10 Comments

A very good summary, thanks for the link. It will be interesting to see if the level of violence subsides after the elections or if it turns into one of faction vs. faction.

Yours truly,

Not So Grand Ayatollah-Bubba

Yes, I too maintain my optimism, even in the face of this morning’s attack on the American soldiers. I think there will be an series of attacks escalating in bloodiness … up until and slightly after the end of January.

I have listened to Thomas P M Barnett’s presentation on the Pentagon’s New Map (on CSpan), which points out that the problems we face come from the “Gap”, countries and nations that are unconnected from the “Core”, ie, the rich countries. He is extremely interesting, with a lot of ideas one likes to think about.

But I disagree with one of his basic theories… that ‘democracy’ is unnecessary to real change in these terrible places. I think of ‘democracy’ as “representative government”, and I think it is a precondition to a better life for most people, because it is the only system that provides enough freedom and flexibility for people to do as well as they can in this life. Fear causes stasis, which is a definition for poverty.

heather

I completely agree.

And Roger, I have found Taheri’s prognostications to be, on the whole, quite reliable.

Jamie Irons

I agree with heather as well.

I feel so bad for the people who lost their lives in Mosul today.

God bless them and their families.

I hope that their deaths will not have been in vain. That is why these elections are important.

Jamie—-Hi!

And Heather—you, too!

I’ve always felt exactly the same way Jamie does about Taheri, though, OTOH, it was Taheri who published an op-ed in the TIMES a couple of years ago saying that UBL was dead.

Which appears not to be the case.

I had been feeling pretty optimistic about Iraq, but my feelings slipped a bit this week . . . partly because of the situation with the Iraqi bloggers, and partly because of a NEW YORKER profile of Wolfowitz, in which this passage appears:

Wolfowitz says that his hopes for a democratic Iraq now are modest. He claims that he never expected a Jefferso-nian democracy, as some of his critics have derisively asserted. What he wishes to see is something stable, and more liberal than what came before. ÔøΩIt is something of a test,ÔøΩ he told me one day this summer, regarding the Iraqis. ÔøΩWe canÔøΩt be sure theyÔøΩll pass. And theyÔøΩre not going to pass with an A-plus. I mean, if they do Romanian democracy and the country doesnÔøΩt break up thatÔøΩll be pretty good.ÔøΩ

I don’t know how to parse Wolfowitz, but it seems to me that the fact he’s publicly raising the possibility that the country could break up may not be good. (Or it could be lowering expectations; who knows.)

As well, Krauthammer seems to have twice stepped back from positive predictions–and the folks at The Corner seem to see Krauthammer step-backs as significant, and indicative of . . . some kind of insider knowledge or other . . . .

I’m starting to get that Kremlinologist-on-Mars feeling again.

I also have no idea just how bad it would be if the country did break up: would that mean unending civil war?

I’m guessing it would, though, again, I don’t know, and it seems that some in the foreign policy establishment do not see partition as necessarily cataclysmic.

So I’m flying more blind than usual. Not only do I not know what’s going to happen in Iraq, which is normal, I don’t have a clue what people like Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld or Bremer are expecting to see happen, which isn’t quite so normal.

More suspense!

The NEW YORKER article is incredibly affecting in places. Here’s a passage:

And so it went, room by room, unit by unit. In one darkened room, a soldier with the build of an offensive lineman lay unconscious, his bare feet extending from the sheet covering his gurney. His wife stood at his side. When Wolfowitz entered the room, she smiled and reported the latest update from the doctors. Then she began to talk about her husbandÔøΩs long deployment, growing more emotional as she spoke. ÔøΩSix months is one thing,ÔøΩ she said, ÔøΩbut a year, which usually becomes thirteen or fourteen months, is just too much.ÔøΩ As she began to cry, an aide closed the door, and Wolfowitz spent several minutes with her privately.

Just before this scene are these two paragraphs:

Johnson said that heÔøΩd sometimes had difficulty convincing his own soldiers of the utility of their mission. ÔøΩThereÔøΩs this long street, we clean it up. Couple of weeks later, itÔøΩs trashed up again. I get a lotta guys that go, ÔøΩWhat are we doing out here?ÔøΩ I say to ÔøΩem, ÔøΩWeÔøΩll come back here, let ÔøΩem see our work.ÔøΩÔøΩSarge, theyÔøΩll tear it up again.ÔøΩÔøΩWell, thatÔøΩs our job. Get the trash outta the street, clear the street, make this place a little better.ÔøΩ But they donÔøΩt understand.ÔøΩ

Wolfowitz stood by JohnsonÔøΩs bed, listening. An aide handed him a copy of Time, the issue that featured the American soldier as Person of the Year. Wolfowitz signed it to a ÔøΩtrue American hero,ÔøΩ and then leaned over the hospital bed and looked Johnson in the eye. ÔøΩIÔøΩll tell you, no matter what people think about the war, ninety-eight per cent of them love our soldiers,ÔøΩ he said. ÔøΩPeriod. ItÔøΩs really the truth. So donÔøΩt confuse the fight about the policy for the people. IÔøΩm sure weÔøΩre going to win, and one day people will feel about you guys the way we feel about the guys who won World War Two. The world didnÔøΩt look so great in 1945-46. It took a little while to get it done. YouÔøΩre getting it done.ÔøΩÔøΩ

I love the guy. I really do.

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/041101fa_fact

Roger, my dear internet friend and fellow baldilocks, we can believe in these elections even as we know violence may win a few preliminary rounds. The liberal is an optimist, in the sense of making a show about being a ìprogressiveî participant in grand collectivist, statist, and internationalist projects, because he actually fears modernity, market society, and too much democracy as forces of cultural decadence, banality, and loss of all that is sacred. The ìconservativeî (a label Iím not entirely comfortable with), at least some kinds of (neo)conservatives, can be a more profound optimist because she knows that however much competition the system engenders between us and the many others to whom it has given some freedoms – immigrants, the Chinese, the fundamentalists at home and abroad, the Texan oilmen, Walmart, etc. – we never need fear losing touch with the eternal and sacred guarantee that conflict can be transcended, that, e.g., we will find deliverance, or freedom in exodus. We each have our own way of knowing such faith is true.

The ìconservativeî knows it is the very nature of our humanity and culture to ever renew and rediscover means of transcendence. In discounting the Utopian, she values the everyday acts of affirmation, the warm smile, the little favor, the fair exchange, the beautiful song, the act of love. Walmart (whose labor practices need reforming ñ I avoid shopping there) may not be a Gothic Cathedral, but in providing people with cheap goods with which to tell their own stories, it works a not dissimilar magic. Similarly, if the elections fail this time, it is the start of many Iraqi stories in which the promise of political and economic freedom grows a little and starts to work its change in a part of the world increasingly tired of both despots and outside rulers, however much they still have many paleoconservatives, now in alliance with our liberals and ìrealistsî, looking for the next dictator. But any next Saddam will be more like a Brezhnev to Saddamís Stalin. Freedom grows in little steps, sometimes backwards, more often forwards. The conservative knows this historical truth; the liberal who fears too much freedom only wants to believe it.

Catherine:

I had not really noted Krauthammer backing up, but maybe I just have not been paying that much attention.

Maybe I am the exception, but I thought more Americans would get killed than have. And I do think that political reform is possible in Iraq, but it will never be a serene place. Well not unless the culture changes a great deal anyway. I don’t know if people like Wolfowitz are coming to that conclusion or if they realize that anything less than Luxemburg in the ME will be considered a failure. That might have something to do with Charles’s backing up as well. He was saying on Fox the other day that the Bush people should be getting far more credit for the success in Afghanistan than they have.

That was so awful today, it reminded me of the attack on the Italians last year.

Just my knuckleheaded way of thinking about things, but I prefer to have an idea of what Wild-eyed Success would look like, what Dismal Failure would look like, what That’s Pretty Good would look like, and what Not Much Better Than a Tie would look like.

A functioning democracy would fit my idea of Wild-eyed Success. It wouldn’t need to be “Jeffersonian” and it could have some nasty looking warts, but anything that is solidly legit as a democracy would work for me. I’d even go so far as waiting a decade or so for it to emerge. Was the Ukraine a democracy prior to recent developments (or is it even now)? Whatever it is the journey stared more than a decade ago. Is it worse or better?

Dismal Failure could be civil war (not to be confused with even a whole lot of terrorism). But if that was short-lived and resulted in partitioning that yielded three smaller democracies, would that be worse than what went before? Dismal Failure could also be someone as bad as Saddam running a murderous regime.

What would That’s Pretty Good look like? Maybe a sorta-kinda quasi-democracy (Russia?) that moves two steps forward, two steps back.

Not Much Better Than a Tie would, I suppose, be “Our Bastard” in charge of a dictatorship.

The situation in the ME and the Islamic world around it could not continue. The status-quo had to end. Some suggest that the status-quo was crumbling into something worse and more dangerous. Anything better and less dangerous to the US (I ultimately don’t care, in my heart of hearts, as much as I’d prefer that everyone live their lives under improving conditions, whether the lives of Arabs or Muslims are improved) would qualify as a success.

We need that part of the world to become better. Better is a relative term. When the starting point is something as horrific as the world of the Taliban’s Afghanistan, Saddam’s Iraq, the Mullah’s Iran, Kadaffi’s Libya, and Pakistan heading the wrong way with nukes, “better” is most anything and “worse” is a longshot.

Terrye

(If you’re still around!)

I think Krauthammer has ‘lowered expectations’ (that was the phrase The Cornerites used) twice.

The only reason i know this is that The Corner pointed it out.

The folks at The Corner seem to regard Krauthammer as some kind of surrogate for the administration . . . assuming I’ve interpreted them correctly. I could do with a little less allusion and a little more direct communication from them on this score.

Anyway, my point is: I have no idea what the hell is going on with Krauthammer, and what, if anything, it means.

I just know The Corner seems to think it means something.

Knucklehead

I prefer to have an idea of what Wild-eyed Success would look like, what Dismal Failure would look like, what That’s Pretty Good would look like, and what Not Much Better Than a Tie would look like.

I love it!

Can’t remember if I mentioned it to you—and not here on the blog, I don’t think—but I’ve just discovered my own personal Ethnic Heritage.

Scots-Irish

I think I am Scots-Irish.

The best evidence that I am is the fact that I don’t know what my ethnic heritage is, which apparently is typical of the Scots-Irish, who were and are so individualistic that they didn’t define themselves as Scots-Irish when they arrived in America in the 1700s, and have today forgotten that’s what they once were.

Anyway, assuming that I am Scots-Irish–I’m clearly a fellow-traveler at the very least–I’m developing a different take on my view of the Iraq War, the ME, Iran, and all the rest of it.

To me it’s plain as day that the ME ‘had to change.’

I’m against Dismal Failure, but anything else would be, to me, a vindication of the war.

Even though I live with a husband who thinks Iraq is a debacle, and that moreover Iraq was destined to be a debacle once the insurgency began (because Western democracies don’t win counterinsurgent wars), I still have trouble grasping why ‘the ME had to change’ isn’t foremost in everyone’s thinking.

Why does half the country hold the view that ‘Saddam was never a threat’?

Now that I’m reading James Webb’s book on the Scots-Irish, BORN FIGHTING, I still don’t understand the liberal position on Iraq & the WOT, but I’m starting to perceive the ancient roots of my own.

Catherine: “The best evidence that I am is the fact that I don’t know what my ethnic heritage is, which apparently is typical of the Scots-Irish, who were and are so individualistic that they didn’t define themselves as Scots-Irish when they arrived in America in the 1700s, and have today forgotten that’s what they once were.”

Yes I think that is good evidence. I am partly “Scots-Irish” except I believe that that is a specifically American term, and here in Canada the historians refer to the Irish Protestants, or PI, or Orangemen. The identity is confusing because in America, Irishness was identified with being Catholic, and the “Scots-Irish”, despite having been in Ireland a long time, were not readily identified as Irish. The IPs have had a huge impact on Canadian culture: Ireland was the first colony of England (and Scotland), and its institutions – e.g. schools, police – were a model for the later colonies. But in addition, the attitudes and accents of Canada remain marked by the large IP immigration which in Canada was 19th rather than 18thC. Interestingly, we think of this contribution less in terms of individualism (though there were many strong individuals) as in terms of the IP culture’s former political and economic power and civic leadership – in other words, ethnic clubbishness.

This contribution is largely forgotten as such because it has just become assimilated to what we identify as anglo-protestant Canadian culture. Toronto, for example, used to be known as the Belfast of the Canadas, but now its descendants are simply the WASPs of T.O. Toronto and other cities used to have big Orange day parades, but no longer, the memory of William of Orange’s Irish conquest being a bit of an embarassment to our PC multicultural times (for which at least one ethnicity has to be the fall guy). However, I wouldn’t doubt that if you looked at the Canadians who sympathize with the US in the present war, and tend to conservative politics, you would find a lot of people who were not quite sure exactly what ethnicity they were.