29 June 2007
Winds of Globalization
The global interconnections of societies now make it impossible for us to tolerate foreign governments that tyrannize their own publics, even when, like Iran, they control strategic resources like oil and gas. On the other hand, warfare has become a terribly inefficient and outdated tool for eradicating foreign tyranny. The IT revolution offers much more effective methods, and insulates the attacker of a tyrannical regime from suffering international consequences for its action.
Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute advocated in the Wall Street Journal on June 25, 2007, the display of American strength through continued warfare in Iraq as a way to quell the aggressive policies of the Iranian regime. All this would demonstrate, on the contrary, is American stupidity. Iran showed its ability to withstand a bloody conflict, much better than the U.S., when it beat back the Iraqis in the 1980s.
The failure of the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq should not be taken as a justification to continue a mistaken strategy. Our resources have to be rescued from the Iraq debacle and reserved for protecting our welfare from the threat of terrorism. Any resources that are left for promoting freedom in Iran should be used to encourage its people to wrest control of their own welfare from the hands of religious demagogues.
The global interconnections of societies now make it impossible for us to tolerate foreign governments that tyrannize their own publics, even when, like Iran, they control strategic resources like oil and gas. On the other hand, warfare has become a terribly inefficient and outdated tool for eradicating foreign tyranny. The IT revolution offers much more effective methods, and insulates the attacker of a tyrannical regime from suffering international consequences for its action.
Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute advocated in the Wall Street Journal on June 25, 2007, the display of American strength through continued warfare in Iraq as a way to quell the aggressive policies of the Iranian regime. All this would demonstrate, on the contrary, is American stupidity. Iran showed its ability to withstand a bloody conflict, much better than the U.S., when it beat back the Iraqis in the 1980s.
The failure of the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq should not be taken as a justification to continue a mistaken strategy. Our resources have to be rescued from the Iraq debacle and reserved for protecting our welfare from the threat of terrorism. Any resources that are left for promoting freedom in Iran should be used to encourage its people to wrest control of their own welfare from the hands of religious demagogues.
28 June 2007
Lugar ‘s Switch
Senator Richard Lugar is too smart to have been taken in any longer by calls for supporting military adventurism abroad simply because American troops have been put at risk. The "War on Terror" is not really a military challenge; war is the wrong metaphor. The real challenge is much more tedious: liberating people's minds from domination by antisocial demagogues.
Military engagement is a convenient sacrifice to ask American voters to make. There is a romance to it that makes its mortal danger worth the risk. The genius of the Bush Administration and its strategists was to have recognized how that devil-may-care attitude could be exploited in order to ignore the immense budgetary expense and personal cost and to cement political power. Of course, the objectives of this strategy were transparent to victims in the Middle East and realists in the rest of the world. Moreover, they have become increasingly obvious even to American adventurers.
Perhaps the good intentions of the American people can be defended—a mistaken use of force in protection of our security. Military force clearly was not the appropriate tool for excising the use of terror for objecting to U.S. corporate and government actions. The lesson to be learned from all this is that international Islamic or other foreign critics of American policies need to be educated on how to use the U.S. system to accomplish their objectives, which in some cases may be the same as those desired by American citizens. Terror will only backfire on them, and on Americans as well.
Senator Richard Lugar is too smart to have been taken in any longer by calls for supporting military adventurism abroad simply because American troops have been put at risk. The "War on Terror" is not really a military challenge; war is the wrong metaphor. The real challenge is much more tedious: liberating people's minds from domination by antisocial demagogues.
Military engagement is a convenient sacrifice to ask American voters to make. There is a romance to it that makes its mortal danger worth the risk. The genius of the Bush Administration and its strategists was to have recognized how that devil-may-care attitude could be exploited in order to ignore the immense budgetary expense and personal cost and to cement political power. Of course, the objectives of this strategy were transparent to victims in the Middle East and realists in the rest of the world. Moreover, they have become increasingly obvious even to American adventurers.
Perhaps the good intentions of the American people can be defended—a mistaken use of force in protection of our security. Military force clearly was not the appropriate tool for excising the use of terror for objecting to U.S. corporate and government actions. The lesson to be learned from all this is that international Islamic or other foreign critics of American policies need to be educated on how to use the U.S. system to accomplish their objectives, which in some cases may be the same as those desired by American citizens. Terror will only backfire on them, and on Americans as well.
22 June 2007
One Prosecutor is Missing
In her OpEd in the Wall Street Journal dated June 22, 2007, Dorothy Rabinowitz surprisingly omits from her vilification the most outrageous recent case of prosecutorial abuse, Kenneth Starr. Even only by one measure of expense that she implies was caused by Patrick Fitzgerald's case against Scooter Libby, Mr. Starr’s multimillion dollar effort to embarrass the Clinton presidency was surely more wasteful of government resources than the Libby conviction.
The while that Ms. Rabinowitz laments before the wheels of justice catch up with special prosecutors will also, no doubt, ever exempt Mr. Starr from being held to account.
In her OpEd in the Wall Street Journal dated June 22, 2007, Dorothy Rabinowitz surprisingly omits from her vilification the most outrageous recent case of prosecutorial abuse, Kenneth Starr. Even only by one measure of expense that she implies was caused by Patrick Fitzgerald's case against Scooter Libby, Mr. Starr’s multimillion dollar effort to embarrass the Clinton presidency was surely more wasteful of government resources than the Libby conviction.
The while that Ms. Rabinowitz laments before the wheels of justice catch up with special prosecutors will also, no doubt, ever exempt Mr. Starr from being held to account.
18 June 2007
Generational Blame
The responsibility of my generation and the last few before me for the harmful effects of global warming causes me a feeling of guilt. In addition to my powerlessness in securing for my children their financial futures, I am forced to accept blame for not having militantly resisted literally burning up our hydrocarbon patrimony. I celebrated the material rewards of profligately depleting the world’s energy resources and polluting our atmosphere with their exhaust in order to promote economic development without regard for their potentially terminal side-effects, or even awareness of them.
Nevertheless, I question whether the next generation would have had the ability to cope with global warming, e.g. through engineering expertise and palliative medicine, without the benefit of the wealth created at the expense of environmental preservation. Alarmists about environmental change may be no more than “tree-huggers” who pessimistically assume that any erosion of the status quo, by definition, destroys the general welfare.
Can we have it both ways? Responsible materialism is not an oxymoron. But it requires devotion of the capabilities that materialism creates to rectifying its faults.
The responsibility of my generation and the last few before me for the harmful effects of global warming causes me a feeling of guilt. In addition to my powerlessness in securing for my children their financial futures, I am forced to accept blame for not having militantly resisted literally burning up our hydrocarbon patrimony. I celebrated the material rewards of profligately depleting the world’s energy resources and polluting our atmosphere with their exhaust in order to promote economic development without regard for their potentially terminal side-effects, or even awareness of them.
Nevertheless, I question whether the next generation would have had the ability to cope with global warming, e.g. through engineering expertise and palliative medicine, without the benefit of the wealth created at the expense of environmental preservation. Alarmists about environmental change may be no more than “tree-huggers” who pessimistically assume that any erosion of the status quo, by definition, destroys the general welfare.
Can we have it both ways? Responsible materialism is not an oxymoron. But it requires devotion of the capabilities that materialism creates to rectifying its faults.
08 June 2007
Volunteer Gladiators
A sad deduction from the Iraq invasion is that the creation of an All-Volunteer Army has had the unintended consequence of encouraging the U.S. Government to engage in military adventurism. Ironically, it is a supposedly conservative Republican administration that has adopted this strategy, evidently in pursuit of control of an important oil producer.
The unproved link between Saddam Hussein and the danger of international terror was a red herring that was used duplicitously to obfuscate the real motivation for the invasion of Iraq. Normally, it is conservatives who discount the danger of limited natural resources to economic growth. The pessimistic view that consumerism cannot survive without expansionism is usually considered a fault of liberals. But the temptation to use a tool like the All-Volunteer Army apparently was irresistible to the rightists who controlled the U.S. government during President Bush’s first six years in office. It had to be used for destroying Saddam, regardless of the fact that its purpose could be justified only by submitting to the business objectives of Republicans’ main corporate supporters, heavily tied to the oil industry. This paralleled the Republicans’ abandonment of their traditional fiscal conservatism by ballooning the federal deficit.
The families who enlisted in the military way of life have been disappointed, not to say betrayed by the political leaders to whom they pledged their allegiance. Their lack of trust in the ideals they thought they were serving promises the disappearance of this wellspring of suspended distaste for fighting wars for a living. If not for reasons of fairness, the disappearance of belief that they are serving the goal of preserving the community will make it necessary to re-impose compulsory military service on our modern society.
A sad deduction from the Iraq invasion is that the creation of an All-Volunteer Army has had the unintended consequence of encouraging the U.S. Government to engage in military adventurism. Ironically, it is a supposedly conservative Republican administration that has adopted this strategy, evidently in pursuit of control of an important oil producer.
The unproved link between Saddam Hussein and the danger of international terror was a red herring that was used duplicitously to obfuscate the real motivation for the invasion of Iraq. Normally, it is conservatives who discount the danger of limited natural resources to economic growth. The pessimistic view that consumerism cannot survive without expansionism is usually considered a fault of liberals. But the temptation to use a tool like the All-Volunteer Army apparently was irresistible to the rightists who controlled the U.S. government during President Bush’s first six years in office. It had to be used for destroying Saddam, regardless of the fact that its purpose could be justified only by submitting to the business objectives of Republicans’ main corporate supporters, heavily tied to the oil industry. This paralleled the Republicans’ abandonment of their traditional fiscal conservatism by ballooning the federal deficit.
The families who enlisted in the military way of life have been disappointed, not to say betrayed by the political leaders to whom they pledged their allegiance. Their lack of trust in the ideals they thought they were serving promises the disappearance of this wellspring of suspended distaste for fighting wars for a living. If not for reasons of fairness, the disappearance of belief that they are serving the goal of preserving the community will make it necessary to re-impose compulsory military service on our modern society.
U.S. Embassy Baghdad
The news that First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting may be abusing its laborers at the project to build the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad brings into relief the real meaning of the gigantic American presence that it will cement in the heart of Iraq’s government center. The embassy complex — 21 buildings on 104 acres – is the largest U.S. foreign “diplomatic” installation in the world.
What it represents is the effective transformation of Iraq into a U.S. protectorate, under the control of a major security force and viceroy-like oversight organization. The projected 5,500 employees of the Embassy, insulated from the unrest surrounding them, will be able to enforce the interests of the U.S. administration. Of course, this is frightening only if the election in 2008 results in a continuance of the Iraq Invasion. Otherwise, the U.S. Vatican in Baghdad will become an expensive millstone that will, no doubt, be difficult to dump.
The news that First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting may be abusing its laborers at the project to build the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad brings into relief the real meaning of the gigantic American presence that it will cement in the heart of Iraq’s government center. The embassy complex — 21 buildings on 104 acres – is the largest U.S. foreign “diplomatic” installation in the world.
What it represents is the effective transformation of Iraq into a U.S. protectorate, under the control of a major security force and viceroy-like oversight organization. The projected 5,500 employees of the Embassy, insulated from the unrest surrounding them, will be able to enforce the interests of the U.S. administration. Of course, this is frightening only if the election in 2008 results in a continuance of the Iraq Invasion. Otherwise, the U.S. Vatican in Baghdad will become an expensive millstone that will, no doubt, be difficult to dump.
05 June 2007
Missile Defense and International Terror
The recent controversy over the establishment of NATO anti-missile defenses in Poland and Czech Republic shows that Mr. Putin shares Mr. Bush’s confusion over how to answer the challenge that International Terror poses to world harmony. Terror is not a new tactic in world politics. The Cold War was commonly referred to as a Balance of Terror. The problem today is that the most frightening sources of terror, fundamentalist Islam and other non-state movements, are not vulnerable to counterbalancing threats of force.
All of them receive financial resources from NGOs and “Rogue States.” These suppliers of funds, recruits, materials and technology are shadow terrorists who cannot be prevented from providing resources or WMD with anti-missile defenses either.
To the extent that the Rogue States threaten other states with nuclear-armed missiles, Russia can provide as effective an anti-missile shield as the U.S. may install in Eastern Europe. The smarter and least costly U.S. strategy would be to enlist Russia to join in a European anti-missile defense system, and to get the Russians to join in combating the root causes of international terror – world poverty and unequal personal opportunity.
The recent controversy over the establishment of NATO anti-missile defenses in Poland and Czech Republic shows that Mr. Putin shares Mr. Bush’s confusion over how to answer the challenge that International Terror poses to world harmony. Terror is not a new tactic in world politics. The Cold War was commonly referred to as a Balance of Terror. The problem today is that the most frightening sources of terror, fundamentalist Islam and other non-state movements, are not vulnerable to counterbalancing threats of force.
All of them receive financial resources from NGOs and “Rogue States.” These suppliers of funds, recruits, materials and technology are shadow terrorists who cannot be prevented from providing resources or WMD with anti-missile defenses either.
To the extent that the Rogue States threaten other states with nuclear-armed missiles, Russia can provide as effective an anti-missile shield as the U.S. may install in Eastern Europe. The smarter and least costly U.S. strategy would be to enlist Russia to join in a European anti-missile defense system, and to get the Russians to join in combating the root causes of international terror – world poverty and unequal personal opportunity.
