that Bush was right and they were wrong, it still means Bush was the one being deceptive.
In semi-related news, on the "Bush Knew!" front, I recommend this Glittering Eye post on the 9/11 commission and how there might have been a decent one. I'm sure that back in the beardless Spock universe there is a substantive, non-partisan commission looking into how to improve intelligence to prevent another such attack, rather than trying to affix blame to political opponents. But that's not the universe we live in, alas.
While the criminal behavior of some American soldiers has gotten wide attention, deservedly so, the good things Americans are doing in Baghdad has received considerably less attention. It deserves more, but won't get it. But read about some of it at Oxblog.
Also, there's some misbehavior that isn't getting all the attention it deserves, as Roger Simon notes. Arnold Ahlert is on the case though.
For those who think we took the eye off the ball in Afghanistan, The Australian has a report that the Taliban are so weakened they're incapable of offensive action.
That's good news. Extremely good, actually. Because if they were to conduct an offensive and we responded the way we have in Fallujah, we'd be hurtin'.
I continue to be puzzled about our activity, or lack thereof, in Fallujah. Actually, I've gone beyond puzzled to befuddled. I’m having a hard time restraining from penning another rant on the subject, which would essentially boil down to “what the. . .” It’s no longer easy to assume, or even hope, that we know what we’re doing there. Let Belmont Club try, but it's looking like a total cluster. . .frag at the moment. A Ba'athist General who sees no evil doesn't seem like the right man for a hard job. And, just as I predictedbefore, the enemy has concluded they've won a great victory in Fallujah. Not that it took any special insight to make such a prediction. But the people smarter than I who are running the show don't seem to have made the connection.
Canadian PM Paul Martin has an idea - hey, what about a means of working out international problems that doesn't involve the UN?
Prime Minister Paul Martin pressed forward yesterday with his plan for a global-leaders forum to solve the world's thorniest problems, giving short shrift to the United Nations as he did so.
"We need to get the right mix of countries in the same room talking without a set script," he said. "We do believe a new approach directly involving political leaders could help break a lot of logjams."
Remember, you read it herefirst. Martin has some more work to do, of course. His list of the 20 countries to involve includes some non-democratic turkeys (Saudi Arabia & China for example). But he's starting to think outside of the UN box, which is good, because the UN's vices are inherent as I argued. Speaking of which, former Swedish PM Per Ahlmark has a piece on how the UN's vices don't seem to matter to many:
NO other organisation is regarded with such respect as the United Nations. This is perhaps natural, for the UN embodies some of humanity's noblest dreams.
But, as the current scandal surrounding the UN's administration of the Iraq oil-for-food program demonstrates, and as the world remembers the Rwanda genocide that began 10 years ago, respect for the UN should be viewed as something of a superstition, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan as its false prophet. . .
the culture of the UN: believe the best of barbarians, do nothing to provoke controversy among superiors, and let others be the butt of criticism afterwards. Even subsequent revelations about Annan's responsibility for the disasters in Rwanda and Bosnia did not affect his standing. On the contrary, he was unanimously re-elected and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. . .
Now, despite revelations about bribery in the UN's oil-for-food program for Iraq, the world is clamouring to entrust Annan with the future of more than 20 million Iraqis who survived Saddam Hussein dictatorship. That is because of who Annan is and what the UN has become: an institution in which no shortcoming, it seems, goes unrewarded.
Too true. For many, even questioning the UN and examining its record is a sign of ill-will.
International acts of terror in
2003 were the fewest in more than 30 years
Remember that when people claim we're not making any progress and even claim that we're making things worse. Such claims are contradicted by the facts.
So, like the Grinch's heart, the EU grew by three sizes this weekend. Not the EU's heart though, but it may have gained a better half. The new Eastern European members are bound to be more suspicious of the supposed benefits of bureaucratized centralization, given their historical experiences.
But more important than those is the post on the collectivist internationalism behind the EU and why efforts at transcending the nation to impose unity of practice on differing countries is wrongheaded and bound to fail (a bit more here, and supporting evidence here and here). There is also this post on transnational governance more broadly, and a Terry Cobb guest blog on Progressive Reactionaries and the anti-democratic attitude at the base of the EU.
For this post I'm going to concentrate on one element of this, and that is the way language is used to structure the terms of debate. In one of the forums I frequent, one of the members wrote, half in jest:
I'm British, we just do what America tells us
This is the conclusion one can reach from listening to the European, including British, news and commentary. Things are phrased to lead people to the conclusion that Britain just supports America because it, or Tony Blair, is obediently servile. The idea that both countries are pursuing the same policy because of mutual agreement over what the policy should be is slighted. Indeed, this is one device that is used to take the debate of the merits of a policy off the table and change the debate. Once this is raised, one is no longer discussing what should be done and why and in cooperation with who, but whether Britain should "join Europe" in forming an "independent foreign policy" or just be America's lapdog/poodle. One doesn't even have to reflect seriously on whether the later is even really the case. Instead of an argument, you carry forth from the assumption, which is based on a false premise.
The flip side, of course, is the premises upon which assertions that a common EU foreign policy is desirable are built. Here it is not usually termed "we'll just do what Europe tells us". Instead the terminology of debate is quite different: are we going to cooperate in Europe? Shouldn't Europe have an "independent foreign policy" (independent of America's)? As put in this NYT editorial on the new EU:
The new members have adopted thousands of pages of laws shared throughout the union. They have had to reform their economies and clean up their environments. And they must endeavor to support the "common foreign and security policy," despite their significant ideological differences with "old Europe," most notably on relations with the United States.
The underlying assumption being that isn't possible unless and until all European capitals submit foreign policy formation to Brussels and the EU, and that otherwise Europe will be "bullied" to comply with America.
This of course ignores the fact that America is less demanding of its allies than this "common EU foreign policy" would be. As the example of Belgium, France, and Germany demonstrate, any country in Europe can freely make foreign policy not only differing from America but in opposition to it. It is a "common European foreign policy" which would compel all members to comply, as I pointed out here.
The false dichotomy of "will we join Europe in having a foreign policy independent of the United States, or simply be obedient satellites of the Hyperpower?" also shifts the debate terms from what foreign policy will that be and whose interests will it serve. Not only are the merits and demerits of this removed from the debate, but it distracts attention from the fact that this "European" foreign policy is to be determined by the elites of a few EU members: the Franco-Belgian-German position was given the status of "Europe's" foreign policy perspective, not the policy of Britain, Spain, Italy, Holland, Norway, and the Eastern European countries that formally joined the EU today. The premise of whether members are going to cooperate on a common European foreign policy or not pushes many important issues to the side, including why France's policy on Iraq was what it was. Well, the Chirac-Hussein connection goes way back, and French motives were self-interested rather than high-minded. Indeed, the real blood-for-oil policy was that of the opponents of the war, who were engaged in corrupt deals with Saddam using oil as the means, and so was the institution - the UN - that we were told we should defer to.
Such subjects receive scant attention in European discussions of public policy. That is because the elites manage the terms of debate in such a way that only "bad" people are uncouth and Europhobic enough to raise such questions in polite company. Thus the merits of an argument are rarely addressed, and the issue of how policy is going to be made and in whose interests are rendered invisible, the argument is whether we are going to join in cooperation with others or not.
But in the real EU, it was always difficult to form a consensus with fifteen members. It will be even harder now with twenty five. Or at least it would be, if the structure remained the same. So that is why great effort is being put towards changing that structure and further centralizing policy authority, and even greater rhetorical effort is being made to manage the terms of debate so that refusing to adopt "the consensus" is rendered illegitimate in advance without the reasons for disagreeing mattering. Phrases like "dividing Europe" are rarely if ever invoked to describe the Franco-German position and attitude, that is only used to describe those members whose opinions are different. That method is also key in insuring that the merits of the two sides of a disagreement are not the focus of debate. You are simply asked to drop your position to avoid "dividing Europe". With more members, the pressure on all to "go along to get along" will be that much more intense, with the vanguard countries and opinion leaders in Europe working overtime to render any dissent out-of-bounds.
That has been the case already with respect to the draft Constitutions, where countries differing from the Franco-German position have been characterized as bad actors who need to change their position and mend their ways. Maybe, as Chirac once said, they're just not well brought up, but whatever it is their position is ruled a priori illegitimate. The entire debate over whether to adopt the draft EU Constitution or not has been shaped in this way: either you are a good European interested in cooperation and integration and accept it in toto, or you are a Europhobic xenophobe because you don't. Thus people are kept from discussing whether this draft, written as it is and with the provisions that are in it, is a worthwhile Constitution to live under or not. The changes it will bring are handwaved away and if you are a European you accept that it will bring with it nothing but good. Another NYT editorial puts it in Orwellian terms:
The European Union's governance will be further tested, though Europe's proposed constitution may help. The E.U. has to become as much a union of citizens as it is of nations. It needs to be more democratic, and its member nations will have to surrender even more sovereignty for this to happen.
Yes, the draft Constitution asks for sovereignity to be surrendered, but is it really more democratic?
There isn't even a democratic attitude in how it is written, much less in its content. How many of those who are being asked to accept it are being asked to read it? Why, indeed, is it written in such an unreadable fashion? Again, language is used as a tool and as I noted throughout the "Constitution for Bureaucratopia" series, in the draft EU Constitution it is used to keep the people of Europe from having any interest in reading the Constitution they will be asked to live under. The contrast between the Bureaucratese of the EU's draft Constitution, written of, by, and for the elites of Europe rather than the people, is at stark contrast with the easy-to-understand language that America's Constitution or Iraq's interim Constitution are written in.
This way, the citizens of the EU are simply told what is in the draft Constitution by their betters. It is not expected that they read it and come to their own conclusions. Indeed, it is made as difficult as humanly possible for them to do so. The draft Constitution is rife with terms of art and jargon that would be unfamiliar with people who are not in the subculture of governance. You need a special "EUrocrat Decoder Ring" to decipher phrases that could easily have been put in plainer terms if the goal was to involve the electorate in understanding how they were to be governed. Language is used to obscure, and it is not a matter of working within a country of multiple languages. The Iraqi draft Constitution is equally understandable in both Arabic and English translations. The draft EU Constitution is equally indecipherable in all languages save that of bureaucratic subcultures.
None of this is accidental. It is all done with purpose. That purpose is to shape the terms of debate and make some questions simply unaskable. Today, Europe is bigger. Do you feel you're involved in something bigger, Citizen?
Update: More here. Check out the dichotomy in this paragraph:
French President Jacques Chirac was one of many European leaders who yesterday cast the expansion in the context of Europe's troubled ties with Washington, with the French leader stressing during a 90-minute press conference that Europe would now be a major economic force and a stronger economic competitor to the US. British Prime Minister Tony Blair took a different tack, boasting in an article in The Times that Britain's hand in Europe would be strengthened because the new entrants shared its strong support for the US and for free trade and market-based economic policies rather than the big-government, welfare state traditions of nations such as France and Germany.
Chirac is pretty much expecting that everyone in the EU will go along with his ambitions, and France's dreams of Glorie harkening back to Napoleon. But the new members may not be that enthralled with bureaucratic centralization on the French model and seconding all their decision-making to the Gaullists:
When the EU's expansion into eastern Europe was first proposed, it was assumed this would strengthen the influence of Germany and France, the continental powers, but Blair noted that English was the second language in most of the new entrants and "importantly we also share the same vision for Europe's future direction".
"Having just escaped from the dead hand of communism, they share the British view that their future prosperity rests on a liberal, competitive economy," Blair said. "I believe the accession ... will be a catalyst for change within the EU, helping to give a new push to Britain's agenda."
Europe Joined: as divided as ever. This, of course, is the solution to that:
Chirac proposed yesterday that countries that sign the constitutional treaty but do not ratify it within two years should be expelled from the EU, an all-or-nothing strategy that would put enormous pressure on voters in such referendums. Britain, The Netherlands and several other countries would be likely to veto such a high-risk strategy, but Chirac's proposal showed how worried he is about the prospect of the constitution being torpedoed.
"Do what we say, or else!" Yep, the EU, not bullying at all. . .a respecter of different positions and opinions, and highly democratic at that. . .
