Holiday ode to ibuprofen, as well as to joy

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: That post on Cronkite, Part II, is coming, coming, coming–but due to holiday doings, I’m on a slightly delayed schedule. The post will appear here later today. Meanwhile…]

Last night, some combination of keyboarding, exhaustion, coughing from the lingering cold I still am fighting, and who knows what else conspired to give me some sort of weird muscle pain in my upper back. It was just one tiny little point–but what a point it was! A knifelike stab whenever I moved, and especially when coughing.

I went to bed with it and woke up with it, unchanged. Hmmm. I started to envision the holidays with this thing, and decided: time for ibuprofen, the over the counter painkiller with the best muscle relaxant properties.

And about a half hour later, to my surprise, joy, and wonderment–the pain is all gone. Normalcy. Sometimes medications do exactly what they say they will.

Leftists, Rousseau, and Islamicist totalitarianism: brothers under the skin

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I ran out of time today for Part II of the Cronkite piece. My plan is to have it appear tomorrow. In the meantime…]

There are several banned trolls whose comments I ordinarily delete here as a matter of course. But every now and then one writes something that I decide to leave up as an example of a certain type of thinking.

Thus, this recent effort from one of my most loyal non-fans in Toronto:

‘Militant’ Islam isn’t going to go away as long as the U.S and Israel continue to control the region through it’s military and corrupt policies.

Given that, there is no U.S chance of winning a military victory there. None.

I’m hoping this site will still be around in a few years when defeat is total and humiliating…

A pithy rendition of a certain type of leftist thinking that, like a snake swallowing its own tail, would devour itself if what it wished for came to pass. Because make absolutely no mistake about it: if this commenter had his way, and defeat of the current effort being mounted by the US were to be “total and humiliating,” and the other side (Islamicist totalitarianism) were to get its way and become victorious in its goal of a worldwide caliphate, not only would there be no sites left like this, the commenter would find his freedoms curtailed so forcefully that he would no longer be able to exercise his own freedom to be a troll. And that would be the least of his (and our) worries.

I’ve often wondered about the failure of the Left to understand this very simple fact. Surely, they are interested in the Enlightenment values of reason, human rights (such as for homosexuals and for women) and individual freedom? Surely they understand what sharia law is all about? Surely they understand that these people are quite serious?

But no; the highlighted comment demonstrates all the basic elements of leftist thought: the attribution of all third-world violence and ills to the always-dastardly doings of those twin repositories of all that’s really evil: the Great and Little Satans, the US and Israel. These beliefs of the Left are offered as a matter of faith, without even an attempt to back them up with facts or logical argument (although if what passes for logical argument is the work of Chomsky and the like, they needn’t bother). Yes, yes, yes, of course; it’s the corruption of the US and Israel that is the cause of all the flaws of the Arab world, and if those things went away all the other problems would magically go away–(or perhaps “wither away,” in the old Marxist phrase).

What’s going on here? I believe that at least part of the answer lies in the philosophical underpinnings of Leftist thought. One of these days I hope to write a long post on its origins in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had a similar reductionist theory of human nature and history (I’ve been wading through this book on the subject, which I highly recommend).

To Rousseau, civilization and society (and reason itself, to a certain extent) were corrupting influences, and must be reformed to better reflect the condition of pre-civilized humanity–a relatively happy state of nature in which people were at peace and non-exploitative towards each other. Civilization led to power inequities and private property (very important to Rousseau, as well as to his heirs, the Jacobins, the Left, and the Communists) and all sorts of unfairness that needed redressing by a state that was not afraid to use Draconian measures and subordinate the people to its will.

In Rousseau’s seminal Social Contract (which, along with Hobbes’ Leviathan, we were made to read in public high school; somehow I doubt whether that’s still the case) he writes [my emphasis]:

…whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body [the public and the state]; this means merely that he will be forced to be free…[if the leaders of the state say to the citizen] “it is expedient for the state that you should die,” he should die.

So the resemblance of the Left to Islamicist fundamentalist totalitarianism isn’t such a stretch after all. The similarity is their profound dislike of modernism, jettisoning of individual freedom for a sort of mythical collective freedom that will be expressed in the general will, the embrace of violent methods for achieving this heaven on earth, and the glorification of feeling over reason. It’s all there in their hero, Rousseau–whether they’ve read him or not.

Gone phishin’

The New Neo Posted on by

Just got this email that somehow evaded my spam folder:

In a brief introduction, my name is George Michael. My intention of contacting you is to have a discussion with you regarding an investment that I want to build in your country. Urgently confirm the receipt of this message with your direct telephone number to enable me call you immediately and furnish you with details.

I will be waiting for your reply as you finish reading this message.

My question: does anyone respond to these things? I know the answer must be “yes” or people wouldn’t bother to generate them and send them, but it’s still hard to believe, since the ploy is so transparent.

[ADDENNDUM: Due to busyness, part II of the Cronkite piece will appear somewhat later than usual today.]

Tet, Cronkite, opinion journalism, and a changing press: Part I (“to tell a conflicted people a higher truth”)

The New Neo Posted on by

While Bush formulates a new plan for Iraq, and others say all is lost there no matter what, I’m reminded of a famous “all is lost” moment from that ever-festering sore of history, the Vietnam War: Walter Cronkite’s editorial on Tet.

Cronkite’s famous post-Tet broadcast of February 27, 1968, delivered on the CBS Evening News, is widely regarded as a turning point in the Vietnam War, as well as broadcast journalism. It caused President Johnson to famously say, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country,” and was apparently instrumental in Johnson’s decision to drop out of the 1968 Presidential race.

Those too young to remember may find such a set of circumstances almost impossible to believe. But Walter Cronkite,”the most trusted man in America” during his 18-year tenure as the anchor for the CBS evening news, is widely regarded to have had great influence on public opinion.

Take a moment to mull that one over and contemplate how the times they have a’changed: it would not seem possible for a major network anchor to be the “most trusted man in America” today (and, by the way, that “most trusted” designation wasn’t just hyperbole; Cronkite was actually judged that in a Gallup Poll of the time. And, of course, today it would be “the most trusted person in America.” But I digress.)

The avuncular Cronkite (and it seems no piece on Cronkite can avoid that perfect description of the man: “avuncular”) held America’s trust for most of his time at the job. Was it simply a more naive era? The fact that so many Americans got their news from that TV half hour (which Cronkite was instrumental in making a full half hour rather than the 15 minutes he originally inherited) through either CBS, or NBC’s rival Huntley-Brinkley, made it seem as though the truth were being told there—after all, there were few competing stories to hear.

And do not underestimate Cronkite’s voice and demeanor, perfect for television. Never slick, not handsome, he seemed profoundly sincere, with a deep and resonant voice and a slight (at least to me) resemblance to another familiar and fatherly icon of the times with the same first name, Walt Disney. Cronkite had distinguished himself during his coverage of the Kennedy assassination, displaying controlled but moving emotion as he took off his glasses to announce the President’s death. It was a deep bonding with the US public through a traumatic time.

Cronkite earned his trust the hard way: by reporting the unvarnished news. In this 2002 radio interview (well worth listening to for insight into his thought process at the time) Cronkite describes his orientation towards his job prior to that watershed moment of the Tet offensive broadcast.

Previously the top brass at CBS, as well as the reporters there, had understood their function to be reporting “the facts, just the facts.” Editorializing was kept strictly separate; at CBS, it was a function of Eric Sevareid, and clearly labeled as such.

The president of CBS news, Dick Salant, was a man of almost fanatical devotion to the principles of non-editorializing journalism, according to Cronkite’s interview. Cronkite said that, till Tet, he “almost wouldn’t let us put an adjective in a sentence” when reporting, he’d been such a stickler for “just the facts.”

But, according to Cronkite, as the Vietnamese War had worn on, and because of the confusion of the American people about the war, reflected in letters to the station, Salant sent Cronkite on a trip to Vietnam with the idea of doing a piece of opinion journalism when he came back, in order to help the American people “understand” what was going on by explicitly editorializing and advising them.

One can speculate long and hard about why Salant decided it was time to make such a drastic change. From Cronkite’s interview, it appears that the brass at CBS was part of the turmoil of the 60s with its “question authority” ethos. If you listen to Cronkite (and he expresses not a moment’s ambivalence about his actions), you may hear, as I did, an anger at a military that seemed heedless of the difficulties of the Vietnam endeavor, and too sanguine–similar to the “cakewalk” accusation towards the present Iraq War.

Another fact that becomes apparent in the Cronkite interview is that he felt personally betrayed by the military men he’d talked to as Vietnam churned on. He’d been a war correspondent in the Second World War, and that conflict, in which the press had been heavily censored, had featured public pronouncements of public optimism but private “off the record” discussions with the press that were more realistic and often more gloomy. Cronkite had been privy to these. But during Vietnam, when there was no official censorship, the military self-censored when talking to the press—they were profoundly optimistic, because they knew everything they said would be reported. Cronkite seemed miffed that he wasn’t given the inside info, as he had been in WWII.

Cronkite is up-front about these differences in his interview. I think it’s ironic that, if there had been more censorship during the Vietnam War, war correspondents such as Cronkite might have understood better where the military was coming from and might have cut them some slack. However, that’s mere speculation. What actually happened is that Cronkite felt betrayed, and he and Salant thought the American people had been betrayed, and they felt it was important enough that they needed to break their own long-standing rule and spill the beans to the American people.

It never seems to have occurred to them, of course, that in reacting to Tet as they did they were participating in a different falsehood, the propagation of North Vietnamese propaganda about the situation.

Whatever Cronkite’s motivations may have been, it’s hard to overestimate the effect it had when he suddenly stated on air that the meaning of Tet was that the situation in Vietnam was hopelessly stalemated and the war could not be won. We’re used to this sort of thing now, and many of us have learned to brush it off. But then, to much of America, Cronkite’s was the voice of trusted authority that could not be denied—despite the fact that he had no special expertise to make such a proclamation.

Of course, we are reaping the fruit of that moment today. Journalism has changed, and not for the better, mixing opinion and facts in messy attempts to influence public opinion rather than inform. In connection with that radio interview, for example, see this statement, rather typical of the genre:

It was a bold move for Cronkite, and it was an seminal moment for journalism, to go beyond the reporting of events, to tell a conflicted people a higher truth, something beyond the cataloguing of casualties or shifting front lines.

To tell a conflicted people a higher truth. That seems to say it all, does it not?

[ADDENDUM: Here is the text of Cronkite’s Tet statement:

“Report from Vietnam,” Walter Cronkite Broadcast, February 27, 1968.

Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we’d like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff. On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won’t show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that-negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.]

[Part II here.]

Don’t mean to beat a dead ISG horse, but…

The New Neo Posted on by

The ISG report seems to be dead in the water. And that’s a good thing. The idea behind the report was to get us all to come together, and we did. The only problem is we came together in condemning it.

Krauthammer sees the ISG report as having given Bush “one last chance to alter course on Iraq.” In James Baker and his clueless cronies, Bush has been lucky in his opponents–as he so often is. Their suggestions were so inept that the report has temporarily revived the seemingly moribund Bush and given him at least a chance to regroup. And whatever new plan for Iraq he may come up with can hardly help but seem better than the utterly astounding ISG suggestion of begging Iran and Syria for assistance.

Dean Barnett is, likewise, happy that the ISG report took only a mere eight days to find–as he puts it–“history’s ashbin.” He calls for a new Churchill to define the path back to “greatness,” something for which the American people yearn.

Unfortunately, as a Churchill fan, I have to say I don’t expect one to be waiting in the wings.

Churchill was sui generis, as well as being very much a man of his times–which was acknowledged to be an earlier time even than World War II. His sort of rhetoric was not only unique, it was grounded in an age long past, and especially British (Tony Blair, for example, comes closer to it than any American ever could. Although not close enough.)

Nor do I think Dean himself really expects a Churchill to emerge. But he is looking for someone who can inspire and clearly articulate what we are fighting for. Someone who doesn’t shirk from asking for sacrifice, and who does not gloss over hardship, but who understands why he/she is requesting it, and what is so important about this fight.

“Leadership” is an old-fashioned word, and a concept towards which many are suspicious. But without it, and without clear vision of success, we flounder.

Parties. Holidays. Home.

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of you who’ve followed my mother’s journey to a new assisted living facility located in the NY community where she lived for most of her life might be interested in learning there’s good news and bad.

First, the bad. She absolutely detests the place. Every time we talk–which is almost every day–she complains: the food stinks, the people likewise. Some of it may be hyperbole, but it may just very well all be true.

Her apartment itself isn’t the problem. It’s a studio, yes. But even though it’s only got one room, the ceilings are high, and huge multiple windows on two sides give it an air of great spaciousness and openness. Likewise, the staff is pleasant and fairly responsive.

When you’re in a place like that, though, and almost ninety-three, the food and–for want of a better word, your fellow inmates–are really the thing. And she’s unequivocally negative about both.

So, what’s the good news? She sounds very happy nonetheless. Happier than she’s sounded in many years. Her voice–always an instant giveaway to her mood, as far back as I can remember–is light and energetic, and her mind seems very sharp.

I think the reason for her good spirits is clear. As I wrote here, she’s home.

In the eighty-eight years she lived in that community, she probably knew thousands of people, many of them well, many of them from childhood. Even though that huge group of friends has now been sharply culled by death and time, it was originally so extraordinarily large that the survivors still constitute a fairly large number.

That means she gets a couple of phone calls on a daily basis from old friends she hasn’t seen in the five years since she moved to New England to be near me when her significant other (boyfriend, that is) died in 2001 at the age of ninety-four. A couple of times a week they’ve taken her out–to lunch, to dinner. To the golf/tennis club she was a member of for forty years, to our old home (sold in the early 90s), to the hamburger joint that opened in the 50s to great fanfare, even to the museum where she used to volunteer and where she still might be able to.

Don’t ever underestimate the power of that sort of community to lift the spirits. It grounds her in a particular space and a particular history, rather than the far northern city where she lived near me, a random place with random people with no significance for her, however lovely or however friendly it or they may have been.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of “home.” One reason, of course, is my mother. Another, as I mentioned in my piece about her move, is that I’ve been contemplating a move myself. I haven’t gotten too far with the process yet, but stay tuned.

This particular weekend I’m back in the New England town where I landed in the late 70s and lived for the next twenty years. I came here because of a job of my then-husband’s; we stayed far past the time he held that job. Once you get set in a place and start raising kids, it becomes home, even if it isn’t the home you would have chosen (too rural, too isolated, for me). And when you’re cooped up with a bunch of screaming toddlers and going stir-crazy yourself–dedicated to the important task of child-rearing though you might be–the friendships you make are deep and lasting.

This weekend it’s holiday party weekend; that’s why I’m here. Last night I went to a celebration that’s been held every year for the last twenty-five. I don’t know most of the people there well anymore; never did, actually. The vast majority I only see once every year, at that very party. But there’s something about knowing people over time that has a power all its own.

The food is always fabulous and copious; the hostess makes everything herself. Every couple of years she moves to a new house and seems to have a new guy–this is the first year for this home and the third for the guy (I approve, by the way, especially of the latter). But when I look at her I don’t just see the present; I see the past.

The young mother with two little babies so close in age I wonder how she managed. The businesswoman who’s started many successful ventures. The different hair colors. The first husband, a charmer, still a friend despite a messy divorce that broke her heart and estranged them for years (she became so startlingly thin at that time that everyone was alarmed for her health).

And that’s the way it was for me and almost everyone there. If they show photos of their tall, grownup children, or give news of offsprings’ marriages and even a few grandkids (something new in the mix), in my mind’s eye rise images of the adorable little babies and toddlers I originally knew years ago. Some of my friends still look pretty good, themselves, but some of them wear the years harder, and they seem–well, some of them seem pretty old. And don’t get me started on the topic of weight gain.

I don’t think I’d ever want to move back here. It’s still too rural and isolated; I’m a city girl, after all. But don’t think I’m not tempted. No, it’s not “home” in the sense that my mother’s community is to her. But, since most of my good friends are scattered all over the country and I have very few relatives, this is probably the closest thing I have to home.

Perhaps it’s the closest thing I’ll ever have, although I hope not. I hope to make a new home, or even a series of successive new homes.

So, anybody got a formula for “instant home?” Or, as I suspect, is that an oxymoron?

Taking my rightful place among bloggers on the left

The New Neo Posted on by

I hereby join two other bloggers, Michelle Malkin and Tammy Bruce, in officially declaring myself to be a woman of the Left.

Of the dominant left hand, that is. I’m not only a lefty, I’m very strongly left-handed, from an unusually left-handed family. Of the four of us—mother, father, brother, and myself—only my father was right-handed.

Although my politics have shifted my handedness has not. I was brought up in a left-handed culture, one in which the minority was right. Not only that, but several of my best friends growing up were also left-handed. So I somehow got the idea that left was best, and that it correlated with all sorts of good things such as creativity and intelligence.

And in fact, left-handedness does appear to correlate at least somewhat with those things, as well as mental slowness and certain types of brain damage. It appears the left-handed population is more likely to harbor outliers of both types—I’ll leave it to my readers to determine which category I might fall into.

I’ve never felt left-handedness itself to be a handicap, however. Little things like having to learn to use a scissors with my right hand were a bit difficult at the outset, but now I wield one as well as anyone.

My mother, raised in the early part of the century, had a far more arduous time of it. Back then it was common practice to switch lefties, and she was forced to write and eat with her right hand. Perhaps for that reason, she’s had a problem all her life in distinguishing right from left (not in the political sense, however); her spatial differentiation is somewhat poorly developed. It used to amuse me when I was little (children are so cruel!) to watch her taking a surrepticious glance at her wedding ring when asked for directions, in order to cue herself as to which was left and which was right.

I have a theory–unsubstantiated–that there’s a higher-than-average number of lefties in the blogger population. I’d love to do a survey. In fact, I’d like to propose that Pajamas Media, often accused of being too heavily skewed to the right, try to redress that imbalance by trumpeting how many of its bloggers are actually lefties.

The following theory, discussed in Wiki’s article on lefthandedness, conforms to my own experience, and could help explain any preponderance of lefties that might be found among bloggers, at Pajamas or otherwise:

Left-handed persons are thought to process information using a “visual simultaneous” method in which several threads can be processed simultaneously. Another way to view this is such: Suppose there were a thousand pieces of popcorn and one of them was colored pink. The right-handed person ”” using the linear sequential processing style ”” would look at the popcorn one at a time until they encountered the pink one. The left-handed person would spread out the pieces of popcorn and visually look at all of them to find the one that was pink. A side effect of these differing styles of processing is that right handed persons need to complete one task before they can start the next. Left-handed people, by contrast, are capable and comfortable switching between tasks. This makes them appear (to the right-handed majority) as if they do not finish anything. Alternately, left-handed people have an excellent ability to multi-task. Perhaps the anecdotal evidence that suggests they are more creative stems from this ability to multi-task.

This is exactly the way I seem to work.

And Wikipedia has thoughtfully compiled this list of famous lefties. Take a look. I’m not sure how valid it is, but it’s fun.

The list of sports figures is exceedingly lengthy, as would be expected. The advantages of left-handedness in most sports is well-known. Musicians, likewise, seem to be legion.

But to me the most fascinating are the politicians and world figures. Sure, you’d expect Castro and Hugo Chavez to be lefties. But both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan (switched, like my mother was, and like his own politics were–he started out to the left and ended up on the right)? And how about the three Presidential candidates in 1992–Clinton, Bush I, and Perot, lefties all. What were the odds?

New Secretary-General Ban: I like the reform rhetoric, at least (and then there’s the French…)

The New Neo Posted on by

If you listened to my most recent podcast, you’ve probably noted that I’m neither a Kofi Annan fan nor a UN fan. Whether I’ll be a Secretary-General Ban fan (couldn’t resist the rhyme) remains to be seen, but at least in his initial UN address he paid rhetorical lip service to the fact that corruption is rampant there and reform is sorely needed. We’ll see whether there’s any way for that to actually happen.

But Ban apparently has flunked his first French test, which was–a French test. Yes, you heard me right; apparently France requires all Secretaries-General to speak French. Although Ban has been burning the midnight oil and brushing up his skills in honor of the big day. he flubbed some questions at a recent French news conference.

Chirac might hold it against him. But I promise I won’t.

Sherman and total war

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been reading a book by Robert Kagan entitled Dangerous Nation, about the history of America’s international relations. Kagan’s thesis is that, from the start, the US was more involved and interventionist, and less isolationist, than conventional wisdom would indicate.

But that’s not the portion of the book I’m writing about today. I’ve been reading the part about the Civil War. In the earliest days of that conflict, people thought it would be possible to wage the war in a relatively “civilized” and circumscribed manner. Instead, it was transformed into one of the bloodiest and most “total” of modern wars fought up till that time.

McClellan, Lincoln’s first Union commander, preferred to wage a “gentleman’s war.” Ulysses S. Grant later described McClellan as one who “did not believe in this war…[letting his] ambivalent attitude toward the conflict influence [his] military performance.” Thus do perceptions of a war’s justness and necessity color the decisions made in the course of it, even by commanders.

McClellan, who was relieved of his military duties in March of 1862, famously ran for President against Lincoln on an antiwar platform in 1864. He lost, partly due to the impressive battle victories of one of his successors, Sherman, who was his very antithesis.

Kagan writes about the ever-controversial General Sherman [emphasis mine]:

The northern generals who prosecuted the war most effectively , and most ruthlessly, had more understanding of its ideological purposes…”We are not only fighting hostile armies,” William Tecumseh Sherman declared, “but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war“….Therefore the North must “make the war so terrible…[and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it “…The Union’s conduct of the Civil War would remain, for American commanders in both world wars of the twentieth century, the very model of a great war…a war of ‘power unrestrained’ unleashed for ‘complete conquest.’

Sherman famously said “War is hell,” a stark statement that encapsulates the horror of war. He’s been accused of committing war crimes during the Civil War, but the evidence is that his campaign against the civilians of the South was mainly limited to destroying property, although it certainly caused a great deal of suffering–as intended.

Sherman also had a way with words. He’s the author of many famous quotes about war which show a fascinating combination of the compassionate and the implacable. Sherman felt the two were closely linked in war–in order to ultimately be compassionate, one had to be ruthless, because half-measures kept the population in an undefeated state, ready to wage war again:

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and defeat.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

The scenes on this field would cure anyone of war.

War as a remedy for war–it seems paradoxical. And yet, it worked for Sherman. And it seems that the dreadful wars of the twentieth century–World Wars I and II–bore out the principle that if a war is bad enough that a people actually feels defeated (not just humiliated or tricked, but defeated and war weary), they are unlikely to start another.

The First World War, bloody and vicious though it was, was not really a total war in the sense Sherman meant, although it came close. Fought mainly by armies (although those armies were decimated; an entire generation of Europeans lost its “best and brightest” men) it was stalemated for an exceptionally long time, and ended through an armistice–and then a treaty, Versailles–that was so unsatisfactory in resolving it that World War II was not long in coming.

The reasons the Germans were able to come back so quickly to start another war, despite their defeat in WWI, are complex. But one of them was probably the fact that although they felt humiliated by the terms of the Treaty, they somehow managed to feel that they had not really been conquered. In fact, in his rise to power, Hitler played on that perception: German defeat was not a “real” defeat, but the result of a betrayal by domestic forces of a varied nature (including, of course, the Jews)–the “stab in the back” theory.

World War II was, by all definitions, a total war. It involved civilian populations far more heavily; in WWI, most of the civilian deaths had been from influenza and famine, but World War II featured heavy civilian bombardment as a common tactic of the war. In fact, it seems that the experience of the total war of WWII decisively ended even the idea of warfare for Western Europe. It made its inhabitants, harking back to Sherman’s words about the South, “so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”

Revulsion for what they suffered during World Wars I and II–compared to the relative lack of suffering on American soil–is part of what has led to European pacifism and belief in the talking cure, as well as their contempt for what they see as America’s tendency to resort far too easily to war. Europe feels itself to have been “cured” of war. The only problem, of course, is that the cure hasn’t spread to the world of Islamic totalitarianism. Au contraire.

The first Gulf War was very different than the American Civil War, World War I, or World War II. The Gulf War was waged in a comparatively “easy and safe”–and limited–manner. However, contradicting Sherman’s statement that such wars end in defeat, it was won by the US and its allies.

On reflection, though, Sherman appears to have been correct, after all. The Gulf War was “won,” but the win was so limited that it led almost inevitably to the present Iraq War. Saddam’s defiance at the end of the Gulf War; his massacre of those who, counting on our help, rose up against him; and his flouting of sanctions and inspections; clearly indicated that neither he nor the Iraqi people (except for his victims) had felt the sting of true defeat.

The present Iraq War illustrates the same dilemma of the “easy and safe” war leading to defeat–or, in this case, the perception of defeat, one that seems to have overwhelmed much of our electorate and our MSM.

“Easy and safe” (relatively speaking, of course; no war is either) is a good description of the initial military campaign of the Iraq War. The degree to which that first stage was “easy and safe” was the degree to which the forces now wreaking havoc there felt undefeated. At the time, it was “easy” for them to pretend to roll over during the initial war, which lasted only a few weeks, and then to regroup for the asymmetrical war they’ve been fighting ever since (a war which, like all modern wars, appeals to our own media–which certainly doesn’t seem to need a total war to feel defeated).

I am most decidedly not advocating using the civilian bombardment techniques of World War II in Iraq. But I am suggesting that we acknowledge that we need to be willing to do what is necessary to win, and to make the actual enemy feel conquered (a la, take out al Sadr and his minions, for starters), and not to just go for “easy and safe.” If we do the latter, we are doing no one a favor–including most of the Iraqi people.

[General Sherman on the topic of the MSM:

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.]

Carter’s “imprisonment wall”

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Jimmy Carter, peacemaker extraordinaire, has called the wall Israel has built an “imprisonment wall.”

A strange notion of imprisonment, indeed. How can a wall designed to keep murderers out of a single small country (Israel), and yet allowing them freedom of movement elsewhere, be considered a prison?

I wonder if Jimmy locks his doors. Because if he does, isn’t he imprisoning someone? Locking out those who might want to steal from him, or murder him? Isn’t that the main reason we all lock our doors (although I have to say, in New England, I know quite a few people who don’t)?

Did Carter even notice the number of suicide bombers blowing Israelis to bits before the wall was erected, and has he compared it to the number of such bombings since?

But no. Carter is almost as demented as Gandhi was when he counseled the Jews to allow Hitler to murder them so that they might claim the moral high ground and set an example of peace/love. Ah, these wonderful peace advocates, always wanting the Jews to sacrifice themselves for the cause! Jimmy, likewise, would like Jews to die in order to give Palestinians freedom of movement within Israel–the freedom to come there and slaughter Jews with impunity.

I haven’t read Carter’s book, but according to this review in the Washington Post, he managed to write the entire thing–which focuses on the topic of the wall–without once conceding that it was built to prevent the murder of Jews.

Astounding. But not surprising.

[NOTE: on the topic of the inflammatory title of Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, read Michael Kinsley in Slate.]

New podcast: Iran + Annan

The New Neo Posted on by

The Sanity Squad is back opining at Pajamas Media. The topics? Iran’s “scientific” [sic] Holocaust Denial Conference, and the legacy of Kofi Annan, whose term as UN Secretary-General is up at the end of the month.

So go to PJ and listen to me, Dr. Sanity, Shrinkwrapped, and Siggy. Those with sharp ears will notice the lingering effects of my rather nasty cold; my voice sounds pretty nasal. I stoically kept myself from coughing up a storm during the podcast: the show must go on!

The definition of “success” in war: Part II (colonialism and occupation)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here.]

Shelby Steele, a supporter of the war in Iraq, discusses the semantic and conceptual problem we face when we have no clear definition of victory:

Without a description of victory, a war has no goal.

Historically victory in foreign war has always meant hegemony: You win, you take over. We not only occupied Germany and Japan militarily after World War II, we also–and without a whit of self doubt–imposed our democratic way of life on them. We took our victory as a moral mandate as well as a military achievement, and felt commanded to morally transform these defeated societies by the terms of our democracy. In this effort we brooked no resistance whatsoever and we achieved great success.

But today, as Nancy Pelosi recently put it, “You can define victory any way you want.” And war, she said, was only “a situation to be resolved.” If this sort of glibness makes the current war seem a directionless postmodern adventure, it is only because those who call us to war have themselves left the definition of victory wide open.

Steele thinks–and I agree–that it’s not just the Iraq War that’s lacked a definition of victory. As Richard Fernandez writes at his blog Belmont Club, we seem to have a problem with the general concept of a war–except for limited, targeted “operations” such as the first Gulf War.

Any proposed solution to the current conflict with Islamic totalitarianism that fails to take into account its worldwide scope, relentless nature, and willingness to fight very dirty, is going to be a half-baked effort. In order to mount a “successful” campaign with an effective plan, we not only need creativity and intelligence, we need commitment, focus, and an understanding that this will be a long hard fight.

In the beginning of the so-called “War on Terror,” Bush’s rhetoric did indicate a long, hard fight. But I don’t think he prepared the American people for what the Iraq War would entail. Whether this was because he was afraid they wouldn’t go along if he described it, or whether he himself (and his advisors) were unaware of how very long and difficult it would be, I don’t know. Probably it was some combination of the two; not a good thing.

But at this point we know it will be very long and very hard. I’m pretty sure Bush and all his advisors know that by now, as well. An asymmetrical war against those who will use terror not only with relative impunity but with joy, who believe themselves divinely inspired, and who number in the millions and are spread throughout the world, and who have an interest in foiling us in Iraq–by definition, that’s going to be a long hard slog.

But besides the inherent difficulties in defining “success” against a shadowy, non-state entity, Steele thinks Americans have other difficulties in understanding–or, perhaps, accepting would be a better word–what victory in Iraq would look like. Steele thinks the problem stems from our modern-day ambivalence over our superpower status, which makes us want (in this postmodern, anticolonial world) to deny the responsibilities that go with it–duties that hark back to that dread word, imperialism.

Steele thinks that reluctance to accept responsibility is the reason we lack the will to impose the sort of occupation I discussed here. At the end of WWII, America had virtually no such guilt about the occupation of Japan and Germany. This ambivalence/guilt is mainly a post-WWII (and, specifically, post-60s and post-Vietnam) phenomenon.

Steele doesn’t mention any psychological reasons for this rejection of responsibility (although, for the boomer generation, I would posit them), but rather, philosophical ones:

Today our antiwar movement is essentially an argument with this fate, a rejection of superpower responsibility.

And this fear of responsibility is what makes us ambivalent toward the idea of victory. Because victory is hegemonic, it mimics colonialism. A complete American victory in Iraq would put that nation–at least for a time–entirely under American power and sovereignty. We would in fact “own” the society as a colony.

He is correct; an occupation does mimic colonialism. But, although related, it isn’t quite the same. We did not “own” post-WWII Japan or West Germany as traditional colonies, for example, although we did exercise a great deal of control over them and took responsibility for them.

Traditionally, colonies existed not only as spoils of war, nor as objects of occupation for reforming their governments into functioning democracies protective of human rights and therefore unlikely to aggressively threaten us again (the motives for our occupations of Japan and Germany), nor even as ways to expand a certain culture and way of life (although they were often that, too). Colonies were also ordinarily taken over in order to exploit their natural resources to the good of the imperialist power: in other words, to plunder.

This accusation of motivations of plunder–of an “unjust” motive for the Iraq War–has been at the heart of the belief system (or at least the rhetoric, sincere or not) of the antiwar movement. It’s at the base of the “no blood for oil” cries, for example.

To those making the charges, there’s no real need to prove we actually are exploiting or appropriating the oil; the accusation stands as symbolic of what colonial powers always do. If the accuser accepts that the US is an imperialist colonialist power, then ipso facto our motivation must be this sort of economic exploitation, which would be both morally wrong and a throwback to the age of colonialism and subjugation of the third world for our (historically, more often Europe’s) own purposes.

The causes of the Iraq War have been disputed, and for many they are a confusing and troubling aspect of the war itself. In contrast to Afghanistan, which was known to harbor al Qaeda and therefore was directly implicated in the 9/11 attack on the US, the stated rationales for going to war with Iraq were legalistic, defensive, and moral.

The legalistic and defensive reasons for the war were Iraq’s multiple violations of the terms that ended the Gulf War, including Saddam’s spotty “cooperation” with weapons inspections. And these reasons were, in turn, part a defense of–of all things–the power of the UN to put teeth into its resolutions.

As such, the current war was actually a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War after a more than decades-long pause. The UN resolutions that were violated included ones concerning WMDs, part of the armistice for that Gulf War, as well. Saddam’s noncompliance had been winked at many times, but in light of 9/11 it was considered far more important than before to make sure Saddam did not have nuclear weapons that he could put into the hands of terrorists or use on his neighbors. This was the directly self-defensive part of the rationale for the war (and, by the way, Bush’s speech on the subject said that we did not have to wait till this threat was “imminent” in order to act).

Then, of course, there were the stated humanitarian goals of the war. We wanted to liberate the people of Iraq from an oppressor, Saddam. This was not the only reason to go to war, of course, but it was definitely part of it. And even this part got us into trouble–paradoxically, because it’s the most morally “pure” part of our motivation. One way it got us into trouble was that–to those who think the US is an evil imperialist power–it was considered just a screen for the “real,” selfish motivation for the war: colonialism. Another reason is that with the toppling of Saddam went the responsibility for establishing a functioning government in a country that had been ruled by tyranny and terror for many decades. It was predictable that there would be a jockeying for power among factions, and that it wouldn’t be pretty, and that the occupation would require a firm hand and would take a long time, although I don’t recall this ever being explicitly stated prior to the war. I believe it should have been emphasized.

To have been emphasized, of course, it would have to have been acknowledged and known. I’m not sure that was the case; if it was not, that would have been a huge failing on the part of the planners of this war.

Transforming Iraq into a nonchaotic state has proven very difficult. But in my opinion, one of the reasons it’s been so very hard is that we were ambivalent in our dedication to that goal from the start. We tried to implement it with half-measures that smacked of PC correctness–the best example being the hands-off policy towards al Sadr when his support was still relatively small.

Without an acceptance of the fact that we are an occupation force in Iraq, and all that entails, there’s no way the country can be prevented from sliding into chaos, or from falling under the domination of neighbors who are up to no good. That knowledge, I believe, is what’s behind the current calls to increase the number of our forces there, if only temporarily. Because, make no mistake about it: if we’re reluctant to “occupy” because of the resemblance of occupation to colonialism, our enemies entertain no such moral quandaries.

As with the USSR during the Cold War, Iran would like expand its power and influence in the region. But Iran is only one of the faces of our enemy. There are others (al Qaeda, or Syria, for example). They resemble each other in ignoring the niceties we pay so much attention to. For the most part, they couldn’t care less about human rights–or human life, for that matter. And of course, being third-world countries, they are somehow exempt from those nefarious charges of colonialism and imperialism–even though they nakedly and boldly lust for those things (and in some cases, already practice them) themselves.

So, what would victory in the “War on Terror” (better phrase: the war against Islamic totalitarianism) look like? Would we at least know it if we saw it? Would it be a decrease in the number of terrorist attacks, or just in our perception of their likelihood? That would certainly be part of such a victory.

Would it have to include a relatively well-functioning and prosperous Middle East? Try as I might, it’s hard to see how the first goal (decrease in the risk of terrorist attacks on us) could be effected without the second, because the hatred and jihadism in that part of the world is fueled by its dysfunctional governments and societies, which are legion. In the modern world, we cannot effectively wall ourselves off from this threat; we must do something about its wellsprings.

That was the real basis for the “moral” argument for starting the Iraq War. Those who were against that war and who argued that, since there were so many other tyrants in the world, why not depose them as well if we were going to go after Saddam, were trying to make the point that there was some self-interest behind our altruistic words about tyrants. And indeed, there was.

But that doesn’t invalidate them. Sometimes things are both morally right and in our best interests. And both things are true of reforming the Middle East.

But what a task! How much of this could–or should–be under our control? And how best to go about it (that’s what the arguments regarding Iran are all about: talks, vs. clandestine operations to support anti-government groups, vs. military action, limited or otherwise)?

Even if reform of the area is something we could effect, at least theoretically, how much are we willing to spend in money, time, and blood, to achieve it? We’ve never answered these questions, but the answers depend in good part on how high we evaluate the risk of doing nothing.

We need a government that is not afraid to use the “s” word–success–and is willing to define it, and able to describe to the American people just what it will take to achieve it.