19 October 2007
Projecting U.S. Military Power
In his Opinion article in the October 18, 2007, Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger asks whether the projection of U.S. military power into the world irreparably divides the American people. Along with his question of our ability to undertake difficult military missions, this is the wrong question about General Ricardo Sanchez’s “Scream.” If Mr. Henninger’s reporting is correct, then General Sanchez himself was missing the point of dissenters’ objections to the Iraq War when he spoke to journalists in Washington this week.
The military owes its loyalty to its Commander in Chief, but the nation, including its politicians, journalists, and civilian citizens, is sovereign over its President. That is the essence of a democratic republic. General Sanchez was right not to have objected in public to the President’s Iraq war policy while on active duty, although he owed it to his chain of command to tell them his professional doubts about its efficacy. However, it is wrong for him and Mr. Henninger to denounce the public, the press and the Congress for lacking the courage to support a war effort with which they do not agree.
The dilemma we find ourselves in is that a democracy can easily be exploited by an opponent who can act more quickly and in secrecy. Our ability to effectively defend ourselves against a threat like Islamic terrorism, however, is not as much dependent on projecting our military power abroad as on using that power wisely. Acquiescing in wasting that power on an ill-conceived invasion of Iraq was a mistake made in panic that has cost our military and the Iraqi people dearly. Correcting that error must be done with composure and in a way that guards against a similar irrational reflex in the future.
In his Opinion article in the October 18, 2007, Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger asks whether the projection of U.S. military power into the world irreparably divides the American people. Along with his question of our ability to undertake difficult military missions, this is the wrong question about General Ricardo Sanchez’s “Scream.” If Mr. Henninger’s reporting is correct, then General Sanchez himself was missing the point of dissenters’ objections to the Iraq War when he spoke to journalists in Washington this week.
The military owes its loyalty to its Commander in Chief, but the nation, including its politicians, journalists, and civilian citizens, is sovereign over its President. That is the essence of a democratic republic. General Sanchez was right not to have objected in public to the President’s Iraq war policy while on active duty, although he owed it to his chain of command to tell them his professional doubts about its efficacy. However, it is wrong for him and Mr. Henninger to denounce the public, the press and the Congress for lacking the courage to support a war effort with which they do not agree.
The dilemma we find ourselves in is that a democracy can easily be exploited by an opponent who can act more quickly and in secrecy. Our ability to effectively defend ourselves against a threat like Islamic terrorism, however, is not as much dependent on projecting our military power abroad as on using that power wisely. Acquiescing in wasting that power on an ill-conceived invasion of Iraq was a mistake made in panic that has cost our military and the Iraqi people dearly. Correcting that error must be done with composure and in a way that guards against a similar irrational reflex in the future.
Behind the Global Warming Delusions
I’m surprised by Daniel B. Botkin’s facile dismissal of environmentalists’ concerns about ecological changes in our planet, in the October 17, 2007, Wall Street Journal. After all, what is causing vegetation in Manhattan to change and attract mockingbirds to flock to the city? And what is causing the sun’s radiant heat to increase and force the recession of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap? If climate change is not directly responsible for the effects of those underlying causes, perhaps human activity has increased their efficacy.
Yes, earth has been a continually changing home for its inhabitants over its billions of years of existence. Human civilization has only been aware for hundreds of years of the effects of industry on that ecosystem’s friendliness to life. And human industry has affected that system for, at most, 10,000 years, or as little as one/millionth of the time since the Big Bang.
Earth and its inhabitants have dealt with changes to its ecology for billions of years by adjusting to them. That doesn’t mean intelligent creatures such as we don’t have the right to feel compelled to preserve our continued existence. However, adjustment to changes in our environment is just as valid a response to them as trying to prevent or reverse those changes. People like Mr. Botkin should be in the forefront of man’s efforts to manage changes in our environment for our common good, and not use his expertise to deflate the urgency that “true believers in global warming” are bringing to that challenge.
I’m surprised by Daniel B. Botkin’s facile dismissal of environmentalists’ concerns about ecological changes in our planet, in the October 17, 2007, Wall Street Journal. After all, what is causing vegetation in Manhattan to change and attract mockingbirds to flock to the city? And what is causing the sun’s radiant heat to increase and force the recession of Kilimanjaro’s ice cap? If climate change is not directly responsible for the effects of those underlying causes, perhaps human activity has increased their efficacy.
Yes, earth has been a continually changing home for its inhabitants over its billions of years of existence. Human civilization has only been aware for hundreds of years of the effects of industry on that ecosystem’s friendliness to life. And human industry has affected that system for, at most, 10,000 years, or as little as one/millionth of the time since the Big Bang.
Earth and its inhabitants have dealt with changes to its ecology for billions of years by adjusting to them. That doesn’t mean intelligent creatures such as we don’t have the right to feel compelled to preserve our continued existence. However, adjustment to changes in our environment is just as valid a response to them as trying to prevent or reverse those changes. People like Mr. Botkin should be in the forefront of man’s efforts to manage changes in our environment for our common good, and not use his expertise to deflate the urgency that “true believers in global warming” are bringing to that challenge.
12 October 2007
Really Resentful Clarence Thomas
I’ll always believe that Justice Clarence Thomas has an enormous chip on his shoulder. It may be well justified, but it doesn’t as a result make for good law.
His characterization of the school voucher debate as a struggle between “the cognoscenti” and poor urban families illustrates the distortion that Justice Thomas’s attitude introduces into his legal judgment. In the end, the most active and well-financed opponents of school vouchers are teachers unions that do not have the same clout in private or charter schools as in public systems. Surely people raised in economically disadvantaged circumstances can become good teachers without being know-it-alls.
In his defense of Justice Thomas in the October 9, 2007, Wall Street Journal, John Yoo draws a frightening and incongruous conclusion – that the imperfections of our society can be resolved by the Supreme Court. Isn’t that what conservatives resent about the “liberal” Warren Court? When government meets its limits on resolving society’s imperfections it is up to citizens to make government work better, not to rely on interpreters of the law to lead us back to the glorious past of the framers’ original intent.
I’ll always believe that Justice Clarence Thomas has an enormous chip on his shoulder. It may be well justified, but it doesn’t as a result make for good law.
His characterization of the school voucher debate as a struggle between “the cognoscenti” and poor urban families illustrates the distortion that Justice Thomas’s attitude introduces into his legal judgment. In the end, the most active and well-financed opponents of school vouchers are teachers unions that do not have the same clout in private or charter schools as in public systems. Surely people raised in economically disadvantaged circumstances can become good teachers without being know-it-alls.
In his defense of Justice Thomas in the October 9, 2007, Wall Street Journal, John Yoo draws a frightening and incongruous conclusion – that the imperfections of our society can be resolved by the Supreme Court. Isn’t that what conservatives resent about the “liberal” Warren Court? When government meets its limits on resolving society’s imperfections it is up to citizens to make government work better, not to rely on interpreters of the law to lead us back to the glorious past of the framers’ original intent.
08 October 2007
“The War” and Nancy Franklin
I wonder why Nancy Franklin’s pan of the Ken Burns TV series, “The War,” in the September 24, 2007, New Yorker, bothered me so much. It was written with the point of view of a head-in-the-sand thirty-year old who has no sense of history. Baby-boomers like Ms. Franklin still have a derivative personal experience of the horror and inarguable compulsion of that conflict. The victimhood that descended on everyone who lived through it and their progeny was an admirable price to pay for a noble cause; one that did not validate the suffering of draftees in the Vietnam War, or the volunteers in the Iraq War.
Ken Burns is a baby boomer, too. Perhaps he, like me, came to realize that our generation and those that follow have been lucky not to have been confronted with as unconscionably evil a foe as faced our parents in the nineteen-thirties and forties. It is a sort of guilty comfort that we have been privileged to enjoy as a result of their heroism. Seeing that heroism depicted in a quality film that speaks through the words and voices of those who sacrificed so much is an activity that does not grow old, no matter how long it lasts.
I was surprised, therefore, by the tone of Ms. Franklin’s review. The devotion with which Mr. Burns and Lynn Novick worked for six years to produce The War can best be appreciated by those who lived through it and their children. Perhaps it is a trying lesson for people with a more removed experience of WWII to withstand. Mr. Burns’ motivation, the fact that many veterans of The War are dying each day, shrinks each day the size of his appreciative audience. He has succeeded in answering that call. It is up to us to make clear to subsequent generations how important to us is the record of sacrifice that Mr. Burns and Ms. Novick have compiled.
I wonder why Nancy Franklin’s pan of the Ken Burns TV series, “The War,” in the September 24, 2007, New Yorker, bothered me so much. It was written with the point of view of a head-in-the-sand thirty-year old who has no sense of history. Baby-boomers like Ms. Franklin still have a derivative personal experience of the horror and inarguable compulsion of that conflict. The victimhood that descended on everyone who lived through it and their progeny was an admirable price to pay for a noble cause; one that did not validate the suffering of draftees in the Vietnam War, or the volunteers in the Iraq War.
Ken Burns is a baby boomer, too. Perhaps he, like me, came to realize that our generation and those that follow have been lucky not to have been confronted with as unconscionably evil a foe as faced our parents in the nineteen-thirties and forties. It is a sort of guilty comfort that we have been privileged to enjoy as a result of their heroism. Seeing that heroism depicted in a quality film that speaks through the words and voices of those who sacrificed so much is an activity that does not grow old, no matter how long it lasts.
I was surprised, therefore, by the tone of Ms. Franklin’s review. The devotion with which Mr. Burns and Lynn Novick worked for six years to produce The War can best be appreciated by those who lived through it and their children. Perhaps it is a trying lesson for people with a more removed experience of WWII to withstand. Mr. Burns’ motivation, the fact that many veterans of The War are dying each day, shrinks each day the size of his appreciative audience. He has succeeded in answering that call. It is up to us to make clear to subsequent generations how important to us is the record of sacrifice that Mr. Burns and Ms. Novick have compiled.
04 October 2007
Heroes for Ideas
Are heroes people who risk danger, regardless of the goal? Or does their goal have something to do with whether or not they have acted heroically?
In his OpEd in the October 4, 2007, Wall Street Journal, Robert D. Kaplan argues that the soldiers in our all-volunteer armed forces should be respected, if not looked up to, for fighting. That adulation was common when they had no choice in the matter, either because of the draft or, even more fatefully, because their country had been attacked. However, our fighting men and women in Iraq are heroic mainly in the same sense that a prize fighter is – they risk physical harm and mental trauma because they choose to do so for a living. In contrast, even fire fighters and policemen and women are victims of fate – someone has to do what they do.
Indeed, loyalty to a particular territory – inspiring defense of ground as Mr. Kaplan calls it – has lost its primacy. The defense of ideas, which was often identified with territory in the past, has become more important in a “flat” world. This development does not mean that we have little need of heroes, however. That the nation-state is crumbling and nationalism is decaying are not to be lamented. Those archaic concepts have caused much of history’s tragedy. But we do need heroism in the defense of ideas like human dignity and self-determination.
Are heroes people who risk danger, regardless of the goal? Or does their goal have something to do with whether or not they have acted heroically?
In his OpEd in the October 4, 2007, Wall Street Journal, Robert D. Kaplan argues that the soldiers in our all-volunteer armed forces should be respected, if not looked up to, for fighting. That adulation was common when they had no choice in the matter, either because of the draft or, even more fatefully, because their country had been attacked. However, our fighting men and women in Iraq are heroic mainly in the same sense that a prize fighter is – they risk physical harm and mental trauma because they choose to do so for a living. In contrast, even fire fighters and policemen and women are victims of fate – someone has to do what they do.
Indeed, loyalty to a particular territory – inspiring defense of ground as Mr. Kaplan calls it – has lost its primacy. The defense of ideas, which was often identified with territory in the past, has become more important in a “flat” world. This development does not mean that we have little need of heroes, however. That the nation-state is crumbling and nationalism is decaying are not to be lamented. Those archaic concepts have caused much of history’s tragedy. But we do need heroism in the defense of ideas like human dignity and self-determination.
02 October 2007
Trigger-Happy Pickpockets
One reason Americans agreed to change from the draft to all-volunteer armed forces was that it would thereby have the professional, well-trained and motivated manpower to fulfill the country’s emergency and security needs. Much is spent on that training, and salaries and benefits are supposed to be commensurate with the regimentation, risks and responsibilities we ask our soldiers to bear.
According to his OpEd article in the October 1, 2007, Wall Street Journal, Ben Ryan seems to think that pay in the military is not enough, and that he and his colleagues (not to mention their new employers) are free to use for private gain the training and skills received when they were part of it. In effect, because those contracts are more expensive than deploying the military to perform the same tasks, U.S. citizens have been paying twice for the training of security contractor employees.
Military experience has always been a good preparation for civilian pursuits, and this continues to be one of its great recruitment advantages. However, security contractor companies, like Blackwater or Triple Canopy, that have assumed the role of the military in Iraq have been exploiting the veterans they rely on for the services they provide to the U.S. government. As Mr. Ryan says, these employees receive no benefits and are paid only for days they work. The difference between their compensation and the contract value represents a profit margin that these companies probably protect with generous contributions to political lobbying groups.
One reason Americans agreed to change from the draft to all-volunteer armed forces was that it would thereby have the professional, well-trained and motivated manpower to fulfill the country’s emergency and security needs. Much is spent on that training, and salaries and benefits are supposed to be commensurate with the regimentation, risks and responsibilities we ask our soldiers to bear.
According to his OpEd article in the October 1, 2007, Wall Street Journal, Ben Ryan seems to think that pay in the military is not enough, and that he and his colleagues (not to mention their new employers) are free to use for private gain the training and skills received when they were part of it. In effect, because those contracts are more expensive than deploying the military to perform the same tasks, U.S. citizens have been paying twice for the training of security contractor employees.
Military experience has always been a good preparation for civilian pursuits, and this continues to be one of its great recruitment advantages. However, security contractor companies, like Blackwater or Triple Canopy, that have assumed the role of the military in Iraq have been exploiting the veterans they rely on for the services they provide to the U.S. government. As Mr. Ryan says, these employees receive no benefits and are paid only for days they work. The difference between their compensation and the contract value represents a profit margin that these companies probably protect with generous contributions to political lobbying groups.
Wall Street Journal Gets Foxy
Ever since the Rupert Murdoch purchase of the Wall Street Journal, I’m sure that many have been monitoring the editorial pages, as well as the paper’s news coverage, for their reflection of a further reactionary drift, if not a tendency towards sensationalism. The September 29-30, 2007, issue carried an OpEd article by Dan Senor that made a case for intervening in Iran to stop its leaders from leveraging its potential nuclear weapons power to influence regional geopolitics.
Secret collaboration must be under discussion now between the world’s great powers, including the Security Council permanent members, for depriving Iran of a nuclear weapon. After all, what do you do with a misbehaving child who is threatening to use a toy to harm someone else? You take the toy away from him. The key to this collaboration will be multilateral consensus on what follows the deprivation. For God’s sake, we don’t want another occupation like Iraq.
It used to be that the OpEd page of the Journal was a haven of intelligent sanity in the views expressed in the paper. Now the selected writers adhere to a uniform position on domestic and world affairs. They all seem to be acolytes of well-funded conservative advocacy organizations like Freedom’s Watch. The wealthy megalomaniac, Mr. Murdoch, is cleverly reducing the cost of influencing opinion in the U.S. and beyond by relying on tax exempt suppliers of editorial comment to fill the Journal’s editorial pages.
Ever since the Rupert Murdoch purchase of the Wall Street Journal, I’m sure that many have been monitoring the editorial pages, as well as the paper’s news coverage, for their reflection of a further reactionary drift, if not a tendency towards sensationalism. The September 29-30, 2007, issue carried an OpEd article by Dan Senor that made a case for intervening in Iran to stop its leaders from leveraging its potential nuclear weapons power to influence regional geopolitics.
Secret collaboration must be under discussion now between the world’s great powers, including the Security Council permanent members, for depriving Iran of a nuclear weapon. After all, what do you do with a misbehaving child who is threatening to use a toy to harm someone else? You take the toy away from him. The key to this collaboration will be multilateral consensus on what follows the deprivation. For God’s sake, we don’t want another occupation like Iraq.
It used to be that the OpEd page of the Journal was a haven of intelligent sanity in the views expressed in the paper. Now the selected writers adhere to a uniform position on domestic and world affairs. They all seem to be acolytes of well-funded conservative advocacy organizations like Freedom’s Watch. The wealthy megalomaniac, Mr. Murdoch, is cleverly reducing the cost of influencing opinion in the U.S. and beyond by relying on tax exempt suppliers of editorial comment to fill the Journal’s editorial pages.
