What is happening in America?
Jul. 22nd, 2007 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbSome of us look at recent American developments with bewildered incomprehension. When, last year, the Democrats conquered Congress, I found myself discussing the matter with a fellow Italian who loathes Bush and heartily dislikes many features of conservative politics. When I started saying that in my view the anti-war noises coming from the Democrat camp were no more than gestures in the direction of their electoral hard core, she hardly let me finish - "Well, of course! They'd never pull out of Iraq, the political consequences would be catastrophic - the country in civil war, American allies falling apart among each other backing rival groups, American prestige in the sewer, possibly even the collapse of NATO as a political force - it would amount to letting Al Qaeda win by default, without even having had to seriously fight." I answered, of course, that I quite agreed. My sympathy for Bush and the Republicans is modified at best; hers is wholly absent; but neither of us imagined that abandoning Iraq was in the realm of conceivable practical politics. That was eight months ago.
From that point of view, the present behaviour of House and Senate is beyond understanding. The presentation of resolutions that - however ambiguous their wording - bear, in the eye of the world, a demand for withdrawal; unprecedented all-night sessions in an attempt to force them through, showing to the world that the Democrats are serious on this issue; even the threat of starving the fighting troops of funds if their veto over Presidential policy is not carried; all this seems like nothing so much as a fury to destroy oneself, as the madman struggling against those who would restrain him from throwing himself headlong into a wood-pulping machine. What is more, it is taking place in a situation that was, on the whole, more conducive to American policy than it had been in years. The governments of France and Germany are friendlier to America than they have been in decades; those of Italy and Spain, which are not, have taken a series of diplomatic defeats and internal and external humiliations and are exposed as a gaggle of irresponsible wreckers, seriously in danger of losing the next elections; Russia had been edging away from Iran even before its diplomatic defeat on points against Britain showed Putin that he had been going too far; the collapse of the Palestinian entity had done nothing to encourage Israel's enemies, and the Arab world was looking increasingly willing to take America's lead against Iran, if that lead was given at all. The only government that had been dropping hints of increased distance from the USA was Britain's new cabinet, and even that was ambiguous at best.
However, one must remember a basic fact of politics: all politics are domestic politics first and foremost. What seems, from the outside, suicidal madness, makes sense - though in the sphere of emotion rather than reason - in the purely domestic context of the USA.
To understand that, we have to go back a further couple of years - and, indeed, a few decades. The crushing defeat of the Democrats in the Presidential elections of 2004 had seriously seemed to herald a new political season for the USA. It was the more depressing in that the Democrats had seriously intended to use every power at their disposal, from massive and undisguised mass media support to fierce voter registration drives, to crush a perceivedly unpopular President who was suspected of having stolen the previous election and who certainly had lost the popular vote. And with all this array of force and support - including one of the most memorable concert tours in the history of popular music, with headlines any promoter would murder his mother for, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, etc. etc. etc. - the Democrats had been left reeling by a decisive and nationwide defeat.
In fact, this was the third such phenomenon in recent history. The assertions of Republican/Conservative forces in recent American history have had, each time, the character of a smashing triumph. The line begins with Nixon, who - though pretty much a centre-left man in his politics - had known how to rouse "the silent majority" against the perceived elitism and distance of the post-Kennedy Democrats. Then there had been Reagan, and "it's morning in America". But Bush II's second election was in some ways the high water-mark of the conservative advance. While Nixon and Reagan were still men of the old order - Nixon's presidency saw the legalization of abortion, and Reagan's did nothing to alter it, for instance - Bush II was perceived to bear a positively revolutionary, religious ideology. IN point of fact, that was nonsense - Bush II's conventional religiousness is not really any more significant than that of any other President in recent history - but what was felt to be at the back of his success was the emergence of a new bloc of voters, the "values voters" - you all remember them, don't you?
The "values voters" were not only a new phenomenon, but a threat to one of the traditional Democrat areas of support - urban Catholics. The new expression "values voter" was meant to describe something that was no longer the old "silent majority" or "moral majority", since it now included masses of Catholics as well as Protestants, and large urban as well as suburban and rural votes. The Democrats had no such clearly visible area for expansion into formerly hostile electorates. The Netroots, though a fertile area for support and finance, had proved a broken reed nationally, and have since then done so again. Faced with crushing defeat, unfavourable long-term electoral trends, and the growth of a hostile and outspoken right-wing culture, the Democrats had good reason to fear a decisive shift that would strand them on the opposition benches for decades.
Remember that: two years ago, the Democrats realistically feared being marginalized. Also, they feared marginalization at the hands of people and values they heartily despised, whom they caricatured in their minds as gaggles of small-town bigots, dittoheads, racists under the skin. This is the psychological, if not rational, explanation of their behaviour today. It has something of the wild exultation of a man condemned to death who has been suddenly and fully reprieved; as well as the vindictive fury of someone who, on the edge of defeat and destruction, suddenly sees the enemy collapse and withdraw. The natural human impulse, in such circumstances, is not to break off the engagement, but to pursue the enemy till you destroyed him, make him pay for every drop of blood, sweat and tears left, humiliate him, crush him. The eager impulse of the Democrats now is to inflict the most crushing and signal humiliation upon the President; and as Iraq is the only important area in which he has not bowed to the prevailing wind, then the urge to make him knuckle under, to fight him and smash him where the public can best see it happen, is all but irresistible. The fact that Congress has so far outdone its Republican predecessor in do-nothingism shows that, for the Democrats, to make the President eat dirt is more important than even to implement the policies they themselves promised to the American people. The movement he represents must be crushed and marginalized - NOW.
This impulse to marginalize and humiliate seems to me very poor politics. Much of the Republican leadership still has plenty of common ground with the Democrats; but it has discredited itself with its own electoral base thanks to visible corruption, startling incompetence, and a complete absence of sense of direction. This is why, in my view, the triumph of 2004 was followed by the collapse of 2006. The "values voters" had not gone anywhere; they still are there - in fact, thanks to Pope Ratzinger, they may be actually growing in strength and influence. They just had sat on their hands while the Democrats, energized by one year of bad news and drift, had turned up to the polls in their millions. What is likely to happen in the long run if the Democrats are mad enough to withdraw their forces from Iraq - or if a coming Democrat President does - is that in five years or so, the vicious chaos, the visible collapse in American prestige, the political decline, if nothing worse happens (and there could be worse, for instance a serious trade depression brought about by skyrocketing oil prices, or more terrorist plots of the nine-eleven kind) will be blamed by the American electorate on the sitting administration, as they were in President Carter's time. At that point, too, the nationwide Republican leadership, guilty of electoral disaster, will have been worked over by the party, and replaced - almost certainly by a group much closer to the "values voters". And while the current Republican candidates are still likely to be comparative moderates such as Romney and Giuliani, the next time around the party may well be led by the Brownbacks and the Tancredos; and the Democrats will have brought about the very thing they loathed - the rise of a religiously-based, highly conservative national political party.
From that point of view, the present behaviour of House and Senate is beyond understanding. The presentation of resolutions that - however ambiguous their wording - bear, in the eye of the world, a demand for withdrawal; unprecedented all-night sessions in an attempt to force them through, showing to the world that the Democrats are serious on this issue; even the threat of starving the fighting troops of funds if their veto over Presidential policy is not carried; all this seems like nothing so much as a fury to destroy oneself, as the madman struggling against those who would restrain him from throwing himself headlong into a wood-pulping machine. What is more, it is taking place in a situation that was, on the whole, more conducive to American policy than it had been in years. The governments of France and Germany are friendlier to America than they have been in decades; those of Italy and Spain, which are not, have taken a series of diplomatic defeats and internal and external humiliations and are exposed as a gaggle of irresponsible wreckers, seriously in danger of losing the next elections; Russia had been edging away from Iran even before its diplomatic defeat on points against Britain showed Putin that he had been going too far; the collapse of the Palestinian entity had done nothing to encourage Israel's enemies, and the Arab world was looking increasingly willing to take America's lead against Iran, if that lead was given at all. The only government that had been dropping hints of increased distance from the USA was Britain's new cabinet, and even that was ambiguous at best.
However, one must remember a basic fact of politics: all politics are domestic politics first and foremost. What seems, from the outside, suicidal madness, makes sense - though in the sphere of emotion rather than reason - in the purely domestic context of the USA.
To understand that, we have to go back a further couple of years - and, indeed, a few decades. The crushing defeat of the Democrats in the Presidential elections of 2004 had seriously seemed to herald a new political season for the USA. It was the more depressing in that the Democrats had seriously intended to use every power at their disposal, from massive and undisguised mass media support to fierce voter registration drives, to crush a perceivedly unpopular President who was suspected of having stolen the previous election and who certainly had lost the popular vote. And with all this array of force and support - including one of the most memorable concert tours in the history of popular music, with headlines any promoter would murder his mother for, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, etc. etc. etc. - the Democrats had been left reeling by a decisive and nationwide defeat.
In fact, this was the third such phenomenon in recent history. The assertions of Republican/Conservative forces in recent American history have had, each time, the character of a smashing triumph. The line begins with Nixon, who - though pretty much a centre-left man in his politics - had known how to rouse "the silent majority" against the perceived elitism and distance of the post-Kennedy Democrats. Then there had been Reagan, and "it's morning in America". But Bush II's second election was in some ways the high water-mark of the conservative advance. While Nixon and Reagan were still men of the old order - Nixon's presidency saw the legalization of abortion, and Reagan's did nothing to alter it, for instance - Bush II was perceived to bear a positively revolutionary, religious ideology. IN point of fact, that was nonsense - Bush II's conventional religiousness is not really any more significant than that of any other President in recent history - but what was felt to be at the back of his success was the emergence of a new bloc of voters, the "values voters" - you all remember them, don't you?
The "values voters" were not only a new phenomenon, but a threat to one of the traditional Democrat areas of support - urban Catholics. The new expression "values voter" was meant to describe something that was no longer the old "silent majority" or "moral majority", since it now included masses of Catholics as well as Protestants, and large urban as well as suburban and rural votes. The Democrats had no such clearly visible area for expansion into formerly hostile electorates. The Netroots, though a fertile area for support and finance, had proved a broken reed nationally, and have since then done so again. Faced with crushing defeat, unfavourable long-term electoral trends, and the growth of a hostile and outspoken right-wing culture, the Democrats had good reason to fear a decisive shift that would strand them on the opposition benches for decades.
Remember that: two years ago, the Democrats realistically feared being marginalized. Also, they feared marginalization at the hands of people and values they heartily despised, whom they caricatured in their minds as gaggles of small-town bigots, dittoheads, racists under the skin. This is the psychological, if not rational, explanation of their behaviour today. It has something of the wild exultation of a man condemned to death who has been suddenly and fully reprieved; as well as the vindictive fury of someone who, on the edge of defeat and destruction, suddenly sees the enemy collapse and withdraw. The natural human impulse, in such circumstances, is not to break off the engagement, but to pursue the enemy till you destroyed him, make him pay for every drop of blood, sweat and tears left, humiliate him, crush him. The eager impulse of the Democrats now is to inflict the most crushing and signal humiliation upon the President; and as Iraq is the only important area in which he has not bowed to the prevailing wind, then the urge to make him knuckle under, to fight him and smash him where the public can best see it happen, is all but irresistible. The fact that Congress has so far outdone its Republican predecessor in do-nothingism shows that, for the Democrats, to make the President eat dirt is more important than even to implement the policies they themselves promised to the American people. The movement he represents must be crushed and marginalized - NOW.
This impulse to marginalize and humiliate seems to me very poor politics. Much of the Republican leadership still has plenty of common ground with the Democrats; but it has discredited itself with its own electoral base thanks to visible corruption, startling incompetence, and a complete absence of sense of direction. This is why, in my view, the triumph of 2004 was followed by the collapse of 2006. The "values voters" had not gone anywhere; they still are there - in fact, thanks to Pope Ratzinger, they may be actually growing in strength and influence. They just had sat on their hands while the Democrats, energized by one year of bad news and drift, had turned up to the polls in their millions. What is likely to happen in the long run if the Democrats are mad enough to withdraw their forces from Iraq - or if a coming Democrat President does - is that in five years or so, the vicious chaos, the visible collapse in American prestige, the political decline, if nothing worse happens (and there could be worse, for instance a serious trade depression brought about by skyrocketing oil prices, or more terrorist plots of the nine-eleven kind) will be blamed by the American electorate on the sitting administration, as they were in President Carter's time. At that point, too, the nationwide Republican leadership, guilty of electoral disaster, will have been worked over by the party, and replaced - almost certainly by a group much closer to the "values voters". And while the current Republican candidates are still likely to be comparative moderates such as Romney and Giuliani, the next time around the party may well be led by the Brownbacks and the Tancredos; and the Democrats will have brought about the very thing they loathed - the rise of a religiously-based, highly conservative national political party.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 02:58 pm (UTC)1) The Democratic Congress see themselves as having been elected in large part because Americans are fed up with the futile military adventure in Iraq. It was a horrendous act of hubris for the Bush administration to engineer the invasion and they've been unbelievably incompetent in managing the country after they conquered it. While I have some sympathy for the notion that having gone in and created chaos, America ought to stay and fix things, it's become more and more aparent that there is "no fixing of things" that America, as an occupying power, can realistically accomplish. The Democrats in Congress are doing what they can to either end the debacle as soon as possible or--failing that--make it blatantly clear that the albatross hangs around Republican necks--where it fairly belongs.
2) The "value voters" are certainly a real phenomena, but as to their party affiliation, I think they are more up for grabs than previously. This is due to the blatant corruption shown by the Republicans in power over the last 8 years, moral as well as political corruption in many cases. While there will always be hard--line religious conservatives as well as hard-line anti-Government ideologues, in the last eight years Americans have experienced a Government in their dual image and mostly not liked the results.
3) There are growing populist sentiments in the U.S. that you fail to mention--spearheaded by commentators like Lou Dobbs and percipitated by the illegal immigrant issue, the miserable state of our health care system and the general economic squeeze on the middle class--which has gotten severe, believe me. Whatever their religious or polical values, Americans tend to vote based on their sense of security and their pocketbooks, and for the majority, these feel very threatened.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 07:48 pm (UTC)Bush got 51% of the popular vote in 2004. That doesn't count as a crushing defeat of the other side, particularly as the US has a habit of returning incumbents by comfortable margins. And I'm not engaging in tinfoil-hat-conspiracy-theory when I say that there was some weird stuff going on in Ohio. I don't know that it was enough to tilt the vote significantly, but here's no reasonable doubt that it was intended to do so.
"The eager impulse of the Democrats now is to inflict the most crushing and signal humiliation upon the President"
I think you're mistaken about this. The recent hard line that Harry Reid has been taking in the Senate, for instance, is nothing like the strategy he was following as recently as spring. But that strategy didn't work. There is no compromise with the zealots who run the White House and their lackeys in the legislative branch--not on any issue, from stem cells to the unitary executive (=elective monarchy).
"The fact that Congress has so far outdone its Republican predecessor in do-nothingism shows that, for the Democrats, to make the President eat dirt is more important than even to implement the policies they themselves promised to the American people."
Why are you sure it shows that the Democrats are unwilling to cooperate with Republicans? Maybe it means that Republicans are unwilling to cooperate with Democrats. This seems, on the evidence, the more likely possibility. It's to the Republicans' political advantage to keep the Democrats from even seeming to deliver on the policies they promised.
On the external policy question, we disagree even more strongly, I'm afraid. The Iraq War never could have resulted in an advantageous strategic result for the US; many of us knew that before the debacle began, but I would say a strong voting majority of US citizens is aware of it now. Every day the fearful cost in blood and treasure mounts higher. And every second we take our eyes off Afghanistan and Pakistan is advantageous to the real enemy, i.e. Osama bin Laden and the genuine accept-no-substitutes Al Qaeda.
It's really not a question of whether the US will withdraw from Iraq. It's a question of when and how. If the Bush administration is smart, the withdrawal will take place as part of a multi-state regional process that ensures some stability and peace in the region. However, the Bush administration is not smart. All they seem to be doing now is trying to wait it out so that the withdrawal will happen on someone else's watch.
Will this result in a net political advantage for the "movement" conservatives who (rightly or wrongly) are associated with this president more than any other? I doubt it. (But if I'm wrong, it won't be the first or last time...)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 09:00 pm (UTC)It does because the other side was sure to win, because they had thrown everything including the kitchen sink into the battle, because 51% for one side does not equal 49% for the other, and because for every new elector registered by Democrats, ten were registered by Republicans. Go back and read contemporary reports. It was perceived as a Waterloo.
...the fearful cost in blood and treasure...
Anyone willing to replace facts with this kind of obfuscatory, screaming rhetoric certainly has nothing in common with me. The "fearful cost" you speak of is what one day's fighting would have cost in a real war, and less people than die in road accidents in Britain, let alone the US. If what is happening in Iraq bothers you, forbid Americans from driving cars - you will save far more lives. As for "treasure", there has not even been a war tax imposed, as countries do when they are involved in serious wars, let alone war bonds and forced loans. You have absolutely no notion what a real war is, sir, and this large-scale police operation in Iraq does not even resemble one.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 10:13 pm (UTC)1) Whether you call it a "crushing defeat" is simply a matter of semantics, but 51% is no landslide any way you slice it. And you certainly must agree that "contempory reports" and post-mortems are going to be slanted by whichever point of view the particular spin-doctor wishes to promote. By the way, your initial assertion of "massive and undisguised mass media support" for the Demorcats in that election is simply untrue. I have never seen the U.S. media more subserviant to an administration than they were during the first Bush II term. By the time of the election, there was more than enough hysterical partisanship for BOTH sides filling the airwaves.
2) **Fearful cost** The current estimated cost of the War to date is well over 400 billion U.S. dollars. Confirmed US dead are over 3600 and wounded over 54,000. Iraqi civilian casualities are of course hard to determine, but low estimates begin at over 65,000. If you do not consider this a fearful cost in blood and treasure, sir, then you and I have radically differing value systems.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 10:23 pm (UTC)... and you have a "value system" evidently disconnected from history, since the cost in our own blood for four years of fighting is less than that of a single large battle in either World War or the American Civil War. By your logic, almost any war with any real enemy opposition would be waged at a "fearful" cost, which makes the term meaningless. (Here's a hint: only use hyperbole for above-average occurrences!)
You are also, I believe, conflating "Iraqi civilian casualties" with "deaths" and with "enemy dead and wounded," so your figures there are complete nonsense. In any case, most of the civilian deaths are due to enemyenemy soliders are to be celebrated rather than mourned.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 07:05 am (UTC)Furthermore, the amount of losses that we've taken over a four year period, operating in almost entirely hostile territory, is phenomenally low. 3600 dead? 27,000 Wounded? That's about a month's operations in Vietnam. Or a single day in World War 2.
Our losses have been extremely *light*, all things considered.
Furthermore, the Iraqi civilian casualties you speak are largely due to the Iraqi's themselves. Shi'ite death squads. Sunni militants and insurgents. Iraqi members of Al-Qaeda inspired terrorist cells.
Don't make it sound like the United States Army is somehow responsible for all those large casualty counts, because that simply isn't true. Collateral damage accounts for a *tiny* fraction of that. The vast majority of it is due to the Iraqis themselves, who have no sense of national unity, no trust in their own nieghbors, and often times no sense of human decency.
How many dead do you think the Baath party, a Sunni faction, was responsible for during Saddam's reign? Hundreds of thousands of both Kurds and Shi'ites were killed by the Sunnis before America ever set foot in Iraq. If we had not invaded, that would have gone on. Don't try to blame all the bloodshed on the Army, when the truth is that in many places, the Army is the only thing keeping stuff from erupting into full-scale genocide of the Sunnis.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 08:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 01:27 pm (UTC)2) I have not forgotten election night and it was personally painful. To call it a "Waterloo" is a ridiculous example of the "rhetorical obfuscation" you accused someone else of in this discussion. Were I to use your technique, I might respond that: "Comparing this election to Waterloo, where Napoleon met his utter and final defeat, shows your either your ignorance or dishonesty. To anyone with a smattering of knowledge, this statement is a joke."
I am done. I will let you and others on your side of the issue have the last word. I am sure you would take it anyway.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 03:53 pm (UTC)Now, if there is one thing I hate more than another, it is someone who puts words in my mouth. You just have. Congratulations. I would demand an apology, were it not evident that you are simply incompetent in the field of debate.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 07:15 pm (UTC)Because if they do, we Republicans will win 2008.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 11:46 pm (UTC)Simply not so. Unseating an incumbent in the US is very difficult. Unseating a president during wartime is even more difficult. The Republicans had a significant advantage in statehouses and state legislatures (particularly in the so-called "swing states" of Ohio and Florida). And the Kerry team was never up to the ruthless professionalism of the Republican team. (Democratic teams seldom are.)
"Anyone willing to replace facts with this kind of obfuscatory, screaming rhetoric certainly has nothing in common with me."
This seems an unfair characterization of my deliberately soft-spoken post. The fact that we disagree does not mean that I'm screaming at you.
"You have absolutely no notion what a real war is, sir, and this large-scale police operation in Iraq does not even resemble one."
Even if this ad hominem assertion were true (as it is not), you don't have valid grounds to assert it, nor is it relevant to the issue at hand.
A cost in blood can be fearful without adding up to WWII levels. It depends on what we're buying with that precious commodity.
"there has not even been a war tax imposed"
Of course not. It's been added to the national debt. No one can deny that those numbers are very large.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 06:33 pm (UTC)I'd think more of your argument, in spite of its tone, if you would come to grips with issues like this. The costs of this war (and they are not merely financial) are immense.
And, as I see the matter, all we have gotten for this war is a lessening of our power, security and influence. What have you to say to this? What would be the up side of staying in Iraq, from the USA's point of view? Are you really content to let your argument rest on baseless sneers at my knowledge of history?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 07:17 pm (UTC)How about buying "avoiding having to fight another war on the scale of, and with costs approximating, WWII levels?"
Because that's what's at stake, right now, in the Gulf. Stopping the Islamofascists before they can come up to bat with atomic weapons and fully modern armies.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 06:26 am (UTC)There is no real danger that Al Qaeda in Iraq would become a dominant force in whatever nation or nations arise from the present sectarian conflict there. That's not my opinion; it's the conclusion of the US military after a series of war games. A partition was the most likely outcome, with Al Qaeda in Iraq dominant in no section.
The carnage that would result from a partition of the country would be immense. But the fact is that Iraq is not a nation. It is a colonial artifact which has been held together by military force until we, in our wisdom, disbanded that force and stepped into its unenviable place. Now either the Iraqis will decide to join together in some kind of federal state or they'll go their separate ways as a trio of distinct nations.
However that plays out, it's obvious that the US has an interest in promoting stability in the region. It is not obvious that the way to do that is exhaust our military by keeping them continuously in the line of fire between disparate groups of Iraqis who are trying to kill each other (and, incidentally, us).
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 07:17 pm (UTC)There can be different reasons why a force does not attain its end. In the recent Israeli case, it was because they chose to give up and not return to the fight, for essentially political-diplomatic reasons.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 09:42 pm (UTC)The Israelis could have deployed enough forces onto the battlefield to outnumber the Hezbollah forces by more than 10:1, both in manpower or in effective strength, which is the generally-accepted degree of superiority needed for conventional forces to defeat irregulars such as guerillas or terrorists (*). Of course, they could not have completely prevented Hezbollah forces from retreating off the battlefield, so presumably some cadre would survive: forces are rarely "wiped out" but rather driven back with severe losses.
And what less could have counted as a victory in an operation of that size?
Driving them away from the Israeli border, and keeping them away by occupying a buffer zone, would have been adequate victory. This time, hopefully, the Israelis would have been wise enough to keep the territory they captured.
(*) Because, at such a level of superiority, they could force them to battle. If Hezbollah instead persisted in fighting as regulars, the superiority required would have been 3:1 assuming light or up to 6 or 9:1 assuming heavy defenses. However, as regulars, they would have also been more vulnerable to Israeli air and artillery.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 08:18 am (UTC)The current policy isn't working. (I don't believe it ever could have, but it's demonstrably not working.) When something doesn't work, you should try something else.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 08:38 am (UTC)Your main problem is that you believe what journalists tell you. The BBC, the New Jerk Dimes, and the rest of them, have been predicting catastrophe and nightmare from day one; they have been predicting it whatever happened on the ground. In war, in general, it is a very bad idea to believe immediate reports, let alone reports by people who have repeatedly shown that they have an axe to grind.
Again and again, you speak like someone who does not have any idea of war. The mere notion that the position of the US army in Iraq is "untenable" shows that you simply do not know what military terms mean. "Untenable" was the position of 179 Texans against 5000 Mexicans at the Alamo, or of Napoleon's Old Guard on the afternoon of Waterloo. It means "a position that cannot be held". It means that whatever you do, the enemy is bound to overwhelm you, so that your only alternative is die with your gun in your hands or surrender unconditionally. The US position in Iraq can be held very easily, and has so been held for four years now, at the cost of a few casualties every month. I know you are not a fool, but when you talk of things which you hate without either knowing or understanding them, you sound like a fool. Your use of words is simply wrong. What you mean is: "I do not think the American electorate is willing to see a few corpses come home every week for the sake of 'a far-away country of which we know nothing'." That is a very different statement from "the American position is untenable."
Even worse, you put words in my mouth. I made no "taunts of cowardice"; I told you how Arabs and Muslims would perceive your behaviour. You have not even tried to answer that point; instead, by your unwarranted attack on me, you have shot the messenger. You show that you simply are not willing to listen to the message, let alone engage with it. And that is neither a reasonable position nor one that allows you the tone of moral superiority which you insist on affecting.
At any rate, even though I did not in fact call Americans cowards, I have good reason to do so. I was in the Italian Army, and about to volunteer for Lebanon, when the great conservative hero Reagan shat himself at one single - though bloody - Hezbollah outrage, and took his troops out of Lebanon WITHOUT EVEN WARNING HIS ALLIES. We Italians had 2000 men in Beirut, there on the promise of American support, and we and the French and the British had to arrange our own departures while the enemy triumphed. Hezbollah was barely known until then (the Lebanese Shias were until then represented by Nabih Berri's Amal party, which was then independent of Tehran but is now reduced to an outhouse of Hezbollah); the flight of the Americans was its making in Lebanon and the Middle East, the second signal triumph of Khomeini over America, and the most diastrous single moment in the Lebanese civil war. So yes, I do not rate Yankee guts quite so much as you expect me to. You dumped your own allies in the soup because of one single bomb, and taught your enemies that Americans can be cowed into flight by a few casualties. That it was Reagan who was guilty of this disgraceful desertion of allies on the field makes no difference - Clinton imitated him, after all. So, if you want a reputation for courage, earn it.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 04:46 pm (UTC)But earlier "That WILL happen, and if you think that a public display of cowardice" etc.
That is a taunt of cowardice, compounded by your unwillingness to stand by your words even as you repeated the taunt. Abusive rhetoric like this couldn't convince water to run downhill. If you want to convince someone of the merits of your position (on Iraq, on anything) you might want to entertain, at least for the purposes of argument, the idea that people may disagree with you for some reason that doesn't involve a moral failing on their part (or yours).
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 05:27 pm (UTC)Taunts don't make for good public policy, conversation or persuasion.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 03:08 pm (UTC)Iran is an aggressor state motivated by a fanatical relgious ideology with long-standing ambitions of controlling the whole Persian Gulf, the Mideast, and (ultimately)the world. The possession of nuclear weapons by any state with such an attitude is obviously dangerous.
War with Iran will thus, ultimately, be necessary to prevent the Iranians from achieving their ends. Iraq borders Iran, and the Iran-Iraq border is not particularly rugged (unlike most of Iran's other borders. The use of Iraqi territory would be of paramount importance both in containing and in invading Iran.
Furthermore, if we leave Iraq, we will only have to invade the place again, because an abandoned Iraq will become a major base for international terror, including operations against the United States of America on her home soil. Since both retreating and re-invading will each exact a cost in blood, treasure and diplomatic credibility, it is better to remain.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 06:11 pm (UTC)Iran is is a bunch of people, many of whom are getting sick and tired of having theocrats push them around. An invasion by the US, even if it were a military disaster for the present government, would be a political gift, because people would naturally back the home team against the invaders. But nuclear weapons in a government fronted by this zealot Ahmadinejad (or anyone like him, of which there are many) would obviously be a terrible danger to Israel, the West, the world.
It's a dilemma, complicated by the present unfortunate state of the US military's readiness. We don't have the resources for a full-scale invasion of Iran while we're occupying Iraq and also trying (and failing, it seems) to hold down the lid on the Afghan-Pakistani border. It's worth repeating: that's where the real enemy is: Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
"If we leave Iraq, we will only have to invade the place again"
I'm not being flippant when I say that I'm okay with that. It is now obvious that USA's enormous military power does not confer on us the ability to build nations. But we can use it effectively against governments. If the government or governments that arise after US withdrawal give us cause to do so, we can fight again. And we'll win again.
It seems likely that the Kurds would welcome a US military presence, and an independent Kurdistan seems quite likely to succeed as a prosperous democratic state with our support. (And, as an old Xenophon fan, I'd like to see the Kardouchoi get a homeland after millennia of being stepped on by empires, but that's neither here nor there.)
Is it so unlikely that, after a period of sectarian strife and civil war, the Shiite south and the Sunni west should look northward to a peaceful, prosperous, free Kurdistan and say, "I'll have what they're having"? We could still win the peace if we stand down, in a strategically shrewd way, from our present untenable position in the no man's land of a nascent civil war.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 07:14 pm (UTC)Iran is is a bunch of people, many of whom are getting sick and tired of having theocrats push them around.
Indeed. But it is far from certain that the people who are sick of being pushed around will act on this rapidly enough to prevent the state called the Islamic Republic of Iran from committing them to a major war, possibly an atomic one.
I could say the same thing about Germany c. 1935, substituting "Nazis" for "theocrats," and be absolutely correct. This true statement won't make any of the 50 million people who died in the European Theater of World War II spring back to life.
An invasion by the US, even if it were a military disaster for the present government, would be a political gift, because people would naturally back the home team against the invaders.
Perhaps, but the invasion could also physically topple the Islamic Republic, and enable us to de-fang their armed forces. Also, the threat (or promise) of an invasion might induce said Iranian people to get off their butts and actually overthrow the Ayatollahs -- they've been talking about doing it for over a decade now, without actually doing anything to accomplish it!
If they can't do it under threat of war with America, then they can't do it at all, and we should stop waiting for it. Let the war happen, let Iran be devastated as much as necessary, and let it be on the heads of the Iranian people, who neglected to stop their leaders.
We don't have the resources for a full-scale invasion of Iran while we're occupying Iraq and also trying (and failing, it seems) to hold down the lid on the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Since the "Iraqi insurgency" is now an almost wholly Iranian-owned operation, taking out the Iranian regime would do a lot to defeat said "insurgency" (in quotes because it's really a disguised international invasion, now that the Ba'athists have given up the fight).
It's worth repeating: that's where the real enemy is: Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
There is more than one "real enemy," and Iran is at least as important as Al Qaeda, being an actual nation.
If the government or governments that arise after US withdrawal give us cause to do so, we can fight again. And we'll win again.
First of all, we may be less eager to enter the second time. (Look up "Muayaguez Incident"). Secondly, the "government" after US withdrawal is going to be either an Iranian occupation or an Iranian puppet regime. So we'll have to fight Iran anyway, if we return.
It seems likely that the Kurds would welcome a US military presence, and an independent Kurdistan seems quite likely to succeed as a prosperous democratic state with our support. (And, as an old Xenophon fan, I'd like to see the Kardouchoi get a homeland after millennia of being stepped on by empires, but that's neither here nor there.)
How exactly are the Kurds going to maintain their independence with the Iranian and Syrian Armed Forces marching into their territory?
Is it so unlikely that, after a period of sectarian strife and civil war, the Shiite south and the Sunni west should look northward to a peaceful, prosperous, free Kurdistan and say, "I'll have what they're having"?
They can "say" what they like. Of course, so saying may land them in an Iranian prison if the Iranian occupation forces hear about it.
Anyway, what the Kurds will most likely be "having" in this scenario is genocide, at the hands of the Iranians and Syrians.
We could still win the peace if we stand down, in a strategically shrewd way, from our present untenable position in the no man's land of a nascent civil war.
Wars are not won by retreats, and you're not explaining what keeps the Iranians out once we are there no longer.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 09:54 pm (UTC)I don't acknowledge "Godwin's Law," I treat this statement as having the logicaal content of "icka foop wimwam," which is to say none.
To elaborate, Godwin's Law was formulated specifically to deprive us of the ability to learn lessons from World War II. Its acceptance in the 1990's was a symptom of the generational "forgetting" of the last Crisis that leads to the decay of the Crisis-preventing institutions which in turn makes the next Crisis possible. (Read Generations, by Strauss and Howe).
In this case, the reason I said "1935" in particular was that the Depression/WWII Crisis started in 1929; the Terror War Crisis started in 2001, which is six years ago. 1929 + 6 = 1935.
What the lack of seriousness with which we have prosecuted this war, by the way, goes to show is that it is difficult to defuse a real Crisis by trying to head it off early. The same fate might have befallen the Anglo-French had they tried to rein Germany in during the mid-1930's.
Churchill was thus probably wrong about the unnecessariness of World War II. Had he become Prime Minister in 1933, he might not have been able to stop Hitler before it came to a long, large war.
Just as we seem to be politically incapable of stopping Iran before the same thing happens.
Ah well. I'm going to move away from the big cities before the real war starts.
... and B.) I don't think this is factually accurate.
Plenty of people in Germany c. 1935 were getting sick and tired of being pushed around. The mere fact that people are "sick and tired of being pushed around" does not mean that they therefore acquire the organization and courage to do something about it. Especially when facing a ruthless dictatorship that will cheerfully torture them to death for opposition.
I'm not going to answer your other points individually, except for Iran vs. Al Qaeda. How many civilian casualties have we taken from Iran? How many from Al Qaeda? Nations we can handle; non-state terrorists are more problematic.
Non-state terrorists without national backing, or at least tolerance, get rounded up and thrown in prison. And by the way, Al Qaeda is now also basing from Iran. (Yes, I know Al Qaeda is composed of Sunnis -- what this shows is the degree to which such scruples can be overridden by the fight against the Great Satan).
When a war is not going well, when a nation's military resources are stretched to their limit, it is not a good idea to open a third front. It just isn't.
Why do you assume that Iran would be a different "front?" And why do you think that an Iran under invasion would still be able to support the "Iraqi insurgents" at full blast?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 09:43 pm (UTC)A.) I wish you had not brought our discussion under the shadow of Godwin's Law and B.) I don't think this is factually accurate.
I'm not going to answer your other points individually, except for Iran vs. Al Qaeda. How many civilian casualties have we taken from Iran? How many from Al Qaeda? Nations we can handle; non-state terrorists are more problematic.
When a war is not going well, when a nation's military resources are stretched to their limit, it is not a good idea to open a third front. It just isn't.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 10:02 pm (UTC)If we pull out of Iraq without first toppling the Islamic Republic of Iran, or at least hitting it hard enough to cripple its nuclear program and the offensive capabilities of its military, the result will be a disaster. And if we launch such attacks but don't follow through until they are complete, the result will also be a disaster.
Bush's fault, for getting obsessed with making Iraq perfect rather than giving himself enough time and money to also conquer Iran.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-22 11:58 pm (UTC)But that would require excellent intelligence and rapid deployment forces, and those services have been handled very crudely by the current administration. I'm sorry if that sounds like mere rhetoric; from where I sit it seems like something that hawks and doves might be willing to agree on.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-03 01:22 am (UTC)As an ally, no. As a willing collaborator, supporter and arms-supplier, yes... Adding tight China-Pakistani military cooperation (with Pakistan being another potential US base for Iran operation, not to mention Afganistan), it fast becomes a quagmire :(
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 03:16 pm (UTC)Specifically, to the Mesopotamian empire-builders, whom he explicitly admired.
... and by 2001 he had managed, by sheer obstinacy coupled with massive bribery, to reduce the coalition against him to Britain and America alone. If he had been allowed to break the military grip these countries had on him, it is absolutely certain that he would have invaded some other country, probably Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Which would have forced us to fight him anyway, because we couldn't have tolerated Saddam Hussein holding most of the world's oil.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 03:12 pm (UTC)We don't need to hold Iran, merely topple its existing regime. The regime is sufficiently unpopular that the local democratic forces, if armed, can probably hold onto power. And during a brief occupation, we could dismantle their nuclear program: if necessary cart it back home as war booty.
If we need to take out Iran's nuclear program by force (a moot point: consider the recent success with North Korea), it seems clear that it will require something more like a surgical strike than a full-fledged invasion.
A surgical strike is fine, but we shouldn't be totally "surgical" -- instead of just taking out reactors, we should sink the Iranian Navy and smash the Iranian Air Force while we're there. Better yet, smash all the Iranian powerplants -- without electricity, they aren't building any atomic bombs.
I don't agree that our negotiations with North Korea constituted a "success." We gave them stuff and got a promise; they will almost certainly break that promise, as they have done the last three times. Our purpose was almost certainly to ensure that North Korea didn't actually attack during the upcoming Iran campaign.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 04:03 am (UTC)As one of those urban-Catholic "values voters" who did not sit on their hands in 2006, the primaries are of upmost importance. I could not in good conscience vote for Guilianis when there are Brownbacks on the ballot.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-23 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 07:39 am (UTC)Last election, every single person I voted for lost, and I didn't vote a straight-ticket. Us poor crunchy conservatives.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 10:31 pm (UTC)America has not declared war, has not put the economy on a wartime footing, has not imposed wartime taxes and rationing, has not imposed a draft, has not passed sedition acts, has not suspended habeus corpus, can not rounded up internal enemies into concentration camps. Before you recoil in horror, remember that this country did all these things in the Civil War, WWI and WWII. It is what a serious country does when it is seriously devoted to fighting and winning.
The ACLU brought a lawsuit on behalf of plaintiffs who, in their law case, and I am not kidding, said the PATRIOT act had a chilling effect on their First Amendment free speech rights to conspire with known terrorists and with terrorists suspects. The case was pursued for a long while, and eventually thrown out of court as frivolous. The ACLU members have not, to the best of my knowledge, been brought up on charges of treason or hanged. They have not even been scolded by an outraged public. Can you imagine the public outcry if the ACLU had attempted to hinder prosecutions of Nazis at Nuremberg?
The enemy in this case has adopted the one tactic to which the Western mind, especially the Western liberal mind, cannot adopt or adjust. Instead of attacking meaningful civilian targets, they attack meaningless targets that have propaganda or psychological-war value only. Instead of declaring war, marching in the open, taking the field against the enemy, they snipe at enemy civilians, targets chosen at random. Instead of hiding in caves, they hide among civilians.
These means have absolutely no military value: none.
They only have value as a tactic to demoralize the foe. They only have value if the foe (us) has a theory of the laws of war making it unlawful to fight if war is not declares, soldiers are not in uniform, enemy civilians get hurt. Conservatives believe in this theory of the laws of war to a degree consonant with practical military prudence; liberals agree with it as an abstract absolute, to be invoked only when it agrees with their progressive moral self-congratulation, or, in other words, only when it is imprudent. A confident culture cannot be defeated by these means; confident cultures merely grow more cold and deadly in wrath when attacked.
The psychology of it this: Americans believe that an enemy is not really real unless he is in uniform and represents a nation-state. Of course, this theory has no foundation in law or in logic. The Barbary pirates were not a nation-state, did not fight in uniform, and did not attack military targets, but, nonetheless, President Jefferson asked the congress for, and received, a declaration of war against them, and the armed force killed them. The line about "to the shores of Tripoly" is a memory of this war.
America has no civilian defense; we have no (real) border control; our security precautions at airports and seaports are nearly meaningless rituals of inefficiency.
What is sad is, things will not change after millions die in terrorist outbreaks of plague (I am assuming bioterror rather than nuclear). All that will happen after the next successful terrorist attack is the same voices as now shout meaningless slogans at each other will shout the same slogans at a louder volume.
We have lost the will to fight. My liberal friend, their faces shining with divine indignation, have told me in no uncertain terms that it is better for a nation to perish than to overstep even the tiniest jot or tittle of international law, and we must respect the Geneva Conventions even when facing enemies who are not signatories. We cannot fight anyone except an army put into a field by a nation-state, and then only if they fight in uniform. Furthermore, all encounters must be blood-free and cost-free and over in six days. The strongest nation on Earth has the weakest will to live.
When the Chinese become the hegemonic power dominating world politics, they will make short work of the Muslim terrorists.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 05:45 am (UTC)