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: 2007-07-25 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)