Revolutionary Wealth

I only caught a little bit of this on Book TV, and apparently it was a re-run. I have to confess that I haven't read any of Toffler's work yet, so I'm not endorsing his conclusions, but I did find the portion of the conversation I watched to be thoughtful and thought-provoking. If the U.S. really is spearheading a new civilization and way of life, and I believe that it is, I wish more Americans would consider what they want our historic legacy to be; will history remember us as just another empire that succumbed to selfish materialism and the arrogance of power, or will it remember us as something more, something nobler and better?

Stop apologizing to the Moslem world

This editorial captures some the frustration I feel about our approach to the Islamic world. Among the many mistakes this administration has made, one of the most baffling is its belief that it must flatter and cajole Moslems to get them to embrace Western-style democracy and values. The fact is, while there are many good Moslems in the world, their religion as it is practiced in most of the world today is inimical to our form of government and our values, not to mention modernity as a whole. Western civilization is by no means perfect, but it doesn't need to keep apologizing to Moslems or obsessively worry about upsetting their feelings. The problems in the Middle East have much less to do with mistakes made by the West than they do with deep-seated cultural and religious problems inherent to their societies. The sooner we stop pretending otherwise the better. Let them worry about how the rest of the world perceives them.

Thoughts after Election Day

So, the Democrats won both houses of Congress, a majority of the governerships, and Rumsfeld's head on a platter. Happy days are here, right? A new golden age of peace, prosperity and virtuous government is upon us at last, right? We'll see. In 1994, when the GOP swept both houses of Congress, I was still an active Democrat, but I wasn't terribly sorry about the results of that election. I thought it would do some good for the Democrats to be a minority again and spend some time in the political wilderness. I thought the GOP might actually make some needed reforms and do some good. And in a few small cases like welfare reform, I thought they did. But whatever change they brought was pretty far from the bold promises of the "Contract with America" (which, you might remember, included term limits for members of Congress). I vividly remember John Kasich telling a reporter, who asked in 1997 why the Republicans hadn't eliminated hundreds of useless federal programs like they'd promised, "You just don't get it. The jig is up around here when it comes to cutting the budget." Apparently the spirit of reform that had brought them to power two years earlier evaporated quickly once they were in the majority. My cynicism about our two-party system deepened, and when George W. Bush "won" the presidency in 2000, I made this prediction to some of my close friends, Republican and Democrat alike: even if he served for a full eight years, we would still have a Marxist tax code, social security, estate taxes and abortion when he left office. I said it to my Democratic friends to put their minds at ease, and I said it to my Republican friends as a cynical statement of just how far I believed Bush would really push his "conservative" agenda. And I stand by that prediction. Aside from his consistently conservative social-religious views, there was (and still is) little that is genuinely conservative about this president, or about most Republicans these days. The fact is, whatever spirit of reform occasionally grips one of our two major parties, it always evaporates quickly once they're in power. Despite some sincere people on both sides of the aisle, neither of these two parties has a serious, lasting interest in any kind of meaningful reform. Above all else, they are interested in seizing and maintaining power. With a system that effectively shuts out third parties and thus healthy competition, they have no compelling reason to change, so this cycle continues every decade or so. Now the pendulum has swung back in the Democrats' favor... for a time. We'll see how long it lasts and how much good they actually do. My expectations are pretty low, considering the sorry act they're following. If they could at least provide some restraint on federal spending and a recklessly interventionist foreign policy, I would be grateful. But I'm not holding my breath.

Thoughts on Election Day

I have no interesting predictions to make about the outcome of today's election. I tried to vote but couldn't because I forgot to register within the 30-day window (I recently moved to a new county). Doh. At first I was disappointed, but my straight Libertarian protest vote wouldn't have helped elect a single person to office anyway. As angry as I am at the GOP's rampant betrayal of real conservative values like fiscal responsibility and prudent foreign policy, I just can't bring myself to be an enabler for a stagnant, intellectually bankrupt two-party system. If the Democrats win the House and/or Senate today, it won't be because they captured the public's imagination with better ideas. As is almost always the case, the one party out of power will win because the electorate eventually got too disgusted with the (only other) party in power. Boy, what an inspiring system. As long as the American public doesn't have to grapple with any new ideas... that's the important thing. And speaking of new ideas, I've been thinking more and more about a suggestion floating around out there that we move Election Day to Veterans Day. I like it, for a number of important symbolic reasons, but with the qualification that I would like it to be on Veterans Day weekend. If you want to maximize voter participation, it makes a hell of a lot more sense (to me, anyway) to hold elections on a Saturday than it does on a Tuesday.

Old-school conservatives speak out

This weekend on "Foreign Exchange," Fareed Zakaria interviewed Andrew Sullivan, the author of the new book, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost it, How to Get it Back. Sullivan's unorthodox advice for Tuesday's election? Vote Democratic. Meanwhile, Fareed has an excellent article in Newsweek about rethinking our strategy in Iraq, and George Will derides Cheney and the war in Iraq in general. Whether you agree with them or not, it's refreshing to see "old-school conservative realists speaking out." It's just a shame it took them so long.

Bill Frist's take on Afghanistan

Bill Frist is probably right, but you can't help but wonder what the GOP would say about a top-ranking Democrat going to Afghanistan and suggesting that its government should include the Taliban. At any rate, it's encouraging to see top Republicans beginning to candidly acknowledge that military force alone will not be sufficient to defeat the insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. The ugly truth is that if we really want democracy in the Middle East and South Asia, we will have to accept the fact that Islamic extremists will be voted into office. Hopefully the results in Afghanistan and Iraq will be more encouraging than in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority.

Conservatism and the "National Will"

While I share Gingrich's concern over the inordinate power of the Supreme Court, I always cringe when I hear so-called conservatives suggesting a course of action that would better reflect the "national will." Conservatism as a philosophy never put much stock in public opinion; in fact there was a time when conservatives saw it as their duty to resist the shifting tides of public opinion as much as possible, recognizing it as a force of mischief in the world, and in democracies in particular. The U.S. Senate was originally conceived as an institution that would resist popular passions and debate issues solely on their merit, which is why senators were not originally elected directly by the people but chosen instead by their state legislatures. The Supreme Court, even moreso, was intended to be immune to the viscitudes of fickle popular opinion. I would expect Gingrich of all people to know this, since--despite his obnoxious personality--he has spoken intelligently in the past about our structure of government and its Founders' intent.

First, the bad news from Iraq...

Has the war in Iraq made us safer from terrorism? Not according to our latest National Intelligence Estimate. Personally, I don't know how anyone could think it would, at least not any time soon. If the president is right that terrorists fear the spread of democracy in the Middle East and will do anything to oppose it, then it makes perfect sense that the threat of terrorism is higher today than it was on 9/11. As long we retain a huge military presence in the heart of the Middle East, we will be a target for every malcontent suicider (my favorite new word in the president's lexicon) in the region, and we will provide plenty of fodder for the mullahs of hatred to fire up new generations of disenchanted Arabs and Moslems against us. As for the argument that we can either fight them here on our shores or fight them in the Middle East, that's what they call a "false dilemma" in Logic 101, but I will have more to say about that in a future post. The good news from Iraq, however, is that Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders are finally making some concessions to the inevitable by submitting a bill to the Iraqi parliament that would allow for the creation of more autonomous regions.

Those Christian Conservatives Ain't Goin' Nowhere

Here's an old election-year saw: Christian conservatives, angry with the GOP, are threatening to bolt the party or stay at home. I'm surprised anyone still falls for that one. Let's face it, as long as a GOP candidate gets up and says he's against abortion and gay marriage--whether he means it or not, and whether he actually does anything about it or not--he'll get every Christian conservative vote in his district. Period. Their own beliefs to the contrary, Christian conservatives are just as easily manipulated as any constituency out there.

Apologizing for the Truth

I'm neither an apologist for the Catholic Church nor someone who takes pleasure in criticizing other people's faith, but I am a little tired of this feeling in the West that we have to be excessively cautious about offending Moslems when discussing Islam. We can criticize Christianity with impunity in the West, but for some reason Islam is off limits? Yes, we can all agree that the history of Christianity is far from admirable in some respects, and Moslem scholars are as eager to make that point as anyone. So again, why is Islam off limits? Maybe the world should stop indulging Islamic fundamentalists and put them on the defensive to explain why their faith has become so conducive to violence and terrorism. And while we're on that subject, why do no prominent Moslem leaders ever apologize for 9/11 or any of the other dozens of horrific acts committed by Moslems in the past few decades? At best, all we ever get is the usual nonsense about the Crusades and America's support of Israel. Despite the fact that there are many peaceful Moslems in the world, it seems like the collective mindset of Islam is such that it has no capacity whatsoever for self-criticism and correction, but instead needs others to blame for its problems.

Winning the War on Terrorism

Fallows makes some compelling points. Well worth the read.

Has the Pentagon become defeatist, too?

A rising tide of sectarian violence? Illegal militias becoming more entrenched? Conditions that could lead to civil war on the rise? What is this, the doom-and-gloom rhetoric of the Democratic Party? No, it's the Pentagon's latest report to Congress about the war in Iraq. Sure, opponents of the war must feel emboldened by the news, but that's irrelevant. It's important that supporters of the war at least accept the reality of what is, rather than cling to the same tired old fantasies; specifically, that any bad news from Iraq is an exaggeration or outright fabrication of the media's, or that democracy is on the verge of sweeping aside tyranny in the Middle East. To the administration's credit, they seem to be in agreement with the Pentagon's assessment, while still doggedly clinging to the fantasy that democracy is the cure to terrorism, civil war, and damn near everything else that ails the Arab world.

Flawed Arguments, Part I

This truly has me scratching my head. The president is saying on the one hand that any premature withdrawal from Iraq will create the world's worst terrorist state, and on the other hand he is saying we have to stay and help this young democracy. On the surface that seems reasonable enough; who wouldn't want democracy instead of a terrorist state? But while I agree that premature withdrawal is not a sane option (I will have more to say on this later), I'm disturbed by the logic here; if he really believes that American military might is the only thing keeping Iraq from becoming a terrorist state, then he is a) tacitly admitting that his administration's pre-war assumptions about post-war Iraq truly were as wrong as they could possibly have been, and b) acknowledging Iraq's own utter helplessness in creating a democracy. How then are we to believe the prevailing "conservative" wisdom that Iraq can be a beacon of democracy in the heart of the Middle East, emboldening the supposedly pro-American people of places like Iran? This argument doesn't add up: if Iraq cannot build a democracy without a long-term American military presence, why should we believe that places like Iran can? I hear guys like this one on NPR saying Iran is ripe for democracy, but I see no compelling proof; just lots of wishful thinking. Frankly, I'm a jaded man when it comes to any form of optimism about that part of the world, which I have unfortunately seen firsthand (twice). If the people of Iran or anywhere else want democracy, why should they need any help or encouragement from us if that's really what they want? Rise up, depose your tyrants, and proclaim yourselves a democracy if that's really what you want, by God. Where is that good old-fashioned, self-help, do-it-yourself conservative philosophy we used to preach? Why doesn't it apply to our foreign policy, where suddenly conservative values like prudence and realism have become bad words, cynically derided as "defeatist"?

Home of the Assassins

Another op-ed about the need to break up Iraq in order to save it. And it's always mildly entertaining, if a little depressing, when an American official like Attorney General Gonzales visits Iraq and talks about "the rule of law." The people of Iraq have never known anything like the rule of law--as we define it--in modern history. They have only known the rule of violence and terror, either from an absolute tyrant or various factions vying to be the absolute tyrant(s). I'm reading a good book by Michael Oren about the Six Day War of 1967, and the first chapter alone is a good primer for novices (i.e., most of our elected officials) who know very little about the turbulent history of the modern Middle East. Long before Israel ever arrived on the scene, the entire region was a case study in the worst aspects of human behavior practiced on a massive, societal scale. This is the same part of the world that gave birth to the word Assassin. I hope to hell the people of Iraq can beat their own history and use this chance we gave them--albeit at no invitation of theirs--to build a better future, but as always when it comes to human beings, I remain skeptical. If some alien civilization had occupied the heart of Europe and given us a democratically elected government in the middle of the Dark Ages, I would be about as optimistic. Maybe a little moreso, actually.

The Islamic Way of War

As Andrew Bacevich writes in the September 11 edition of The American Conservative: "It’s time for Americans to recognize that the enterprise that some neoconservatives refer to as World War IV is unwinnable in a strictly military sense. Indeed, it’s past time to re-examine the post-Cold War assumption that military power provides the preferred antidote to any and all complaints that we have with the world beyond our borders." While I disagree with Mr. Bacevich that there is anything uniquely Islamic about the "way of war" being fought by insurgents and terrorists in the Middle East, I think his larger point is well taken. There are a number of politicians in this country--mainly self-identified "conservatives"--who believe that conventional military force can reshape that region of the world to our liking. I disagree. We certainly have the ability to destroy any number of regimes we don't like, but when it comes to the harder work of building stable, peaceful democracies in a climate of age-old ethnic and religious violence--and somehow expecting that if only the American people can toughen up and quit whining, our conventional military forces can prevail in that task--we are relatively powerless and horrifically naive. It's not that I think the president's vision of a democratic Middle East is all bad; it's that I think his strategy for realizing that vision is flawed. No amount of open-ended occupations and conventional military force alone will ever produce the results he wants, nor will they produce the results that Israel wants in Lebanon.

A polite but firm letter to Hezbollah

When I read about Kofi Annan demanding that Hezbollah turn over the two captured Israeli soldiers, I was reminded of the Simpsons episode where Mayor Quimby says, "People, take it easy. We are all upset about Mr. Burns' plan to, uh, block out our sun. It is time for decisive action. I have here a polite but firm letter to Mr. Burns' underlings, who, with some cajoling, will pass it along to him or at least give him the jist of it. Also, it has been brought to my attention that a number of you are stroking guns. Therefore, I will step aside and open up the floor." Mr. Annan is in the same hopeless position as Mayor Quimby. Ultimately it's not the U.N., but a bunch of angry guys with guns in Lebanon and Israel who will determine the fate of those two nations.

More dissent in the ranks

More Republican dissent on Iraq as top GOP frontrunners jockey for position in '08. I had forgotten about Cheney's "final throes" comment until reading this. I also seem to recall Rumsfeld at first denying there was an insurgency, then saying it was only a few hundred strong, and then gradually admitting it was in the thousands. Now the media is saying it's stronger than it's ever been, and a dwindling number of hardcore Bush loyalists are all but convinced that the insurgency/civil war is a complete fabrication of the media's. Now the president himself is saying he and his administration have always said Iraq would be a long, hard conflict. That's not true, of course, unless one remembers that the administration views the war in Iraq and the War on Terrorism as one and the same. Anyhoo, it will be an interesting barometer of the party's mood to see how much traction guys like McCain and Hagel get out of their criticism of the president and the war.

Hagel speaks out (again)

Wouldn't it be nice if a GOP presidential candidate actually ran against his party's Johnsonian spending habits and utopian foreign policy and won the nomination? Probably ain't gonna happen, but one can dream.

Federalism for Iraq

News like this is hardly anything new when it comes to Iraq, but it does make one wonder--yet again--how such a bitter religious division can be overcome to forge a stable, enduring democracy. Tocqueville believed, and many conservatives used to believe, that the mores/habits/values/practices of a culture largely predetermined whether a successful democracy could take hold. Today, many conservatives (or perhaps more accurately, neo-conservatives) believe the opposite: that democracy can transform even the most alien culture for the better. They believe in what Pat Buchanan derisively called "the salvific power of free elections." For proof of this salvific power, Wilsonian idealists will most commonly cite post-war Japan. But Japan is a poor example for the case in Iraq, since it has none of the ethnic or religious divisions--indeed, is probably the most homogenous nation on Earth--and did in fact already possess, prior to our occupation, many of the mores that tend to make democracy work, like self-discipline, thrift, and respect for the law. A much better example for the neo-conservative case is probably India, which has managed to muddle along with a functioning democracy in spite of serious ethnic and religious divisions. But if one looks to India as a model for Iraq, one must remember that democracy only took hold there after the partition of 1947, which created the nation of Pakistan. So this raises the valid question, should Iraq be partitioned? It already has a de facto sovereign Kurdish nation within its borders, one that will almost certainly clamor for full independence as all de facto states eventually do. Could there be a Sunni and Shiite partition as well? Peter Galbraith is one of the leading American advocates for a three-state solution in Iraq, but so far this position has been derided as defeatist by the administration, which clings to a utopian view of Iraq where free elections somehow defeat terrorism and end more than a millenium of bitter religious violence. What is most baffling about this position is that our own nation survived--in fact thrived--because our founders recognized the wisdom of joining our original 13 states into a federation in which they could all still enjoy a strong degree of autonomy. Certainly the issue of slavery posed a serious challenge to our system of federalism, and the Civil War changed it forever, but there are few sane scholars today who would argue against the ultimate success of our system. So why do neo-conservatives cling to a utopian vision of democracy and bitterly reject practical solutions based on historical precedent? If anyone has a good answer, I'd like to hear it.

What the...?

"We will defeat the terrorists by strengthening young democracies across the broader Middle East."? Huh? Is that what we're doing in Lebanon? I hate to sound like a broken record, but I don't think Lebanon's young democracy got any help from 34 days of sustained devastation, and I don't think anything our government has said or done from the beginning of that conflict to date has helped Lebanese democracy in any way whatsoever. All we did was countenance the same failed strategy we've used in Iraq, where the insurgents and terrorists are as strong today as they've ever been. It's kind of hard to build a stable democracy when your people are getting shot at and blown up every day.