We have not had the opportunity to post anything in the past two weeks due to a death in the family, but the events of the past week alone leave much to be written about. In an effort to "catch up," we submit a conversation between longtime friend NG and myself, highlighting our thoughts on the Democratic legistlative agenda. As always, your comments and criticisms are welcome.
JP--
So. Allen conceded, and all seems shiny.
What do you think the Dems should start working on for a legislative agenda? I mean, the obvious task before the new bastards is figuring out the Iraq situation, hopefully in a way that will at least keep the civil war from spilling out to the surrounding countries. Reopening diplomatic channels with Syria and Iran? Using the party switch to try and get other nations to contribute to a peacekeeping force? Voiding all the no-bid contracts and reopening to any country in the world that wants to help?
But that stuff's all foreign, and right now the big issues--the one we won the house on--are for domestic issues. Timothy Noah's talking socialized medicine, but this is certainly a bit early to start talking about the same damn issue that lost 'em congress in '94. Even if we're calling it "Medicare For All," it's going to face a lot of knee-jerk resistance from, well, both ends of the political spectrum.
So what else should they try to work on? An Apollo project for energy independence? Signing onto Kyoto? Somehow increasing funding for inner-city schools?
The minimum wage raise is a given, it's so easy: they'll have that shit passed January 21st, vetoed by the 23rd, and outvetoed by February. Same with quietly letting Bush's tax cuts expire--it won't have major negative effects on most Americans, and I think most of the wealthy voters in the election are going to be okay with a return to pre-2000 tax levels. We're at war, you know.
Beyond that, I've got no big ideas. And the Democrats don't really, either. Which is fine: the Contract With America was way overrated as a governing manifesto, if not grossly misleading. You got anything, or are you as lost as I am right now?
It's so nice to write without having to worry about some dude popping
up in black sedan outside my house now,
---NG
-------------------
NG:
On Iraq: We've got to stay. Here's why: Cambodia, 1971. Or we could just abandon the Kurds for the third time. Whichever. Iran is our best bet in helping to stabilize the region. Otherwise we're approaching an "exterminate the brutes" scenario.
On Rumsfeld: I had a Steven Colbert moment when they announced his resignation. I ran up and down the rows of my office shouting "I called it!" Then they released today that GWB had planned to let him go five weeks ago. I called that too! Too bad I couldn't call Rutgers +6.5 yesterday.
On Medicare: What are we, Norway? Baby steps, blue team.
On the Domestic Agenda: You're right to mention education. No teacher or administrator I've spoken to thinks highly of "No Child Left Behind." It presents more problems than it solves--and forces embattled schools to fight in a zero-sum context against one another. Neither districts nor the children they attempt to educate benefit from the Survivor like competition over already scarce resources. Dems should set their sights here.
As far as energy is concerned, there are two avenues (not mutually exclusive) that present themselves. The first is investing in renewable energy research. One might also consider extending tax credits to households that purchase/install renewable energy systems. Check out www.findsolar.com for an example.
The second is to continue to securitize pollution (as has been done--I'll do more research on this and shoot you some refs). Basically, pollution is securitized as if it were any other commodity, and firms can purchase pollution "credits" to hedge against the impact of their manufacturing or transformational pollution. Dems make the world greener, GOP'ers get their capitalism on, everybody's happy.
That's my suggestion for the first 100 days. All reasonable goals, that do not eschew the GOP or the liberal centrists (in the Norfolk VA area for instance) that voted super-moderates like Jim Webb into office. Truth be told, the man is probably no less conservative than Allen, but at least he's not a racist.
-JP
------------------------
Pic--
Here's some slightly more fleshed out ideas for the Fightin' 110th:
You're right about Iraq, especially the bit about pressuring / talking to Iran being the easiest way to help stabilize the Current Situation. Which is why I'm so happy about Bush nominating Gates for Secretary for Defense: not only does he want to talk to Iran now, he's got a proven track record of being in communication with them from the eighties.
But getting Iran involved (above-board, on our side instead of covertly maneuvering against us) isn't without it's problems, either. A lot of Arab leaders are worried about Iran's increasing stature in the region, especially since they're Shiite and, well, kind of crazy even by Mideast strongmen standards. Conspiracy theories about the mullahs attempting to rebuild the Persian Empire abound on the street. Engage Tehran and you're bound to further incite what's left of Al Qaeda, which would probably make the situation in Iraq even worse.
Of course, you could probably throw a few bones to Syria--maybe help them secure their borders with a 700-mile fence and some cameras from Boeing or something--and hope that they keep the Sunni ex-Baathists under control. Gates doesn't have a history of arms dealing with the Syrians, but it's never too late to start, right? But yeah: "responsible redeployment" isn't the easiest option to implement right now. Sure, Vietnam turned out mostly okay after we left, but there wasn't a radical division between North and South like there is between the three groups in Iraq. Best-case scenario? Restructuring the country into three semi-autonomous small-s states, with a weak federal government to mediate disputes and split up the oil wealth. It'd be kind of like the E.U., except all the bloodshed will be happening concurrently.
Medicare: Baby steps? Fine. Doing nothing? Not okay. The American health care system is broken, fractured, radioactive glass. Bills are rising at something like twice the rate of inflation, you're more likely to die in a hospital from a staph infection you got there than what you went in for (I think, need to check that--it's a seriously high rate), and the level of care has decreased since, well, '94. And this is to say nothing of the 40 million or so uninsured, who have to resort to the emergency room for health care, further driving up the premiums.
It's telling how effective the health care industry's PR campaign in 94 was, when many sane people--certified Dems!--immediately equate socializing medicine in some form with political death. It's the third rail of American politics, sure, but [insert cheesy "powers the subway" line here].
Don't know where to begin here, honestly--a single payer system isn't going to pass, fully socialized health care isn't going to pass, and the current system is a disaster. Which is where the notion of "medicare for all" comes in: a very basic insurance that would probably have somewhere around the same level of coverage I'm paying $80 a month for: two or three doctor's visits a year, small co-pays for generics, a fairly high but not bank-breaking deductible. Want better? You get a plan from your employer.
They might not be able to get anything along these lines passed this Congress, but they might have more luck expanding medicare in some fashion--and simplifying the senior benefit plans that the insurers basically wrote themselves. Vetoed, sure, but at least passed. And then look: Bush is obstructing what the people want. Vote Democrat in 2008 if you want sensible health care!
Education: Fund the schools, sure. Higher more teachers, sure. Quoth Toby Ziegler: "Where's the money?" NCLB is a travesty of a piece of legislation, for all the reasons you mentioned, but part of the problem with the bill is that it imagines there's an easy solution to funding differences. Propose splitting property tax revenues across all schools in a district--or a larger area, say a county or a state--and the richer parents pull their kids out into private schools, or simply protest the changes. And you can't simply funnel more money into failing schools, because without the teachers and a dedicated staff, it's not going to do any good.
(Teach for America's a great program, but the fact is that it's not a long term solution--these kids don't stick around. The prospect of an extra $10Gs a year won't entice a lot more of them to stay, either.)
In the late 90s--I don't know if the government's still doing it—there was a federal "e-Loan" program. The idea was to loan schools (public or private) money on the cheap so that they could buy computers and other technological wonders for their classes; the more students you had on government lunch programs, the more the cost would be subsidized. It's not a perfect program--St. Martin's in the Bronx, for whom my dad put together the proposal, is still paying off a bunch of Pentium IIs—but it might be a good place to start. Improving the infrastructure of schools can't be a bad idea.
Energy and Pollution: Yes, emissions credits are a workable system, though they're not a panacea. I think California's got a system in place now, and maybe one or two other states. I like the idea, I'd love to see it passed, and I'd really love to see an index fund or two in place where I could invest in some myself. Imagine having not only companies in the market for these things, but environmentalists as well. Or something. Not really sure if saying that out loud is a good idea.
How do you feel about a carbon tax? Taxing both individuals and corporations based on the amount of CO2 they produce in a year, and then offering tax credits to make the tax progressive? It might be a difficult thing to push through, and I'm not really sure of the details, and as another negative Tom Friedman's supporting it, but I'm interested in your thoughts.
13 November 2006
03 November 2006
Iraq in Pictures
Came across this image on the NY Times Website on 1 November 2006. I think it speaks for itself. DM at the crime lab pointed out that the peace/chaos continuum lacked a real datum point. Sure there are hash marks at the middle of the yellow section, but what do they really mean? Find below our comparative poltiical benchmarks to give some context to the Department of Defense briefing. As it stands, the current situation in Iraq looks to fall somewhere between Berlin, 1945 and Thermopylae in 480BC. Stay the course...
31 October 2006
Bush on Iraq: A Second Response
We're glad that the "Bush in Iraq" post has generated so much dialogue. We received another strong reaction, this time from our friend NG in Virginia, taking a hard line against Martin Amis' claim that what Islam needs is a Reformation followed by an Enlightenment. NG writes:
Wars don't cause religious reformations; religious reformations cause wars. The Thirty Years and Hundred Year War (and all the other wars in Europe from, oh, 1550 until the 18th century) were religiously motivated, with the Lutheran princes fighting Catholic ones or Calvinist Brits overthrowing an Anglican King, that kind of thing. Eventually they settled down and stopped focusing on differences so much. There wasn't another Reformation that tempered religious passion in Europe, but rather the focus on the secular values of the Enlightenment.
This whole notion that Islam is just waiting for a Reformation and then they'll be good global citizens like the Christians and the Jews is wrong-headed on so many different levels. First off, as mentioned above, Reformations don't calm down tensions so much as inflame them; you wind up with a new group fighting for recognition amongst a group of elites who want to maintain the status quo. If there was a radically polite version of Shi'a Islam that arose in Basra tomorrow, how long do you think it would last?
Second, there's no single body in Islam--even in Mideast Islam—that has the same stature as the pre-theses Catholic Church in Europe. In Europe, before Luther, Christianity existed in The *Church*, apostolic and catholic. There was a hierarchy in that Church, with most of the religious authority centralized in the hands of the Pope. There was a single body in European Christianity that was a relatively easy target for reform.
But in Islam, you don't have that. You have the major division between Sunni and Shi'a Islam, living together in close proximity. Shi'a Islam, today, has something resembling a Pope--Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and Khameini in Iran--that acts in a similar way to the organization of the European, medieval church. But this is relatively new, originating in the last two hundred or so years (or longer, not entirely sure on the facts here), but at the very least, not reaching back to Mohammed himself. It's not 1300 years old. You could try to rebel against this Church, but see how long you last in Basra or Baghdad or Qum or Tehran. Hint: hope you were looking for martyrdom.
And Sunni Islam is totally decentralized. Don't think "Church," think "Rabbinical Judaism," where local Islamic jurists make religiouspronouncements based on the Qu'ran, the Hadith and the assorted bodies of Islamic law (there are four Sunni schools and one Shi'a). There's no one body to appeal to, no one body to attempt to reform, no Church to rebel against. A classical, European-style Reformation just isn't possible in Islam.
But here's the rub (and the third point): A lot of what's going on in Islam over the last three hundred years or so has beenreformation-like. The Salafist movement--the guys who toss the 1300 years of accumulated law out the window in favor of what's going on in the Qu'ran and the sayings of the prophet--bears a lot of similarities to Luther, who decided to throw out 1500 years or so of Christian theology in favor of returning to the Bible itself. But who are these Salafis? The Muslim Brothers. Hamas. The Taliban (to a degree). You know, the guys we don't like, and don't like us back. The guys who blow things up and like to start wars. And the
Wahhabis--oh, Jesus. Those guys are frickin' nuts.
The last thing Islam needs is another Reformation. What the Islamic world needs is an Enlightenment. But again, there are too manydifferences between the modern-day Middle East and eighteenth century Europe. You can't just take what happened three hundred years ago, in a very specific cultural milieu and assume that this broadly similar but quite different situation will turn out in a similar fashion.
For example, Christianity has always had a strong element of secularism to it: That line about "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's" makes it easy for Christians to claim that temporal and spiritual authorities are two different things. But there's no similar line in the Qu'ran or the Hadith, which is a fact that Muslims love to point out when you suggest that they create a purely secular, religiously tolerant government. And again, the whole power base of Islam is different than pre-reformation Europe, and so is the distribution of temporal power. And so are the hatreds. Imagine a world in which, following the Great Schism, the leaders of the Orthodox Church lead a charge on Rome and killed the Pope and most of the curia. And then moved in, leaving Catholics in, say, England and France and Germany, with the Orthodox Church controlling the rest of the continent. The hatreds that would be created from such a drastic event, followed by living in such close proximity to one another for so long, are roughly the same as the hatreds that exist between the Sunni and Shi'a populations in Iraq.
An Enlightenment is going to have a hard time forming in that environment. And certainly, it won't take the form of French salons and a guillotine, but will be based on the form of the culture that surrounds it, if it happens at all. America opened the box and pulledthe pin on the grenade, but it's not a matter of tossing it away and hoping everything works out. America pulled the pin in the middle of its own ammo dump, and anywhere you throw it, things are gonna explode. Iran is going to consolidate its hold on power in the region, or the Shi'a death squads will spread to Lebanon and help train Hezbollah agents there, possibly casting that country back into civil war, or the Sunni/Wahabbi insurgency will be emboldened and try to take down Syria or Saudi Arabia, or any number of other, terrible scenarios. These are events with serious repercussions for the rest of the world, where as the European religious wars mostly hurt only Europe.
The situation is fucked any way you look at it, and for years. When the best you can hope for some magical calming of the Mideast, at some far point into the future, it isn't just disingenuous, it's dangerous. At some point, we're going to need to find a way to stop the bleeding.
Wars don't cause religious reformations; religious reformations cause wars. The Thirty Years and Hundred Year War (and all the other wars in Europe from, oh, 1550 until the 18th century) were religiously motivated, with the Lutheran princes fighting Catholic ones or Calvinist Brits overthrowing an Anglican King, that kind of thing. Eventually they settled down and stopped focusing on differences so much. There wasn't another Reformation that tempered religious passion in Europe, but rather the focus on the secular values of the Enlightenment.
This whole notion that Islam is just waiting for a Reformation and then they'll be good global citizens like the Christians and the Jews is wrong-headed on so many different levels. First off, as mentioned above, Reformations don't calm down tensions so much as inflame them; you wind up with a new group fighting for recognition amongst a group of elites who want to maintain the status quo. If there was a radically polite version of Shi'a Islam that arose in Basra tomorrow, how long do you think it would last?
Second, there's no single body in Islam--even in Mideast Islam—that has the same stature as the pre-theses Catholic Church in Europe. In Europe, before Luther, Christianity existed in The *Church*, apostolic and catholic. There was a hierarchy in that Church, with most of the religious authority centralized in the hands of the Pope. There was a single body in European Christianity that was a relatively easy target for reform.
But in Islam, you don't have that. You have the major division between Sunni and Shi'a Islam, living together in close proximity. Shi'a Islam, today, has something resembling a Pope--Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and Khameini in Iran--that acts in a similar way to the organization of the European, medieval church. But this is relatively new, originating in the last two hundred or so years (or longer, not entirely sure on the facts here), but at the very least, not reaching back to Mohammed himself. It's not 1300 years old. You could try to rebel against this Church, but see how long you last in Basra or Baghdad or Qum or Tehran. Hint: hope you were looking for martyrdom.
And Sunni Islam is totally decentralized. Don't think "Church," think "Rabbinical Judaism," where local Islamic jurists make religiouspronouncements based on the Qu'ran, the Hadith and the assorted bodies of Islamic law (there are four Sunni schools and one Shi'a). There's no one body to appeal to, no one body to attempt to reform, no Church to rebel against. A classical, European-style Reformation just isn't possible in Islam.
But here's the rub (and the third point): A lot of what's going on in Islam over the last three hundred years or so has beenreformation-like. The Salafist movement--the guys who toss the 1300 years of accumulated law out the window in favor of what's going on in the Qu'ran and the sayings of the prophet--bears a lot of similarities to Luther, who decided to throw out 1500 years or so of Christian theology in favor of returning to the Bible itself. But who are these Salafis? The Muslim Brothers. Hamas. The Taliban (to a degree). You know, the guys we don't like, and don't like us back. The guys who blow things up and like to start wars. And the
Wahhabis--oh, Jesus. Those guys are frickin' nuts.
The last thing Islam needs is another Reformation. What the Islamic world needs is an Enlightenment. But again, there are too manydifferences between the modern-day Middle East and eighteenth century Europe. You can't just take what happened three hundred years ago, in a very specific cultural milieu and assume that this broadly similar but quite different situation will turn out in a similar fashion.
For example, Christianity has always had a strong element of secularism to it: That line about "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's" makes it easy for Christians to claim that temporal and spiritual authorities are two different things. But there's no similar line in the Qu'ran or the Hadith, which is a fact that Muslims love to point out when you suggest that they create a purely secular, religiously tolerant government. And again, the whole power base of Islam is different than pre-reformation Europe, and so is the distribution of temporal power. And so are the hatreds. Imagine a world in which, following the Great Schism, the leaders of the Orthodox Church lead a charge on Rome and killed the Pope and most of the curia. And then moved in, leaving Catholics in, say, England and France and Germany, with the Orthodox Church controlling the rest of the continent. The hatreds that would be created from such a drastic event, followed by living in such close proximity to one another for so long, are roughly the same as the hatreds that exist between the Sunni and Shi'a populations in Iraq.
An Enlightenment is going to have a hard time forming in that environment. And certainly, it won't take the form of French salons and a guillotine, but will be based on the form of the culture that surrounds it, if it happens at all. America opened the box and pulledthe pin on the grenade, but it's not a matter of tossing it away and hoping everything works out. America pulled the pin in the middle of its own ammo dump, and anywhere you throw it, things are gonna explode. Iran is going to consolidate its hold on power in the region, or the Shi'a death squads will spread to Lebanon and help train Hezbollah agents there, possibly casting that country back into civil war, or the Sunni/Wahabbi insurgency will be emboldened and try to take down Syria or Saudi Arabia, or any number of other, terrible scenarios. These are events with serious repercussions for the rest of the world, where as the European religious wars mostly hurt only Europe.
The situation is fucked any way you look at it, and for years. When the best you can hope for some magical calming of the Mideast, at some far point into the future, it isn't just disingenuous, it's dangerous. At some point, we're going to need to find a way to stop the bleeding.
27 October 2006
Bush on Iraq: A Response
Received this response from TN, broadcasting from midtown Manhattan; proof positive that the legal and financial fields are capable of cooperating. TN is a fellow alumnus of the University of Virginia, also Jesuit educated, is very well-read and curses like a sailor. His unfortunate decision to take issue with parts Wednesday's post lead him to offer the following comments, which we humbly submit:
JP, Can't say I agree with you, and I can't say I can out argue you, but we can leave that at that. My simple rebuttals:
1) Decentralized Africa is on its own, and I'd venture to say that it is worse off--well, at least in the short-run. That said, I acknowledge that these nation-states may be better suited in the long-run as plans to inject freedom alongside vaccines continually yield to the fundamental reality that self-governance is necessary for any form of centralization or change. Nonetheless...
2) Though TR-Bush II global policing has been motivated by political (and especially personal, in my opinion) egotism, I can accept these motivations when I consider their potential effects:
a) Sadaam is gone, and authoritarianism is no longer accepted as a standard in the Middle East. Crazy me almost thinks that an historically brief period of insurgent rule validates the ideal of democracy over time. The biggest obstacle, as always, is money--but not to worry, the Chinese will import their factories to the MidEast once they control the global economy. In the numbers-game, the US is giving lives in an exposé of the dangers of decentralization when facing a world of global power-states. See the films Braveheart/Michael Collins--murderers, even when turned-martyrs, have paved the way for independence and democracy everywhere. A common enemy may be the best thing the Middle East has.
b) Considering this, as an American, the MidEast has to know that there are consequences for fucking with us. Such tension has historically left either side facing a this-or-that decision: the greater power has to consider the losses associated w/foreign controls. There are benefits of this control (oil! greenpoint!); but, more importantly, after a period of destabilization, the developing nation-state has to decide whether it wishes to pursue the path of continued militaristic growth or consent to achieved gains and form localized pockets of governance. Postmodernism tells me that the anti-war effort assumes that the people of the MidEast are incapable of reaching this conclusion. While their poverty makes their progress seem painfully slow in the global world, I think they'll figure it out.
c) If it weren't for WWII, Gandhi wouldn't have worked. And, India only survives because it has learned to cooperate in a globalized world. For every ten (hundred, thousand, whatever--I was an English major), there will be a small handful of Iraqis who see the opportunity in global cooperation. Soon, their sons and daughters may be your doctor, will be your nurse, and definitely will take your call re: your problemswith your PDA/TV/DVD.
Figured I'd try my hand at blogging. Fuck you for being smarter than me. I'll buy you someday. Ka-plah! --TN
NB: 2c is in part already taking place. For one example, visit the website of Iraq born, London based Architect Zaha Hadid, whose work has been displayed this Summer at the Guggenheim museum. Ms. Hadid's work is both conceptually challenging and quite beautiful, and many of her architectural designs are sketched not with paper and ink but as oil paintings. Whether or not her example will be followed remains to be seen...
25 October 2006
Bush on Iraq: Cramming for Midterms
President Bush addressed the nation earlier this morning from the white house. You can read the transcript of his speech here. Days after the White House publicly jettisoned the "stay the course" mantra (which I confess always made me think more about Dana Carvey impersonating Bush I), Bush II's comments in today's press conference represent a decided shift in White House policy. Looking over Mr. Bush's statement, there are elements of change (brought on by the pressure of Iraqi violence and the upcoming midterm election), but there are certain, more latent and more troubling similarities to his old doctrine.
In pursuit of this goal, I have broken up various lines of the President's speech in order to weigh in on where exactly they fit in the general tenor of his administration. As you will see, some of Mr. Bush's comments are well-taken, while others seem to obfuscate the problems that actually exist, both in our approach to Iraq and within the country itself. Let us look more deeply into the properties of Mr. Bush's speech:
Honest:
"The enemy we face in Iraq has evolved over the past three years. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, a sophisticated and violent insurgency took root."
Bush fully acknowledges the dire condition of Iraq in the wake of the war of liberation. One wonders just how sophisticated the insurgency is, especially considering the fact that Iraqi officials and civilians seem to be the target of the violence more than Coalition troops. Commenting on this cycle of Violence, Brendan O'Neill describes Iraq as the world's first "Suicide State." It is interesting to consider the civil unrest in Iraq in contrast to the Hungarian Revolt in 1956 (whose 50th Anniversary was yesterday). Specifically, the Hungarian Revolt was a clear action of a unified people around a clear, though perhaps uncertain leader in Imre Nagy. O'Neill notes that no clear leaders have emerged within the various sectarian groups that roam the streets of Baghdad blanketing the city in violence. No political program has been expressed, not even a simple proclamation by the Shia assassin squad that "violence will reign until the Sunnis are no more." Perhaps their actions can speak for their program, but perhaps also the Iraqi "insurgency" is in point of fact the decentralized explosion of deep seated tribal differences--of the sort of great hatred that can only be held in check by an authoritarian regime (s.v. Yugoslavia as a Soviet satellite). That unsettling notion leads Bush to take the following tact in today's press conference:
Misleading:
"The cycle of violence in which al Qaeda insurgents attacked Shia civilians and Shia death squads retaliated against Sunnis has sharply increased in recent months, particularly in Baghdad."
Describing Iraqi civil unrest in these terms makes sense, but the causality that Bush draws seems geared more towards buttressing the American justification for intervention more than painting a clear picture of the Iraqi polity. By tracing the "insurgency" back to al Qaeda as its prime-mover, Bush can successfully restore a notion of legitimacy to the Iraqi campaign on the basis that it fits squarely within the "war on terror" rubric. It is clear that such an association is self-serving, showing Bush's ability to adjust his argument without sacrificing its fundamental assumptions. This does not, however, change the fact that Bush may be right to argue that our military presence must not change in Iraq. We'll see why later in his speech.
Neocon:
"I will also explain why, despite the difficulties and bloodshed, it remains critical that America defeat the enemy in Iraq by helping the Iraqis build a free nation that can sustain itself and defend itself."
I am getting sick and tired of hearing about building a "free nation." It's as if Paul Wolfowitz was making some sort of penance for the Kissenger doctrine of a generation ago. Rather than install or support dictators in order to ensure a balance of power, as Kissenger unscrupulously supported throughout his career, the current tact is to forcibly inject freedom into political environments that may simply not want, or not be ready to deal with it. That said, Bush himself does not tow the neo-con line with such zealousness. There are elements of Kissengerian policy, which henceforth will be noted as "fascist doomfire stability theory" or FDST, that exist in Bush's doctrine today:
Realpolitik:
"Our security at home depends on ensuring that Iraq is an ally in the war on terror and does not become a terrorist haven like Afghanistan under the Taliban."
It has to be noted. In every speech. Bush signed a contract with Rupert Murdoch, Lockheed Martin and Satan. He must, in every speech on Iraq, maintain that it must not align itself against America. The "terrorist haven" phenomenon is one thing, but the larger principle is for the United States to have a likeminded government in an Arab nation in the Middle East. A pro-US Iraq is a fulcrum for dealing with Syria and Iran. No longer will Ahmadinejad see only Israel between Iran and the US. I do not mean to put this in antagonistic terms. A pro-US Arab nation would give us common ground with other Middle East nations, and that is something that benefits the entire world. That said, Bush (in a completely unreasonable rhetorical flourish) also highlights the dark side to realpolitik:
"If we do not defeat the terrorists or extremists in Iraq, they will gain access to vast oil reserves and use Iraq as a base to overthrow moderate governments across the broader Middle East."
Why, Mr. Bush, would you bring oil into the discussion. It's the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, so shut up and don't mention it. He should have just come out and said, "It would also be good for our pro-US Muslim nation in the Middle East to trade oil with us." What are the "terrorists" going to do with their vast oil fields? Al Qaeda is not comprised of businessmen; they leave that work to the Saudis. Sure it is possible that terror networks may be able to finance their operations with oil money, but what Bush is really worried about is having another Iran or Venezuela to deal with; a nation that hates the US while at the same time possessing the resources upon which we depend. Of course, now that Bush has opened the door for the power-dynamics discussion he cannot leave us feeling secure. So he continues:
Saber-Rattling:
"They [terrorists] will launch new attacks on America from this new safe haven. They will pursue their goal of a radical Islamic empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia."
Be afraid. I'll point out, here, that a better justification for solidifying our military presence in Iraq was advanced a few weeks ago by Christopher Hitchens, here. In closing his polemic against Henry Kissenger, Hitchens observes that the Iraq-Vietnam analogy does not hold nearly as well as the Iraq-Cambodia analogy. Leaving Iraq would result in a completely anarchic (rather than today's mostly anarchic) social order in which Iraq as "suicide state" would fall into chaos. Martin Amis, a writer for the UK paper The Telegraph, commented on this in his review of Bob Woodward's "State of Denial." Citing Vali Nasr's "The Shia Revival," Amis writes:
"The most momentous consequence of the Iraq adventure is the ignition of the Muslim civil war... the one between the Sunni and the Shia, which has been marinating for a millennium."
He continues:
"We can say, with the facetiousness of despair, that it’s just as well to get this out of the way; and let us hope it is merely a Thirty Years’ War, and not a Hundred Years’ War. After that, we can look forward to a Reformation, followed, in due course, by an Enlightenment."
Perhaps he is right, and this is a cultural process that must, at some point, run its course. That leaves the US feeling a little too much like Pandora. In other words, you have to throw the grenade after you've pulled out the pin.
False:
"We must not fall prey to the sophisticated propaganda by the enemy, who is trying to undermine our confidence and make us believe that our presence in Iraq is the cause of all its problems."
The only sophisticated propaganda has come from Bush's own Intelligence agencies. Kudos to FoxNews for linking on their website the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, which leaked to the public a month ago. This was the report that concluded the US policy in Iraq was creating more terrorists than it was capturing or killing, and that ultimately the American campaign in Iraq has made the country less safe. Take this in conjunction with the fact that there are no "leaders" of the Iraqi insurgency, and so there cannot be any "sophisticated propaganda" coming from the vacuous entities which comprise the insurgency. The only administrations which have determined that our presence in Iraq is the cause of its (and our) problems are American Intelligence Administrations. Still, who can expect Bush to take that kind of responsibility right before an election? That’s right, this speech comes right before an election, and as such it must be more self-serving than clarifying. This, mind you, is not a phenomenon endemic to Bush, or Republicans, but to the structure of American Political at large. But, since we're dealing in concrete terms, with the 2006 Midterms bearing down upon us, Bush closes with some concrete terms of his own.
Frightening:
"I'm confident this generation will answer that call and defeat and ideology that is bent on destroying America and all that we stand for."
Just in case you were wondering, the stakes of this game are the nation and all we stand for. We're all in. This is partly true. The only folks that definitely have all their chips on the table are the President and his Party.
In pursuit of this goal, I have broken up various lines of the President's speech in order to weigh in on where exactly they fit in the general tenor of his administration. As you will see, some of Mr. Bush's comments are well-taken, while others seem to obfuscate the problems that actually exist, both in our approach to Iraq and within the country itself. Let us look more deeply into the properties of Mr. Bush's speech:
Honest:
"The enemy we face in Iraq has evolved over the past three years. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, a sophisticated and violent insurgency took root."
Bush fully acknowledges the dire condition of Iraq in the wake of the war of liberation. One wonders just how sophisticated the insurgency is, especially considering the fact that Iraqi officials and civilians seem to be the target of the violence more than Coalition troops. Commenting on this cycle of Violence, Brendan O'Neill describes Iraq as the world's first "Suicide State." It is interesting to consider the civil unrest in Iraq in contrast to the Hungarian Revolt in 1956 (whose 50th Anniversary was yesterday). Specifically, the Hungarian Revolt was a clear action of a unified people around a clear, though perhaps uncertain leader in Imre Nagy. O'Neill notes that no clear leaders have emerged within the various sectarian groups that roam the streets of Baghdad blanketing the city in violence. No political program has been expressed, not even a simple proclamation by the Shia assassin squad that "violence will reign until the Sunnis are no more." Perhaps their actions can speak for their program, but perhaps also the Iraqi "insurgency" is in point of fact the decentralized explosion of deep seated tribal differences--of the sort of great hatred that can only be held in check by an authoritarian regime (s.v. Yugoslavia as a Soviet satellite). That unsettling notion leads Bush to take the following tact in today's press conference:
Misleading:
"The cycle of violence in which al Qaeda insurgents attacked Shia civilians and Shia death squads retaliated against Sunnis has sharply increased in recent months, particularly in Baghdad."
Describing Iraqi civil unrest in these terms makes sense, but the causality that Bush draws seems geared more towards buttressing the American justification for intervention more than painting a clear picture of the Iraqi polity. By tracing the "insurgency" back to al Qaeda as its prime-mover, Bush can successfully restore a notion of legitimacy to the Iraqi campaign on the basis that it fits squarely within the "war on terror" rubric. It is clear that such an association is self-serving, showing Bush's ability to adjust his argument without sacrificing its fundamental assumptions. This does not, however, change the fact that Bush may be right to argue that our military presence must not change in Iraq. We'll see why later in his speech.
Neocon:
"I will also explain why, despite the difficulties and bloodshed, it remains critical that America defeat the enemy in Iraq by helping the Iraqis build a free nation that can sustain itself and defend itself."
I am getting sick and tired of hearing about building a "free nation." It's as if Paul Wolfowitz was making some sort of penance for the Kissenger doctrine of a generation ago. Rather than install or support dictators in order to ensure a balance of power, as Kissenger unscrupulously supported throughout his career, the current tact is to forcibly inject freedom into political environments that may simply not want, or not be ready to deal with it. That said, Bush himself does not tow the neo-con line with such zealousness. There are elements of Kissengerian policy, which henceforth will be noted as "fascist doomfire stability theory" or FDST, that exist in Bush's doctrine today:
Realpolitik:
"Our security at home depends on ensuring that Iraq is an ally in the war on terror and does not become a terrorist haven like Afghanistan under the Taliban."
It has to be noted. In every speech. Bush signed a contract with Rupert Murdoch, Lockheed Martin and Satan. He must, in every speech on Iraq, maintain that it must not align itself against America. The "terrorist haven" phenomenon is one thing, but the larger principle is for the United States to have a likeminded government in an Arab nation in the Middle East. A pro-US Iraq is a fulcrum for dealing with Syria and Iran. No longer will Ahmadinejad see only Israel between Iran and the US. I do not mean to put this in antagonistic terms. A pro-US Arab nation would give us common ground with other Middle East nations, and that is something that benefits the entire world. That said, Bush (in a completely unreasonable rhetorical flourish) also highlights the dark side to realpolitik:
"If we do not defeat the terrorists or extremists in Iraq, they will gain access to vast oil reserves and use Iraq as a base to overthrow moderate governments across the broader Middle East."
Why, Mr. Bush, would you bring oil into the discussion. It's the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, so shut up and don't mention it. He should have just come out and said, "It would also be good for our pro-US Muslim nation in the Middle East to trade oil with us." What are the "terrorists" going to do with their vast oil fields? Al Qaeda is not comprised of businessmen; they leave that work to the Saudis. Sure it is possible that terror networks may be able to finance their operations with oil money, but what Bush is really worried about is having another Iran or Venezuela to deal with; a nation that hates the US while at the same time possessing the resources upon which we depend. Of course, now that Bush has opened the door for the power-dynamics discussion he cannot leave us feeling secure. So he continues:
Saber-Rattling:
"They [terrorists] will launch new attacks on America from this new safe haven. They will pursue their goal of a radical Islamic empire that stretches from Spain to Indonesia."
Be afraid. I'll point out, here, that a better justification for solidifying our military presence in Iraq was advanced a few weeks ago by Christopher Hitchens, here. In closing his polemic against Henry Kissenger, Hitchens observes that the Iraq-Vietnam analogy does not hold nearly as well as the Iraq-Cambodia analogy. Leaving Iraq would result in a completely anarchic (rather than today's mostly anarchic) social order in which Iraq as "suicide state" would fall into chaos. Martin Amis, a writer for the UK paper The Telegraph, commented on this in his review of Bob Woodward's "State of Denial." Citing Vali Nasr's "The Shia Revival," Amis writes:
"The most momentous consequence of the Iraq adventure is the ignition of the Muslim civil war... the one between the Sunni and the Shia, which has been marinating for a millennium."
He continues:
"We can say, with the facetiousness of despair, that it’s just as well to get this out of the way; and let us hope it is merely a Thirty Years’ War, and not a Hundred Years’ War. After that, we can look forward to a Reformation, followed, in due course, by an Enlightenment."
Perhaps he is right, and this is a cultural process that must, at some point, run its course. That leaves the US feeling a little too much like Pandora. In other words, you have to throw the grenade after you've pulled out the pin.
False:
"We must not fall prey to the sophisticated propaganda by the enemy, who is trying to undermine our confidence and make us believe that our presence in Iraq is the cause of all its problems."
The only sophisticated propaganda has come from Bush's own Intelligence agencies. Kudos to FoxNews for linking on their website the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, which leaked to the public a month ago. This was the report that concluded the US policy in Iraq was creating more terrorists than it was capturing or killing, and that ultimately the American campaign in Iraq has made the country less safe. Take this in conjunction with the fact that there are no "leaders" of the Iraqi insurgency, and so there cannot be any "sophisticated propaganda" coming from the vacuous entities which comprise the insurgency. The only administrations which have determined that our presence in Iraq is the cause of its (and our) problems are American Intelligence Administrations. Still, who can expect Bush to take that kind of responsibility right before an election? That’s right, this speech comes right before an election, and as such it must be more self-serving than clarifying. This, mind you, is not a phenomenon endemic to Bush, or Republicans, but to the structure of American Political at large. But, since we're dealing in concrete terms, with the 2006 Midterms bearing down upon us, Bush closes with some concrete terms of his own.
Frightening:
"I'm confident this generation will answer that call and defeat and ideology that is bent on destroying America and all that we stand for."
Just in case you were wondering, the stakes of this game are the nation and all we stand for. We're all in. This is partly true. The only folks that definitely have all their chips on the table are the President and his Party.
20 October 2006
Academy Experiment
Last week I came across this website, a random essay generator driven by a program aptly titled the Dada Engine. The brilliant handlers at elsewhere.org filled the Dada Engine's word pools with various abstruse literary theory terms, author names, vague references and half-quotes (some legitimate, others invented by the engine). What results when you follow the link above, which I certainly hope you did, is a randomly generated essay on Postmodernism. Do your best to read it, and when you finish you are rewarded with the following explanation at the bottom of the page:
"The essay you have just seen is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator. To generate another essay, follow this link."
Having spent a good deal of my time as an undergraduate studying the jargon that the site so smartly lampoons, I cannot help but feel simultaneously delighted and insulted. I'm delighted because, as an undergraduate, I specialized more in sophistry than in scholarship. That is to say, I excelled in the art of talking through a seminar than I did in contributing to a seminar. Those of us who spent time in classes titled "German Intellectual History" or "Modern and Postmodern Poetry" will know exactly what I mean. Chances are, I was that guy who you hated in class. I'm not proud of this, nor am I ashamed. I am delighted because the Dada Engine has finally called out all sophists in sheep's clothing.
I should not have been so surprised, however, because looking over the Dada Engine led me to recollect a similar shakeup in the academic world that took place in the mid nineties. In 1994, an NYU physicist named Alan D. Sokal composed an essay entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Wow. You can read a copy of the essay on Dr. Sokal's personal NYU page here. Dr. Sokal's essay is a fabrication. It is a meaningless string of non-sequiturs, semi-sequiturs and unsubstantiated assertions which develops a theory of quantum gravity that liberates itself from the dominating effects of traditional gender norms. Dr. Sokal's experiment in 1995/96 was to attempt to get his thoroughly documented, eloquent though meaningless essay accepted and published by a major academic journal. To his dismay, the essay was accepted and published by the journal "Social Text," edited the likes of Andrew Ross and Fredrick Jameson, eminent scholars in literary and cultural criticism. Here is a selection from the start of Dr. Sokal's essay:
"But deep conceptual shifts within twentieth-century science have undermined this Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics1; revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast further doubt on its credibility2; and, most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of ``objectivity''.3 It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical ``reality'', no less than social ``reality'', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific ``knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities."
Laden with jargon, Dr. Sokal's rhetoric obscures what little substance the essay actually contains. In a paper published shortly after the debut of his experimental essay, Sokal writes:
"Basically, I claim that quantum gravity -- the still-speculative theory of space and time on scales of a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter -- has profound political implications (which, of course, are ``progressive''). In support of this improbable proposition, I proceed as follows: First, I quote some controversial philosophical pronouncements of Heisenberg and Bohr, and assert (without argument) that quantum physics is profoundly consonant with ``postmodernist epistemology.'' Next, I assemble a pastiche -- Derrida and general relativity, Lacan and topology, Irigaray and quantum gravity -- held together by vague rhetoric about ``nonlinearity'', ``flux'' and ``interconnectedness.'' Finally, I jump (again without argument) to the assertion that ``postmodern science'' has abolished the concept of objective reality."
You've sat next to people in classes who you know are full of shit; who have mastered jargon and rhetoric without knowing (or caring) about the concepts that they toss around like paper-airplanes. I was an unabashed member of that group during my undergraduate time. I write this without any sense of fault or guilt. It is the lot of an undergraduate to play fast and loose with concepts--to learn the ropes while learning how to navigate academic waters. Sokal's experiment had, lamentably, found that some of those snake oil salesmen had in point of fact penetrated the highest reaches of the academy. He acknowledges that central to his experiment was the fact that his account quantum gravity liberating the political arena is inherently praiseworthy of the general themes that dominate postmodern literary criticism. A cynical overreaction would be to call academics a bunch of self-serving sycophants, yet as scholarship (especially in the humanities) becomes increasingly jargon laden and inaccessible to the uninitiated, circles that engage in these sorts of dialogue appear more like self-preserving tribesmen than champions of culture and erudition.
Sokal himself acknowledges in his revelatory essay:
"The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least, that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left have been getting intellectually lazy. The editors of Social Text liked my article because they liked its conclusion: that ``the content and methodology of postmodern science provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project.'' They apparently felt no need to analyze the quality of the evidence, the cogency of the arguments, or even the relevance of the arguments to the purported conclusion. "
It is out of a sense of responsibility that Sokal challenges the academic laziness that he recognized within the academy. The responsibility felt by a professor who considers himself "an old leftist," extends beyond such considerations of academic rigor, I believe, to a larger sense of civic responsibility that the academy must strive to achieve. It is very easy to see the public benefit of scientific and technological research institutions, and there is a correspondingly large percentage of public appropriations to fund laboratories and departments in the natural and applied sciences. Not so in the humanities, where grant money is increasingly scarce in part because "output," if you could even call it that, does not have a clear social impact. Furthermore, the nature of scholarship in the humanities eschews as often as it bolsters public dialogue. The discussion over intellectual rigor prompts a secondary but no less important discussion on academic relevance. As someone who affirms the importance of literary criticism (albeit without the expertise or eloquence to really express it in useful terms), I very much hope that the lessons Dr. Sokal imparted upon the academy will finally, a decade later, begin to sink in.
Soon: A guest essay on the science behind the Space Elevator.
Later: An account of Donald Rumsfeld.
Still Later: An appraisal of the Midterm Elections.
12 October 2006
Approaching Korea
Robert D. Kaplan, editor of the Atlantic Monthly has published an article in its October issue entitled When North Korea Falls. In it, he takes a very different approach to the current diplomatic and military crisis in North Korea. In the article, Kaplan considers North Korea's recent nuclear test in the context of a regime in decline, and posits some possible outcomes of the implosion of the Kim family regime. He also locates North Korea in the larger context of the region, a tumultuous area of the world where super-powers, former-superpowers and would-be successors seem to collide in great a tectonic shift. In that respect, the State Department's commitment to the six-nation talks, which join Japan, South Korea, Russia and China in the discussion between North Korea and the United States, may hinder progress if only to ensure the safety and stability of the entire Pacific region.
Having interviewed many key diplomatic and military personnel, Kaplan portrays a picture of North Korea as a regime in rapid decline. The recent coverage of North Korea's nuclear test has not highlighted the precarious position the Kim family occupies both domestically and abroad. Specifically he highlights seven steps that portend a regime's decline:
Phase One: resource depletion;
Phase Two: the failure to maintain infrastructure around the country because of resource depletion;
Phase Three: the rise of independent fiefs informally controlled by local party apparatchiks or warlords, along with widespread corruption to circumvent a failing central government;
Phase Four: the attempted suppression of these fiefs by the KFR once it feels that they have become powerful enough;
Phase Five: active resistance against the central government;
Phase Six: the fracture of the regime; and
Phase Seven: the formation of new national leadership.
After setting down this schematic, Kaplan observes, "North Korea probably reached Phase Four in the mid-1990s, but was saved by subsidies from China and South Korea, as well as by famine aid from the United States. It has now gone back to Phase Three. " If you do not agree, consider this 2002 Vanity Fair essay written by Christopher Hitchens which describes a carefully manipulated tour of North Korea. In the article, he presciently writes, "Like some Lilliput masquerading as Brobdingnag, North Korea likes to bluff the rest of the world and force it to ask, Would this regime be prepared to immolate itself and others to make a last, dying point?" Kaplan acknowledges this sentiment as he observes that as totalitarian regimes proceed down the checklist of decline, the propensity for spontaneous, violent lashing out increases. In the same way a battered boxer becomes very erratic in the later rounds, North Korea as it weakens may become increasingly dangerous.
One overall theme of his article is to highlight the relative weakness of the regime that underlies North Korea's recent saber rattling. The missile tests this past summer (the results of which were not conclusively positive) coupled with last week's nuclear test (which also has not been conclusively considered successful) paint the picture of a regime making knee-jerk reactions in order to gain a stronger diplomatic position. The main demand voiced by Kim Jong Il has not been for economic, territorial or military concessions, but rather to abandon six-nation talks and to deal bi-laterally with the United States. Kaplan praises the US for not overreacting to the tests, in an era where overreaction seems to be the norm.
Jacob Weisberg's excellent article That Axis of Evil which leads in this week's update of Slate.com speaks to the Bush administration's capacity to exacerbate international problems. In it he traces our increasingly tenuous foreign relations back to the 2002 State of the Union address where Iraq, Iran and North Korea were joined together as an ignominious and collective threat to the United States. Flashy as though Bush's rhetoric may have been, Weisberg argues that it has further radicalized Iran and North Korea in terms of their US relations. It certainly doesn't help matters that one regime in the tripartite axis has been decimated by a US military intervention. It becomes less surprising then that Iran would elect the very-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response to American support for the conservative-ish Bush administration. I describe the administration in those terms because the real conservatives at play are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who will not be discussed because they warrant articles of their own. Suffice to say, the Bush administration has made it clear that it will adopt a realist/power-politics approach to US foreign relations. Thus, Weisberg concludes, "Iran and North Korea drew from Bush's idealist invasion the realist lesson that only a nuclear deterrent could preserve them from regime change." In short, the US has set a precedent, and our adversaries have acknowledged it and are playing by its rules. I shudder, if only for my own dear friends that are bravely serving in the US armed forces, that their next few years of service may prove exceedingly dangerous.
We can be thankful that in the past few weeks, cooler heads have prevailed. It almost becomes cause for concern how underwhelming the public reaction has been to the news. Just yesterday, my colleagues down at the crime lab were more worried about a plane crashing into a building on the upper east side of New York, than anything else. Hell, I was more concerned that the Colts didn't cover the spread on Sunday than I am about the total destabilization of the Pacific rim. Though a cataclysm seems unlikely, and a military response an outside possibility, the stakes have inexorably been raised. For all our concerns, the Korean kudzu will not unravel any time soon.
--------------------
Coming Soon: Recalling Alan Sokel's physics experiment with the humanities.
Having interviewed many key diplomatic and military personnel, Kaplan portrays a picture of North Korea as a regime in rapid decline. The recent coverage of North Korea's nuclear test has not highlighted the precarious position the Kim family occupies both domestically and abroad. Specifically he highlights seven steps that portend a regime's decline:
Phase One: resource depletion;
Phase Two: the failure to maintain infrastructure around the country because of resource depletion;
Phase Three: the rise of independent fiefs informally controlled by local party apparatchiks or warlords, along with widespread corruption to circumvent a failing central government;
Phase Four: the attempted suppression of these fiefs by the KFR once it feels that they have become powerful enough;
Phase Five: active resistance against the central government;
Phase Six: the fracture of the regime; and
Phase Seven: the formation of new national leadership.
After setting down this schematic, Kaplan observes, "North Korea probably reached Phase Four in the mid-1990s, but was saved by subsidies from China and South Korea, as well as by famine aid from the United States. It has now gone back to Phase Three. " If you do not agree, consider this 2002 Vanity Fair essay written by Christopher Hitchens which describes a carefully manipulated tour of North Korea. In the article, he presciently writes, "Like some Lilliput masquerading as Brobdingnag, North Korea likes to bluff the rest of the world and force it to ask, Would this regime be prepared to immolate itself and others to make a last, dying point?" Kaplan acknowledges this sentiment as he observes that as totalitarian regimes proceed down the checklist of decline, the propensity for spontaneous, violent lashing out increases. In the same way a battered boxer becomes very erratic in the later rounds, North Korea as it weakens may become increasingly dangerous.
One overall theme of his article is to highlight the relative weakness of the regime that underlies North Korea's recent saber rattling. The missile tests this past summer (the results of which were not conclusively positive) coupled with last week's nuclear test (which also has not been conclusively considered successful) paint the picture of a regime making knee-jerk reactions in order to gain a stronger diplomatic position. The main demand voiced by Kim Jong Il has not been for economic, territorial or military concessions, but rather to abandon six-nation talks and to deal bi-laterally with the United States. Kaplan praises the US for not overreacting to the tests, in an era where overreaction seems to be the norm.
Jacob Weisberg's excellent article That Axis of Evil which leads in this week's update of Slate.com speaks to the Bush administration's capacity to exacerbate international problems. In it he traces our increasingly tenuous foreign relations back to the 2002 State of the Union address where Iraq, Iran and North Korea were joined together as an ignominious and collective threat to the United States. Flashy as though Bush's rhetoric may have been, Weisberg argues that it has further radicalized Iran and North Korea in terms of their US relations. It certainly doesn't help matters that one regime in the tripartite axis has been decimated by a US military intervention. It becomes less surprising then that Iran would elect the very-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response to American support for the conservative-ish Bush administration. I describe the administration in those terms because the real conservatives at play are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who will not be discussed because they warrant articles of their own. Suffice to say, the Bush administration has made it clear that it will adopt a realist/power-politics approach to US foreign relations. Thus, Weisberg concludes, "Iran and North Korea drew from Bush's idealist invasion the realist lesson that only a nuclear deterrent could preserve them from regime change." In short, the US has set a precedent, and our adversaries have acknowledged it and are playing by its rules. I shudder, if only for my own dear friends that are bravely serving in the US armed forces, that their next few years of service may prove exceedingly dangerous.
We can be thankful that in the past few weeks, cooler heads have prevailed. It almost becomes cause for concern how underwhelming the public reaction has been to the news. Just yesterday, my colleagues down at the crime lab were more worried about a plane crashing into a building on the upper east side of New York, than anything else. Hell, I was more concerned that the Colts didn't cover the spread on Sunday than I am about the total destabilization of the Pacific rim. Though a cataclysm seems unlikely, and a military response an outside possibility, the stakes have inexorably been raised. For all our concerns, the Korean kudzu will not unravel any time soon.
--------------------
Coming Soon: Recalling Alan Sokel's physics experiment with the humanities.
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