The power of words: let’s just say we won in Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

In a remarkable column by Terence Samuels at The American Prospect, the author praises Montana’s Democratic Senator Jon Tester for the following suggestion regarding the dilemma of what to do about the war in Iraq:

He begins with the idea that the war in Iraq is won, not lost, and that we should pat ourselves firmly on the back and get the hell out. Clearly, with casualties rising and the situation increasingly hopeless, it requires a high quality conceit [to] declare victory in Iraq. But if the aim is to get out, a little rationalizing may be a small price to pay.

Samuels clearly does not believe the war has been won, not by a long shot. But does Tester? He has stated that our initial goals in going into Iraq—the search for WMDs, the deposing of Saddam, and free elections—have in fact been achieved.

That is true, as far as it goes. But it’s also true that without a more stable government there, achievement of the last goal will not be true in any meaningful sense for long.

It’s also true that initial goals in a war are not the same goals as the reconstruction after a war, and that’s the stage we are in, like it or not: occupation. The Marshall Plan and the postwar occupation of Japan were not part of the original war goals, but without them World War II would have inexorably led to even greater problems it did.

So Tester’s “solution” is short-sighted at best. But Samuels hits the nail on the head when he says that the real goal is “to get out,” and declaring victory is just a political tool to make the getaway more politically palatable domestically.

How it plays in Peoria, however, is not how it plays in the world. And if all the world is a stage, it’s the world stage we should be interested in here, not petty domestic politics (the latter, I’m afraid, a concern not historically limited to the Democrat side of the aisle). And the world will see through this particular ploy immediately, and find it contemptible, laughable, and weak.

Another characteristic Tester’s proposal has is that it indicates a strong and almost delusional belief in the power of words to create reality. Yes indeed, labels do influence perceptions, but not that much. If Tester or Samuels actually believe that the Islamicist totalitarian jihadis will suddenly say, “ooops, I guess we lost after all” if victory is declared along with a premature pullout, leaving the Iraqis vulnerable to terrorist and/or Iranian/Syrian takeover, then Tester and Samuels are either remarkably naive, remarkably stupid, or both.

Samuels ends his piece on a cryptic note. After quoting Tester as saying that he can no longer give Bush the benefit of the doubt that he will end the Iraq war, Samuels writes:

For Democrats, even as they disagree on how to respond, that is the bottom line. As more Republican lawmakers come to the same conclusion, so too will the war come to its end. It’ll be clear then who will have won.

It will be clear who will have won what? The war in Iraq? Or the war Samuels seems to consider the more important one, the political battle over which party’s vision of that war will prevail?

[ADDENDUM: I’ve written at length previously about the conundrum presented by the lack of definition of what “success” would look like in the war in Iraq. Please see this and this.]

Giving smallpox to the Native Americans

The New Neo Posted on by

When the Europeans came to this continent, it was already inhabited by millions of indigenous peoples, originally and (erroneously) called “Indians” by the invaders, and later known by the more PC term “Native Americans” (although, just to confuse things even further, it appears that those Native Americans now consider certain variations of either term acceptable).

What happened to the native population of North America? Why did its numbers plummet so drastically?

In the 60s it became commonplace to emphasize the anti-Indian racism of early settlers in this country, as well as their predilection for wiping out Native Americans. There’s no question that these accusations are not based on complete fabrication. But you may or may not be astonished to learn that the vast majority of indigenous peoples on the North American continent were not deliberately eliminated by the Europeans (and I mean the vast majority—scroll down in the following link to the category “depopulation from disease” for details) but were instead killed by diseases the Europeans inadvertently brought with them.

According to the evidence and our best knowledge of what happened, these illnesses were spread by initial sporadic contact, so that by the time permanent settlers were arriving the native population was already quite sparse in certain areas. For example, close to 90% of the Indians in some parts of the continent (100% in some islands) are estimated to have died of disease fairly soon after first contact (see this and the previous link for more details).

Europeans died in droves of disease, as well, and syphilis may or may not have been a “gift” the Indians inadvertently gave them in return. But although diseases such as smallpox ravaged European populations, they were far more virulent among Native Americans, who had not been exposed to them before.

In circles in which it has become fashionable to attribute the worst of all possible motives to Westerners, it is an accepted truth that the history of US settlers vis a vis the native population is one of unrelieved murder and mayhem. And make no mistake about it, there was plenty of that to go around. The settlers believed it was their business to take over, and were ruthless about doing so.

It is far beyond the scope of this post to review the history of European and Native American contacts and relations, but any idea that the latter were some sort of ideal people, free from violence and conflict prior to encountering the settlers, is absolutely false. Native Americans had their share of inter-tribal conflicts, and in fact some of the early wars between the settlers and the Indians exploited these already-existing rivalries.

If you read the links, however, you’ll discover that the earliest contacts between settlers and Indians were basically friendly and mutually respectful. But clashes were inevitable as the settlements grew and began to be a greater threat to traditional Indian life. In this there is nothing unusual about American history; such is the way of the world, unfortunately, and conflicts between previously-existing groups and new arrivals are often bloody and vicious.

The acknowledgment that Native Americans had been mistreated in this country for centuries is certainly a statement of fact. But, as with so much of history, misconceptions abound, and the tendency is to err on the side of imputing even greater villainy to the settlers than is warranted. Many people who are not aware of the role of disease in the picture have the idea that the settlers came in and wiped out millions by indiscriminate and intentional slaughter, certainly an erroneous point of view (and see this, by the way, for the difficulty of even estimating the actual pre-Columbian indigenous population figures).

Both the early settlers—and the Indians themselves—tended to believe that the decimation of the native population by disease, and the relative immunity of the Europeans, were examples of the workings and will of the deity. This reaction is not hard to imagine psychologically—such things are often seen as punishment for sins by those (in this case, both groups) who don’t understand the science of viruses and disease resistance. The resultant fear and depression in the native populations, as well as the disorganization of communities that had lost so many important members, could arguably have contributed to their marginalization, as well.

The vast majority of us no longer see disease as a consequence of divine will. But it is still seen by some as an aspect of political ill will, perpetrated by those nefarious Western invaders. Thus, the legend of the smallpox-infected blankets, given by settlers to Indians to deliberately infect them with disease.

Legend, you say? Isn’t it amply documented that this in fact happened?

It turns out, however, that the story rests on two foundations, one utterly discredited and one not. The first we can deal with quickly: our old friend Ward Churchill (yes, the very same) fabricated a story (thoroughly discredited here by a scholar relatively reluctant to debunk him) that the US army attempted to give smallpox to native Americans in the 1830’s. Not true.

The second allegation has more legs to it. There is strong evidence that such a plan was at least discussed in letters exchanged between General Jeffrey Amherst and Colonel Henry Bouquet, British (not American; the time was pre-Revolutionary) commanders during the French and Indian War. Although there is no indication that they ever followed through on their plot, they certainly contemplated it while at the same time expressing intense hatred for Indians.

Another allegation to back up the previous story is the mention of blankets donated from a smallpox hospital in order to “have the desired effect.” It occurs in the Journal of William Trent, commander of the local militia. However, a more careful reading of Trent’s journal indicates that the “desired effect” in Trent’s eyes (there’s no evidence he knew of the plans of Amherst and Bouquet, or of whether smallpox could be spread in this way) was to cement good relations, not bad (see this; scroll down about halfway].

That’s it, however. Hardly a lengthy history of death-by-intentionally-donated blanket. The truth of this aspect of US history—treatment of indigenous peoples—is bad and sad enough, although hardly unique in the annals of the planet. But the temptation to portray the conduct of the settlers as even worse than it was is apparently irresistible.

[ADDENDUM: This post was sparked by a discussion in the comments section of yesterday’s entry, see this and this. Regarding the subject matter of the first comment—whether smallpox was in fact brought over by the first Europeans to come to the new world, I believe the answer is that indeed it was. Columbus’s first voyage, for example, took thirty-two days (from the Canaries), and if some of his sailors had been infected with smallpox at the outset and infected others on the ship, there could easily be sailors still infectious when they disembarked. Most smallpox victims survive (and some have relatively mild cases), the disease is spread through aerosol dispersion, and the infectious period lasts up to three weeks after symptoms appear, which in turn can be up to seventeen days after initial exposure to the infection. Thus, the period between exposure and the end of the possibility of transmitting the disease to others can be up to thirty-eight days. And this, of course, does not even factor in the previously mentioned sailor-to-sailor spread, which could increase the time period for infectiousness of the crew significantly.]

Independence Day, heroes, and villains

The New Neo Posted on by

Today is the Fourth of July, our Independence Day. Although the focus is on fireworks and barbecues—a tradition I intend to perpetuate this evening—deep down, this particular holiday is really about American history.

John Adams, one of our founding fathers, knew this, although he was off two days on the date. As he presciently wrote to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

“Forever more” is a long time, to be sure. But so far the celebration is holding.

History often seems inevitable after it happens, and we tend to forget it is not—and that, most especially, the outcome is not known to those who live through the events in real time. The United States had a precarious existence at first, and Francis Scott Keys’s uncertainty about America’s continuance was not a ploy when he wrote of the fledgling United States in terms of a question, not a statement, “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave/o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

Abraham Lincoln was determined to make sure the answer to Keys’s question would be, “Yes.” My old-fashioned education required that we fifth-graders memorize the Gettysburg address, and although at the time the I thought its opening phrase “Four score and seven years ago…”—referring back, of course, to 1776—sounded like a long time had passed, as I got older it occurred to me that when Lincoln spoke the nation was still relatively young and facing the greatest test of its existence, with the outcome unknown.

Lincoln wondered whether a nation devoted to liberty and the proposition that all men are created equal (and for “men” read “humans”) could continue to endure. He knew full well that such “equality” was imperfect under the law of the land; correcting flaws in its application to blacks was part of the reason for the Civil War that was being fought under his remarkable and eloquent aegis.

Independence Day isn’t about being perfect and celebrating that perfection. It’s about acknowledging the wonderful and optimistic vision of the original founders, being thankful for those in the past who have preserved it, and trying to honor it in the future. There are those who think our present government to be so pernicious that it has perverted the intent of the Declaration of Independence. There are others who, like me, think our government flawed but basically sound and that no such perversion has occurred, although course corrections are sometimes required—and have always been required—in our not-so-long history as a nation.

Speaking of that history—I’ve written before about the fact that the criticism of Lincoln by his own contemporaries was at least as bad (and very similar) to that meted out to Bush. This does not mean I’m equating the two in terms of statesmanship or vision or judgment; I am not. But my high estimation of Lincoln—and yours—was not shared by most of his contemporaries.

Here’s a quote on the subject from the excellent book American Brutus, Michael W. Kauffman’s biography of John Wilkes Booth:

The Civil War was unlike anything known in modern times, and the nation came closer to collapse than most people realize today. Emancipation of slaves, confiscation of property, and the draft often led to deadly clashes between the public and civil authorities. The political storm threatened not only the federal government, but state governments as well”¦In the middle stood Abraham Lincoln, blamed for the war and fired upon from all sides. It was not just the fringe element who hated the president; judges, senators, editors, and otherwise respectable citizens left no doubt of their contempt for him as well. One senator compared Lincoln to the tyrants of history, saying “They are all buried beneath the wave of oblivion compared to what this man of yesterday, this Abraham Lincoln, that neither you nor I ever heard of four years ago, has chosen to exercise”¦”

As I’ve written before, this isn’t the sort of thing one hears about in grade school or even high school history classes. Ordinarily one has to be in college level courses to be exposed to these rather startling facts of history as it was actually lived. But most people stop taking history courses before reaching that point, unfortunately, and therefore have little of substance to refer to when attempting to compare our present situation to the past.

Some believe the teaching of the history of the United States should involved focusing on the bad—the errors and misdeeds—over the good, and that teaching the latter is somehow jingoistic. Some believe that anything offending the tender sensibilities of some child or group of children or parents should be excluded, as well, and that history should be a PC endeavor to cater to all interest and ethnic groups.

I would like instead to see the teaching of a realistic and representative balance between the good and the bad in our history; and an awareness of the fact that although this nation is indeed flawed, that is only a reflection of the flawed human condition rather than some special and unique failing of our own. On balance, the US has a more heroic and inspiring vision than most, and has lived up to it far better and far more often than one might have expected, given the nature of humanity. And this is something to celebrate.

Mark Steyn has written that Prime Minister Howard of Australia has said the teaching of history in that country should be taught as a “heroic national narrative.” That’s a novel thought, is it not? But I think our history could honestly be described that way. Remember, real-life heroes are not Supermen; they make errors and have weaknesses, and they struggle to overcome them. Our own Civil War was an example of one of these struggles to correct a major flaw in the execution of the concept that all are created equal, and to more perfectly fulfill the original vision in the Declaration of Independence. There will be other such corrections, no doubt, in our future—hopefully, neither as wrenching not as bloody.

But we must be careful not to overcorrect or overreact; the Fourth of July is not a day of national breast-beating. It’s as good a day as any, and better than some, to celebrate the remarkable and laudable vision under which this nation was founded, and to be deeply grateful for those who have preserved and expanded that vision. The fact that its execution will always be imperfect is no reason to consider ourselves the villains of the piece. There are enough true villains out there for comparison, if anyone cares to look.

On liberty

The New Neo Posted on by

[I’ve been too busy to write today, so in honor of the Fourth, this is a repeat of an old post. See you tomorrow.]

I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.

When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York.

And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.

I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.

All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a prepoderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.

The garden is more advanced from what it must be at my house, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyachinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.

In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.

As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in 1965, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on every visit. So, what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth, restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.

I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.

The sight is intensely familiar to me–I used to see it almost every day when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.

Who’s afraid of the big bad terrorists?

The New Neo Posted on by

Police speculate that three recent car bomb incidents in Britain are related. Perhaps al Qaeda is part of the picture, perhaps not. But all three car bombs had a similar modus operandi to one another, and the outcomes of all three were exactly what you would want from a terrorist attack: no one was hurt, or it was only the terrorists themselves that were injured.

This allows us to add these particular events to the fairly long list of what you might call the Keystone Cops school of terrorist activity—would-be perpetrators who don’t seem to be able to do much more than harm themselves. It also allows those on the Left who are so inclined, to pooh-pooh the threat of terrorism and to mock those who take it seriously (I’m not going to link to the particular Leftist blogs in question and add to their traffic—but if you’re especially interested, a typical such site can be found if you follow the appropriate link here).

I’ve written at some length previously on the topic of the Left’s accusations that the Right is motivated by irrational fear. What interests me more right now about the current terrorist activity in Britain, and the reaction of the Left to it, is the use of the “incompetence” meme.

Until 9/11, Islamic terrorists in Western countries had a reputation as bumblers. This despite their deadly success on foreign soil: the Khobar Towers, Pan Am Flight 103, the US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, and the USS Cole.

This “bumbler” reputation should have been put to rest by 9/11, but it was not. And the long list of exceedingly successful attacks on Western allies since 9/11 ought to indicate a very serious intent and threat, as well: the London subway bombings, the Bali nightclub carnage, and the Madrid train bombings, to name just a few.

But the lack of major attacks in the US since 9/11 has allowed many people to think of that day as an anomaly, and to focus instead on failed attempts. Successful terrorist attacks may not be easy to execute perfectly, but there’s absolutely no reason to think they cannot and will not be, simply because so many fail. The pattern is to try, try again if unsuccessful, till they get it right. In that respect 9/11 itself is a good case in point.

The WTC attack of 1993 was an extremely serious one that killed six people and injured over a thousand others. But it was not taken all that seriously by many in the general public because the number of people murdered was so small compared to the grandiose plans of the perpetrators, and because of certain details of how they were caught—particularly the fact that one of them was arrested while trying to collect a deposit on the rental van involved in the explosion (a “Saturday Night Live” touch if ever there was one).

But the intent was every bit as deadly as the 2001 attack that toppled the buildings. In fact, the intent was the same—mastermind Ramzi Yousef fully intended to destroy the towers, and only missed accomplishing that goal by a slightly faulty placement of the bomb, according to the WTC architect’s testimony in the trial.

The difference between a plan that can be viewed as farcical and almost comical, and one that is as horrific and deadly as 9/11, can be surprisingly small. If something had gone wrong with the terrorists’ plans and/or execution on 9/11—bad weather, perhaps, or a greater ability of the intelligence community to connect the dots—they would have seemed to be incompetent bumblers like the earlier plotters. And the same might have ended up being true, in reverse, of these most recent would-be terrorists—if they’d been just a bit more technically competent, they might have perpetrated a horrific mass murder.

Nothing prior to 9/11 prepared us for that day, although many things should have. Nothing subsequent has indicated terrorists have given up on attacking us.

One thing is certain: if another large attack occurs, we cannot say it came as a surprise, or that the perpetrators were incompetent fools.

On-topic and off: letting go

The New Neo Posted on by

I was asked here why it is that I tolerate so many off-topic comments on this blog. Why not delete them, or at least admonish people to stay on-topic?

As far as I’m concerned, the comments section here is for everyone. I mostly let go of the result, except for the most overt and abusive trolls (usually that’s redundant). People will go off-topic; that’s what people do. I spend many hours writing what I imagine to be some carefully crafted post, with tons of nuance and masses of critical thinking, and then people talk about something tangential or even unrelated.

Sometimes, of course, the comments are wonderful, better than the piece. Sometimes not. My portion is something I fling out into the world without knowing what will happen later; I just try to do my part as best I can. The research and the learning that go into writing the post interest me in and of themselves. In the process of writing I often crystallize and organize my thoughts, or even truly learn what I actually think about the topic in the first place. At any rate, once people start commenting, it’s out of my control, except for weeding out the really offensive ones.

Weeding, hmmm—now that I think of it, I’ll say that the garden’s that way, too (life, too, most probably). Everything we do we can’t control, and sometimes things crop up that you don’t expect—some of them good, some of them not so good. And everything we do we ultimately have to leave.

And yet we do it anyway, and for what? For love, for beauty, for knowledge, for fun, for curiosity, for our descendants, for ourselves, for whomever might happen by to appreciate what we’ve done (or to criticize it).

Which reminds me—here’s my garden, about a week ago. And it’s okay if you go off-topic:

irises10.jpgirises8.jpg

The surge: “Hello we must be going…”

The New Neo Posted on by

Groucho Marx had a signature greeting song, always good for a laugh: “Hello I Must Be Going:”

Hello, I must be going
I cannot stay
I came to say
I must be going
I’m glad I came
But just the same
I must be going…

In relation to the surge, Congress is Groucho Marx, although not nearly as funny. That surge we’ve heard so much about, headed by counter-insurgency expert General Petraeus—originally held in such high bipartisan esteem—is only about a week or so into full deployment.

But of course it’s failed. Or, rather, it will fail. Inevitably, indubitably.

Because the pundits and the members of Congress know much more about such things than General Petraeus. No need to wait around to see what actually happens by the short-sighted September deadline. When last I checked it’s only late June right now, but what more could possibly happen in a couple of months? Why bother? We all know the outcome, don’t we?

The MSM made much of Senator Richard Lugar’s speech on the subject (and please actually read his words rather than the MSM reports of what he said) since it represented a defection from the Bush line by a prominent Republican. The gist of Lugar’s speech seemed to be the following: the Iraqis are no good, our military is tired, and neither the American people nor Congress has the patience and will to even try anymore, so let’s leave before we even discover the results of the surge.

Senator Lugar’s rationale for suggesting abandonment of the surge now rather than waiting any longer is predicated on the fact that we are more likely to get truly bipartisan cooperative policy going if we start sooner rather than waiting to accomplish it during a contentious election year.

Sorry, Senator, you may not have noticed, but it’s already rather late for that. Actually, it’s been too late since the election of 2006. In fact, it was probably too late even earlier. As you yourself noted in the first few paragraphs of your speech [emphasis mine]:

The prospects that the current “surge” strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the President are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate. And the strident, polarized nature of that debate increases the risk that our involvement in Iraq will end in a poorly planned withdrawal that undercuts our vital interests in the Middle East….The current debate on Iraq in Washington has not been conducive to a thoughtful revision of our Iraq policy.

Bingo, Senator Lugar. And that includes you.

Here’s an outline of the way the surge is supposed to work, if successful. You’ll note that its main thrust is not expected to occur until this summer—that’s actually where that September timeline for a report on the undertaking originated.

In fact, the surge is an example of what Lugar is asking for, “a thoughtful revision of our Iraq policy,” drawn up by a general who is the country’s expert in the field, newly appointed and approved (the latter unanimously, I might add) for the very purpose of implementing it after the architect of the old policy, Secretary Rumsfeld, was ousted subsequent to last year’s election.

Oh, details, details. And, as J.D. Johannes points out in this article, the four goals Senator Lugar has outlined for our policy in Iraq and the greater Middle East:

…are being advanced, some of them dramatically, by the surge strategy of Gen. David Petraeus ”” the very strategy that Sen. Lugar would scrap in favor of “downsizing and redeployment.”

Johannes has recently returned from three months in Iraq, and his article offers a strong critique of Lugar’s speech. Johannes notes that the surge has already accomplished important things, even prior to its being at full strength:

The principal accomplishment of the surge to date is solidifying the “Anbar Awakening,” the significance of which has been under-reported by the media and ill-understood by the public. If any piece of territory in Iraq qualified as a “terrorist safe haven,” it was bloody Anbar. This province of little over 1 million people ”” 4.5 percent of Iraq’s population—has accounted for 34.6 percent of U.S. casualties….The virtual extinction of the insurgency in the province ”” a victory that I was privileged to witness first-hand ”” represented not some momentary quirk of tribal alliances, but a diligent application of the revised tactics that coalition forces have implemented under skilled, battle-proven officers and Gen. Petraeus.

It’s not hard to predict that whatever gains may occur this summer as a result of Petraeus and his “skilled, battle-proven” officers and troops will likewise by “under-reported by the media and ill-understood by the public.”

And that’s because the fix is in, and the song is being sung: Hello, we must be going….

What price diversity?

The New Neo Posted on by

Today the Supreme Court has handed down this decision blocking attempts by the public school administrations of Seattle and Louisville to reassign students solely on the basis of race in an attempt at greater diversity.

Here’s the NY Times’ summary of the ruling, which was a close 5-4 decision breaking along the expected Supreme Court lines, with the usual conservative/liberal split among the Justices. In the majority opinion, the Court wrote that the districts had failed to meet the burden of justifying the “extreme means” they chose to right the perceived racial divisions.

I haven’t had time to read the full opinion with all the dissents, although I hope to do so later. But I have several preliminary observations, two based on memory, one based on social science.

The first is that I lived in Boston back in the days of the controversial institution of busing, and although I was (and remain) extremely sympathetic to the plight of African-American students in inner cities with virtually segregated schools, I thought busing opponents had understandable objections. Yes, yes, I know, some were motivated by racism, but others were motivated by the principle of keeping young children in local schools and not making them be guinea pigs to social science experimentation ordered by courts under the aegis of academics (the busing plan was based on a PhD thesis by Harvard student Charles Glenn).

In the case of Boston, busing went both ways, and white students (in predominantly poor neighborhoods, naturally) were forced out of their own districts on sometimes lengthy rides to predominantly (and often substandard) African-American schools. This was supposed to foster equality of opportunity and greater racial understanding. It may have done the former—an example of “a lowering tide sinks all boats”—but it certainly didn’t lead to the latter, as this fascinating history of the busing experiment will attest.

In fact, the result was not only increased racial turmoil, but helped lead to the effective desegregation of Boston public schools as whites pulled out of the city (or the public school system) and the student body become approximately 85% minority. Perhaps this would have happened anyway, but the process supposedly was accelerated by the busing crisis.

Busing in Boston effectively ended in the late 1980s, when school choice—which seems to have been a comparatively effective and successful solution—was instituted. But that was found unconstitutional by the courts at the turn of the millennium, and the Boston public schools are now unable to use either method to balance schools racially (perhaps moot, considering the racial demography that exists today among the public school student population).

My second memory is of the college I attended back in the mid-to-late 60s. When I started it was a large coed school with an almost totally white student body, its black students mostly athletes on scholarship. Two years later the African-American student population there had increased enormously to approximately 15% or so, but I noticed (I had transferred, but was back for a visit) that there was virtually no mixing. When the number of blacks had been small, they were well-integrated into the student body, but now the dining halls were utterly segregated, seemingly by choice. In other words, the black kids stuck together and so did the white kids.

It’s easy to say that enforced integration of these two types certainly has not led to racial harmony. And yet something has—at least, relatively speaking. Those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s can readily tell the difference, and it is profound: African-Americans are far more integrated into our society, and far more visible in positions of power and influence than ever before. In addition, the sort of seething racial turmoil that one could feel simmering—and often erupting—seems to have diminished. So perhaps, in the long term, some of these solutions “worked.”

That brings us, however, to my third point. Recently there has been some interesting research indicating that, in the short-and even the medium-term, increasing diversity ends up fostering problems more often than not. Well-known Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, has found over five years of research that:

…immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities. He fears that his work on the surprisingly negative effects of diversity will become part of the immigration debate, even though he finds that in the long run, people do forge new communities and new ties.

This conforms almost exactly with my observations, but there’s more. Diversity leads to a general lack of trust and withdrawal from community activity, a kind of “hunkering down” effect, lower confidence and investment in community, less charitable giving, lower happiness. This is true whatever the economic level of the community is, by the way.

Putnam himself was disturbed enough by his own findings that he “delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity.” A very odd course of action for a scientist—but this is a social scientist, after all. At least he published in the end, although he has yet to make the details of his research available and has only released a summary.

But the results indicate that diversity has profound negative consequences in the short and medium runs, and so we should not be surprised if we notice that is exactly what has happened. And, by the way, for those who think this is primarily a phenomenon of the big bad old USA, it is not. The result apparently holds true in studies of communities in Australia, Sweden Canada and Britain as well.

I’m not suggesting we go back to the days of segregation, or that we ban legal immigrants. But I am suggesting that the idea that the enforcement of diversity at all costs is no panacea, and is not going to lead to the results even its proponents are hoping for. At the very least, expect a very bumpy ride for decades along the way.

A mighty poor documentary

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t seen it and probably won’t, because I don’t go to the movies often and this one doesn’t sound very good. And reading this review of the Danny Pearl story “A Mighty Heart” only reinforces that notion.

Daniel Pearl’s friend and colleague Asra Q. Nomani seems incensed that the movie doesn’t portray anything like the Danny she knew, respected, and platonically loved. She cooperated with the film’s development, thinking the movie “had the potential to be meaningful” and would explain Pearl’s passion for reporting as well as tell the story of the team that searched for him so vigorously and yet futilely. Nomani also hoped the movie would spark what she refers to as “a search for the truth behind Danny’s death,” which she feels has not yet been learned (not sure about that last part, but I’m fairly certain it doesn’t involve George Bush; she sounds like a relatively sensible woman).

Sensible yes, but naive about Hollywood. Please, someone, let me know when has Hollywood ever done right by a true story?

The fact that, as Nomani points out, the movie has been turned into a vehicle for star Jolie, and Pearl has become, as she says, “a cameo in his own murder”—and a bland, boring cameo at that, unlike the exceptionally witty and charismatic Pearl—is hardly surprising. Nor is the fact that details of the kidnapping are botched to make it seem more dramatic and simplistic, such as having Pearl receive (and ignore) a series of three warnings not to meet in a public place with the man he was due to interview.

Never happened, says Nomani. But it makes for a more easily “readable” story line, so who cares if it trashes Pearl’s memory by insulting his intelligence and caution?

Not the movie industry. Nor should the somewhat naive Nomani have expected it to. After all, this is the same Hollywood that cast the non-athlete (and left-handed) Tony Perkins as right-handed Red Sox player Jimmy Piersall, that simplified and distorted Gandhi’s life with tremendous inaccuracy to the tune of eight Oscars, that provides a home for Oliver Stone’s “historical” shenanigans. Why would Daniel Pearl’s story be any different?

If war is not the answer, what is?

The New Neo Posted on by

You’ve all seen those posters and bumper stickers: “War is not the answer.”

You’ve also seen discussions of why those sporting them are incorrect; war has solved some things and provided answers to certain questions—such as whether, for example, there would be a 1000-year Reich.

I’ve spent some time puzzling over the use of the “war is not the answer” mantra. For some people—the less thoughtful—I think it’s merely a kneejerk catch phrase, a method to decorate a car in a way that says, “I’m a good person, not a bloodthirsty sonofabitch like those who advocate war.” This group (and I have no idea what percentage of the whole it might represent) has no particular understanding of history, especially the history of warfare, and no real thought about the limitations of the perfectibility of human nature.

And then there are those who really don’t have much interest in pacifism, but have an ultra-Leftist political agenda that an alliance with pacifists serves. These people see pacifists as a subset of the category “useful idiots” that they’ve found so very helpful over time.

That leaves us with the third category, the one that interests me most, the committed and relatively thoughtful and well-meaning people who sustain a hope that, although war will sometimes happen, they can promote a set of programs that will lead to a world in which war will be resorted to less and less. I will summarize their position by saying that, although they understand that war sometimes has provided short-term answers to certain questions (such as the one posited above about the Third Reich), it has never provided a long-term answer to the problem of human intra-species aggression on a large scale, and each war has introduced new problems in its wake that lead to further war.

In other words, when members of this third group say “War is not the answer” their accent is on the word “the.” War isn’t not the final answer to the problems of human conflict, and although it may appear to solve some things, other problems are bound to arise that will lead to future wars.

Well, excuse me but: duh. Or to put it more politely: there are no solutions to the problem of human conflict that will eliminate the need for force at times, just as there are virtually no large-scale societies that can do away with police or prisons.

The advent of the atomic age gave pacifists—and their hopes for a way to end war—a boost, and understandably so. As dreadful as war has been in the first half of the twentieth century, with the invention of nuclear weapons it became far worse to contemplate. Early on in the atomic age the hope was that nations would be sane enough that the prospect of mutually assured destruction would be a powerful deterrent to any war, and that therefore—paradoxically—the very power of the weapons would be the reason they were unlikely to be used in the future.

Amazingly enough, so far that hope has been borne out; Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still both the first and the last times nuclear weapons have actually been detonated on a populace.

But that does not mean war has ended; sub-atomic conflicts have regularly sprung up around the world, and many of those are presently of the asymmetrical variety, involving terrorism and/or guerilla warfare and insurgencies. Another common type of war in recent times has been the internecine inter-tribal, inter-ethnic, and/or inter-religious conflicts of the third world, particularly Africa.

As for nuclear weapons, unfortunately they have recently become tools that seem more likely to be used. We now have an enemy who is less obviously interested in life than in death, and motivated at least in part by apocalyptic religious thinking (example: Iran). We also have another and related enemy that is not a state and therefore has no nation of people to protect, would be difficult to trace a bomb back to, and is driven by the same aforementioned religious motivation and otherwordly emphasis, (examples: al Qaeda and its spawn).

All of this fuels the depth of the desire to find an alternative to war—an alternative that provides not only “an” answer, but “the” answer, in a way that war never can. If you go to websites that promote pacifism, such as this one run by a Quaker lobby, you’ll find attempts to explain what that alternative solution should be.

What you find there, of course, is not “the” answer, either. This is no surprise, because if you hold the more tragic (and, I believe, more realistic) view of human nature that I happen to, then you’re not looking for “the” answer, because you believe there never can be one.

There is really nothing so terribly wrong with the “solutions” offered there (except for reliance on the corrupt and/or incompetent UN), at least as far as they go, which isn’t all that far. The Quaker website stresses the idea of prevention, of nipping things in the bud before they ever get to that point. Nice idea, and I’m sure in some cases it works, but the programs described mostly focus on preventing one type of conflict, the so-called “mass humanitarian crises” such as the Rwandan slaughter. Although the role of the UN and NGOs in Darfur doesn’t indicate things have been going very well in this regard, there is some evidence of success (follow the link and scroll down to number four) in a very limited and circumscribed number of cases, none of which involve the so-called “war on terror” or Islamic totalitarianism.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Pope John Paul II negotiating a deal between Argentina and Chile over the Beagle Channel, or a social service society soothing the seething shantytowns of Ahmedabad in India through street plays and festivals—laudable though such things may be—aren’t about to give us “the answer” to the current question of what to do to counter the threat that militant Islamic fundamentalist totalitarianism represents now, including both its national and its terrorist manifestations.

Prevention is wonderful, and I’m all for it. It’s good to exercise aerobically, to eat healthfully, try to avoid carcinogens, and to get your vaccinations. The disease model dictates, however, that although an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, human beings rarely follow all the rules, and even those who do can end up with the shock of cancer or some other dread disease. When that happens, cure is worth many ounces of prevention, because prevention is no longer possible. And treatment must occur quickly.

Does that mean that someone who is diagnosed with cancer should give up practicing good health habits? Of course not; the two—prevention and treatment—work in tandem, and healthful practices can make treatment more effective. That’s why the “treatment” known as war does not preclude peace efforts such as those described on the Quaker website, as well.

War as a treatment? Yes—an exceptionally drastic one that should only be resorted to when there are no good alternatives, or when time has run out on the ones that might have worked in the past (the problem, of course, is deciding when that has happened). And like all drastic treatments it has many side effects, and can backfire and cause worse problems than those it attempts to address.

With war, every now and then there’s a cure, of course—World War II as a “cure” for Nazism, for example (although of course small pockets of that particular disease remain). But although World War II “cured” Nazism on a worldwide basis, the side effects were profound and devastating, and its aftermath fostered the growth of another already-existing disease: Communism.

Yes, indeed, war is not the answer to the problems that bring about armed conflict, and war is probably the least benign “treatment” on earth. But when prevention (and our very incomplete knowledge of how to accomplish it) has failed, sometimes it’s the only answer.

[ADDENDUM: In one of those examples of simultaneity in which the blogosphere is especially rich, Shrinkwrapped writes today on the psychological underpinnings of this sort of ultra-pacifist point of view.]

Who put the Cialis in socialism?

The New Neo Posted on by

Ymarsakar asks why my blog refuses to accept any and all comments featuring the word “socialism.”

Well, I certainly had no idea! It was never my intent! I wasn’t even there! Blame it on WordPress! Blame it on….Cialis.

Cialis? The erectile dysfunction drug? Whatever does being “ready when the moment is right” have to do with socialism—or socialists, apparently another word inadvertently banned from this site?

One could make an argument for some sort of link between the two: for an awfully long time, socialism has been waiting—and ready—for the moment that has somehow never quite come (and yet has seemed to socialists to be on its way), the moment that will prove once and for all that socialism is the superior method of running a country.

But no; the true connection is the fact that (as most of you may have figured out by now) the word “cialis” is embedded in the word “socialism.”

I currently have blocked about fifty drug names on this site; if I hadn’t done so, there might be upwards of a fifty or so pharmaceutical spam comments here a day. Cialis, of course, is one of them, and the unintended consequence of blocking Cialis is to block socialism.

So as an experiment, and in the interests of free speech (wouldn’t want to be accused by the Left of blocking that), I have temporarily and experimentally unblocked Cialis. Therefore you are free to discuss socialism and socialists to your hearts’ delight, without resorting to such ruses as soci@list.

And you’re free to discuss Cialis as well.

The unintended consequences of teaching expurgated history

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know about you, but I hated the subject “history” in school. School history courses were almost uniformly boring, and this is a source of wonder to me because history itself is almost unfailingly fascinating and even gripping. To make history dull, one has to work at it.

But work at it they did. They purposely left out (and continue to leave out—although what is deleted now is different than it used to be) the good stuff.

In my day, what was left out was anything that was too complex, and also anything that conflicted with the perception of America as a righteous and near-perfect place—which included any personal foibles and imperfections of the Founding Fathers (and of course, anything remotely related to sex). What’s left out today is anything that isn’t politically correct on either side (which of course is virtually everything of truth) and anything that might make the US look good (I’m engaging in only a slight bit of hyperbole there, I’m afraid).

In short, anything of interest is left out, as well as anything that would meaningfully connect the teaching of history with the problems we are facing today—which would be what would make it most interesting and most helpful.

The consequences of putting history into a blender and turning it into bland, featureless, and easily digestible pap is not just having students who are bored to tears, although that would be bad enough. Nor is it just that history textbooks now have a strong bias on the Left, although that isn’t a good thing either. The worst effect is that such an approach to the teaching of history creates an ignorant and naive populace that is even more condemned than would otherwise be the case to repeat history’s errors.

I’m convinced, for example, that failure to properly teach the history of the wars that we have fought in the past—their complications, controversies, and errors, as well as what led to them and what was accomplished by them—has led to unrealistic and simplistic expectations of warfare itself.

And, come to think of it, perhaps this is not an unintended consequence; it’s possible that the current overarching Leftist bias of the writers of today’s textbooks include a pacifist agenda, of which this is part.

Or perhaps not. I’m not sure it matters all that much, because the effects are the same: a populace that cannot understand what is happening now because it cannot intelligently analyze its own past and apply it to the present. Of course, how to apply that past to the present is a subject on which reasonable—and even well-informed—people can and will differ.

But even though we can never know the truth of what happened in the past with absolute certainly, we can most definitely approximate that truth far better than we’ve been doing so far in our classrooms. Our future may depend on it.