A Time to Speak and a Time to Act

I'm torn between two different inclinations. The first is in perfect agreement with you. We have the power to openly declare our aims, so why not go ahead and do so? Open debate is what our country is founded on, why should we be afraid or timid to proudly declare what most nations already know?

The second inclination, however, gives me caution. I do not trust the vision or fairness of whichever party is out of power, be it Democrat or Republican, but specifically I do not trust the Leftist wing of the Democratic party. Accusations of imperialism, of unilateralism and arrogance, would drown out any serious discussion of whether or not the pacification or connection strategy is a good one. For the far-Left, and I think this is beyond any doubt, America can do no good in the world. Their global paradigm only has room for the exploited, and the exploiter. Those who exercise power for self-interest, i.e. America, are prima facie exploiters, so any attempt at persuasion falls on deaf ears.

Chomsky's simplistic theory of international relations is fine-tuned and ubiquitous in this crowd, ready to tear any persuasive attempt apart. War is all about profit and power; lost in this explanation is any possibility that American self-interest can coincide with the truly oppressed (that they currently do is due to Bush and his radical foreign policy departure). America is in a tough position with her far-Left constituency, especially when their words resonate with the largest generation to ever grace the nation: the baby boomers. And especially when the Democratic Party is in thrall to their monies. Most of these fellow-travelers, schooled on Vietnam, disfavor any foreign action that utilizes the military-industrial complex for self-interest.

Luckily, this crowd is also poorly read on events not reported in the New York Times or Reuters, so much of what we do occurs under the radar. We have troops in scores of countries right now, training indigenous armies and nurturing local relations--a favorite tactic of ours is impromptu medical checkups for the locals--and this is, for the most part, going swimmingly. Robert D. Kaplan makes this point in his new book, Imperial Grunts.

The American and European Left do not like the unilateral exercise of American power on principle, regardless of what it is used for. As a fundamental tenet you can understand it, for power can corrupt even the most well-meaning of people. But as the saying goes, "All beliefs taken to the extreme are extreme." We are in an ephemeral moment of global dominance, we are probably the most virtuous society that has ever existed, we are a decent and idealistic people, and we could make a hell of a lot of difference, for our children and for the world.

9/11 was a wake up call for those who act. While we get ramped up, I'm willing to let the critics go back to sleep.

A Discussion at Belmont Club

GMAT:The fact is, four years after 9/11, it is still more dangerous, even in Iraq, let alone the rest of the arab world, to be pro-American than to be anti-american.

Me: It strikes me that the level of pro- and anti-Americanism is not a good metric by which to judge our war strategy. We are not waging war to be liked, a common misperception.

Infinitely more important is whether Iraqis feel it more in their interest to be pro-Government or pro-Insurgent. In that regard, we are winning decisively.

GMAT: I'm more concerned about the inversions of those actually leading (if you can call it that) the so-called Global War on Terror.

Whatever you want to call it, it is a necessary war that we are winning. While Bush could do better at explaining the war to the public, I find it intellectually unattractive to say we are not being led. Everything that has happened in the last four years is unprecedented--historically shocking, in fact. While it may be a travesty to have to partially disrobe to ensure your safety on board a flying missile, I must note that while you have been taking off your shoes we have conquered the unconquerable Afghanistan, eliminated over 600 Al'Qaeda leadership (80%), stabilized an ungovernable Balisan (Philippines, the other half of Enduring Freedom), are training armies in the Horn of Africa to defeat the terrorists, dismantled Baathist Iraq, arrested Saddam Hussein and killed his sons, held the first ever free elections in the Arab world, dismantled the nuclear blackmarket run out of Pakistan, shut down Libya's WMD program, held firm in Ukraine, demanded and got Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, boxed in Iran, marginalized Assad, oversaw the Iraqi Constitution, opened schools for girls in Afghanistan, and did all this with only 2,000 combat deaths worldwide.

Don't confuse leadership with oratory. Our generals and our President are doing a fine job on the war, even if they stumble fighting the war on the war. For better or worse we seem to be putting all our faith in propaganda by deed. In an age of language inversion and adverse press, why not?

So, I'm sorry about your shoes, but let's keep some perspective here. We are winning, and winning decisively.

GMAT: Winning decisively? Your list was most impressive. After two tours in Vietnam, I could have produced an equally impressive list of our accomplishments.

However, it's a poor substitute for clearly expressed war aims, the accomplishment of which are measurable, define victory, and mark the end of extraordinary executive war powers.

Angelo Codevilla on Victory: "Common sense does not mistake the difference between victory and defeat: the losers weep and cower, while the winners strut and rejoice. The losers have to change their ways, the winners feel more secure than ever in theirs."

Me: I don't deny that the public front is important, but the stakes are much higher now than in Vietnam, and in many ways speak for themselves. I think it was Wretchard who commented on an earlier thread that the reason we don't hear of a real push to withdraw is that nobody wants to be responsible for the inevitable chaos that would follow. Having an Al'Qaeda victory hanging around ones neck is not a good way to get elected.

But I wonder if we are not imposing our will more than you think. If we have changed the way we do business since 9/11, it is in the other direction: we are now more assertive internationally than ever before. Historians may write about the irony of our situation, because in the last four years our global power and credibility have actually increased, immensely in fact, even while our image has taken a beating. We have truly become a global colossus, gaining footprints in Central Asia and the Middle East while at the same time cementing our role as the arbiter of world affairs. We see this role in almost all situations, from Palestine/Israel to EU/Iran. Progress on all these fronts is impossible without a US stamp of approval, and, much more importantly, so is conflict.

China, with the North Korea situation, has a play to check that influence if they succeed in solving the nuke problem when we couldn't, but the damage is already done to their West. The war in the Balkans and Afghanistan, the deal with India, our bases in the 'Stans and our influence in Mongolia are new additions to our power structure, unprecedented global gains in so short a time.

Your concerns over Bush's inability to clearly expressing war aims are well taken, but I wonder if expressing our true intentions--global pacification--is better left unsaid, or at least better left implied. We may be talking softly, but our stick has become legendary.

Proportionality in Journalism

Journalists take objectivity to mean fairness; they understand their primary imperative to be, "Get both sides of the story."

The problem is thus: if an entity is objectively bad, or even objectively evil (and both do in fact exist in the real world), the journalist's drive for fairness makes his reporting inherently biased towards evil, because he will reestablish the statistical median artificially and inaccurately, which has the effect of watering down knowledge and discarding lessons of history. A phenomenon like Nazi Germany, which produced data with a negative to positive statistical ratio of about 1000 to 1, becomes a much different creature when a supposedly enlightened journalist revisits that balance and creates a negative to positive ratio of, lets say, 11 to 2.

The sophistication of our journalists, as we are well aware, also inaccurately skews objective good, but in the other way towards bad. This is even embraced by journalists, if by implication, when they claim dissent as a virtue of its own, without regard to that which is dissented from. The inevitable "but" that attends good news from Iraq is a true, but disproportionate, qualifier, much like "Mussolini making the trains run on time." The confines of time and space make even mentioning it suspect. If the qualifier appears in a 600 page book, its harm is limited. If it is mentioned in a 600 word article, it is almost obscene.

Objectivity is hard, there is no denying that, but the short-cut rule of "fair and balanced" is a sure way to miss it. It speaks of a loss of judgment, a misplaced value system that can only gain credence in an abstracted world that has ceased interacting with reality. Journalists in that sense are cultural autistics and historical amnesiacs.

Most things are non-neutral, so a neutral approach to reporting news is bound to fail. When there is a finite space to report almost infinite data, proportionality must be adhered to. Anything less is unsophisticated.

Journalism in the 21st Century

When anything but perfection is "not good enough", and when war is always "worse than we imagined", progress is always outweighed by disproportionate qualifiers. If a journalist wants to report the negative, fine, but when he uses it to change the complexion of an otherwise positive development he is doing a disservice to his audience.

"But" Journalism is the art of turning victory into defeat, and it is a symptom of a larger problem: the naive disbelief in opportunity cost and the childish faith that anything can be certain. 8.5 million Iraqis participate in the first free and fair elections the region has ever seen, but (fill in the blank). If we think it might fail, it has failed already. If we must pay for it, it already costs too much.

The difference between the wise and the educated has become vast. The wise know that everything may not be okay. Our elite hear this, and feel betrayed.

The Managerial Empire

Read Imperial Grunts by Robert Kaplan.

"The effort in Iraq, with its large-scale mobilization of troops and immense concentration of risk, could not be indicative of how the U.S. would act in the future. It was in Colombia where I was introduced to the tactics that the U.S. would employ to manage an unruly world."

A managerial Empire for a nation of MBA's. This highlights the folly of analyzing Iraq, and Vietnam for that matter, too broadly. As Kaplan says, the world is Injun Country, and our small bands of adventurous men are trying to mid-wife civilization and decency across the entire globe. I commented earlier that it is in the vanguard of the American imperium where you can find real true believers. Read this book and you will see the truth of that statement, and be proud.

Another point Kaplan makes is more worrisome. Colombian FARC and ELN are being supported by Chavez, and he has trained these terrorists to sabotage the Colombian oil pipe-line so the U.S. will be more dependent, and therefore more beholden, to Venezuelan oil. Chavez is also handing out Venezuelan ID cards to men from Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Chavez is Castro's protege, and it must be remembered that Castro, in 1967, began the era of international terrorism with a grand meeting of Leftist radicals in Havana, and afterwards became a type of centrale for terrorist leaders and funds. The agenda of the 1967 meeting was to destabilize democracies everywhere, thereby setting the stage for communist revolution. From this meeting of the terrorist minds sprang Europe's terror decade of the '70's which spilled over into the Middle East.

It is no secret that there is a common cause between the radical left and the radical right, what Claire Sterling referred to as Red and Black terrorism respectively. What is Chavez up to that we, as amateur analysts, cannot see? I'm afraid Chavez is planning to annex the choke-point of the American economy and thereby gain disproportionate influence and power, while retaining plausible deniability for the attacks. The tactic of blowing up Colombia's oil pipe-line could easily be transported to the Middle East, or Mexico, or even Canada, our number one supplier, leaving Chavez the arbiter of the price and supply of American oil, which would increase his influence immensely. A Castro with oil is a scary proposition, but an oil-rich Castro in control of U.S. supply, who wields terrorism freely and unapologetically, and unlike the real Castro young and still virile, is a serious national security threat, ripe for the Chinese to massage to their advantage.

I do hope we are not being blinded by the concentrated risk of Iraq. If we are to get out of this century still the leader of the free world, it is going to take the eternal vigilance of Americans, both military and civilian, to remain the former and preserve the latter.

Imperial March

After reading "The Terror Network", it struck me how much we can blame communism and its fellow travelers for the age of terrorism. Terrorism in its first instance is an attack on liberal democracy; it is dangerous because it turns our strengths against us and makes the virtuous society untenable. The communist revolutionaries of the 70's knew that democracies were highly impotent against terrorism. People want safety more than liberties, and governments that could not supply the former would end by taking away the latter. Once the society is militarized and oppressed, the patient communist can find the fodder he needs to feed the beast of revolution. Start by stealing from the rich to feed the poor, and eventually the wind and the people are at your back. With such justification is tyranny and fascism embraced over democracy; this is the reason far-Leftists cheer dictatorship and abuse. Abuse and oppression are necessary preconditions of revolution, and revolution is what they fight for. If democracy is two steps away from the Worker's Paradise, tyranny is but one.

Thus, the Tupamaros could celebrate their accomplishment of fascism, though it was much different than what they desired, because their biggest enemy had been discredited and defeated. They had pushed society down the slippery slope to communism, and the end would justify the means.

Thus, George Galloway makes common cause with fascism, but he is not for it. Both Osama and Galloway believe the same thing. To rebuild, you must first tear down. To create, you must destroy.

The War on Terrorism is a final insult added to communism's injurious defeat. Instead of devolving our liberties at home, America took it upon herself to change the world. The revolutionary narrative was incomplete; nobody ever thought what might happen if America pushed back. The price of that omission is now being shouldered by our erstwhile enemy Osama, and his unfortunate allies the Baathists and the Taliban. As an Emperor once said, he has paid the price for his lack of vision.

The power and influence of America has now reached every state on this planet, by necessity and by right. Something great and unprecedented is underfoot, a unique story our enemies did not predict and cannot believe. America has become an Empire of the Mind, and she is pressing her advantage. In her vanguard are the real true believers.

You might say the revolutionaries are dreamers, but they are not the only ones. Not by a long shot.

Tribunal of the Left

Wretchard writes:

If we start regarding the Palestinians as men like other men and hold them to the same standards we will accomplish two things: utter the greatest Liberal heresy possible and treat them as equals.

Oh, but we no longer see men as morally autonomous. Standing to come before the tribunal of the Left--where redistributive redress and ideological injunction are bandied about with a cynical eye--is granted only to the well-organized victim group that speaks truth to power. These new pockets of political consequence are composed of men all too happy to trade their own individual interests for the newfangled glory of anger in defeat, supplicants and petitioners drawn to Stereotype's crescent of embrace, surprised when they find themselves in shackles instead.

Will Canada Formalize Shariah?

From Wretchard's Cat and Dog, which highlights the fight against Canada's acceptance of Shariah as a formal legal entity to arbitrate family law for Canadien Muslims:

NoSharia.Com has found a clever way to prevent their position from cascading through their whole ideological system, and escalating into a wholesale opposition to "political Islam" by generalizing their argument as opposition to all "faith based" types of arbitration.

The secular faith of the far Left is waging an asymmetrical war against the established ethos and institutions of the West. The decentralized deconstructionists have formed cells in universities and coffee shops, they are ubiquitous and self-sufficient, and when a weakness is exposed they swarm and terrorize with brazen fervor.

Contradictory cultures, so long as they play victim, are embraced as fellow travelers, but these same cultures are attacked when they parley with the enemy. Repression that originates outside of the West is authentic, so long as it occurs in impoverished enclaves. When it formally joins the machine, though, all hands on deck.

The presupposition of badness ascribed to faith-based institutions is a bullet meant only for Christianity, a shiny stone to bring down the largest of Western Goliaths. Islam does itself no favors by being noticed. If it weren't so impatient, who knows what spoils would await.

Parallelism

It struck me, when watching Talabani answer a question from an Israeli reporter, that the issue of "normalizing" relations with Israel is, for the Kurds, much like the issue of slavery for the North during the Constitutional Convention: something that was subsumed by the importance of unity and survival.

Good Fences

Talabani said that Assad had invited him to visit Damascus, but Talabani replied that he would not come until Assad "prepared the ground for a successful meeting." Then he said,

"I'm sorry to tell you that all Arab media, without exception, is supporting terrorism, morally, by making propaganda for them, describing them as the heroes of the struggle against imperialism and Zionism, and encouraging them to come fight in Iraq.

I'm sorry to tell you that a Palestinian organization, when responding to the crimes in London, said 'I'm sorry to see these people go to London, why they not going to Iraq to fight there?'

At the end of his answer, Talabani used a saying that he could not himself translate into English, so he asked a minister of his to do it for the crowd:

"A man who digs a well for his brother to fall in, but instead it is he who falls in."

Our new policy in the Middle East

"A document that the few cannot hold up as a banner of victory is a success for the many. In the new Iraq, there will be no victors, and no vanquished...

Thank you, America, for your dignity and courage. We fought together to end a civil war. There was a civil war, a civil war of Saddam Hussein against the people of Iraq.

Now, we continue to struggle side-by-side to uproot the Iraqi fascism that has long threatened us all. By treating the Iraqi people as partners, the United States has courageously made the final and most important alteration to its policy in the Middle East."

Jalal Talabani, President of a Free Iraq.

Think about it. Whatever this is, it is not a failure.

To Falluja

I would like to highlight a colloquial observation from the Talabani conference.

President Talabani was asked about militias being dispersed under the new Constitution, and he said that Kurdistan, for instance, wanted to keep the Peshmerga until the terrorist threat went away, and then would convert them into a type of national guard.

He said that the consequence of immediately dispersing the Peshmerga would be "many Falluja." Falluja in this sense meaning "city taken over by terrorists."

This from Bill Rogio:

"To Fallujah" has now become a verb for Iraqis, Hickey explained later, synonymous with the violent leveling of a recalcitrant city. In mid July, in fact, Baghdad ominously announced that there would be a "solution" to the Tall 'Afar "problem" within 10 days. Three dozen men from Tall 'Afar and Mosul went to Baghdad to meet with the government to circumvent "a Fallujah." In this usage Falluja means "destroyed by America."

Interestingly, we now have proof of the efficacy of force as a meme generator. Because of our actions, in Iraq city taken over by terrorists equals destroyed by America. We have created a new noun with two simultaneous meanings. The meanings are irretrievably linked, so they are both avoided.

What Happened in New Orleans?

Dan Darling has an excellent post here.

The Washington Post analyzes events here.

An article on the role of FEMA in emergencies is here.

Blanco balks at President's offer of help. On Friday.

Rich Lowry covers some of the basics here.

Information about the logistical challenge, and the swift federal response, look here. From a guy who does it as a career.

I think that about does it. The final score's still out, but it is becoming apparent that this was first and foremost a local and state failure.

Black and White

Would Blacks across the country really rise up in solidarity with looters?

Whites would not. Asians would not. Would Latinos? Surely not Jews. Muslims?

When Blacks study hard and speak proper English, they are accused by their peers of "acting White", of being Uncle Toms. It is the Black Community, whatever that is, that defines its own culture, and it has embraced a characterization of negatives. What's left for them, when they reject Whitey's norms, is unsuccessful behavior, and victimhood. A poor strategy in a world of competitive labor.

What are the percentages of success for "acting White"; how many rise up out of poverty by "acting Black."

Tough questions, with tough answers. As Thomas Sowell points out, many Blacks in this country voluntarily define themselves as rednecks. As memes go, it is quite the virus.

Shame and Pity

I think the reality on the ground is simply too complex to accurately distill post hoc imperatives. A city with major access points destroyed cannot simply be invaded without a large, comprehensive logistical plan; otherwise the troops, instead of being the solution, become part of the problem.

But I agree with you that something is drastically wrong. Americans are dying in the streets of New Orleans, and those who don't make it out will die thinking they have been abandoned by their country. Citizens still trapped on rooftops waive the American flag in a desperate plea to a country that does not seem to care. The "Help Me" signs failed them in days 1, 2, and 3; nobody came, nobody noticed. Desperate, they put their last hope in a symbol that, unbeknownst to them, somehow means less than it used to.

Whatever is wrong, we need to fix it. I watch the news and all I feel is pity, and shame. Pity for our countrymen suffering and dying, and shame for our failure and helplessness. I will never be able to forget the incomprehension of a young mother, holding her dead five-day-old daughter in her arms, as the camera came in close.

Today her world was shattered. America came too late.

It's not a Black Thing

New Orleans City, according to the 2000 census, has a population of 484,674. Out of that number, 325,947 citizens are African American, which is about 67.25% of the population.

From what I can find, about 25,000 - 30,000 people sought shelter in the Superdome, and these are the people that you see on TV. Most media sources guess 100,000 people stayed in New Orleans to ride out the storm, with the highest estimate coming from UK's Independent, which pegs the number at 200,000.

Now think about it. We are hearing that this is a "Black" thing, that the only people suffering are African Americans. The innuendo behind these statements is an overall indictment of our system, and in many cases the statements have moved beyond implication to outright accusation.

Yet we are seeing only a small fraction of reality. Even if all 100,000 people remaining in the city are black, that means over 200,000 blacks were able to leave, which means it is absolutely inaccurate to assert blacks have it worse because they are black.

Many factors led the people who are now suffering to stay, but race is not one of them. In fact, from a purely statistical standpoint, being an African American in New Orleans gave you a pretty decent chance of getting out. If two-thirds of all blacks in New Orleans fled the storm, race will not tell you why some stayed behind.

SETI and Global Warming

You can find an interesting speech by Michael Crichton, on the subject of global warming and bad politics, here.

Global Warming

Two things to think about:

The "experts" derive their data from two sources. One, via classic scientific observation they gather emission (CO2), climate and glacier data points from all over the world, and document correlations and patterns that exist amongst the data (though other contradictory patterns are ignored, like the fact that Antarctic ice is thickening). Though conclusions remain elusive, newspapers, prostituting scientists and political operatives distort the nature of these observations. Causal links are asserted where none are claimed or exist.

Two, warnings and predictions are derived from advanced and complicated computer models. The programs and algorithms that underlie these models are fractal or chaotic in nature, which means all results from lengthy iterations are eminently dependent on initial conditions. The problem with using these climate model prognostications as guidance is obvious: the scientist, and therefore the climate model, is working from imperfect knowledge. A small omission or error will cause a drastic departure from reality, and the number of variables that affect Earth's climate make such omissions inevitable.

Other warming explanations, like land-use or the sun, are ignored by these true believers. Information, like the great difference in warming between New York and Albany, is not discussed. "Global Warming" is bandied about even though many places on the globe are actively cooling. Debate means heresy, and heresy means persecution.

The idea that Man's Industry is ruining the world is a strong tonic and heady brew for Eco-Leftists, and their favor (and fervor) has generated an industry of its own. Interests and dedicated factions have multiplied, and, much like eugenics in the early 1900's, bad science has spawned bad politics. Warming may not be global, but its sordid advocates surely are.

That is not to say that "global warming" has been disproved; man may be every bit as consequential as the environmentalists claim. But we do not know, and the question remains: is it prudent to constrain mankind's defenses against nature in the short term on the off chance that we have anything to do with climate change in the long term?