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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
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Who? Whom?
Megan Mcardle asks for help in deciding who to vote for. My comment got so long that I decided, what the heck, I'd post it here. It's far from perfect, written spur-of-the-moment. But it'll be a good lead-in to a post I want to write on what's going on, going wrong (and right) in Iraq and the costs we've paid in invading.
Don't get me wrong, I still support the war. But only a fool believes there haven't been "opportunity costs", as there are when you make any choice from a range of options. But more on that later. This post is about (some of) the reasons to vote for Bush.
She's seems to be asking mainly for the positive reason(s) to vote for one of the two major candidates, rather than the negative ones to vote against the other guy. It's pretty obvious, for example, to everyone except his most blind supporters that Kerry's "plan to win the war in Iraq", and the WoT in general, is a non-starter (relying on allies who haven't the means, even if they had the interest, to contribute meaningfully. I give Afghanistan as the example - that is the model, in essence, that Kerry offers for Iraq, but the allies contribute very little and will only participate meaningfully in places that are already so secure that their assistance really isn't needed. That is, they'll provide security once an area is already secure. . .); and on the other hand, only the most blind Bush supporters believe that everything is proceeding exactly as he has foreseen in Iraq.
I'm a Bush supporter who all along thought that the aftermath of toppling Saddam would be more difficult than the "regime change" itself, and that has proven to be the case. But I don't pat myself on the back, because it's far more difficult than I thought it was going to be and there are many ways that Bush's team mishandled things. However, I think they were mishandled in ways that, if Kerry were in office, they would have been mishandled worse. Take Fallujah - does anyone think that Kerry would have sent the troops in to clean it up sooner? That is, that he would take a harder line and be more aggressive in crushing pockets of resistance? But, again, that's a negative.
Lets turn to the positive. The first reason, IMO, to vote for Bush may not involve the war, or the economy, and things like that. Indeed, it involves another branch of government entirely. This isn't just an election about who will control the White House for the next four years. This is an election about who will control the Supreme Court for the next 20 years. Whichever side wins will be appointing at least two, and very possibly three or four, Supreme Court Justices. They will appoint people as young as they can. Neither will appoint "Dream Candidate" justices, ones that are your ideal in every respect. But which do you think are likely to make appointments closer to what you'd like to see?
That will shape much of what happens in this country over the next two decades. It will shape the realm of the politically possible. What do you want to see done and/or undone (fixed, reformed)?
As for foreign policy and the war, with all their faults I think the Bush team has a more clear-eyed vision of the world. For all that Kerry's supporters speak of them being blinded to reality and unwilling to see things for what they are, it is closer to the truth to say that is projecting. It took a realistic calculus, and willingness to take the difficult step of acting on that, to realize that whether we wanted to or not, we were going to have to fight this war largely without the "allies" that Kerry says we abandoned. The simple fact is that few nations in the world are able to contribute much to this fight, when it comes to what is actually needed (force-projection), and few are willing to spend what it takes to develop such resources. Those few countries are the ones that are with us. The others (France & Germany mainly) have for over a decade talked a good game about their desire to create such forces, able to act anywhere in the world. But to this day they have not spent what it would take to field such forces in on meaningful scale. Their latest ambitions in this area have been redirected to cobbling together an EU Force that will rely principally upon assets the UK has; this is simply re-arranging Org Charts (and who controls what), rather than developing any additional capabilities.
Kerry was for regime change and IMO has largely criticized things that didn't work out but on topics where it is hard to see how anyone, including himself or Bush's predecessor, would have done better. It's not a "negative" against him to point out that the countries which refused to support a UN Resolution to take strong action against Saddam in '98, when Clinton & Blair ended up striking Iraq to the condemnation of the same crowd that condemned Bush & Blair, the same crowd that were then proposing that instead we should remove sanctions, were not going to participate in regime change in '02-03, no matter who was in the White House.
This is a flaw in the worldview of that side of the political spectrum, the idea that anything - any disagreement, conflict of views and difference of opinion, can be overcome through negotiation, if diplomacy is done right. Not everything can, where real interests are involved. Hell, the same people understand that at home. Woulds Kerry vote for Bush's tax cut bills if Bush and his domestic policy advisors had just been smoother talkers? Or do Bush and Kerry just have such different views on economic & tax policy that no amount of jaw-jaw-jaw would have resulted in Kerry supporting Bush's tax policies? A counter-argument may be that "oh, well Bush could have changed the bills to get Kerry's vote" - but that involves not persuasion to support a policy, but changing the policy to fit the other guy's preferences. That's a different kettle of fish.
So on foreign policy, one has to conclude that either Kerry's view of the world is unrealistic, or that in diplomacy & negotiation with other countries, he would be willing to modify America's policies, adjusting them to conform to what is acceptable/desired by other countries, for the sake of consensus-building. Consensus-building is not without value, but whether it's worth it depends upon what you're giving up for it, and what actual, practical benefit you get from gaining it.
So that's where the rubber hits the road. I think the Bush team has been slow in recovering from mis-steps. But the only things Kerry proposes that have a realistic chance of coming to pass, increasing the American Army some and stepping up the training of Iraqi forces, are things that Bush is already doing. And of the two, while neither is perfect (not at all!), I think Bush will allow a more aggressive pursuit of the enemies in Iraq than Kerry will want to engage in. We see some of that starting now. Frankly I wish it had taken place six months ago or more, but Bush was trying to accommodate the desires of others (Iraqi leaders who wanted negotiated cease-fires and deals). I think that what happened as a result shows the limitations of that way of proceeding. I think that the Bush team is closer to understanding those limitations while Kerry will never understand that, will always be ready to accept another round of negotiations and cease-fires that allows the other side to live to carry on the fight.
We see that in the difference between how Bush is handling North Korea vs. how Kerry wants to handle it, too. It's not just that all the sudden Kerry-the-multilateralist is in favor of America going unilateral and cutting out the allies. It's his willingness to do what the other side wants to placate them (Kim Jong Il wants bilateral discussions, because he understands he's more likely to get what he wants as a result - another "Agreed Framework" farce/fiasco).
Btw, the unseriousness of the Kerry team, and dems in general, on grave foreign policy matters is again on display here. They are all aware, and indeed were at the time, that the "Agreed Framework" with North Korea was a boondoggle of the highest order (and were cross at Carter for unleashing the discussions that lead to it, but felt cornered into doing it). But to get at Bush, and because they're like the Bourbons (neither forgetting history nor learning from history), they're proposing to go down that same path again.
I think Bush's tactics there are much better - though again, not perfect. But there's the rub, too; perfect options don't exist. Not in foreign policy, not in diplomacy, and not in politics and who to vote for.
Faced with the candidates we have, I know which one I'm going to vote for.
Reading Instapundit, I was struck by a line at the end of this post:
The "zero defects" approach to war is, I think, born of a combination of military ignorance and partisanship.
I've mentioned the cluelessness of most reporters when it comes to military matters myself more than once. But I think the problem goes beyond that, and beyond partisanship - though it's related to an ideological mindset.
It's not just military ignorance at work here, but historical ignorance - as Glenn alludes to. You don't really have to have in depth knowledge of the military to do better than most reporters do today. I doubt that reporters in the early '40s started with a better knowledge of the military. Neither did reporters who covered WWI in '17 and '18. So why is coverage so different now?
I'll get to the answer in a second, but first I should note that what I'm doing here, and what Glenn did in his post, involved putting things in historical context. Most reporters aren't able to do that, and when they try they tend to flub it badly.
The reason for that, and the reason why coverage of the war and just about anything else (from the environment to the state of politics to the economy and standard-of-living-issues) boils down to the remarkable lack of intellectual curiosity among reporters. Indeed, among those who work-with-words in general.
The simple fact of the matter is that our intellectual class is not very intellectually curious. Instead, they tend to be ideologues who believe they already know, and their job is to transmit their better understanding of the world and its workings to the rest of us, using current events as examples. Of course, this isn't universally true, but it is generally the case.
Reporters in the past were not "professionals" as such. They didn't attend J-School. Reporting was more of a craft than a profession - which ironically made them more curious. They had fewer preconceived notions, I think, and dug for the facts. Again, broad generalizations are at work here - I'm not overlooking the "yellow journalism" of the past, and editors and publishers with their axes to grind, and there was certainly a partisan press back then as there is now - and FDR was often its target.
But reporters now seem to go into any topic, any story, with far more preconceived notions, provided by ideology, than reporters did in the past. Most of these are often wrong or misleading or misapplied, but they aren't able to correct for it because of a lack of real intellectual curiosity. In the past, reporters didn't have a J-School degree, so they substituted common sense for a college education. That seemed to work better, and I think successful bloggers, whatever their education level, tend to have it.
We're told time and time again by scions of the mainstream media that "bloggers aren't professional journalists". With the exception of the ones that are, that's true. Your typical good blogger substitutes sound judgement and common sense for a professional credential. That's what blogging often adds to news. A blogger may not do any "real journalism", going out and getting new news. They - we - generally rely on other media sources for the raw information. But the "added value" a reader gets from blogging comes from that critical eye, good judgement, common sense, and the ability to put information in a more intellectually grounded context than the mainstream media is generally able to provide anymore.
When I flew back home for leave after AIT we went to a place for breakfast the next day and there was a car in the parking lot with a Kerry bumper-sticker and a "War is Not the Answer" bumper sticker. I kept thinking that given what they say about bringing in more honesty and candor in politics, it would behoove the Kerry Campaign to find some way to combine those bumper-stickers in a way that accurately expresses their attitude towards the entire War on Terror. But I couldn't think of a concise slogan. Until the other day.
Here I am sitting down reading an article in THe Economist on the campaign, and they write about "the 'war on terror'." EUREKA!
So here's the slogan:
Turn The War On Terror into "The War On Terror": Vote Kerry
Which accurately and concisely conveys the way they (Kerry and his closest foreign policy advisors) see it, as akin to the "War on Poverty" and other such pseudo-wars.
If you're one of the many Americans who want to pitch in to help the troops but aren't sure what you can do, you might want to check this out. It's a way to send a care package to wounded soldiers. Check it out.
On PBS's Newshour, Tom Dashle was bemoaning "the use of wedge issues" in this campaign.
Of course, it is important to see through the political fog and understand what a "wedge issue" is. A "wedge issue" is any issue that gets between Democrats and power. In a democratic republic, that means any issue where a majority of the people are not in favor of their position and/or policies.
Sorry, couldn't resist lifting that line from the Dr. Who episode, "The Invisible Enemy" (one of my favs, from back in the day).
I now have internet in the barracks, at least. Which means I will be able to write back to some folks who e-mailed me but who I haven't been able to write back to (yet).
I've been working in the Motor Pool this week, so even less access than normal at work (which is minimal as it is), and the internet I have in the barracks at this time is still just dial up (would you all believe that my own personal home computer is still an ancient, obsolete Windows 95, Pentium II system? Well, that's what I've got, folks, until I get the ducats to finally upgrade. I was hoping to do that this fall, but family finances haven't been great and I've been chipping in as much as I've been able. But I digress. . .again).
Well, this means there should be some blogging on a more regular basis soon. This week I'm boning up to take the ACT, because I have to have a recent ACT for an OCS application packet. But I'm sure I'll be blogging, as I've missed it. More on that in a later post, but I've got to go now (I'm just on my lunch break atm).
