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saturday, november 1, 2003
Confederacy in the Nooz!
Once again, candidates are sniping at each other over Confederate flags.
Recently, Howard Dean said,
"I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup
trucks," the former Vermont governor said in an interview published Saturday in the Des Moines Register. "We can't beat George
Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats." (CNN)
Frankly, I think Dean has to say stuff like that if he's going
to get any votes in Southern primaries at all. But let's continue -- Dick Gephardt made some remark about how he wanted to
be the candidate for guys with American flags in their pickup trucks. Which reminded me of another entanglement Gephardt had
with the battle flag last January.
So I'm repeating here a blog from January 20, 2003. I'm not criticizing either
Gephardt or Dean with this. I'm merely presenting it for the entertainment value. (This one's for you, D.R. Marvel!)
January 20, 2003
Southern Crosses
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - State
officials took down Confederate flags at two historic sites Tuesday after Democratic presidential hopeful Dick Gephardt
said they shouldn't be flown anywhere.
Confederate battle flags were removed at the Confederate Memorial Historic
Site and the Fort Davidson Historic Site, said Sue Holst, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The
flags will still be displayed inside the sites' visitor centers. ...
In Missouri, the flag had flown for decades without controversy or criticism from public officials at the Confederate memorial
near Higginsville. The remains of 694 Confederate veterans and 108 wives are buried at the site.
The Fort Davidson site commemorates the 1864 Battle of Pilot Knob.
[Link to Guardian article]
I don't recall I've ever been to the Higginsville
cemetary, but day trips to Fort Davidson loom fairly large in childhood memory.
The Fort Davidson site is in a poor, sparsely populated
part of the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri. To say it is off the beaten path is to give it too much credit; even those
who live in the region have to go out of their way to find it.
When I was a girl in the 1950s, there was nothing there
but a depression in a ragged, weedy meadow where the fort used to be and a modest marker. I do not remember flags; I
do remember the tree-covered mountains looming over the battlefield, one of which is crowned with a prominent rock called
Pilot Knob.
More recently the state of Missouri built a nice little
air-conditioned visitors' center housing artifacts from the Battle of Pilot Knob. And, out in the meadow, to mark the spot
where Confederate dead were buried in the rifle pits, there came to be a modest Confederate flag on a short flagpole.
The flag was not on the place-where-the-fort-used-to-be itself, because
Fort Davidson was a Union fort. The nearby town of Ironton was a Union town, the headquarters of Ulysses S. Grant's first
command as a general. The Confederates buried in the meadow were part of an invading force aiming to take St. Louis. The mission
had little chance of success, and it was stopped at Fort Davidson. Or, rather, it was stopped when the Union defenders blew
Fort Davidson and its store of munitions to smithereens, thereby leaving an impressive hole in the ground.
In September 1864 Confederate Maj. General Sterling Price led approximately
12,000 men out of Arkansas, advancing north toward St. Louis. However, at least a quarter of Price's men had no weapons. His
plan was to arm them by taking Union arsenals, including the arsenal at Fort Davidson, which included four 32 pound
siege guns, three 24 pound howitzers, and six 3-inch ordnance rifles. In the center of the fort was a buried powder magazine.
When word of the advancing army reached St. Louis, Brig. General Thomas
Ewing, Jr. (a brother-in-law of William Tecumseh Sherman himself) was dispatched to Fort Davidson, which was south of St.
Louis in Price's path. Ewing and five companies of the 14th Iowa Infantry Volunteers reached Pilot Knob on September 26 and
occupied the fort, which truth be told wasn't much of a fort-- just an earthwork structure surrounded by a dry moat. These
troops, plus approximately 150 civilians from the area -- including a militia of free African-Americans -- provided
about 1,300 men to stand against the Confederate 12,000.
The local militia and the invading Confederates clashed in the streets
of Ironton; they fought around the countryside, in the meadows and on the slopes of green mountains. The Iowa volunteers held
the fort against charge after charge. The fighting ended at nightful with the Union still in control of the fort.
Ewing, however, realized there was no way his troops could hold
another day against Price. So in the dark of night the Iowa men muffled their horses' hooves and artillery wheels with blankets
and silently evacuated the fort, leaving behind a detail to destroy the remaining munitions and keep them out of Price's
hands. When the gunpowder magazine exploded, the blast was heard for 20 miles.
Heritage and Hooey
As I said, I've never been to Higginsville. I looked it up on the web.
This historic site encompasses the grounds of what was once the Confederate Home
of Missouri, which housed dependent Confederate veterans and their families. The last Confederate veteran living at the home
died there in 1950 at the age of 108. In 1957, the Missouri General Assembly established this site as a permanent memorial
to those soldiers. It includes the historic restored chapel, the cemetery where more than 679 Confederate veterans are buried,
and a park landscape that features picnic sites and several small fishing lakes. Located one mile north of Higginsville.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources issued a statement that
said use of the flags at Higginsville and Pilot Knob were "in context of interpretation of that part of history," and that
there's no record of anyone asking for removal of the flags until now.
This weekend about 50 people, some in Confederate uniforms, stood outside
the Missouri governor's manion to protest the removal of the flags.
The decision to remove the flags at the Confederate Memorial Historic Site near Higginsville
and the Fort Davidson Historic Site near Pilot Knob was purely political, said John Wolfe, the heritage defense chairman for
the Missouri division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (news - web sites).
"They tore down our heritage, stole it from us," said Wolfe, who was among the 50
people who attended. "It's theft, it's blasphemous, it's criminal -- and all for political purposes." ...
Mark Trout, who attended the rally, said he was
a member of the Sons of Union Veterans and considered suppression of Confederate heritage or emblems to be a "direct attack
on the overall history of the Civil War."
He said singling out the Confederate flag was unfair
because slavery existed in the United States longer than the Confederacy existed. [Robert Sandler, Associated Press, January 19, 2003]
So let's talk about history and heritage.
First of all, what we're calling the Confederate flag is not the historical Confederate flag. The flag officially known as
the "Stars and Bars" looked like this:
The Confederate States of America adopted
two other national flags in its short history, none of them exactly like the Confederate flag draped
in the back window of half of the pickup trucks in the Ozarks. What we call the Confederate flag today was
a battle flag adopted by some, not all, Confederate regiments.
Similar nonsense is going on in the neighboring
state of Oklahoma.
A lawmaker who originally wanted a Confederate
flag to fly at the Capitol has agreed to a compromise that would place this and 13 other historical flags across the street
at the Oklahoma History Center.
Rep. Wayne Pettigrew, R-Edmond, said he would revise his flag bill to specify that
only U.S. and state flags should fly at the Capitol.
Rep. Kevin Cox, D-Oklahoma City, who had opposed the idea of flying the Confederate
flag at the Capitol has no objection to flying it at the history center.
Cox, who is black, said the flag does not belong at the Capitol because it represented
the Confederacy "which held us in slavery."
Pettigrew said he and Cox had a different view of the Civil War. He said he had been
taught it was an issue of states rights and economics. [Associated Press, January 17, 2003]
Oklahoma wasn't even a bleeping state at the time of the
bleeping Civil War. More important, though, is that the "heritage" guys like Pettigrew don't know history from spinach.
The truth is that slavery was the raison d'être of the Confederacy.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with
the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced
our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest
material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions
of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious
law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the
world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and
was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or
a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. ["A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession
of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union," adopted in convention by the state of Mississippi, 1860]
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are
laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination
to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] [Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, 1861]
There it is. I don't know how much more plainly it could have been
said.
Let me say, frankly, that it doesn't bother me personally if a
Confederate flag flaps over some Confederate graveyard in the backwoods. And I love re-enactors of all stripes. Somebody's
gotta be the Confederates and wear the butternut uniforms and wave Confederate flags around, or the re-enactments wouldn't
be any fun, would they?
But those who scream about "heritage" when a Confederate flag comes
down don't care about real heritage, or history. What they cherish is a mythology, and a dangerous one. It's long past time
that we all acknolwedged the truth of what the Confederacy was about -- slavery. And its heritage is racial division, which
does none of us any good.
The Confederate dead at Fort Davidson lay unmarked for more than
a century before some state historian determined where the rifle pit was and stuck a flag on it. If the "heritage" enthusiasts
care so much, they can chip in some money and buy a stone marker.
saturday, november 1, 2003
Email from a Clark Supporter
Part of an email from R. Arango of Washington State:
The
reason for this note is to share with you some perceptions of Wes Clark ... I was in the West Point class behind Wes
at West Point (class of 1967); we both taught in the Social Science department at West Point and overlapped one year.
I took over Wes’ class in political philosophy after he left in 1974 (yes, he taught Political Philosophy, not economics).
Unlike
Hugh Shelton, I have the highest regard for Wes’ character and honesty -- If Wes said he never smoked dope, take that to the
bank. Wes is an outstanding intellect who has a remarkable ability to place events in a broader context. I imagine that folks
like Hugh Shelton (good ole boy, special operations types) were very wary of someone like Wes. Bottom line: I
don’t believe Wes has any negative character or integrity issues, and if Gen Shelton has some, he should make them public.
So
why is he running as a democrat? My conjecture: Wes is extraordinarily competitive; he wants to accomplish the highest goals
life has to offer--that means he wants to be President. I suspect West looked at the political landscape in the context of
his age, and realized he was not going to be able to mount a challenge to an incumbent president as a republican--I am sure
Wes has other goals for himself as well (Nobel Prize would come to mind), and waiting another four years would throw him off
his personal life plan--and trust me, from what I know of Wes, he DOES have a personal life plan. I will leave it for
others to make judgments about his democratic ideological purity. I am merely offering you conjecture about his motivations.
Hey, hombre, we don't need no steenking ideological purity!
I don't know the man at all, of course, but my impression is that Clark is driven by practicality rather than ideology,
and the GOP has become so ideological there's no room left for people who still know how to think. So -- welcome to the Dems,
General!
Cures versus Diseases
Considering the flaming mess that used to be the country of Iraq, an
old saying comes to mind: Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
The Bushies keep stressing that Iraqis are "better off" without Saddam Hussein in
power. That may be; it's hard to judge from the other side of the planet. But what side effects will Bush's Iraq "cure"
have for the rest of the world?
Yes, Saddam was a nasty guy; no question. But he was being contained and did not
constitute a threat to the rest of us. Thanks to Our Guys in the White House, however, Iraq is quickly destabilizing
into a hotbed of terrorist activity that could spread throughout the Middle East and beyond.
I don't want to talk about mistakes already made. Right or wrong, we got INTO Iraq, and the task for the next Democratic president of the United States will be getting
us OUT. But before we argue about how to get out, I urge that we base our solutions on
practicality rather than ideology. So, I want to talk about when cures
are worse than diseases, and why two wrongs don't make a right, and why we should look both ways before crossing the
street.
"Wingnuts" Versus "Real-Worlders"
Those of us who are politics nerds tend to live in a left-wing versus right-wing paradigm.(1) We normally think that people who are liberals or leftists are on one
side end of a political spectrum, and people who are conservative or right-wing are on the other.
But let's try something else. Instead of sorting ourselves out by "left wing"
and "right wing," let's put the practical, problem-solving types on one side of the room and the ideologues of either wing
on the other, and see how that works. Let's call the ideologues the "wingnuts" and the non-ideologues "real-worlders."
Before I go any further, let's be clear what an ideologue is. (Sorry to be pedantic.)
In the present context, let's define ideology as "a set of doctrines that form the basis of a political/economic
system" and ideologue as "an advocate of an ideology."
Ideologies are OK up to a point, but they all have their limits and pitfalls.
No doctrine fits reality 100 percent of the time; most don't even come close. Real,
hardwired ideologues -- wingnuts -- are people who bend their perceptions of reality to fit their doctrines
instead of adjusting their doctrines to fit reality. Real-worlders, on the other hand, may cherish some ideals (e.g.,
liberty is good) but are more interested in achieving practical solutions than fulfilling anybody's doctrines.
I found a fascinating psychology paper that says ideologues of both left and right
have more in common with each other than they have with non-ideologues. Specifically:
Research investigating the relationship between cognitive style and political orientation
reveals that individuals on both the political left and the right can, at times, demonstrate low levels of integrative complexity
(e.g., Tetlock, 1984). Integrative complexity is defined by two characteristics: (a) differentiation, the number of different
aspects of an issue that a person recognizes, and (b) integration, the development of complex connections among the differentiated
characteristics (Tetlock, 1986). People scoring high in integrative complexity are able to recognize that there are many different
sides to a given issue and they are able to integrate those different sides and determine a way to cope with the necessary
trade-offs involved (see Tetlock & Suedfeld, 1988). [Mullen, Bauman, Skitka, "Avoiding the PItfalls of Polticized Psychology," Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy,
Vol. 3, No. 1, 2003] (2)
In English, what this says is that ideologues can't see problems as they are, but
instead simplify (distort) reality so that it fits their ideologies. Non-ideologues are able to see a situation
as-it-is, in all of its complexity, and deal with it in a practical matter.
The paper goes on to say that both left- and right-wing ideologues can score pretty
high on the authoritarian and "cognitive inflexibility" scales, meaning that wingnuts of either wing can morph into jackbooted "my
way or the highway" types who do poorly on the Global Change Game and shouldn't be trusted with sharp objects, not to
mention actual power.
A new political paradigm of wingnuts versus real-worlders
works for me, as I've been butting heads lately with leftists who assume I must be on "their" side because I am opposed
to all things Bush. But why should I embrace Maoism just because somebody else's cognitive framework puts me
and Maoists together in a box labeled "Left"?
As the Buddha would have said had he spoken English, cognitive frameworks are not
reality.
Meanwhile, Back in Iraq
So, here we are. Even as I keyboard, all over the world people are thinking and debating
and writing about how to resolve the mess of Iraq. Very simply, three schools of though are emerging:
1. The "U.S. out of Iraq now" school.
2. The "U.S. out of Iraq after Iraq is stabilized" school.
3. The "we got it, it's ours, so we can do what we want with it" school. (3)
My understanding of the "U.S. out of Iraq now" hypothesis is this: First,
since we shouldn't have invaded to begin with, why compound the mistake by continuing the occupation? Second, the U.S. presence
in Iraq is drawing terrorists and jihadists to Iraq like flies (4), so the longer we stay, the
worse it's going to get. Third, our occupation is costing buckets of money and the lives of soldiers and civilians.
I believe that's most of it. If somebody can think of an argument I've left out,
please add it to comments.
Those are compelling arguments, but I think the "gradual withdrawal" people have
good arguments, too. First, people who understand Iraq better than I do say the violence will not settle
down if the U.S. pulls out. Rather, with no government in place, there will be a series of power struggles between Shia mullahs
and Wahabi extremists; among regional tribes and warlords, and between the Kurds and everybody else.
Unlike South Vietnam, which came under the control of North Vietnam when the U.S.
pulled out, control of Iraq will be up for grabs. The power vacuum our bugout would create could lead to a regional bloodbath
and the further destabilization of neighboring countries. (Or not.)
Although it might be tempting to think the UN would agree to step in and take over,
keep in mind that (1) it might not; and (2) UN peacekeepers don't have a good track record in really violent situations, such
as when somebody might shoot at them.
If we leave now, some say, at some point in the future U.S. troops might have to
go back to Iraq as part of a NATO or other international force to bring order, and by that point the place will be an even
bigger mess than it is now.
Another "gradual" argument is a moral one -- we broke it, so we should fix it. A
few of us old-timers speak fondly of the Marshall Plan, which helped bring peace to Europe after World War II. (The Bushies like to pretend that their policies are something like
a Marshall Plan, but of course that's nonsense. It's more like a Yard Sale for War Profiteers Plan.)
The point is that good, well-meaning, non-imperialist people disagree on whether
the U.S. should get out of Iraq immediately or gradually. We may disagree, but let's not smear each other over this issue.(5)
Where do we go from here?
No progress toward getting out of Iraq will be made as long as Bush is in the
White House. Bush may make speeches and other noises about getting out of Iraq, but we know that as long as Halliburton et
al. are still feeding at the trough, he's determined to let them. As we prepare for next year's campaign and the
Democratic nominee who WILL be elected in 2004, however, I think it's important to be real-worlders and not wingnuts.
.
All of the Democratic candidates -- even Joe Lieberman, believe it or not -- are in favor of getting the U.S. out of Iraq. Some of them are "get
out of Iraq NOW" people; more of them are "get out of Iraq in stages" people. It is not true (as I've heard some
say) that some Dem candidates favor an indefinite U.S. occupation.
We may disagree on which Dem has the best plan for getting out of Iraq, but
I hope we agree that the first step toward sanity in Iraq will be to vacate George W. Bush from the oval office.
We must also realize that by January 2005 the situation in Iraq may have changed
in ways we cannot imagine. Any plans we come up with now might be inapplicable by then. That's one more reason why it's a
bit silly to argue about the fine details of anybody's plan.
Instead of the details of the plans, look to the character and qualifications of
the planners. Which candidates are driven by practicality, and which by ideology? Which are proven problem-solvers and which
have a history of being divisive, "my way or the highway" types? Although we don't want spineless appeasers, neither do we
want a President who can't play well with others (like the one we have now).
And whatever we do, let's be sure our cures are not worse than the disease.
There are many other issues that we might look at in a "wingnut versus
real-worlder" light, such as the next steps for the anti-Iraq War movement. Are big demonstrations useful for winning the
hearts and minds of independents? Does participation by extremist ideological factions in these demonstrations do more harm
to the cause of defeating Bush than good? If not demonstrating, what should we be doing to educate the public about what's
wrong in Iraq?
What do you think?
Notes
(1) For years I swore by the left/right, totalitarian/libertarian
model espoused in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s book, The Vital Center. But we may be moving into an age in which
that model doesn't work as well as it used to, or else I'm not working as well as I used to. Take your pick.
(2) The Global Change Game is a kind of "Sim Planet" exercise in which a group of people try to run the world and solve its problems. Authoritarians
who play the game have an alarming propensity to destroy their sim world by nuclear holocaust.
(3) The White House would deny this is their actual position.
Well, stuff it. You ain't foolin' nobody.
(5) OK, I'm guilty, too. I'll try to behave in the
future.
Hot Links, Chocolate Withdrawal Edition
7:06 am | link
friday, october 31, 2003
Blue-collar Presidents?
I hate to kick Dennis Kucinich again... okay, no I don't. It's fun. So
here comes another kick.
There's an interview of Studs Terkel in today's San Francisco Chronicle that in which
Mr. Terkel says he's
rooting for Dennis Kucinich, who "has the chance that the Bears have of winning
the Super Bowl. He'd be our first blue-collar president. But he's out. . . . and Dean will do. If George Bush, with Depression
and war can win, the Democratic Party should be dissolved. It has no balls."
The first blue-collar president? There's a challenge. We've
had presidents who were farmers and who owned small businesses. Several were teachers, soldiers, and lawyers. Andrew
Johnson was a tailor. Harding was a newspaper editor. Truman was a farmer and then a haberdasher. Carter was a peanut
farmer and Reagan was an actor. But nobody's worked in a factory (not counting summer jobs) or been a washing machine
repairman, so strictly speaking none were "blue collar," I guess.
On the other hand, I've skimmed about in biographies of Dennis Kucinich and
he doesn't seem to be all that "blue collar," either. His parents appear to have been among the hard-core unemployed for most
of his childood, which makes them "no collar." He was in local Cleveland politics while still in college, and he remained
a politician until he lost his job as mayor of Cleveland in 1980. Did he ever work in a factory, except maybe as a summer
job? I don't know.
Historical Revisionism Alert
I get the Wall Street Journal's opinion roundup by
email because of my keen interest in technology. There's bound to be at least one opinion piece every day that obviously was
written by a GOP-programmed bot. It's amazing what good code can do these days.
Still, a code-generated mix of GOP talking points and buzzwords
doesn't always hang together as a coherent essay. A case in point is today's featured article, "Fickle Interventionists." (1)
This bot-written wonder starts out:
The polls show that most Americans understand the coming
burden and still favor war; after 9/11 they realize the dangers of ignoring foreign threats. About U.S. elites there are greater
doubts. Our liberal pundits and politicians are fickle interventionists; many of them signed on early to topple Saddam but
have lately been offering caveats and cavils as D-Day approaches. Will they run for moral cover if the going gets tough, as
they did in Vietnam?
So we wrote March 18 in describing the "largest risk" of war with Iraq.
Let's pause to reflect on these words, starting with the
quotation from last March.
The polls show that most Americans understand the coming burden and still favor
war;
It's true that the polls showed strong support
for invading Iraq last March. For example, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of adults nationwide taken March 14-15 showed 64 percent in favor and 33 percent opposed.
On the other hand, when a Zogby poll taken March 14-15, 2003 asked likely voters, "Would you support or oppose a war against Iraq if there were hundreds of American
casualties?" 46 percent said yes, 47 percent said no, and the remainder were not sure. Asked about thousands
of casualties, and the support dropped to 43 percent. And when asked if they could support a U.S. action without significant
UN or international support, 47 percent said yes and 49 percent said no.
In other words, many who supported the invasion did not understand the "coming burden." How
could they, when surrogates of the administration were all over television and radio saying the war would be a "cakewalk,"
and that Iraqis would greet our troops with cheers and bouquets of flowers?
What
people were ready for last March was Gulf War II -- a few days of fun television, including feel-good, rally-round-the-flag
speeches and cool action videos of buildings blowing up. And then everybody goes home and life goes back to normal.
They
were not ready for a real war -- a when will it end, how many will die, will my child or spouse have to go,
war. But that's what they got.
Our liberal pundits and politicians are fickle interventionists;
many of them signed on early to topple Saddam but have lately been offering caveats and cavils as D-Day approaches.
The
"caveats and cavils" issued by the liberal "fickle interventionists" were warnings (from wiser people than exist on the WSJ
editorial board) that an Iraq invasion could turn into a real war. And, the "caveats and cavils" turned out to be
pretty darn accurate. If anything, Iraq is turning out to be even worse than "the fickle" predicted.
Further,
the brief quotation that the bot picked up to begin today's essay was from another bot-written featured article called "The 12-Year War." This essay implied that 12 years of containment policy toward Iraq allowed the terrorist attacks of
September 11 to happen. These days even the White House admits these's no connection between Saddam Hussein and September
11.
Back
to today's essay:
Seven months later, this question remains
the largest imponderable in calculating the odds of American victory.
I
would say the largest "imponderable" is the fact that the Bushies had no clue what they were getting into when they snubbed
international opinion to charge into Iraq. They were utterly unprepared for post-invasion (I started to say "postwar," but
in fact the war may be just getting started) realities. They grossly underestimated the number of troops needed on the ground
to maintain security. Remember what the Pentagon did to General Shinseki? This is from the New York Times last February:
Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front
war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand
troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops.
Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost
of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately
a war's duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward. [Eric Schmitt, "Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Forces' Size," The New York Times, February 28, 2003]
And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't even permit
discussion of the costs of the war:
In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, many nations agreed in advance of
hostilities to help pay for a conflict that eventually cost about $61 billion. Mr. Wolfowitz said that this time around the
administration was dealing with "countries that are quite frightened of their own shadows" in assembling a coalition to force
President Saddam Hussein to disarm.
Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath
would take more time, he said. "I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before
the fact," Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war
and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because
of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher,
ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're
going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.
At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost
estimates made even ranges imperfect. Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject,
Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I've already decided that. It's not useful." [Eric Schmitt, ibid.]
Translation:
Most leaders of most other nations in the world had the sense to see an invasion of Iraq should be undertaken, if
at all, with more advance preparation that the Bushies were willing to make. Wolfowitz and others didn't want to bother
about winning allies through diplomacy, assuming that once the war commenced other countries would sign on. And,
having underestimated the dangers and the costs, the Pentagon decided it didn't want to listen to debate.
(Can somebody tell me if Paul Wolfowitz has even gotten something
right?)
The Wall Street Journal bot continues,
Just as the going gets rough in Iraq, some of our
elites are losing their nerve.
It cracks me up when the wealthy, coddled, hothouse flowers
who make up the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal call other people "elites."
This of course is precisely the goal of the terrorists in Iraq who this week began their
Ramadan offensive. Their car bombs and rocket attacks are destructive and terrifying but not a serious military threat. The
guerrilla insurgency remains leaderless, with no great power support and largely confined to the Sunni Triangle surrounding
Baghdad. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis continue to support the U.S. presence, and progress continues toward Iraqi self-rule.
In short, Iraq is not in "chaos" or on the verge of a popular uprising, and this anti-guerrilla war is clearly winnable.
Based on their past record, when the WSJ says a war is
"clearly winnable," we're in trouble. The guerilla insurgency (remember back when Rummy refused to use the word guerilla?)
is becoming bigger and more organized every day. The simple fact is that Donald "let's do war on the cheap" Rumsfeld's
Pentagon doesn't have enough troops in Iraq to provide the security necessary to prevent wholesale looting, never mind rebuilding. And because support for
the war is eroding, and the Bushies are spineless wimps who craft policy to fit poll numbers, and other nations will
not be sending soldiers into this mess in spite of what the Bushies promise, the number of troops will not be
increasing. We're not only in a quagmire; we're in one hell of an impasse.
But the Baathist die-hards know that they do not have to win in Iraq; they merely have to prevail
in Washington. So like the Tet offensive of 1968 and the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, their terror campaign
is intended to shake American resolve. (2)
Does it ever occur to these genius that we should not
have sent troops into Vietnam or into Lebanon, and that the resistance we encountered was, therefore, the result of our own
folly? Of course not. (3)
The moral is, don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
A good portion of the Democratic Party and its intellectual cohort are already predicting American
defeat. The Vietnam analogies are flying, with Donald Rumsfeld routinely compared to Robert McNamara and President Bush to
LBJ. Conveniently, they stop the analogy short of Tet, a crushing military defeat for the Viet Cong that was spun into a political
victory for Ho Chi Minh in the U.S.
I don't have the energy to go into the Tet offensive and will let that particular
howler go. (4) And there is a difference between Rummy and McNamara -- Rummy is worse. But let's go on ...
Some of the voices from that era are sounding the same themes again.
That's because we did the same damnfool thing again
-- start a war that didn't need to be fought without enough military resources for a knockout punch and without
a clear exit strategy.
Rather than report on Saddam Hussein's torturers, they care only about Halliburton's contracts.
Translation: Because Saddam was such a nasty guy
we're not supposed to complain about the White House acting as a clearinghouse for war profiteers. And what happened to the
weapons of mass destruction, by the way?
Instead of focusing on how to win the war we are now engaged in, they want to refight the argument
over how we got in. And rather than provide the means to win, they cry for a plan to get out.
Um, WSJ -- are you saying the ultimate goal is not to "get out"? That
after liberating the people of Iraq from the yolk of oppression, we don't really intend to give them back their own country,
sooner or later, and go away? Because if you know of some plan for the U.S. to remain lords of Iraq for an indefinite period
of time, you'd better spit it out.
"Getting out" was always the stated goal of the Bush Administration -- to
enable Iraq to become a free, independent, and democratic nation. The question being debated is not whether to "get
out" but how, and when.
There are hotheads on the extreme left who want to pull out immediately and leave the
mess for others to clean up. Very few Democratic politicians agree with that. But we must always be clear
to the world and to ourselves that we don't want to occupy Iraq forever.
If, say, five years from now, all our troops are out of the sovereign and republican nation
of Iraq, then perhaps we can claim a "win." But if, five years from now, we are still the foreign power in occupation of Iraq,
then we will have lost.
The editorial continues but doesn't get any better. So I'll leave the rest
alone.
Notes
(1) For more about the word interventionism and its deeper meanings when
coupled with the qualifier military, see "Remember the Airlift."
(2) Let me say that once I'm done writing this particular blog I hope
never to use the word resolve again. And that's a shame, because it's a perfectly good word. But every time I see
that word I hear our "leader" drawl it out, and I think of how his very utterance of the word turns it into a lie --
the man didn't even have the "resolve" to stick with his cushy National Guard assignment, for pity's sake. When in his own privileged, protected little life did George W. Bush ever demonstrate resolve?
(3) For more on Lebanon and why we shouldn't have been there, see "Old Dogs. Old Tricks."
(4) Although the U.S. pushed back the North Vietnamese, the Tet Offensive represented
the beginning of the end, so to speak, in Vietnam. It resulted in a callup of reserves (which LBJ had wished to avoid) and
revealed that the war wasn't going as well as had been reported. For a short explanation of Tet, click here.
Unrelated link
Hot Links, Donald Luskin Is a Stalker Edition
7:54 am | link
Krugman on the Quarter
Preview of tomorrow's Paul Krugman column in the New York Times:
My purpose is not to denigrate the impressive estimated 7.2 percent growth rate for
the third quarter | | | | |
