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More on clean hands and evil triumphing — 119 Comments

1. If government is engaged in anything military or legal, especially something that combines the two, it’s regarded with intense suspicion

   Yeah, what kind of Commie pinko would think that?

   [T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious Blackstone, in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital: “To bereave a man of life, [says he] or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.”

2. History supports the conservative view, and it should because government is one group of men holding power over another.

   The Left has no history to argue from, and it is to their benefit that no real history is taught in our schools. Parents, teach your children. Given them specific facts and tell them true stories with names, places, and dates.

3. Clean hands prep tofu
   Butterfly effect? What? Hats?
   Allahu Akbar

4. A cynic is an optimist by nature and a realist by sad experience. And it is the cynic in me that has a theory.

   The SCOTUS B.5 may see that the Court stands a good chance of pulling away from the Left in the next five years. Knowing that the people who replace them will likely be more respectful of precedent than they are, they may be seeking to embed their worldview in precedent while they still have the chance, anchoring the future on the foundation they are setting.

5. mhe: You will note I already wrote, in the next-to-last paragraph of this post:

   Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t tend to trust government much at all, but they acknowledge the strength of the counterbalancing external threat represented by Islamicist totalitarianism (and, previously, Communism), plus the fact that government is a sort of “necessary evil” for the purpose of military action and defense.

   That is why, in the main, conservatives support justices who are the so-called “strict constructionists” of the Constitution. They feel this best preserves us against the possible tyranny of the courts. They also believe that illegal enemy noncombatants (such as, for example, pirates—or noncitizen terrorists captured on foreign soil) fall outside the purview of the Constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus. They believe that our need for defense, and the passage of statutes that grant rights (although not habeas corpus) to the prisoners involved, as well as adherence to the time-honored military justice system in trying their cases, is enough protection against tyranny while preserving our right to defend ourselves.

   As I said, a question of balance.

6. a question of balance

   Shorter Neoneocon:

   “Moral relativism is bad, except when I’m choosing.”

7. Not to be too picky about the circumstances that set up this piece, but wasn’t it the bombing and invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War that brought the Khmer Rouge to power? And if there had been lots more COs “sitting out” our little imperialistic adventure, there would not have been enough troops to expand the war in that way and no genocide would have happened, whereas if the writer had joined the effort he might have been one of the ones responsible for bringing the bad guys to power.

   There, as in Iraq, we ignored the advice to “First, do no harm.”

8. mhe: This business of writing a “shorter” version of what you think someone is saying—or what you’d prefer to think someone is saying—doesn’t make it correct.

   I would imagine you know the difference between moral relativism and the need to weigh alternatives while making ethical choices, and the acknowledgment that reasonable people (and unreasonable people) may differ. Understanding, of course, that I am human and can make errors, I still attempt to make or to advocate the choices I think are objectively correct based on the available evidence, not arbitrarily correct based on how I might feel, or what I might want to be true. Moral relativists think otherwise.

9. Brown Bess: That’s the Left’s point of view, not the Right’s, which thinks our withdrawal from Vietnam caused it. This, of course, is a simplified version of each side’s point of view; the reality is quite complex. I have done a lot of research and made notes for a post on the topic—maybe one day I’ll get to it.

10. Those on the left tend to want a conceptually balanced ideal, whereas conservative are more like to try to achieve balance by adding a little to one side, evaluating and then adjusting. Conservatives don’t demand perfection; they are happy with pretty darn good.

11. You know, I have to wonder at the people who think that invading Cambodia caused such horrible things and yet North Vietnam using Cambodia to funnel supplies and personnel into South Vietnam for years beforehand somehow had no effect whatsoever on Cambodia’s stability.

    Willful blindness.

12. neo-neocon wrote:

    mhe: This business of writing a “shorter” version of what you think someone is saying–or what you’d prefer to think someone is saying–doesn’t make it correct.

    To be less diplomatic, it’s a way to deliberately lie about what an opponent says.

13. Neo: I admire your patience in the face of this absurdity

14. What is this “shorter” horse manure which has, as far as I can tell, suddenly sprung up? Patrick Chester is correct: it a way to deliberately lie.

    There is typically no difference between “shorter” and “x is racist”. It’s a “can’t prove a negative” situation. No matter that x adopted black children, x’s accuser says: “so what, x is racist.” No matter how an accused points to their own words as refutation of “shorter”, their accuser says “so what, ‘shorter’ is correct”.

    I speculate “shorter” began as a series of jokes which referenced what every leftist knows to be truths about the other side: they are either consciously or unconsciously racist, greedy and selfish, uninformed, or all of the above. Since great jokes reference some bit of truth, and “shorter” referenced some bit of “truth”, the affectation gained favor.

    “Shorter” is a gradeschool taunt. To use it is to announce you are a child.

15. I am human and can make errors, I still attempt to make or to advocate the choices I think are objectively correct based on the available evidence, not arbitrarily correct based on how I might feel, or what I might want to be true

    Yes, terribly objective, except about little things like the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, or the inconvenient fact that we know numerous innocent people ended up in Guantanamo. Having constructed an imaginary universe in which every detainee is guilty by definition, and in which the President and his advisors would never, ever shade the truth — let alone pronounce utter falsehoods — you now suffer from the delusion that your judgments are objective.

    All your talk of “balance” is little more than camouflage for a Chicken Little mentality. I pity you and the closed world you inhabit.

16. Ultimately, it all has to do with people wanting a place for all their emotions. People who don’t admit much place for shame as regards sexual depravity will find some other place to put shame, from a kind of innate sense that shame has some purpose: for every emotion there is a season. The liberals don’t usually feel that depraved addictions like sodomy are shameful, and so they psychologically need to find something else that would be shameful and worthy of feeling guilty about. Liberals are forever looking for other stuff (besides sodomy and other shameful addictions) to be guilty about or that we should feel ashamed of, yeah. The Republicans, being the party of money, more tend to view depravity shameful, mainly because if mating is based more on money than on depravity, that favors their own mating. Rich men are more successful at using money in attracting females than poorer men are, but they aren’t any more successful at using depravity. So it is in their best interest to (rightly) view depravity as depraved and vulgar, which prevents them from having a psychological need to feel guilty about other things. And the religious right takes such a broad definition of stuff worthy of being ashamed of as regards personal pleasure and sexual morals, senseless national guilt about stuff not related to sex or pleasure would only make them more unbalanced, and so you wouldn’t expect them to tend to have much (misplaced) guilt about it, any more than the rich conservatives.

17. Brown Bess,

    Let me digress from the main topic of this thread to ask you to ponder another way of looking at Pol Pot, Cambodia, and the bombings in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. For starters, the North Vietnamese were using terror and threats to compel the Cambodian government to allow the Ho Chi Mihn Trail to egress their nation. This was a naked aggression directed at Cambodia’s neighbor, the Republic of South Vietnam. We did conduct secret negotiations with Cambodia and Laos for the purpose of getting permission to begin interdicting the Communist traffic on the Trail. We got it, and we did bomb the Communists’ weapons depots, convoys, and troop concentrations. We did not have the kind of precision bombing that we do today. Nevertheless, in those days a B-52 formation could put its load right within the confines of a football sized area. However, in war nothing goes perfectly. Any collateral damage in Cambodia falls on the Communists’ to take responsibility for. Not us. Furthermore, the bombing in that country was not and never was the proximate cause of the Khmer Rouge’s taking the country. Pol Pot had planned this for many years when he was in Paris, and eventually his Chinese masters brought him over, armed his groups, and turned them loose. So, if an outside power is to be given some of the blame, well, take your pick: Hanoi or Beijing or both. This theory that the United States is the cause of the Killing Fields has been around for a long time. It is the American Left’s way of deflecting blame away from fellow socialists/totalitarians. This kind of deception is actually very commonplace among the Left. And that proclivity for lying is one of the many reasons why I left the Left back in 1987.

    On the prior thread, I knew exactly where neo was going with the idea of how to balance ethical reasoning in the Boumedine decision. The Constitution does set limits on how far government can go with abuse and power grabbing. We conservatives know this. We don’t see the need to bring in laws from other traditions, institutions, and treaties that have to do with foreign relations and war.

18. In my above response I should have checked what I had typed. I meant “football sized field” for the precision of the B-52 bombing strikes during the Vietnam War.

19. Towards the end of my time on the Left, roughly 1985-87, I began to dig into the various versions of historical reality that I had taken for granted, and looked at them again. This time looking for fact and not interpretation.

    Many of the officers and NCO’s I had served with in the U.S. Army, during my three year enlistment from 1973 to 1976, told me a lot about that war, and how the Communists fought it. That planted a seed. It would be many years before I really watered it and revisited it.

    When I was in college what I heard and what I read was almost exclusively the Left’s narrative about these events. Starting in the mid-eighties, while I was a Jesuit seminarian, I met priests who were from Eastern Europe and I got another clue as to how the Marxists tend to fudge or revise the facts of history. These guys planted seeds of doubts – that mixed in with all of the other critiques of Marxism I was wrestling with. I was seriously exploring philosophy, history, and science to see if there was a way around the conservative critiques. Eventually I found there was not. Along that journey I began to very often find that things I had learned on the Left were falsifications of reality. After I had left the Society of Jesus, I began to read historical accounts of that war, and found that the facts the Left had told us about that war did not square with reality. And by this time I had learned more about the truth of socialist societies.

    Lying and revision to suit the purposes of propaganda – advancing the revolutionary consciousness – were a big reason for my disillusionment with the Left. To this day, because of how deeply I went into socialist theory and historical narrative, I am ever-distrustful of their motives. They may dress it up in some noble, seemingly moral declaration, but I just don’t trust their ultimate aims. I know all too well from my days on the Left that they hate this country and support anything that can weaken it or bring it down.

20. With as many illegal aliens that have crossed the borders and are still crossing the border undetected(and I don’t think any here would deny that obvious fact) the secrecy, detentions, and overall conduct (wiretapping for instance) is seemingly a false sense of security perpetrated on the public by the current administration.

    As far as I’m concerned, in general we are not even dealing with people with the resources and sophistication (at least in organization if not technology) of 60 year old WW2 Nazi Germany.

    This is not to say they are not dangerous.

    But yes, I am one that feels that yes, we can accomplish most of our goals with transparency. Strange that… I am confident that we can deal with terrorism at least as well without compromising more traditional values.

    Or more to the point, focus, itself, on the problem was 90 percent of the solution after 9/11.

    (I don’t really know what the percentage was, but obviously priorties of resources needed reevaluating, instead of on say, the cold war or whatever)

21. Also, I don’t think we’ve ever fought a war where the expectation seems to be, we will never have have a casualty again on U.S. soil again or we’re not doing enough.

    I’m sorry, but I DON’T want to live in a society that is so locked down to do that.

    (okay, someone throw in, but what if they bring in a “nuke” , okay, but still see above sentence)

22. And third consecutive post:

    I know some here and elsewhere seem to be trying to combat all of Islam. I do not know how to fight that, so I’m sticking to the people plotting and making bombs.

23. logern,

    Nor should we, at this point, be “trying to combat all of Islam.” But, to get an idea of what we are facing, it would behoove you to read the Qur’an, some English translations of the ahadith Bukhari and Muslim, and some reliable historical commentary on the life of Muhammad. Know that all traditional schools of Islamic theology hold the Qur’an to be a divine dictation. And then you will find that the jihadis actually are correctly quoting their own scriptures for the mandates to do what they do. Our friends, therefore, should be the “bad” Muslims, not the good Muslims. Good Muslims do as Allah commands. The “bad” Muslims are the cultural Muslims.

    Honestly, we cannot fight them all all at once. Simply not possible. But what is most important is that we stymie the soft jihad they are waging to make inroads into our society and to weaken its resolve to resist jihad in all its forms. And that means we citizens have to hit the books, because our political, media, and academic elites are not doing that and show no inclination to stray from their comfort zones.

24. I think Leftists are sick.

    Freud wrote, on “Civilization and it discontents”, about people who are unhappy with the constraints civilization puts on us. I think leftists/liberals fall in this category.

    Notice that their “enemy”, if any at all, are “conservatives”, not terrorists, not people from other nations, not countries who chant “Death to America” everyday. But “conservatives” or “Republicans”.

    See their language, even here in this comments, people as mhe and such. Their enemies, the ones they portray as “evil”, are conservatives. All the others are not “evil”, are just either distractions, victims, or people you can “dialog” with (apparently you cant’t just dialog with conservatives).

    The reason is that they are discontent with civilization, with the conservative values which are its base, and therefore wish to destroy them.

    Not being an American (I’m from South America), American leftists strike me as the strangest of them all.

    Since they live in the most powerful and richest country on earth, I always thought very strange the fact that liberal Americans would want their own country to be weaker, to lose wars, to have less weapons than their sworn enemies. Why!?? What kind of sick person would want this for their own country? Yet many seem to think that it is OK for Iran to have nuclear weapons, for the military in the country be reduced, etc etc etc.

    But if you see that their real enemy are not terrorists or other nations, but conservatives and conservative values, it all becomes clearer.

25. neo: It’s a strange paradox.

    Well, perhaps not so strange. Modern day “liberals”, esp. of the kind that like to call themselves (with a nice irony) “progressives”, are defined entirely by their fascination with the coercive power of the state to achieve a planned or engineered society. As long as the state is seen as pursuing such planning, they’re not only fine with repressive and even totalitarian measures, they advocate and, when given the power, implement them. Hence, for example, the left-leaning and comically-named “Human Rights” kangaroo courts in Canada that are busily silencing undesirable speech, or the warm and fuzzy fondness of lefties for the Cuban regime and for cold-blooded executioners like Che Guevara, or the trek of doting left-lib celebrities to kiss the feet of a vicious clown like Chavez. No, it’s only when the state is in the hands of those who refuse to use its coercive power to advance their agenda that the mush-for-brains lefties get upset and suddenly start appropriating the language and concerns of those who have always valued freedom. Little wonder that, as phony converts to liberty, they can’t understand the painful compromises that are sometimes required to preserve that freedom. For the likes of meh above, for example, it’s always better that 10 terrorist atrocities occur than one innocent bystander be detained.

26. Does anyone else get the feeling that these anti-lefrtist messages being left by new people are being made by Leftists?

27. I believe the first step involved in doing sound moral reasoning is to be grounded in the truth. If one is wittingly or unwittingly grounded in lies or half-truths, even if the method of reasoning is sound, the result will be a costly error. Or, as is often stated in the computer world: garbage in, garbage out.

    I say that even if the one trying to do sound moral reasoning is a good person and is trying to do the right thing.

    That is why a realistic assessment of the context of the problem is so utterly, starkly critical. This is why I believe many on the Left, some of them certainly good people (I don’t subscribe to the view that all Leftists have venal motives), fail so utterly when choosing the policy option or legal opinion that satisfies their needs. They start from faulty perception and erroneous facts about the world and human behavior.

    My God, I learned even during my Leftist days that not all human beings are the same or think alike or even have the same psychological pressure points. And in the current conflict I have seen all too often how those on the Left think that the Islamic terrorists are really not that different from us, after all, “their violence comes from the same kinds of “frustrations” that ours would come from, eh?”

    And so, they apply their worn template of “root causes” to the problem, oblivious to the real facts and history, and conclude that some degree of appeasement or coddling would mollify their aims to convert us or kill us.

    If your enemy is religiously motivated, isn’t it kind of idiotic to think that Marxist analysis would shed light on the problem?

28. Recently watched the Adams Chronicles on DVD. Wonderful history lesson. One of the striking things was the argument between the founders about how the government should work. Adams, Hamilton, and others from the northeast wanted a strong, activist central government. Jefferson, Washington, and others from the southern colonies wanted a weak central government with strong states rights.

    That argument, slightly modified, continues to this day.

    The way I read the Constitution the Federal government would confine itself to defending us from all enemies foreign and domestic, along with regulating interstate commerce. Anything else is, IMHO, optional and to be decided by the citizenry. Call me a Jeffersonian.

    It’s obvious to even the casual observer that the Feds are involved in any number of optional activities beyond defense and regulating interstate commerce. We got to this point because Presidents and Congresses have decided to take on these optional activities and the voters have pretty much bought the program.

    Today the Feds have their fingers in many, many pies and deep in our pockets. Conservatives have taken a look at this and decided we have gone too far down the path to an all powerful central government. Thus the debate. Prior to 1960 there was little in the way of a Conservative movement in this country. The dems had pretty much run things to their liking since 1933.

    But the argument is now mostly framed in terms of “fairness.” The high moral position assumed by the Left is that they only want to make things more fair. Equality of results is more important to them than equality of opportunity. And in their eyes only a very powerful central government can achieve this desired result. (And they’re right.)

    Conservatives have taken the time to examine the results of pwerful central governments trying to produce equal outcomes. The USSR, Red China, Mynamar, Cuba, and North Korea are some examples we have studied. What we have seen is that equality of outcomes results not in a perfected egalitarian society, but in a prison in which the inmates all share equally in the misery produced.

    The Left is either unwilling to look at these examples or they believe that these countries just didn’t get it RIGHT. Give the Left the reins of power and they will GET IT RIGHT! (I hear this implied in every Obama speech.)

    One of the reasons this argument persists is that the benefits of Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market is, unless studied closely, invisible to a person who is looking only for fairness.

    So the debate goes on. Conservatives have won a few in the last 28 years (since Reagan was elected), but the slide toward socialism seems to continue. Our education system contributes mightily to that trend.

    I have been observing Congressional hearings on Scott McClellan and the la affaire de Plame, the DOD decisions about interrogation methods at GITMO, and the question of whether Bush lied to the country about IRAQ and WMDs. What I see is the democrat majority angling to somehow bring charges against the Bush administration for “War Crimes” if Obama is elected. (They seem pretty confident about that.) This is a truly frightening prospect. They are trying to criminalize policy decisions that the Bush administration made that they don’t like or disagree with. If they get away with it, it will mean no President can make any decisions not approved by the Left.

    Sorry to get so far afield, but I see something more sinister going on than just a vicious blogosphere debate about the issues. It is about the way people perceive the world and what that means to us.

29. Jimmy J,

    Do you think the Left will push things so far, and will so recklessly neglect to defend the nation, that we may have a civil war or another revolution to overthrow the government?

    Prosecuting President Bush and officials who carried out policy will cause a lot of division and maybe even violence in our country. I would not at all want to be on the Left when that happens, because most of the military and law enforcement would go over to our side. MY experience of the Left, when I was there thirty years ago and from what I’ve observed today, is that the Left would be annihilated in a civil war. Very little of the military would hold with them. Our people have the weapons, the training, and the understanding of how to fight that would simply, pardon the expression, blow the Left away. Literally, shooting ducks in a barrel.

30. # Vince P Says:
    June 21st, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    Does anyone else get the feeling that these anti-lefrtist messages being left by new people are being made by Leftists?

    Are you talking about me, Sir? I ain’t no leftist. Besides, I’m not really new, been reading this blog for years, I just don’t really comment very often.

    neo, you’re great. bye.

31. Zeno: not specifically you.

32. Neo, as usual I appreciate your writing, and I’d like again to applaud it. However, as usual, I’d like to point out some places where I think you are eliding over quite a number of issues.

    Since you yourself say you were once a liberal, I find it odd that your characterizations of liberal or leftist views seems so at odds with pretty much every liberal I know. What you describe as a “left/liberal” point of view is in fact, in my experience, almost exclusively a leftist point of view, not a liberal point of view. Liberals, in my experience, consider external enemies to be very much a threat, and very much worth fighting vigorously — but we also believe that protecting our liberties at home is important. It is, as you say, a balance between the two things that one has to strike, somehow, to find the optimum — obviously one can see that going way far in one direction (police state) or in the other (pacifist country?) would be almost certainly disastrous.

    I have a number of leftist friends who do subscribe to the view that internal threats from our own government are far more of a concern than external threats. I might note, however, that this view is not exclusively leftist — conservatives, traditionally, have also been very suspicious of the power of government. In this respect you really are a neo-conservative — pro-government power, yet conservative. But my point here is that suspicion of government power is both a left- and right-wing concern, at least historically.

    I am all for aggressively combating our enemies. As I’ve said many times, I think we should have threatened to bomb North Korea’s nuclear power plant when they threw out the IAEA cameras and inspectors. I think we should aggressively pursue our enemies who are currently establishing safe havens in Northern Pakistan. I believe we should pressure Iran, and consider targeted strikes against their nuclear facilities if they do not accept intrusive inspections. Protecting national security is paramount to the thinking of most liberals, even if it is not nearly so important to leftists. I am surprised you aren’t aware of this distinction, given the fact that one would presume many of your friends and family are liberals. Or were you, in your past life, so to speak, a leftist, rather than just a liberal?

    Regarding Boumediene, I think of course you’re right that many people argue emotionally rather than legally about that decision — but that is true on both sides, as you can see by reading the comments section of your own posts. Those of us who argue the merits of this case legally are of a different temperament, but obviously there are those on both sides, left and right … and clearly the decision itself is rendered in legal terms that are eminently clear and I believe correct. Naturally, protecting our liberties at home is only one side of the coin — we also must aggressively pursue our enemies as well. I am saying we can and should do both, and to do both is the strongest, and most effective, long-term strategy.

33. Some confusion may arrise because “the left” is interchangely used for all those left of right. 🙂

    Whereas, “leftest” if used, is much more specific.

    “Lefties” I’m not so sure. That also could be confusing.

    I think Democrats can still join the Communist or Socialist parties in the U.S. if they want, but until they specifically do, it might be better to refer to more specific terms or descriptions if you want your point to be understood better.

    If however you want to whitewash the whole “left” as unified pinkos — well, carry on.

    Same goes for the “right”.

34. It’s so rewarding when someone responds to a very minor and insignificant bit of a long writing

35. “Liberals, in my experience, consider external enemies to be very much a threat, and very much worth fighting vigorously – but we also believe that protecting our liberties at home is important.”

    That’s not been my experience. The self-professed liberals I know have a hard time believing we have any enemies that we haven’t made ourselves, and therefore believe we need to talk to them, build up their esteem, apologize and make reparations for past actions, etc. They also want to cut military spending so we can better fund schools and healthcare. They seem to believe that if we are harmless, no one will harm us, and they tend to be ashamed of the US. Most of my friends these days are self-identified liberals, and I’ve heard these points repeatedly from them.

36. “They seem to believe that if we are harmless, no one will harm us, and they tend to be ashamed of the US. ”

    Yeah. A conservative is someone who recognizes that the aggressive urge in human nature is often without conscience and pays no attention to innocence. Bad guys attack innocents. “Liberals” as I have known them recently–area of Kittery Maine–seem to be more pleased at being “good children” (with pure conscience) than concerned to be “good adults” (effective actors with conscience.)

37. Thanks for a good Sunday read, Neo. I also like how you try and draw out those critical to your article. From my point of view its an attempt at dialog and coming to common ground or at least agreeing to disagree.
    What I don’t understand is why I never see that type of response in those that dislike your articles. Theirs is more of a- “bunch of war fascists, Big Oil, Big Corps, ect. Their comments tend to shut down dialog. And as best as I can determine, they will never change that point of view. But anyway, thanks for the time and effort to share your thoughts with your readers. This reader appreciates it 🙂
    For all your liberals that really want to change the world, check out http://www.kiva.org and put your money where your mouth is. Although I suspect their organization has a liberal mindset, their microloans help those in need. 🙂

38. Continuing the thought.

    I think those who are stuck at being “pure” do not understand, really, the more complicated life one has when one chooses to be responsible for consequences. The horizon of the childish liberal just is not broad enough; such folks don’t understand that it’s possible to carry the more adult burden–and it’s quite a burden–of being responsible for actual consequences, including the unintended consequences, of actions.

39. Here’s what Obama said recently:

    “I start from a different premise. I believe that the Iraq War was a major strategic blunder. It diverted us from the battle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan–the people who launched the attacks of 9/11 and who remain powerful and active today. We face threats in Iraq, but the two greatest ones, as General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have testified, are Al Qaeda (which is wounded but not dead) and Iran. Both are a direct consequence of the invasion. There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before 2003, and Iran’s influence has expanded massively since then.”

    My main issue is of course that Al Qaeda is the result of instability in the region so by definition, Iraq is central to any permanent solution to Al Qaeda. Secondly, Obama flat out lies when he says Al Qaeda is more powerful today (e.g. when was the last time a 767 flew into a US asset?).

    A central issue I imagine for the GOP is when to begin the assault on the premise that the war was/is fundamentally wrong as a strategic policy in the Middle East. Clearly and most comforting about the Neocon position (articulated recently by Condi Rice in Foreign Affairs) is the decision to invade Iraq was made on the heels of a 40 year attempt to mediate peace and progress in the region, with little concrete results. The fact is US$1 Trillion later, the region has been thrust into the late 20th Century and today is peppered with strong evidence in Dubai and elsewhere of having actually moved into the 21st Century. The basic premise of the wedge strategy is that meaningful socio-political change can only be affected by the introdution of military pressure. When one looks at a map of the Middle East today, two things scream out: (1) Iran is irrefutably contained; (2) The Saudis and Israel are no longer the focal points of US cooperation, thus freeing them to become unique forces of political influence with their respective allies and partisan groups. A third but perhaps less significant transformation, is the shift from the monolithic view of the region (i.e. Arabs as Muslims versus Sunni, Shia, Christians, Jews) on the part of not only the US and Europeans but also within the region itself as evidenced by a willingness to experiment peacefully with democratic representation in Iraq. Friedman interestingly points this out last week when he mused on a comment by an Egyptian who said Israel and Iraq are the only two democracies in the Middle East. The comment drew ire of course but he was right on. The perception is that the US is meddling but the result is a profound shift in Iraq to a government coalition grounded in fair representation in government.

    I never served in the military and as such to an extent don’t have the same right to my views as others perhaps. Yet, it causes me great concern that the larger population, many public officials as well as the press, utterly fail to exercise basic critical thinking when reviewing the history of the Middle East, its strategic role in the global economy (as both a provider of crude but also as an ideological ally in the transformation of non-secular autocracies and larger issues such as the conversion to alternative energy solutions), and perhaps most importantly, the containment of non-integrating powers like Iran.

40. The “liberals” you’re speaking of are, I would argue, much closer to leftist in terms of politics than mainstream liberals — but you may also be misinterpreting their views to some degree. But lets look to history — World War II was fought by FDR and Truman — both liberals, both Democrats. JFK — a liberal — tried to invade Cuba by proxy (in a horribly mismanaged way, of course, but still), and was a staunch anti-Communist (note that he was the one who started the Vietnam War — though I imagine that had he lived, he might have conducted it a lot better than Johnson did).

    I am a liberal, and I think the idea that just being “nice” is hardly going to prevent the United States from being attacked. You have to aggressively defend your borders, and go after your enemies, because many of them will try to attack you regardless of how “nice” you are. On the other hand, I don’t disagree with the idea that our policies abroad can and has worked against us both now and in the past. To the extent that we are viewed in a negative light, it will increase the power of our enemies, and to the extent we’re viewed positively, it will harm our enemies. This isn’t a matter of wolly-headed idealism — it’s a hard-nosed pragmatic fact. Naturally, that alone isn’t enough — you have to be both ethical AND tough, and I think that’s a perfectly mainstream liberal POV, even if there may be some on the far left who think the way you describe.

    I imagine, however, that many of the liberals you think are so naively idealistic supported the Afghan war, would cheer on attempts to aggressively go after bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and have no problems with the United States attacking people who attacked us. Furthermore, I’ve never heard any mainstream Democrat suggest that our national defense should consist only of “being pure and innocent so no one will attack us.” Yes, we should avoid making enemies needlessly, we should attempt to be as even-handed, fair, and ethical as possible — because that increases our strength in many ways. But at the same time we should be tough against our enemies. I believe that is by far the mainstream “liberal” position and it is certainly mine.

41. … wasn’t it the bombing and invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War that brought the Khmer Rouge to power?

    Almost certain in any discussion of atrocities by various nefarious parties, in this case the Khmer Rouge, is that someone will come along and hotly declare that the US is responsible for the murders.

    I think it is debatable that the Khmer Rouge were a consequence of US actions. But what the comment is really implying is that the Khmer Rouge got so doggone mad at the US that they had to(here’s were the meme becomes ridiculous) slaughter millions of their own people.

    Yes, the khmer Rouge were a bunch of nice folks who became so upset at the US bombing of Communist supply routes passing unchallenged through their territory that they formed up a Communist movement and committed genocide on their own people. This is what many anti-war types profess to believe.

    I’ve observed this same phenomena in debates about Stalin, Communism itself, Hitler, Mussolini, the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe after WW2, Saddam Hussein – just about any vile regime or individual. For some the US is always to blame – no matter what.

42. I dont see Iraq as a mistake.

    In 2003 , Al Qaeda/Afghanistan was dispursed. They fled to many places, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq amoung them.

    Iraq had a vendetta against us

    UN Sanctions were weakening

    The Iraq society was disintegrating

    Iraq was paying Palestinian suicide bombers

    Iraq was shooting at US/UK jet planes in No Fly Zones

    Iraq had human capablituy to restart nuclear program as soon as sanctions were over

    Expectations were for a followup attack on US soil were high

    You add all that up, plus iraq making a mockery of the security council and there’s no way you could just leave things as they were

    If we didn’t invade when we did, we’d be facing a nuclear iraq, nuclear iran and probably a nuclear saudi arabia

    we would be far worse off than we are now.

43. Along these lines, see Ghost of Flea’s Quote of the Day from Kathy Shaidel:

    The difference between what the Nazis said about the Jews and what people today are saying about radical Muslims is…

    What we’re saying about radical Muslims is true.

    To pretend otherwise is to perform the intellectual equivalent of hiding Nazis in your attic during World War II.

44. Fred says: “I never served in the military and as such to an extent don’t have the same right to my views as others perhaps.”

    Mitsu says: “But at the same time we should be tough against our enemies. I believe that is by far the mainstream “liberal” position and it is certainly mine.”

    Fred, your humility is appreciated, but your “views” in your last post are brilliant in my opinion, and you have at least as much right as any other American to express them, especially here. If the pen is (truly) mightier than the sword, then your insight and eloquence, even in this remote corner of the digital universe, is a potentially important force for a more rational and safer world. Mitsu, as usual, is correct in principle, just not in reality. People don’t have enough respect for how much has been accomplished in Iraq during the last five years.

45. logern

    As far as I’m concerned, in general we are not even dealing with people with the resources and sophistication (at least in organization if not technology) of 60 year old WW2 Nazi Germany.

    This is not to say they are not dangerous.

    But yes, I am one that feels that yes, we can accomplish most of our goals with transparency. Strange that… I am confident that we can deal with terrorism at least as well without compromising more traditional values.

    The difficulty arises from the attacker not being a State. Nazi Germany was Naziism, an idea, embedded within a state. Attacking the State took it down, and the classical political model of war matched the danger. Such a fight could not be conducted transparently. (Nor can criminal investigations be transparent until they are completed, and witness protection programs can never be transparent.)

    We are now fighting an ideology and a collection of shadow groups that are not a State. Those actors (like Hugo Chavez) that represent States are not using the full power of war, so we feel bound not to resort to war. They do this deliberately, knowing that we as a nation can adopt Sherman’s principle: They have chosen war for their remedy, and I intend to give them all that I can. But this does not mean that some actors are not warlike, nor that war and crime do not mix. They mixed in the days of piracy; they mix when Hugo Chavez supports FARC and FARC funds itself with drug money; they mix when the Taliban in Afghanistan destroys any crop except opium poppies and kills any farmer (and family) who twice plants another crop; they mix when Marxists in Nepal and warlords in Africa demand “taxes” from the people in the territories they claim.

    Find a way to fight these people that does not require us to keep secret what we know about them. Then tell the president and the JCS about it. But don’t tell everyone; if the enemy knows about it they will have a chance to counter it.

    Information has always been at the heart of war. Sun-Tzu knew it. Ulysses Grant knew it; he took Vicksburg on intelligence from a large network of spies and scouts. (Vicksburg is one of the great campaigns of military history, completely refuting the notion of Grant the Butcher; my impression is that Napoleon never managed a campaign better, but wiser people may know better.) Recon and intel are matched by secrecy and security as vital tools of war. If you have any doubt, remember that WWII turned at the very moment that the Allies realized that their codes were being broken.

    If you accept that there is a war being waged on us, then how can you justify denying the need of secrecy and security? And how can you reconcile them with “transparency”?

    Also, I don’t think we’ve ever fought a war where the expectation seems to be, we will never have have a casualty again on U.S. soil again or we’re not doing enough.

    I’m sorry, but I DON’T want to live in a society that is so locked down to do that.

    In war, one must sometimes accept casualties. That does not mean that they are “acceptible” as a moral outcome, only that they are part of the best possible outcome. Remember, the first WTC bombing included massive quantities of cyanide; the intention was that it would be carried up into the towers and kill the thousands in them by slow suffocation. (In intermediate doses, cyanide kills by binding up hemoglobin. It failed because the bombers didn’t understand the high-temperature/high-pressure chemistry of the cyanide compound they used; it was deactivated in the explosion.) Would this massive kill be acceptible to you? Do you think that history would agree with you?

    And when the next attack occurs, will the politicians and pundits say “at least we preserved habeas corpus” or will they say “who let this happen again?” What will the voters say? I’m not quite cynical enough to say that the Dems want another attack to occur on a GOP watch, but I think they are acting like it. And maybe some of them are telling themselves it can’t happen when they know better. But that is opinion not strongly grounded in fact.

    War is politics carried on by other means. When the means of politics must yield to the means of war, some of the ways of politics must also yield to the ways of war.

    FredHjr

    Do you think the Left will push things so far, and will so recklessly neglect to defend the nation, that we may have a civil war or another revolution to overthrow the government?

    Prosecuting President Bush and officials who carried out policy will cause a lot of division and maybe even violence in our country. I would not at all want to be on the Left when that happens, because most of the military and law enforcement would go over to our side.

    What you describe goes beyond the ordinary notion of Constitutional Crisis. Someone recently pointed out that when Julius Caesar brought his army intact across the Rubicon, he knew that had he not done so he would have been arrested and perhaps executed because he was more popular that the civilian rulers of Rome, and that this government corruption would not be cured by his death.

    The threat of retaliation can keep a dictator in power. When a Pinochet or a Fujimoro steps down, it is a tremendous act of faith or courage. But retaliation after an election should never happen, and our Constitution is crafted to keep it from happening. If you read the Federalist Papers, you will be amazed at the knowledge of history that Hamilton, Madison, and Jay brought to the discussion. They were not alone among the Founding Fathers. (Read the Federalist Papers; in places they are breathtaking.)

    The urge for retaliation against an elected Executive who has stepped down at the end of his term strikes at the foundation of consensual government. It is really, really dangerous and indicates that too few people appreciate what consensual government is about, and what it is worth.

46. FredHjr,
    I don’t necessarily believe we are facing violence or civil war. What I do see is an attempt by the dems to carry out a bloodless coup where they gain the upperhand over their enemies the Republicans who have, in their opinion, made policies that they believe or want to believe were criminal activities.

    As to who would come down where in that argument, I have seen too many military, CIA, and FBI types who have been adamently opposed to the Bush administration policies to believe that the agencies of the Presidency would be monolithic in support of presidential powers. In fact, if it weren’t for these dissenting individuals who leaked info to the MSM or wrote tell all, poison-pen books, the dems would not have any so-called evidence to support their charges.

    The awful part about all this is that this debate and political manuevering is taking place in an overcharged atmosphere in which the average citizen is left with very little in the way of solid information to form their opinions about where the two parties want to lead them. Mostly this is because our young voters have received very little education to help them make judgments about political policies. In addition, the 30 second TV sound bite coupled with shallow /biased reprting by newspapers are not helpful either.

    As a result, I judge that the argument for smaller government, and free market policies is presently losing the debate. The dems and their Kos Kid allies are in full attack mode. Those who want more government solutions to every problem are winning the battle. The smaller government, free market argument, because it does not appeal to the emotions is hard to get across to the moderates and undecideds who are the key to winning elections. I could be wrong, but that is the way it looks to me.

47. Vince P Says:

    June 22nd, 2008 at 11:57 am ……

    Exactly, and need we remind people, again, that many, if not most of the current high profile dimocrat blowhards were beating the drums for a full decade before the war; Then reversed position, actively undermining the effort, beginning before the “troops” had even gotten to Baghdad, for no other purpose than their craven political opportunism.

48. njcommuter,

    I’ve never read The Federalist Papers and I may do so sometime.

    Your comments in rebuttal of logern pretty much support my contention that judgment has to be based on reality and the facts of the situation. logern is starting from a point that is not reality in any sense. logern’s ideas also support my view that the Left knows very little about the theory of war, the nature of the many kinds of warfare, or how to fight a war. That is why, if they forced a Constitutional crisis upon us – and there are many ways they could do this – the armed opposition to them would win that fight.

    Many Democrats voted for The Patriot Act when it was first passed. Why have they changed their minds? Most of their representatives and Senators are lawyers. They saw nothing untoward in the Act when they voted in favor of it.

    I believe David Horowitz is right about these people. He used to be one of them, and they have viciously turned on him when he left the Left. Horowitz believes that these people think that the United States is THE EVIL ACTOR in the world. When the Muslims call us the Great Satan, it resonates within them that this is so. There is an Unholy Alliance of the Left with the Islamic enemy.

    “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

49. Neo,

    Terrific piece.

    Most of those offering comments seem thoughtful and measured in their replies; and you are heroically patient with the few who are not, or who have a tiresome ax to grind.

    Jamie Irons

50. FredHjr Says:
    “Why have they changed their minds?”

    For the same reason Robert Byrd, the former klansman, is, I presume, now supporting Barack Hussein Obama; For the same reason Rev. Wright, the former black power muslim, is now representing himself as a bible thumping (apostate) “Christian” preacher; For the same reason that the Clinton power couple are now on the B.O. Bandwagon; For the same reason that muslims worldwide are not condemning the reverand and B.O. as apostates (for others they clamor for their deaths), but instead extolling Barry’s greatness. They are all simply gaming the system, for purposes of political and probably personal financial ambition, as well as to promote, surreptitiously if necessary, their broader left-wing/Islamist power agendas. Jamie, you’re right about the piece, now let’s see you contribute something new, I’ll try to sharpen my old axe…

51. Mitsu — It seems that the term “liberal” as used today has drifted a good ways leftward since JFK. I still call myself a liberal, alibeit a “classic liberal.”

52. Yes, but the “classic liberal” today is closer to Reagan than to today’s Democratic Party.

53. A while ago I found a link to an extraordinary essay on ethics, politics and war: Moral Clarity in a Time of War. (I believe I found it on strategypage.com.)

    (Sorry for the close double-post.)

54. njcommuter — True, that’s why I mostly vote Republican these days.

    I’m still a registered Democrat, though I suppose that may eventually change, but it’s hard to think of myself as a Republican.

55. >drifted a good deal leftward since JFK

    That may be, but what I am saying is the views I am expressing above are quite mainstream in the Democratic Party today, and certainly among my friends and family. I don’t know any Democratic president in the last century who espoused the idea that the United States was the worst threat the world, that we ought to protect ourselves solely by being “nice”, that we shouldn’t have a strong military or should never fight any wars. In fact, many of the greatest military victories we have had as a nation were conducted by Democrats. I’ve seen this same phenomenon on blogs on both sides of the political spectrum: a tendency to think the other side is populated entirely by the most extreme versions — liberals think all conservatives want to establish a police state, get rid of democracy, etc…. conservatives think liberals are only worried about the power of the United States and care nothing for fighting for American security.

    Sure, we can disagree about many things, and we may disagree about things like whether or not the Iraq war was a good idea — but the broad mainstream on both sides of the aisle agrees on more than I think we’d like to believe. Both Democrats and Republicans, for the most part, want to preserve democracy at home and want to fight our enemies abroad. We differ, I believe, more in terms of what we think of as effective strategy and tactics than on whether or not America deserves protection.

    I do think that many conservatives underestimate the *strength* of ethical behavior. As I’ve said above, *in the real world* — being ethical has a value. It helps us gain allies, and makes it less likely that we will generate enmity. This has been shown in the history of warfare time and again. Otto von Bismarck unified Germany through a combination of strength and diplomacy — both qualities are crucial. Without considering the diplomatic effect of our initiatives, you make things far worse for yourself. Multiplying our enemies is not an effective way of defending yourself.

    But — this is not to say that we shouldn’t fight for our country at all, as I think some of you imagine “liberals” believe — that’s absurd. You choose your battles and your wars carefully, but when you go to war, you go all out. That’s the way we won WWII and the Gulf War and many other wars. I say one ought to be reluctant to go to war, but once you make the decision you go for it, all the way. I believe this is a view that many liberals would share. It is, as Neo has said, a question of balance, and yes, conservatives and liberals disagree on where to put the balance, but most liberals agree that we ought to defend ourselves, just as most conservatives agree that we ought to protect democracy at home.

56. njcommuter,

    I just read George Weigel’s article you linked above. One of the better elucidations of the Just War Doctrine written for non-theologians I’ve read in awhile.

    If one delves into the history of jihad conquest, there is a pattern there repeated down through the centuries. And that pattern is the emulation of the Prophet’s way of war. I recommend that those who oppose our prosecution of war against the Islamic enemy delve into the Islamic scriptures (Qur’an), traditions (ahadith), and the history of the deeds and words of Muhammad (Sira) to get an understanding of how Islam conquers the unbelievers. Actual armies fielded by the Ummah is the last stage of how they wage war. The prior stages soften the enemy and prepare for the coup de main.

    Terrorism and propaganda are the earliest tactics. The purpose of these is to take a target society and render it unable to summon the will to fight. It’s aim is to undermine the faith of those people that they have the will and resources to fight. We in the West are being subjected to this first stage.

    The error which opponents of our response make is to think that this is a ragtag band of criminals. Nothing more than a nuisance – a pimple on or arse. Compounding the error are fairly strong elements within our body politic which have some sort of sympathy with the jihadis, be it sharing a hatred of the Jewish state or a hatred of our so-called imperial predations, or other such delusions. And that too is a part of the Muslim strategy, a pattern which you will find repeated throughout the history of the conquest and subjugation of kafir peoples. The Muslims made alliances with factions and blocs within the target nations. Those groups worked to the purpose of sapping their country’s will to withstand the Islamic aggressor.

    Pay heed to this, because it is repeating itself today. That band of criminals and terrorists who have no uniform are united in an ideology and common purpose. They sense we are weak – and we are. They sense they can bend us to their will, and there are those who think we should bend to it.

    When I was on the Left one of the conceits of many on that side is that they know the true history – minus the details. But for them history is an ideological Hegelian construct. We must disabuse them of this conceit, and expose the fraud of their revisionism.

    The Ummah has figured out how to employ Lenin’s useful idiots.

57. Yes, but is letting an evil man enslave children and turn them into an army, destroying communities by forcing women to kill husbands and children to kill their mothers, ethical behavior? Every international actor that does not work to wipe out the LRA is tacitly permitting this. Is this ethical behavior, or would it be ethical behavior to find out where this wicked man is and blanket the area with fuel-air explosives, penetrating bombs, and combined-effect bombs until it was morally certain that he and his chief henchmen were dead? This would kill many of the children he has corrupted, and perhaps many people he was already in the act of killing, but he would no longer be able to spread this particularly bad evil across Africa.

    Read the Moral Clarity essay before you answer, please.

58. I just read George Weigel’s article you linked above. One of the better elucidations of the Just War Doctrine written for non-theologians I’ve read in awhile.

    Yes, but also a critical analysis of the JWD and the doctrines which are slowly replacing it, and why the replacements are a disaster for the civilizations that hew to them. And, most important, a clean separation of the JWD and those erstwhile, poorly-grounded replacements.

    If you’ve read Bobbitt (or, I suspect, Hobbes, Machiavelli, or many other classics of political science) you will find a connection to the choice of doctrine and the legitimacy of the State.

    Sorry to rely so much on references, but I am not schooled in this stuff and my reading is not as broad as you might think. (I trained as an engineer.)

59. njcommuter,

    Actually, I’ve never read Machiavelli, but I plan to get to him this Fall or Winter (I already have a crowded plate). I studied economics and philosophy in college and then in the seminary I studied more philosophy. After the seminary, I went in a very different direction: and MBA in Finance. In recent years I’ve been furiously reading as much about Islam as I can get. Know your enemy. First principle.

    I’ve never been attracted to the “clean hands” kind of moral reasoning. It is too self-absorbed and inflexible. As a Roman Catholic Christian, the FIRST thing you must consider to be sacred is human life. Close behind it is the liberty and well-being of the human being. People matter more than principles. “The Law was made to serve man, not man the Law.” Moral rectitude that exposes people to violence and enslavement is unethical.

    We took the hard line towards Communism and we built our defenses accordingly. We confronted it in armed combat where and when necessary. And our willingness to do so played a part in the collapse of many of those totalitarian regimes. Well, Islam is the oldest totalitarianism still standing, and we are seeing the recrudescence of Islamic jihad, dormant for a few centuries when we had laid low the armies of the caliph before the gates of Vienna in 1683.

    Right now, I support a policy of containment with respect to Islam. We should attack the terror networks and those states which support them. Islamic terror groups and regimes which either have obtained or are trying to obtain nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons should be attacked and deprived of those weapons. I do not think we should allow Muslims to immigrate to the West, as many of them are not here to truly assimilate into our way life. They are here to make money, and to support the spread of Islam. It is not easy to trust these people, because of the doctrine of taqiyya – deception, lying. Many Muslim apostates tell us that we are playing with fire by not being very discriminating in how we let these people into our societies.

60. I do not think we should allow Muslims to immigrate to the West, as many of them are not here to truly assimilate into our way life. They are here to make money, and to support the spread of Islam. It is not easy to trust these people, because of the doctrine of taqiyya – deception, lying. Many Muslim apostates tell us that we are playing with fire by not being very discriminating in how we let these people into our societies.

    Gah, though, how is this different than treating all Christians as if they are in your face, Bible thumping fundamentalists?

    This caught my eye first. I have to catch up –more later.

61. … and have no problems with the United States attacking people who attacked us.

    My problem with this is that I don’t want my President waiting until thousands of US citizens are murdered before taking action. We can’t simply wait around, as we did pre-9/11 and pre-Bush, with attempts(always unsuccessful), to buy off, placate, concede, employing conventional diplomacy and hoping for the best. Steps must be taken BEFORE attack.

    There, as in Iraq, we ignored the advice to “First, do no harm.”

    Primum non nocere, a principle taught to medical students, is a good oath for the medical profession, but applying it to foreign policy seems to preclude war altogether. How does one wage war and NOT cause harm, however regretfully? Idealism carried to naive extremes ultimately causes disaster. The paradox is that it inevitably leads to a higher probability of war – and even more widespread and deadly wars.

    Also, I don’t think we’ve ever fought a war where the expectation seems to be, we will never have have a casualty again on U.S. soil again or we’re not doing enough.

    I am unsure of the meaning of this assertion. Does the writer believe civilian casualties on American soil is acceptable? Let us hope our next President does not have the same seemingly indifferent disregard.

    (okay, someone throw in, but what if they bring in a “nuke” , okay, but still see above sentence)

    Here the writer seems to be able to blithely accept the unacceptable – a nuclear act of terror on American soil. I’m beginning to wonder if the commentor is being provocative simply for the sake of being provocative. If I have misinterpreted the comment I welcome a clarification.

    To the extent that we are viewed in a negative light, it will increase the power of our enemies, and to the extent we’re viewed positively, it will harm our enemies.

    One sure way to know if the US is prospering – or not – is to observe the various hostile regimes and entities, namely, Iran, Syria, Palestine and unfriendly groups in almost every state in the Middle East. If they are relatively happy, the US has suffered a setback. If they are upset, the US is winning.

    I suspect that as a whole the Islamic world is one third inimical to the US and the West, one third neutral who just want to live their lives and stay safe while the powers that be contend with each other and one third who are perhaps under the radar because of the speech restrictions in most Islamic societies but who secretly favor the West. I’m not counting the few who become active terrorists.

    Conventional Gallup-like polling of such attitudes in Islamic societies is flawed because of the reluctance to speak out against Islamic conventional wisdom(very similar to the Progressive meme) – in which the West and the US is blamed for everything.

62. logern is starting from a point that is not reality in any sense.

    My favorite running companion (and really only) during Desert Shield was an intelligence officer. We at least agreed that running in the morning was preferable to any other time of day over there.

    My clarity point was not real clear. Although I do think “focus” was the single most significant change for dealing with terrorism. And constitutional guarantees aren’t that much of a hindrance to follow.

    As to naive, I don’t know. Liberals moaning and groaning about the government infringing on rights, and conservatives waking up years later asking why the government didn’t warn them about radiation, I guess. (I live in Las Vegas)

63. Actually, grackle, I am perturbed that many Americans can deal with war in the abstract so easily when they’re are talking about waging it for the greater good.

64. logern

    I am innocent of war. I would like to remain that way, but I especially want that when American citizens see war, they see it on foreign soil, they are trained to wage it, and they are well-equipped to do so. I want every asymmetry of war to favor us and make our enemies either wise enough not to try, or stupid enough to throw themselves into the greatest death and destruction we can create. I want our friends to be confident that we will do this on their behalf.

    I want the world to know that the world has neither a better friend nor a worse enemy than the USA, and that we will fight “when our cause it is just.” And I want us, here, to enjoy in peace the blessings of liberty, for ourselves and our Posterity.

    And this, this because I want to know neither war nor the conditions worse than war that the minds of depraved Men can create.

65. Perfected democrat, thank you very much for your kind words. This little corner is in fact quite a respite from the mainstream which in time I do believe will resume its proper place above the waterline.

    I think a reference to Thomas Barnett’s ‘The Pentagon’s New Map’ is apropos. The basic premise that the current globe is divided between integrating and non-integrating powers is spot on. As a Latin Americanist I have watched with starry-eyed interest the utter crumbling of Chavez in Venezuela. It has taken time but his internal support coupled with obscene revelations about his funding of the FARC, seem to have finally forced him to take the back seat in the public eye. His ultimate departure I imagine will be quiet and as uneventful as were his domestic policies and pitiful calls for a new Bolivarian Revolution in South America. The Kennedy connection with Chavez is one that repulses me – those ads with Joe Kennedy pumping Chavez’ generosity with heating oil in New England were nothing more than pathetic. I would add that all of this will be done without one overt action taken by the US against him (covert is another issue and I am sure we’ve been running massive surveillance out of Curacao for years). In the context of integrating powers, Chavez has succeeded in alienating himself not only in the region but globally because he failed to appreciate the essence of integration which is more about sharing an economic vision than culture or ideology or relogion. His refusal to heed the King of Spain last Fall was hysterical – I think that youtube of the King telling him to shut up was one of the best viral streams I’ve seen to date. The point I think is that if one buys the integrating versus non-integrating argument, there is truly no way out but in – it is binary and linear. The hinge I believe is economics and more precisely flows of capital. If the dems do take both the White House and Congress, it will test this country’s ability to retain capital investment, not in business necessarily but in the capital markets. The ability to bypass capital liabilities in perpetuity via efficient structuring coupled with the mobility of capital has a built in incentive to migrate to more tax efficient havens in the blink of an eye. In this light, the gravest problem we face as a country is the lack of saving – one that drives a particular kind of populist message: that things will be better if we simply take a little more from the owners of wealth and redistribute to the less concentrated owners of capital. The big shiny carrot for the populist (and I do mean Obama) is carte blanche to continue passing earmarks underwritten with US Treasuries. I think the newly integrated powers see this and it is a main reason why they have simply gone ahead and developed their own centers for banking and global public policy management. The great irony of course is that the very populist who claims to work on behalf of a better country here at home moves us closer to becoming a single producer: military muscle. I saw a guy with a patch on his back pack today that said “GOP Disappear” or something to that effect and thought to myself, yes, that’s exactly what the Left wants, unilateral control to engage in authoritarianism. It is what I wanted back in college and when I opposed the first Iraq War on grounds that, well, I was a college student and simply knew better than those old farts with the football.

66. >we can’t simply wait around

    What if, by attacking preventively, you end up causing many more American deaths than you would have if you had acted in a more cautious manner? Many people unfamiliar with war act as though there is no security risk associated with it — yet there are grave security risks. Attacking preventively, without sufficient justification, typically generates a backlash — massively increasing the number and strength of your enemies. In other words, going to war out of fear can create far worse consequences than going to war soberly and reluctantly.

    Powerful nations have fallen time and again because they’ve ignored this. As Jack Snyder points out in his seminal book, Myths of Empire, empires of old were frequently drawn into conflicts intended to improve security, but instead simply increased the number and strength and resolve of their enemies. For every one region pacified, two or three hostile ones would sprout up.

    The United States has only a few hundred million people — we cannot occupy the entire world. We can barely occupy just one medium-sized Middle Eastern country. We do not have unlimited resources. To gain the best long-term security you have to balance your strategy. If we do not, we will suffer far more grave harm than whatever meager benefits we may derive from the preventive wars.

67. “What if, by attacking preventively, you end up causing many more American deaths than you would have if you had acted in a more cautious manner?”

    I guess it would be the same answer you would give to “What if by doing nothing we cause many more American deaths than by preventing them”. Such is a thing with predicting the future – you have to make your best judgment. Sometimes you are wrong – we took that approach during the 90’s and it caused the largest attack on US soil after Perl Harbor.

    “As Jack Snyder points out in his seminal book, Myths of Empire, empires of old were frequently drawn into conflicts intended to improve security, but instead simply increased the number and strength and resolve of their enemies.”

    True, but then they were also drawn into conflicts to improve security and it succeeded – in fact this tended to happen WAY more often than not. The Roman Empire only had a very few create such a backlash in hundreds of years of rule and expansion. Even then their downfall was more because of internal rot than external pressure. The next large Empires most think of – the Mongols and the British – were similar. However the British Empire willingly broke up as the Brits started releasing territory. Their wars for security generally worked for a few hundred years.

    It’s like saying War has never solved anything – well sure except Desert Storm, Korea, WWI, WWI, Revolutionary War, and a whole string of them for many thousands of years. Of course one can point to wars that were disasters just as one can easily point to ones that were great successes – you can even find ones that were successes the whole time they were being waged.

    “We can barely occupy just one medium-sized Middle Eastern country.”

    You may want to actually pay attention to what is happening over there. Better is to point out we can’t occupy a small eastern European country that has nothing (Bosnia) – most US service men MUCH prefer to serve in Iraq over places like Bosnia and to a lesser extent Afghanistan. Also one would point out that we are occupying many different areas of the world, many of them from the time of WWII – Iraq has been on of the better success stories of the last 20 years (again – compare it to Bosnia).

    Though in the end I do agree we have to balance things, not only does that mean we can’t invade some places unless we absolutely have too (say Iran) balance would also mean we need to invade places that can and do help us (say Iraq and Afghanistan).

    You can’t call for balance and expect people to pay much attention if all you want is one side to dominate – that isn’t balance. We have been MUCH more balanced than under most other presidents – Clinton being one of the worst for starting conflicts that we can’t or will not win and that have absolutely no national interest yet will cause nothing but hatred towards us. But for some reason people didn’t and don’t complain about those places – I’ll leave that up to the reader to determine why.

68. mitsu,

    Per your last post, and the cautionary advice you render about pre-emptive attacks, how do you deal with a nation that is almost there getting nuclear weapons and that nation has repeatedly issued threats against another nation? And the nation that is being threatened with nuclear annihilation has never attacked the aggressor?

    Do you just let that nation get the nukes and hope that their threats are just idle boasts?

    Or, do you take the threats at face value and then take steps to destroy the weapons and the facilities that make them?

    mitsu, you have to also factor in the worst case scenarios. How many are going to die when the nukes fly vs. how many will die from collateral damage when you pre-emptively break the new toys?

    I think we all know the nation I am referring to. I think we all know that if the U.S. and/or Israel were to destroy the Iranian nuke weapons’ development facilities at Natanz and Isfahan then Hizb’allah would be set loose upon us. That is one of the consequences. But, even so, we can deal with Hizb’allah as well. They will lose more than we will. Overall, again, weigh this with the likely loss of many millions of people: an entire nation (Israel) destroyed, and another one losing many times that number of people (Iran).

    I don’t know about you, but I would rather keep the butcher’s bill a lot lower and consider the cost of pre-emption a cheaper price to pay the devil.

    Bottom Line: survival of more people and of nations matters more to me than what others think of what I do and my methods. I don’t want international prestige. Just respect. Sometimes it is better to be feared than to be loved, because the kind of love some bestow is not the kind I want.

69. >You can’t call for balance and expect people to pay much
    >attention if all you want is one side to dominate

    Agreed, but then again that isn’t all I want. As I’ve said before, I have supported many wars we’ve engaged in, including the first Gulf War, the operations in the Balkans, and the Afghan conflict. I currently believe that we should be pouring far more resources into Afghanistan and also pressuring northern Pakistan about 100x more heavily than we are. On the other hand, and I’m sure you will disagree, but I believe the Iraq war was a terrible mistake, one which has greatly strengthened our enemies at a huge cost to us in lives and money, it has made us appear far weaker than we appeared before (where we seemed to be nearly invincible), and it has siphoned critical resources away from other much more pressing (to me) security needs.

    As for Iran, I believe it is a grave danger that it may acquire nuclear weapons. I think if we had not invaded Iraq, we would have been in a much stronger position to thwart both Iran and North Korea. One of the worst security failures of the Iraq War was it prevented us from dealing with North Korea strongly at the time. I do think, unlike some Democrats, that we should threaten limited strikes against their nuclear facilities if they do not agree to intrusive inspections and they do not stop enriching uranium. This is a proliferation issue.

    On the other hand, Iran as a state is deterrable, in the sense that even if they had nuclear weapons they would be deterred by the threat of annihilation if they attempted to use them against us, just as the USSR was. However — the danger that some weapon might fall into the hands of terrorists or even some nuclear material for a dirty bomb might fall into the hands of terrorists is very real. So for that reason we ought to threaten Iran and take this very seriously. I believe our being bogged down in Iraq makes this very much more difficult than it would otherwise be — not only for military reasons but because we lack the political support in the world because of Iraq. Iraq to me is a classic case of the negative security consequences of going to war against the wrong opponent at the wrong time.

70. grackle
    … and have no problems with the United States attacking people who attacked us.

    My problem with this is that I don’t want my President waiting until thousands of US citizens are murdered before taking action. … Steps must be taken BEFORE attack.

    There, as in Iraq, we ignored the advice to “First, do no harm.”

    Primum non nocere … is a good oath for the medical profession, but applying it to foreign policy seems to preclude war altogether. How does one wage war and NOT cause harm, however regretfully?

    This is where the Moral Clarity issue comes in. Very serious people have studied this issue ever since Christianity made it clear that rulers were bound by moral law. Their answers are grounded in eternal principles and still hold. (Yes, Judaism understood it earlier.)

    Mitsu

    What if, by attacking preventively, you end up causing many more American deaths than you would have if you had acted in a more cautious manner? Many people unfamiliar with war act as though there is no security risk associated with it – yet there are grave security risks.

    This is a serious question of Statecraft. It must be asked seriously, without presumption on the answer. Or, if you are arguing for a conclusion, you have to argue seriously from your premises, starting with your premises.

    You also have to look at the long-term questions.

    Attacking preventively, without sufficient justification, typically generates a backlash … going to war out of fear can create far worse consequences than going to war soberly and reluctantly.

    Agreed. But once the decision is made to go to war, it must be undertaken whole-heartedly, not reluctantly.

    Powerful nations have fallen time and again because they’ve ignored this. As Jack Snyder points out in his seminal book, Myths of Empire, empires of old were frequently drawn into conflicts intended to improve security, but instead simply increased the number and strength and resolve of their enemies. For every one region pacified, two or three hostile ones would sprout up.

    This is a good argument for not trying to pacify Africa. But our actions in the Middle East have been measured. We have taken on one monstrous, amoral tyrant and the terrorists he harbored. They threw themselves wholeheartedly against us, and have been hurt very badly. (This was evident two years ago, in spite of our errors and the actions of the MSM.) As far as the people of Iraq are concerned, the terrorists lost the moral war. Iraqi society, even the tribal parts, has chosen civilization. We’ll be involved with them for a long time, but in recompense Iran sees every one of its borders held by one of its enemies–enemies it has created.

    The United States has only a few hundred million people – we cannot occupy the entire world. We can barely occupy just one medium-sized Middle Eastern country. We do not have unlimited resources.

    Agreed in principle. But, based on our GDP and population, we should have two to four times the ready expeditionary combat power we have. We throw much of our government spending down ratholes of corruption (bridges to nowhere) and ineffiency (important tasks run by government unions where the private sector could do the job better, as proven by education in Germany and elsewhere).

    To gain the best long-term security you have to balance your strategy ]or] suffer far more grave harm than whatever meager benefits we may derive from the preventive wars.

    Again, an issue of Statecraft (Strategy, as Bobbitt calls it). I expect the real outcomes of the Second Gulf War to become apparent over the next six to twelve years. That’s a projection (guess), of course. I’ll evaluate the evidence as it occurs, rather than considering the matter closed as of now. I ask that you do the same.

    But for now, it looks pretty good to me. We’ve saved more innocent lives than we’ve taken, and we’ve taken the lives of many who wished us ill and had the power to do us harm. Look at the number of high-level terrorist commanders that we’ve captured or killed, and the amount of intel we’ve gotten from them. Yes, there are more to backfill, but we’ve reduced them to the fourth string or worse. Taking down all that experience at once hurts them a lot. (A well-documented example is what happened to the Imperial Japanese Navy when they kept their best pilots in combat instead of using them to train the next generation.)

    One outcome that I think we can considered a settled conclusion is that the US military has learned a lot about fighting such wars. The learning won’t be complete until our military acadamies teach it (and I expect they are already started) and until our civilian leadership, Executive and Congress, allow the lessons to be reflected in the structure of our expeditionary forces. The big lesson that we need to absorb now is the need for command resources dedicated to civilian affairs, and other resources prepared for the purpose (as well as for the other resources of war). A related lesson is the need to understand the political battlefield in wars in tribal or semi-tribal societies. The Special Forces have a pretty good handle on it, but those skills have to go up the command chain, perhaps even into the JCS, perhaps even into the State Department.

    I believe the Iraq war […] has greatly strengthened our enemies at a huge cost to us in lives and money [and] made us appear far weaker than we appeared before (where we seemed to be nearly invincible), and it has siphoned critical resources away from other much more pressing (to me) security needs.

    It has exposed our weaknesses. It has also shown that we can adapt in the heat of battle, which is truly frightening to our enemies. They speak of us as though we are the Borg, and they are not wholly wrong. The difference is the difference between Empire and Hegemony.

    But our previous caution appeared feckless to our enemies, who declared us the “weak horse” and chose to attack us. We let this go on for decades. Khobar Towers occurred on Reagan’s watch, though I will argue that he inherited a country and a military victimized by our failures in ‘Nam and the naivete of Carter. Remember, we lost Vietnam not on the ground, but in Washington; see On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, which was the real beginning of clear thinking on the subject. (You may wish to buy this one in hardcover.)

    And yes, I know that we need to replace a lot of machinery and ordnance. Some of the machinery will be given to Iraq, good for eight years of training and peacetime (even troubled peace.) Some of it will be refurbished (“life-extension program”). Some of it will be replaced by better (the Humvee’s replacement will have some intrinsic mine/IED protection). Ordnance has a finite life; one problem that many terrorists have is that they buy old USSR stockpiles. The propellants slowly become intert with age; the explosives slowly become unstable. (See here.

71. This article bears on the proactive response/clean hands debate.

    (Neo, I know you tried to make the web page edit function work before, but my last article reminds me of how much I need it.)

72. Sorry to interrupt a third time, but another Strategy Page article caught my attention. Iran is setting up operations in Venezuala at the invitation of Hugo Chavez. I don’t think you’ll see this in the MSM, unless it’s next to the Legal Notices on page sixty-eight, in small print below the fold.

73. Iran is not deterrable. The clerics who run Iran and A’jad are members of the largest sect with in Shiia Islam, the Twelvers.

    The Shiia believe that no legitimate Islamic State exists in the world unless under the rule of a Caliph who is from Mohemmed’s bloodline. The last such ruler was the 12th Imam who Allah has taken and placed into occultation.

    There he will remain until a future date when the world is in great distress and chaos.

    Allah will cause the 12th Imam to return to as Caliph of the Muslim and the Shias will rise up and dominate the Islamic World , getting justice for all the long years when the Sunni persecuted them.

    Then once the Muslim world is under the Mahdi’s banner, the world-wide conquest will begin and all of the earth will be put under Sharia law.

    The Mullahs in Iran believe that if they cause the global conditions of chaos and distress then they can provoke the manifestation of the Imam.

    If they die in the process , then Allah will surely reward them in Paradise.

    If they accomplish their goal of rendering neutral the world’s Great Satan, then a retaliatory nuclear strike is more than tolerable as a price to pay to achieve such a great feat for Allah.

    Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the following in Qom in 1980:

    “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

    Iran will have only one chance to pull this off. They must be sure that when they use their nuclear weapons that they cause the maximum damage because they probably won’t have the chance to do a second round.

    Thus if iran is going to nuke Israel, they will also be nuking the United States, and not just one city, but many.

    Iran has put Hezebellah in Venezuela and Central America to form networks, years ago.

    It wouldn’t surprise me if Iran is putting missiles down there.

    If the US managed to not see a North Korean nuclear facility in Syria until it was almost done being constructed, what else is out there in the world we don’t know about.

74. The modern way of war–which informs the Geneva Convention and other legal documents–has certain lacunae. It presumes certain things such as state actors, regular armies, and so forth.
    Assymetrical warfare is designed to take advantage of the lacunae.
    Western liberals insist on applying the GC’s view of war to assymetrical warfare in order to preserve our enemies’ advantages. Western nations, in part due to inertia and failure of imagination, do the same thing, at least initially.

    Which brings up the question of deniability and borders.
    Currently, the Taliban are using Pakistan as a sanctuary. When we breach the sanctuary, we get the crap, not the Taliban who use the border of a sovereign nation as a one-way shield.

    That’s a holdover from the western idea of war and the Taliban and their western liberal allies know it very well.

    With the exception of Antarctica, no piece of land in the world is outside the borders of a sovereign nation. At least as far as the mapmakers are concerned.

    Non-state actors can scoot across borders and their hosts can claim either ignorance or inability to manage the situation. Another assymetry made useful by the western way of war.

    How to deter deniable attacks, especially nukes? Ignore denials.

    If we get nuked, we don’t wait for forensics. We nuke–list large Middle Eastern cities–immediately.
    There won’t be room for the rogue intel guys to say, “they can’t touch us ’cause they can’t prove anything”.

75. njcommuter,

    Quick correction of something you had posted. The attack on the Khobar Towers happened under Carter’s watch, not Reagan’s. Otherwise, good rebuttals of mitsu’s argument.

76. With the exception of Antarctica, no piece of land in the world is outside the borders of a sovereign nation. At least as far as the mapmakers are concerned.

    Minor quibble… Gaza and the West Bank have no sovereign

77. mitsu,

    Iran is not deterrable. See VinceP’s answer, which is exactly how I would have stated it. Western Leftists, and even many conservatives, are woefully informed about Islam, its tenets, its scriptures (Qur’an), traditions (ahadith), and the words and deeds of the Prophet (Sira).

    As for the Iraq war making us less able to deal with Iran, currently we have them surrounded. That’s a lot of air space we now own and they have to defend. They have to spread their air defenses out over many thousands more miles. Also, if Saddam were still in power, the Israeli jets would not be able to traverse Iraq without the alarm being raised.

    The only reason why we are constrained in bombing the Iranian nuclear weapons’ facilities right now is politically. Even though we are winning in Iraq, the President is so fatally wounded, politically, and people in the government, even in his own party, are willing to stick the knife in his back, that there is a lot of opposition to striking the Mullahs’ toys. The NIE report was a political document telling the President that he does not have the government’s support for pre-emption. Anyone with half a brain knows that Iran did not stop the weapons’ development. It’s all underground, out of sight now. And slowly, word is leaking out that this is so.

    So, mitsu, you and all our fellow citizens and the political opposition from the Democrats have succeeded in what you set out to do five years ago: discredit the President and fatally wound the policy.

    However, I put a lot of blame on President Bush as well. He has failed miserably to fight back against the press and his political opponents. He has the bully pulpit to use to stem the tide, but refused to use it. And he has plenty of foreign intelligence and rationale to support the policy, but refused to make his case on and ongoing basis.

    There is a price to be paid for failing to win this vicious internal political war. In the future it will be sanguinary and there will be the devil to pay for this foolishness.

78. Just to illustrate how deluded the Left is — the other day I heard a fellow professor (at a major university–teaching history) lamented that he was unable to “radicalize” his students…another friend responded that they need to compare “game plans”. It’s not about education anymore, it’s about indoctrination, about getting kids to think the way that they do. Therefore all the information they deal with for all of these issues is filtered through these rationalizations, their own worldviews, and without any tolerance for anyone with another approach. Oh — and they were patronizing and make snide remarks to me– who responded to this lamentation with nothing but disgust. But because I don’t belong to their club of “special knowledge” I must be evil.

79. Liberal’s problem lies in the fact that they fall prey to the idea of all forks in life’s road possess a utopian choice and a wrong choice.

    Since hindsight (or the nightly news) can’t judge the unchosen, there is rampant speculation that what was chosen in America’s history, being unnavoidably flawed as life is, is evidence the unchosen path was there for the taking if only intellectuals were in charge.

    The glass can only be half empty and never half full, since the perfect full glass is the only standard to measure by.

    No wonder those so afflicted seek change. When all choices to date haven’t gotten unemployment down to 0% and turned ghetto children into rocket scientist, there was an obvious utopian choice we missed at a fork in the road somewhere.

80. Actually, grackle, I am perturbed that many Americans can deal with war in the abstract so easily when they’re are talking about waging it for the greater good.

    Here the commentor becomes a mind reader and whines about what the commentor believes he reads in the minds of those who favor a pro-active foreign policy instead of the pre-9/11 foreign policy mindset of appeasement, bribery and hoping for the best – which resulted in a string of acts of terror culminating in 9/11. The paradox is that most anti-war types seem to believe their feckless reluctance to retaliate against such acts to be a road to peace instead of the road to bigger and better 9/11-type attacks.

    In other words, going to war out of fear can create far worse consequences than going to war soberly and reluctantly.

    More mind-reading. One wonders what it would take to produce “fear” in the writer. Multiple 9/11-type atrocities in America? A nuke exploded in New York?

    In regards to Iraq I would say that 13 years of acquiescence in the face of Saddam’s stubborn refusal to comply with the agreements after the First Gulf War constitutes extreme reluctance on the part of the US to wait that long before finally taking action. How much reluctance and sobriety would it take for the writer to favor action – 20 years? 30 years of Saddam’s shenanigans? While he develops nukes at his leisure?

    The United States has only a few hundred million people – we cannot occupy the entire world. We can barely occupy just one medium-sized Middle Eastern country.

    On the one hand anti-war types bemoan what they often characterize as an attack on all of Islam, frequently accusing pro-war individuals of religious and cultural hatred of all Islam who favor a pro-active foreign policy in regards to terror-sponsoring nations and on the other hand assume that pro-war people want to occupy the “entire world.” No, not the “entire world,” just those parts of the world that seek to destroy the US and its allies – thanks just the same.

    … it has made us appear far weaker than we appeared before (where we seemed to be nearly invincible), and it has siphoned critical resources away from other much more pressing (to me) security needs.

    “Nearly invincible”? Did doing much of nothing about 9/11, the USS Cole bombing, Saddam’s breaking of EVERY post-war agreement, the embassy takeover and hostage holding by Iran in 1979, Mogadishu, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing (to name only a few) make the US look “invincible”?

    I think if we had not invaded Iraq, we would have been in a much stronger position to thwart both Iran and North Korea.

    The writer is entitled to believe what the writer wishes. As for me, I think friendly regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan puts the US in a “stronger position” to counter Iran – and Syria, Palestine and others too.

    One of the worst security failures of the Iraq War was it prevented us from dealing with North Korea strongly at the time.

    I don’t see how doing nothing about terrorism helps the US in its dealings with North Korea.

    On the other hand, Iran as a state is deterrable, in the sense that even if they had nuclear weapons they would be deterred by the threat of annihilation if they attempted to use them against us, just as the USSR was.

    Many anti-war types cling to the belief that nuclear-armed Mullahs would be kept in check by possible US retaliation. This would perhaps be true if the US had acted vigorously in the years after 1979 to retaliate against atrocities and other acts of war that occurred in every administration from Carter up to Bush II. Clearly, in the years before Saddam’s toppling, the US was seen as weak. Bush is now in the process of trying to reverse that attitude.

    I believe our being bogged down in Iraq makes this very much more difficult than it would otherwise be – not only for military reasons but because we lack the political support in the world because of Iraq.

    Still, even after the success of the Surge, anti-war types see the US as “bogged down in Iraq.” The US can’t wait for political support(which is stronger than the commentor evidently believes) while the terrorists commit 9/11-style attacks and their sponsors bully or subjugate every Middle Eastern regime – to do so constitutes acceptance of the unacceptable.

    This is where the Moral Clarity issue comes in. Very serious people have studied this issue ever since Christianity made it clear that rulers were bound by moral law.

    The first moral imperative for me is that the US President do everything in his power to see that another, perhaps more deadly, 9/11 type attack not occur again.

81. Brown Bess Says:

    “Not to be too picky about the circumstances that set up this piece, but wasn’t it the bombing and invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War that brought the Khmer Rouge to power?”

    That’s been a meme pushed by the left since back then. It’s up there (or down, depending on your POV) with the USSR was never a serious threat and Shia and Sunnis would never cooperate… re: basically something only people inside the left wing circle believe. So, it’s an argument, but not a fact. Actually, there are plenty of better arguments that the theory is not true.

82. Vince P Says:

    “Does anyone else get the feeling that these anti-lefrtist messages being left by new people are being made by Leftists?”

    Some of them, yes.

83. Wow.. great comments from the last batch of messages. I agree with them all

84. mitsu

    As for Iran, I believe it is a grave danger that it may acquire nuclear weapons. I think if we had not invaded Iraq, we would have been in a much stronger position to thwart both Iran and North Korea. One of the worst security failures of the Iraq War was it prevented us from dealing with North Korea strongly at the time.

    Our ability to deal with North Korea is limited strongly by China. China regards the DPRK as a border state essential to its territorial integrity, and we need the cooperation of the PRC to do anything at all about the DPRK. For this reason, it is unlikely that Kim Jong Il will open a full front war on the South; the PRC would push south as the ROK and the USA pushed north. But infiltration will continue; so will the attempt to export forbidden technology. Right now, those exports are not aimed at ideology but at cash. (The DPRK’s counterfeiting technology is one reason for Treasury redesigning our paper currency every ten years.)

    The terrorists have justified our increased control of internation finance. This has probably hurt the DPRK. The PRC prevents us from blockading them from the sea; that prevents us from catching a lot of illegal cargoes, including nuclear devices and materiel. When we have had justification to stop and search ships in transit to or from the DPRK, we’ve found lots of interesting stuff.

    Taking down or infiltrating terror networks and controlling finance greatly reduces the harm that Kim Jong Il can do. If he actually launches a nuke, the PRC is liable to take over North Korea. They may give part of it back afterwards; they might not. Right now the DPRK is a very expensive and troublesome border state. (Control of mountains surrounding its territory is the probable motive for China’s conquest of Tibet.)

    On the other hand, Iran as a state is deterrable, in the sense that even if they had nuclear weapons they would be deterred by the threat of annihilation if they attempted to use them against us, just as the USSR was.

    It depends on who is in power. The Mad Mullahs might prefer to deal a ‘lethal’ blow to their enemies. Whether the generals would allow it, or be able to stop it, probably changes from week to week. The best thing here is to keep working on missile shoot-down capabilities, to maintain whatever intel capabilities we have, and work with Israel. All that ‘star wars’ money may yet save the world from a successful nuclear strike. And that would be worth every penny.

    However – the danger that some weapon might fall into the hands of terrorists or even some nuclear material for a dirty bomb might fall into the hands of terrorists is very real. So for that reason we ought to threaten Iran and take this very seriously. I believe our being bogged down in Iraq makes this very much more difficult than it would otherwise be – not only for military reasons but because we lack the political support in the world because of Iraq.

    “Fall into” is a deceptive phrase. It would be sold or stolen. The greatest danger is from the misplaced stockpiles in the former USSR, then from corruption in Pakistan. Iran or the DPRK would supply it only if it served a specific end; the risks of backlash are too great to let someone else choose a low-value target.

    As far as deniability: the nuclear powers have a fairly good chance of figuring out where the stuff came from by examining the radiation and reaction products. The deniability would last for a week or so.

    As far as support: the world is coming around on this right now. Do you think that German forces in Afghanistan would be allowed to take the offense against the enemy (as they are not now allowed) if we were not in Iraq?

    Iraq to me is a classic case of the negative security consequences of going to war against the wrong opponent at the wrong time.

    I see it as removing the easy problem to give ourselves more freedom to work on the hard ones. Not a bad tactic while programming computers, nor a bad grand strategy in statecraft.

    Richard Aubrey

    The modern way of war—which informs the Geneva Convention and other legal documents—has certain lacunae. It presumes certain things such as state actors, regular armies, and so forth.

    Bobbitt give a lot of background for understanding this in The Shield of Achilles.

    Assymetrical warfare is designed to take advantage of the lacunae.

    I’m not a military man, but as I understand it, any warfare not involving similar means used by each party is considered asymmetrical. In this case, the enemy has found a weakness: we have forgotten how to deal with non-State combatants, and have never had to figure out how to deal with enemies hidden inside other States. We helped to create the modern system of state sovereignty that shields them (see The Shield of Achilles, chapter Colonel House and a World Made of Law) and now the weaknesses of the system are being used against us. A shorter, penetrating analysis comes from Lee Harris in Our World-Historical Gamble, which I consider required reading. (In which: a neocon builds an argument on Marx and Hegel.)

    FredHjr

    Quick correction of something you had posted. The attack on the Khobar Towers happened under Carter’s watch, not Reagan’s.

    Was it the Marine Barracks that I was thinking of, then? Thanks for the correction.

    Katie

    … the other day I heard a fellow professor (at a major university—teaching history) lamented that he was unable to “radicalize” his students…another friend responded that they need to compare “game plans”.

    If the indoctrination fails, maybe the doctrine is faulty? Maybe it’s so faulty on its face that it can’t succeed? Maybe it’s better not to tell them about it and let them fail?

    grackle

    “This is where the Moral Clarity issue comes in.”
    The first moral imperative for me is that the US President do everything in his power to see that another, perhaps more deadly, 9/11 type attack not occur again.

    The author of Moral Clarity in a Time of War would probably agree with you wholeheartedly. But it will help you to make your case to have at hand the classical, long-established reasoning and a good rebuttal for sloppy thought that passes for ethics today.

85. Neo, I apparently botched a close-link delimeter in my last post (after “World-Historical Gamble”). Would you please fix it? (Forget edit, just get us preview!)

    [From neo-neocon: Fixed. I had a preview function, but there was a glitch in it that seemed unfixable that botched all the links.]

86. “It has exposed our weaknesses. It has also shown that we can adapt in the heat of battle, which is truly frightening to our enemies. They speak of us as though we are the Borg, and they are not wholly wrong. The difference is the difference between Empire and Hegemony.”

    Very true and this should not be underestimated. It makes it such that the ones fighting are mostly the ones that are suiciding – they know going into the conflict they are going to loose and are hoping for a political victory. They see a good chance of that occurring right now in large part because of people like Mitsu who *want* more than they *think*.

    “But our previous caution appeared feckless to our enemies, who declared us the “weak horse” and chose to attack us. We let this go on for decades.”

    As I said in my post too – we tried the whole talking non-war method and it got us a few decades of terrorist attacks against our civilians culminating in the twin towers. They thought one good blow and we would quit – they learned that to not be true. Who would have thought on 9-12-2001 that we would be in 2008 with no more terrorist attacks? They learned that lesson the hard way.

    Further, as of right now they are finding it MUCH harder to recruit. They did well over this for some time but they can only handle casualty rates in the hundreds to one for so long. In another couple of years there will be several terrorist groups that will only exist in the minds of a few people who are too afraid to let anyone know they think that way – Al-Qaida is already finding it difficult to recruit people in countries we are *not* in and have no intention of being in nor are they asking them to directly go against us. The fear our enemies have of us of us is that strong.

    Now they are seeing if a more protracted battle will win (such as happened in Vietnam) and we will see. If Mistsu had his/her way they would now how to win. If you really and truly want to see those groups strengthened let them have an actual victory against us. Obama (or any other politician) is not going to be able to double talk them into thinking our abandonment of the region is any thing other than total victory for them.

    These things do not occur in a vacuum – our hand wringing over past terrorist attacks set the blue print for 9-11 and Vietnam set the blue print for how to fight the US in a war. Had we fought each of those conflicts to win and saw them to the end this would not have happened.

87. It has exposed our weaknesses. It has also shown that we can adapt in the heat of battle, which is truly frightening to our enemies.

    For an example, see David Bellavia’s first-person account of the last battle of Falujah in House to House. The enemy knew our tactical doctrine, shaped the battlespace to turn it against us, established killing zones and hopped their fighters up on adrenaline so high that a central chest shot would not take them down. They also outnumbered our soldiers, who nevertheless defeated them decisively. Their edge? Equipment, training, flexibility, skill and experience in combined-arms warfare, determination, and an essential value of doctrine: you understand what your fellow soldiers (and units) need from you, and you know what to do for them.

88. But it will help you to make your case to have at hand the classical, long-established reasoning and a good rebuttal for sloppy thought that passes for ethics today.

    Here’s my reasoning and I assure the commentor that if not “classical” to the degree of the commentor’s rather mysterious standards it’s at least informed: It’s time to stop allowing hostile nations to use terrorists to wage a proxy war on the US and the rest of the West. We’ve talked to them until we are blue in the face – with 9/11 as thanks for US forbearance in the face of extreme provocation. We’ve cajoled, flattered, attempted to buy them off, we’ve tried everything that could reasonably be expected to make these very clever folks to cease their mayhem.

    Attempts to lecture pro-war commentors on ethics without even a passing reference to the ruthlessness and absolutely vile ethics-free behavior of the enemy does very little for the commentor’s own cause. There’s virtually no standards for the enemy but there are always extremely high standards required of the US. And the enemy is counting on this. It’s the enemy’s main advantage. They know there is a good chance the Democrats will hand victory to them just as they did with for North Vietnam.

    By the way, it’s worth noting that Plato and Socrates were both highly regarded and successful soldiers.

    “We make war that we may live in peace.”
    Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics – 1177b (Book X, Chapter 7)

89. Quote: “We make war that we may live in peace.”
    Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics – 1177b (Book X, Chapter 7) “grackle”

    I am currently reading Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics.”

    A good antidote to Plato, if one needs it.

    The Left is unprincipled in its use of “principles” for arguments against their country. Their solicitude for our nation’s enemies is endearing, but first it will kill us.

90. When the translation is good, reading Aristotle can be an amazing experience. (I read the Nicomachean Ethics.) When it’s not … well, I never made it into the Metaphysics. I should try again.

    As I recall, Socrates was saved in battle at Delium by Alcibiades, who later played a role in the defeat of Athens. How much turned on saving one hoplite!

    grackle

    The “classical reasoning” of which I wrote addresses the circumstances under which it is proper for the State to use violence for its legitimate ends. It considers and discards the simplistic “presumption against violence” that ignores the consequences of accepting the presumption.

91. >drifted a good deal leftward since JFK

    That may be, but what I am saying is the views I am expressing above are quite mainstream in the Democratic Party today, and certainly among my friends and family.

    Mitsu — Thanks for the response. I may be late getting back, however, I must say that I think you are fooling yourself. I can’t imagine any current Democrats other than Lieberman getting on board with the Kennedy Doctrine from JFK’s inaugural address:

    “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

    Remember that JFK ran to the right of Nixon on defense, that JFK risked WWIII with the Berlin Airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s certainly not what Obama and his Democratic supporters doing today.

    Furthermore I can’t imagine Democrats of JFK’s era getting on board with rampant hatred of a Republican president as we have seen during Bush’s presidency.

    While you have not descended to quite that level, frequently your posts exhibit a certain spittle towards Bush about his “huge slews of errors” and so on. I also dislike the way you divvy up the territory so that we who support Bush and the Iraq War aren’t on the side of ethical behavior or the rule of law.

    Sorry, that’s your view. I consider the Bush administration behaving ethically and within the rule of law.

92. FredHjr Says:

    “The Left is unprincipled in its use of “principles” for arguments against their country. Their solicitude for our nation’s enemies is endearing, but first it will kill us.”

    I agree. The use of ‘ethics’ is simply a rhetorical weapon to be deployed when convenient. They claim to see a lack of ethics whenever it suits their purposes and regardless of how tortured the logic must be to get to that point. Then if it is a cause they support, they’ll never bring up either ethics or peace (example, leftist silence or even support of rebels in El Salvador).

93. I have just begun Philip Bobbitt’s recently published Terror and Consent, the title referring to political orders ruled by terror and those ruled by consent. In the introduction, he offers a page-long bullet list of beliefs of both Left and Right on Terror and the proper response to it–and declares that they are all wrong. One thing that he says is right is that even the large democracies should fear events that would make it impossible for governments to protect the governed, thereby destroying the governments’ legitimacy. He goes further, saying that the USA, being the most advanced of the ‘market states’, is uniquely vulnerable to this.

    For those that doubt the power of the constitutional crisis, I point to the logjam that Nazi, pro-German, and anti-war politicians created in the French government as Wermacht tanks rolled into France. The paralyzed government was unable to even order a military response.

    The government of the USA, with its separate executive, should be able to withstand this better than a parliamentary-based government. But it is by no means the only such scenario, as I expect Bobbitt will demonstrate.

    I’ll let you know. I expect to consume much of the book tomorrow.

94. The “classical reasoning” of which I wrote addresses the circumstances under which it is proper for the State to use violence for its legitimate ends. It considers and discards the simplistic “presumption against violence” that ignores the consequences of accepting the presumption.

    I believe the commentor may be referring to a partial interpretation of a concept called by some The Just War Tradition. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say on the JWT as applied to the Iraq War:

    Supporters of the war tended to accept the US position that the enforcement of UN resolutions was sufficient authority or even, as in the case of the Land Letter, that the United States as a sovereign nation could count as legitimate authority. Opponents of the war tended to interpret legitimate authority as requiring a specific Security Council resolution.

    What it boils down to is that the anti-war types wanted to topple Saddam only if the UN Security Council approved. The US could not decide on its own to overthrow Saddam but rather must wait for the UN’s go-ahead. It’s typical of the anti-war mindset – diddle with the UN(which we did for 13 years) while Saddam laughs.

    Grackle’s Rule: If the UN disapproves of something the US is doing it usually means the US is doing the right thing.

95. njcommuter:
    I’m looking forward to this book

    God’s War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible
    by Walid Shoebat and Joel Richardson
    Release July 4

    Trailer for book
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLeRFwY3SDs

    Link to Joel’s site
    http://www.joelstrumpet.com

96. “As for the Iraq war making us less able to deal with Iran, currently we have them surrounded. That’s a lot of air space we now own and they have to defend. They have to spread their air defenses out over many thousands more miles.”

    This is one of the better statements I’ve seen in a while. If controlling Iran was our goal then Iraq and Afghanistan are, by far, the two best choices. In fact they are such good choices I’ve been surprised that one of the things the moonbats accuse them of is fabricating intelligence in order to surround and contain Iran.

    Really, look at a map of the region: http://quranbible.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/middle_east_951.jpg

    Note that we now almost contain their eastern and western borders almost entirely by ourselves and the rest of that area is controlled by friendlies to us. Their southern border is the gulf region – however note that the majority of it is behind the little choke point which we also control. They basically have the Gulf of Oman that isn’t mostly hostile to them (I’m not sure about Turkmenistan).

    If you look at a map of major supply lines we have an even tighter control. In fact, if you wanted to contain Iran without fighting them we could not have picked two better targets. Had we wanted to control the entire region the only better thing would be to have Iran instead of Afghanistan but that is only a really minor quibble.

    Iraq is strategically one of the smartest moves we could have made there – there is a reason why the big three powers in that region are Saudia Arabia, Iran, and Iraq and there is a reason why Al-Qaida chose Afghanistan and why the Russians wanted it so bad too. Those are the control points of the region and we now control two of four with one other being mostly friendly.

97. Back in 2003 I assumed this was one of the main unsaid reasons for the war

    But as time went by and the Democrats decided to play traitor it seemed increasingly unlikely that the plan would go forward.

98. Saddam and Iran fought two wars to a standstill, with great loss of life. In two years, Iraq will have at least the equivalent of one armored division. They’ll be armed with Russian tanks in the beginning, but they’ll have American training and doctrine (*). No, I don’t think that they want to take on Iran. But if Iran pushes hard enough, they might just do it. And they will certainly be able to fight a convention war with Iran, especially if their nascent air-to-ground capabilities get an American boost. That will depend on the status-of-forces agreement.

    (*) Later, there may be some good used German tanks on the market. The Germans might like to sell some new copies of an older model, too, if they get a large order and a good contract for spares.

99. I have just begun Philip Bobbitt’s recently published Terror and Consent, the title referring to political orders ruled by terror and those ruled by consent.

    I have just finished the introduction. This is no pons asinorum, it is a gauntlet clattering on the tiles: Unless we think anew and act anew, we shall lose our countries, and all of civilization. Had I not read The Shield of Achilles I would be sceptical at this point; surely we can muddle through. But if Bobbitt is following the same lines, then I think I see not where he is going, but that he is taking farther than we can know us along ways unforseen.

100. njcommuter Says:

     “I point to the logjam that Nazi, pro-German, and anti-war politicians created in the French government as Wermacht tanks rolled into France. The paralyzed government was unable to even order a military response.”

     A lot of that went down the memory hole but I know a little about that stuff. The Nazis did pass themselves off as a peace party… laughable in hindsight I know… but they did (along with violent left socialists) and it is part of the reason I’m skeptical of people who pass themselves off as such now… especially when they have checkered pasts when it comes to militarism and war (when it was the left / their side leading the ‘charge’)…

     A lot of twenty somethings were never taught any of this and/or two young to remember the left’s connections to the USSR…

101. “They’ll be armed with Russian tanks in the beginning, but they’ll have American training and doctrine”

     I’ve always felt this was really most of those countries largest fear. Yea, having a functional democracy in Iraq should encourage other countries to do it and that is something they should also fear. However they have been quite good at controlling the flow of information before and no reason they can’t now – they are quite happy with their populace living in the stone age.

     There is only really one other country there that fights with modern western tactics and that is Israel. A state the size of Tennessee holds off an area the size of the entire eastern half of the continental US – now there is another. In fact there is one that they can’t fan the flames as being “Jews”.

     You know the above revolutions we are hoping will happen at some time? I also bet we really hope Iraq steps up and helps there. *That* would be absolutely devastating in that region to the fundamentalist Muslims.

     I can’t really say what they plan – I also seriously doubt that they will try and take over things (for one thing we wouldn’t allow that either). But I also highly suspect that the mullah’s in Iran great fear an Iraq with a modern western style military if for nothing more than knowing what it would mean to attack them.

     Frankly, at this point, it is almost too late. Even if Obama completely pulls the US out I’m somewhat sure we have enough structure in place they are solid enough to repel any outside attack and eventually finish the job of modernization on their own. We have the command structure mostly in place now and need the grunts – that hard long slog is mostly over with. I more fear the political fallout of such a thing – if the radical Islamics were to take over I greatly fear their army using modern warfare techniques (at this point I also can’t say how their C&C staff would react to that as part of our structure is based on integrity too). It wouldn’t be a cakewalk in the initial invasion let alone if the combatants went to ground like these did – untrained “combatants” are tough enough, ones with modern western urban warfare knowledge would be totally impossible.

102. The one problem with American TraDoc is that the soldiers we fielded have been so good that Iraqi soldiers will have a hard time living up to the reputation. When an ambush with five-to-one superiority turns into a defeat for your attackers and it’s routine enough to not make the news, you’re doing something right.

103. nj.
     Some folks in Iraq have said Iraqis, even civilians, have begun imitating Americans. Their soldiers stand like Americans, try to train like Americans.
     Their young men get the US style sunglasses.
     It is, among many, apparently, a good thing to aspire to.
     There must be a reason.

104. Richard Aubrey

     I’m not following things on the ground there the way I was when Badgers6, Teflon Don of AcutePolitics, and both Michael Yon and Michael Totten were reporting, but the picture I have is that they are quick to copy style, but it takes months of training to copy substance. AK47s are common in Iraq, but they are mostly fired into the air in celebration. In a western army, that’s considered reckless and a cause for discipline. The recruits have to unlearn and relearn. They are doing it and getting the battlefield successes that follow, but it’s more than just copying.

     On Terror and Consent

     I’m about a quarter through the text of the book (excluding the references and other back matter).

     The Shield of Achilles approached the present and future through a deep foundation in the past. The past provides many more examples and the threads stand out more clearly. When it follows those threads into the present, this reader had to work through a certain skepticism, since it is harder to know the present than the past, and even harder to know the future.

     Terror and Consent is rooted in the present; the references to the past are the threads of TSoA, greatly condensed. Bobbitt pulls strong arguments out of the fog of the present, but they would probably be harder for someone who has not read TSoA, which I judge to be the foundation work. Here’s the gist so far:

     Terror has been with us in one form or another since the development of the first form of the modern state (the Princely States of Italy). In each era (Princely State, Kingly State, Territorial State, State-Nation and Nation-State) the form of terrorism matched the form of the State in a paradoxical way: it worked to opposite ends, but used the same tools, machinery, etc. The great conflict (Long War) of the Twentieth Century (between fascism, communism, and government by consent) tended to submerge terrorism, even as terrorist ways were adopted at various times by fascism and communism.

     If the new era will be dominated by Thomas Barnett’s functioning, connected world (Bobbitt’s Market State) then the forms of terrorism will use those same mechanisms. (Witness Bin Laden’s financing networks and A.Q.Khan’s one-stop shopping, full-service contracting of nuclear weapons production.) The terrorists have just begun, and they are going to get ahead of civilization unless we can shake off perceptions of the past that we have institutionalized, including Posse Comitatus and our sharp distinction between criminal and warlike behavior. (Someone ought to send nine copies of this to SCOTUS.)

     I’ll pick the book up later today. The only fault so far, if it is a fault, is that the parts of the book examining Iraq are up to date as of late 2007. That doesn’t invalidate them, but it means the reader must consider what information Bobbitt had available when he wrote it.

     Bobbitt spares no punches on either side of the discussion, but he does give credit where credit is due. The generals who said we need more force going into Iraq he answers thus: They said we needed more force because that’s what our doctrine said. They failed to understand that Rumsfield was changing that doctrine, and failed to see that he would be successful in doing so. Neither they nor Rumsfeld could imagine the challenge that would follow. Neither they nor Rumsfeld could expect that the newly ‘liberated’ people would loot and destroy the power plants, power lines, water and sewer networks, museums, and other apparatus of civilization which US bombing had so carefully spared.

     What is geniunely astonishing is that someone who can write like this, treating terrorist and terrorism as the enemy, placing blame where it is due and exonerating where it is not, can do so while occupying a chair at the notoriously left-wing Columbia University.

     I’m not far enough along to call it a must-read, but it’s sure looking like it.

105. Terror and Consent

     This thread is getting a bit stale, but I’ll post here for now.

     I’m up to page 216 out of about 520 (excluding references and other back matter). Up to this point, Bobbitt has been making the sort of rock-solid case that many of us here would make, although with twists. The case is build methodically, with well-reasoned step following well-reasoned step. (I’d be curious to see what flaws Mitsu would find.) It’s not always pleasant. This is an epochal war (as Bobbitt uses the term) and it won’t end until the Market State is replaced by something else–and we probably won’t recognize that until after it has happened. It is a preclusive war: our goal is to prevent the enemy from killing us and destroying our way of life (in any number of ways); his goal is to preclude us from a way of life that (he feels) threatens him by its very existance. It does not matter whether he is a paranoid dictator for whom no amount of control will ultimately be enough or a religous fanatic for whom a free society is a temptation to sin, and worse, to unbelief. He views us as a threat and wishes to preclude us from living as we wish. There is no center of gravity to destroy, only individuals to kill and tools to deny him. These tools may be access to financial networks, access to the computers that control our electrical grid (and could destroy it), or access to DNA-building machinery with which he could use the 1918 flu virus’s genome, already posted on the Internet, to bring this pandemic back to life with devastating consequences.

     There is no victory parade, only a dynamic process that must keep us safe if we are to live in under consensual government. For if we are not safe, the government’s claim to legitimacy is destroyed.

     And because every member of a State of Consent is a member of the government, for a Bin Laden every member of the State, every citizen of whatever rank is both a legitimate target and a logical target. If killing and cowing can destroy the State’s ability to function, it is a valid and logical target. And the terrorists are not wrong. They planned the Madrid subway bombings with the intent of influencing the elections. It was successful; they got what they wanted. And Spain has not fully faced up to how they obeyed their enemy’s demand to stop fighting.

     I now have the sense that Bobbitt is about to take the argument in some directions that I may not agree with, or at least will not consider settled. We’ll see.

     One last thought, and it is my own. I have said that our enemies are united by their determination to make the world safe for barbarism. I believe it was Milton who had Satan declare that it was better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven. The terrorists would make of the world a hell so that they may rule rather than endure the very existance of the near-paradise that is civilization. Like Satan, they are evil.

     (Someone check me on the quote.)

106. I’ll mostly skip the absurdities and elementary historical errors floating around this thread and the linked sources. I stopped reading the TCS article when I got to the claim that Muslims invented non-state violence and terror, as if the IRA and a hundred other Western terror groups had never existed. The terrorists opposing the “West” do not present, and have never presented, a particularly new threat.

     The central problem with this thread lies in the framing of the issue. Habeus Corpus lies at the very heart of the rule of law. The framers of the US constitution saw its importance so clearly that they made it the only right directly enshrined in the text of the constitution itself. Without the rule of law, the way of life associated with the post-enlightenment West simply doesn’t exist.

     The current conflict tests whether the people of the West will suffer to preserve the basic principles underlying our way of life. Tolerating exceptions to the rule of law for security fails that test. It says, to us as much as to our opponents, that w will not suffer even uncertainty to preserve the principles for which our forbears died in the thousands. Even confronted with little more than our own fears, we will hand over our rights. If we do not find our courage, confront our fears, and say to anyone who tries to make us give up our rights through terror that however many of us they kill, we will die free together, then anyone who wants to destroy our way of life can do so; they have only to frighten us.

     This issue has nothing to do with an unwillingness to dirty our hands. It has to do with understanding that we can only conquer evil through self-sacrifice and courage. It took men wading ashore onto a hundred beaches under machine-gun fire to free minds from Fascism, Naziism, and Japanese Imperialism. It took Andrei Sakharov and thousands, if not millions of brave men and women in Central and Eastern Europe to break the yoke of “scientific socialism”.

     If the people of any society refuse to suffer and sacrifice for their values, preferring to relay on wealth and technology to defend them in comfort, they will only remain safe until someone accumulates greater wealth or invents more effective technology; history suggests to us that will inevitably happen.

107. Actually, the Muslim violence goes back to the 700’s. They may not have invented it, but they’ve got a long pedigree. And Harris’s point about how they are exploiting a weakness in our current state (international) system is telling: just as you say, there are states not founded on the sacrifice of their owners; such states are easily subverted.

     Even the Founders and Framers recognized that in time of war, Habeas Corpus may be suspended. I have not finished Bobbitt’s Law-vs-Strategy analysis, but so far it looks like he has his hands around the right issues. His resume in Constitutional Theory is hard to beat.

108. One more note: I’ve gotten a bit farther, through Bobbitt’s treatment of the Habeas issue, which is current as of late last year. I’m disappointed in that he blames the Bush for making a mess of things even as he calls on Congress to pass the right laws and SCOTUS to understand that we are in a war. Congress is stonewalling, SCOTUS is unrealistic as never before, and the Executive is trying to make the best of it while the enemy moves.

     However, he does clearly say that Congress and SCOTUS have to make serious changes. And it appears that subsequent sections will propose changes that neither Congress nor SCOTUS will want any part of. Repeal of Posse Comitatus is just the start–and his reasoning on the point is interesting, at least, and tied to the change in the “Constitutional Order.”

109. njcommuter, if you mean to refer to the United States constitution, you have it wrong. The text of the United States Constitution does not allow for the suspension of Habeas Corpus merely based on the United States having entered a state of war. The text (Article I section 9) reads thus:

     The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when
     in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

     In other words, you have to have both hostile troops in the streets and a solid public safety case in order to justify a suspension of Hebeas Corpus. Right now, the term war in relation to the status of the United States remains rhetoric rather than legal reality. Nobody has come remotely close to invading or rebelling within the meaning of the statute.

110. My point is that the Founders and Framers did forsee the possibility of such warlike activity as would require it. They had no experience of the terrorism we face, and could not provide for our case. But where they did forsee such a case they did make provision. Ergo, such thinking is not beyond the pale of the Constition, even if SCOTUS suddenly turns textualist on this point and draws the line close.

     Why not read Terror and Consent for yourself. I’m far enough in to say that the first 2/5 or so are the first 2/5 of a very important book. If the rest is as good, the book will be much more than that.

111. States of Terror and Consent

     I now feel comfortable saying a bit more about Philip Bobbitt’s new book. I’m almost through with Chapter 6, and looking forward a bit into Chapter 7, The Strategic Relationship Between Means and Ends.

     This extensive quote is from the third and fourth pages of the chapter; ellipses are mine:

     … there has been some general agreement that [terrorism] is performed by non-state actors, that it involves the use of violence for politcal ends, and that it targets civilian populations. But this has proved insufficient … states too use terror; and that the acts of terrorists– … even suicide bombing –are often indistinguishable from conventional warfare, which also uses violence in pursuit of political objectives; that civilians are often the targets of ordinary criminals … and that terrorists do target military and official persons. There has been no consensus on whether the defining parameters should be then nature of the attack, the identity of the perpetrators, or the characteristics of their targets.

     By contrast, consider the following definition: Terrorism is the pursuit of political goals through the use of violence against noncombatants in order to dissuade them from doing what they have a lawful right to do. This definition puts the goals of terrorism back into the picture by linking strategic means (attacks on civilians) with legal ends (the deterrence of lawful actions). Was it terrorism when the Allies bombed Berlin in 1944, knowing that countless civilian deaths would occur? No, because the city was crucial to the political and economic pursuit of unlawful wars by the Nazis. What about the firebombing of Dresden, where the inhabitants had every right to do what they were doing as civilians? Perhaps it was an attack directed at the Nazi regime, whose arial defense of Dresden critically weakened its war effort, and not an attack on civilians per se, or perhaps it was simply state terrorism and because it occurred during wartime, it was a war crime. To turn this around, one might say that a war crime … is an act of terrorism that occurs in a theater of war. Similarly, acts that in war would be classified as war crimes are acts of terrorism when they occur outside the conventional theaters of war.

     Take again the case of Zacarias Moussaoui …. If we assume that the attacks on September 11 were acts of war … then isn’t Moussaoui a prisoner of war … who can be tried for conspiring to commit war crimes? Terrorism, in the current context, is the very paradigm of a war crime.

     By changing–one might say, correcting–the definition of terrorism, Bobbitt has made formerly murky cases clear. He has found a strong link between the terrorism that we and our legal system don’t understand and war crimes, which we do understand (even if our systems are not experienced in punishing them).

     This process, equivalent perhaps to a change of variable in solving a differential equation, is what von Clausewitz called critical analysis, and “untangling things that were … formerly tangled” is the defining characteristic of the process.

     It is critical analysis that makes Bobbitt’s work so powerful and important, and for that I am willing to overlook a lot of disagreement over particular cases. It is, I believe, critical analysis such as this that will allow us to “think anew, and act anew, [and] save our country.”

     So, although I am only a little past the halfway point, I declare soberly and enthusiastically that Terror and Consent is one of the most important works on terrorism to date, maybe the most important work.

     A triffling quibble: On the second page of Chapter 7, Bobbitt attributes a version of question “If the ends don’t justify the means, what does?” to the late Washington Lawyer Paul Porter. The question goes back at least to G.K.Chesteron, and might be original with him.

112. It took men wading ashore onto a hundred beaches under machine-gun fire to free minds from Fascism, Nazism, and Japanese Imperialism.

     And not one of the prisoners of war or unlawful combatants that resulted were given the right of Habeas Corpus.

113. njcommuter: Yes, the framers of the constitution did foresee specific military circumstances that might require the suspension of habeas corpus. I do not believe the current circumstances of the United States come close to the circumstances listed in the constitution.

     grackle: Prisoners of war got the benefit of the Geneva Conventions, and the term “unlawful combatant” had a highly restrictive definition: only spies and saboteurs out of uniform and actually operating behind enemy lines counted. By the criteria used in the World War II, the US would have had to let a substantial number of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay go, and turn a good part of it into a prisoner of war camp subject to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions.

     In any case, governments did walk over various constitutional guarantees with big tackety boots during the Second World War, but they did so both for limited purposes and for what everyone understood as a limited time. The catch-phrase of the Second World War, “for the duration” differs profoundly from the one propounded by Bush et. al.; “the new normal”. To the extent that FDR or Churchill asked people to give up their rights (not that I condone everything the allies did in the war, particularly the internment of Americans of Japanese origin), they asked for a temporary suspension. Any rights you give up under the current circumstances, you may well not get back in your lifetimes, if ever. Under those circumstances, accepting the arguments of neo-conservative radicals such as David Addington does constitute giving up a large number of the rights that make up a precious part of the heritage of post-enlightenment democratic culture.

114. Prisoners of war got the benefit of the Geneva Conventions, and the term “unlawful combatant” had a highly restrictive definition: only spies and saboteurs out of uniform and actually operating behind enemy lines counted. By the criteria used in the World War II, the US would have had to let a substantial number of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay go, and turn a good part of it into a prisoner of war camp subject to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions.

     What the above has to do with my comments is unclear.

     On the subject of Guantanamo: Several of the detainees who have already been released have gone on to murder more people. No doubt those released that have been discovered to have continued their mayhem represent only the tip of the iceberg.

     Nonetheless, Gitmo and the detainees are not large in my concerns. At present the fate of the detainees is being worked out by Congress, the Administration and SCOTUS. Whatever is finally decided in regards to their status, treatment and imprisonment will have been determined in a legal manner.

115. I’ve finished Terror and Consent and submitted reviews for Amazon and B&N. I guess this thread is still active, so I’ll put one here. In the meantime, Bobbitt’s analysis offers guidance for the issue of illegal combatants. He’s distinctly unhappy about Gitmo, and about the way the Bush administration has handled things, but recognizes that there can’t be much improvement until both Congress and SCOTUS start to act realistically. His guidance is worthy of consideration; indeed the whole book needs to be taken very seriously.

116. Further thoughts on the subject of Guantanamo:

     Being a veteran I can tell you that if you are innocent you want to be tried by the military. You’ll have a better chance for a fair trial. If you are guilty you are better off in front of a civilian jury. So a military handling of the judicial duties of determining what happens to the detainees does not offend my sense of fairness. The military has already proven lenient and released quite a few detainees – some, perhaps most, who continued their terrorist activities after release.

     The detainees could all be let go. The recent SCOTUS decision seems to point in that direction. So be it. Their numbers are not large enough to have much importance in the overall scheme of things. I would rather the Bush administration, or hopefully, a McCain administration release them than to have to reveal intelligence in a civilian court for the enemy to study and analyze. And any public trial would become a media circus.

117. Terror and Consent

     With all I’ve written so far about Terror and Consent, I’m not sure where to pick things up.

     Chapter 7, The Strategic Relationship Between Means and Ends
     Chapter seven begins with the definition of terrorism as the pursuit of political goals through the use of violence against non-combatants in order to dissuade them from doing what they have a legal right to do. From this basis, Bobbitt explores moral, legal, and strategic dimensions, including the very nature of a war against terror (a war in support of law–note that chapter in TSoA: Colonel House and a World Made of Law), the difference between the moral imperatives binding on a government and those binding on a private person, how persons on different parts of the battlefield may view things and, finally, “the awful subject of torture,” which he treats at length. He closes by refuting the perception that the war on terror must be lawless; since it is a war for law, we must give our Law the strength to answer its own enemy; only then is our defense of it truly legitimate. (And without legitimacy, the State collapses from within.)

     Chapter 8, Terrorism: Supply and Demand

     The debate on terrorism since 9/11 has mainly focused on al Qaeda, and on terrorism refracted through that focus, not on human rights and the impact of terror on human rights.

     The causes of terrorism Bobbitt calls the demand side; the effects of terrorism are the supply side. I find these terms confusing, perhaps because the final cause (desired effect) is called supply and the action seeking the cause is called supply.

     Prosecuting war against decentralized terror paradoxically requires the kind of coordinated command and control that demands centralization. This is highly asymmetric, and creates better targets for terror. (Bobbitt does not explore the possibilities of recent study about self-organizing systems, hive behavior, and such.) Stores of such things as smallpox virus are also high-value centralized targets.

     But our laws also create vulnerability. Our president, congress, and judiciary can be destroyed, with devestating results on the legitimacy of subsequent action. Bobbitt urges us to ‘stockpile’ laws, laws only needed in case of emergency. More robust procedures providing for replacements of legislators, SCOTUS, and yes, the President would provide depth. He does not analyze the new vulnerabilities these would create; with the replacement personnel named, it might be possible to assassinate specific persons to put others in power, or even to manipulate the replacements beforehand (since less care may be taken in their election/selection). Nor does he address the problem of Congress spending most of their time posturing instead of legislating.

     Other suggestions include tamper-resistant national ID cards, rules for preventive detention of terrorist suspects, repeal of Posse Comitatus and amendment of the Stafford Act (which regulates presidential declaration of states of emergency), FISA data mining programs (requiring judicial authorization), and restrictions on the publication by private parties of information like the genomes of dangerous viruses (which has already been done on the Internet).

     Something to offend everyone.

     Chapter 9, The Illusion of an American Strategic Doctrine begins with the circumstances that led to the Monroe Doctrine and with the practical strategic effects of that doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine stands in contrasts with the more recently pronounced strategic doctrines, which prove unworthy of the name. Bobbitt analyzes the situation and proposes alternatives.

     In Chapters 10 (Mise-en-Scene: The Properties of Sovereignty) and 11 (Danse Macabre: Global Governance and Legitimacy) Bobbitt examines the international system of state sovereignty. He identifies three basic characteristics of sovereignty: authority, territoriality, and supremecy, then declares

     Now it happens that all of these principles are about to be abandoned. This should not be too disturbing to Americans, for the United States has, from its inception, flourished under an idea of sovereignty that is perhaps unique within the society of states and has never accepted the dogmas listed above. The American theory of limited government is founded on the notion that the People possess rights that can’t be alienated by delegating them to the government. … Sovereignty is not fully vested in the American state. This … stands in contrast to declarations of human rights like Magna Carta or the Universal Declaration of human Rights that purport to grant rights to the people.
     …
     Nor is sovereignty necessarily territorial, as shown by the relationship of the United States ot its aboriginal population. … It has been held by the U.S. Supreme Court that the Indian tribes exercise sovereignty that predates the Constitution, and that they are therefore not bound the the Constitution’s Bill of Rights …. An Indian tribe’s jurisdiction over tribal members is personal rather than territorial.
     Finally, U.S. sovereignty is shared. … There are a number of constitutional subjects at which the state governments in the U.S. are exclusively competent, including aspects of real property, inheritance, and domestic relations ….

     Bobbitt argues that Europe is trying shared sovereignty (though the fellow forbidden by law to sell or give away chinese gooseberries three sixty-fourths of an inch below Eurostandard might argue they have shared the wrong part.) Bit by bit, the parts about inalienable rights are also being treated seriously.

     On this view, the support of terror arrogates to the State powers it cannot have … because the People cannot authorize their state to take away another people’s right of consent (the same way that voters in Texas cannot levy taxes against the citizens of California).

     Such support, on Bobbitt’s view, can be taken to render a government illegitimate.

     To the degree this is happening, it is a sea-change in the constitution of the community of nations. It is resisted by those whose acquiescence is most sorely needed. Its value or danger to the USA depends on the exact definition of terrorism (which I quoted in a previous article). Bobbitt examines how it is being applied, or misapplied, in our actions in Iraq and the criticisms thereof. He emphasizes the absurdity of the the claims that we may not undertake humanitarian interventions when they comport with our interests, but should undertake them when we have nothing at stake and can only lose by our actions. If we are justified by our legitimate interests, then the combination of interests is a stronger justification, not a weaker.

     It is clear, Bobbitt writes, that international treaties and conventions need to be rewritten. In their current form, they work against us and force us to ignore them, which renders hollow our calls for other states to meet their obligations. On his view, we have both the moral authority and the practical leadership to convince our allies to agree to these changes for our mutual benefit.

     The last full chapter, The Triage of Terror, should be put before the American people with every news report about the WoT.

     … We cannot pursue an agenda in the Wars against Terror that will positively affect all three theaters of concern (global, networked terrorism; WMD proliferation; and the human catastrophe) at the same time. In fact, often the most successful pursuit of any one of these objectives operates negatively with respect to the others.

     If we pursue market state terrorists ruthlessly to their harbors, we will frighten their hosts (who may then seek protection by acquiring WMD) and destroy many innocent lives in the process of twenty-first century warfare …. If, on the other hand, we give security guarantees and share technology … to prevent proliferation, we take on board partners whose commitment to human rights may be highly questionable …. If we focus principally on human rights, we sacrifice necessary allies in the war on terror–where would we be in Afghanistan without the collaboration of Pakistan?–and give incentives to states to arm themselves to avoid humanitarian intervention. Finally … we know that a secret military mission … to capture Zawahiri … was aborted at the last minute … owing to fears that thie operation might destabilize the Pakistani government … even to the extent of allowing an anti-Western regime … to come into the possession of nuclear weapons.

     Bobbitt has no solution for these problems, only tools with which to understand and suggestions to give us more security and freedom of action. Bismark, Metternich, Richelieu and Machiavelli together could not steer a safe course through these shoals! Yet it is the task before us, and the sooner we face up to it, the better.

     The book ends with Conclusion: A Plague Treatise for the Twenty-first Century. Doctors wrote treatises on the great Plagues full of guesses about what caused the plague and how it could be treated. What they had in common was good intentions and being totally wrong about the cause and nature of the disease. Thus Bobbitt warns us of his limits, but he nevertheless offers some prescriptions for how to think and what to do. They are positive, can probably be implemented (if the idealogues will see the mess we are in rather than the mess they would like us to be in) and would probably reduce our vulnerabilities and give us some possible lines of attack. The terrorists will skirt those lines at the cost of some freedom of action, which is to the good.

     All in all, Terror and Consent is a landmark analysis of the choices before us. We may not agree on all the answers, but we ignore the analysis at our peril. That is not to say that we may not logically refute it if that is possible, but ignoring it is reckless, at least.

118. restrictions on the publication by private parties of information like the genomes of dangerous viruses (which has already been done on the Internet)

     I should make it clear that what has been done is the publishing of viral genomes, not laws about restriction.

     If you can classify and restrict publication of dangerous technology, what about dangerous discoveries from nature? Stockpiles of smallpox are well controlled, but polio still exists in nature and the Sabin vaccine is a live vaccine known to mutate. Hemorrhagic fevers exist widely in the wild; how effective would publication bans be?

119. Related to Bobbitt and the legitimacy of States of Terror: USA Today is reporting that the Bush administration is pressing the UN to declare Mugabe’s regime illegitimate on the grounds of its use of terror (including starvation) against his own people to interfere with elections, and on the need to allow humanitarian relief. Unlike Myanmar, Zimbabwe does not have a sponsor on the Security Council. China would certainly veto any action against Myanmar, but their commercial relationships with Zimbabwe (a) do not involve their border security and (b) are infamous, so they may be willing to let this one go. Or maybe not; they are strongly attached to classical sovereignty.

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