Vaya Con Dios, Rummy!
Here is the record of Donald Rumsfeld. (1) Tried to take a top-heavy Pentagon and prepare it for the wars of the postmodern world, in which on a minute’s notice thousands of American soldiers, with air and sea support, would have to be sent to some god-awful place to fight some savagery—and then be trashed live on CNN for doing it; (2) less than a month after 9/11 he organized the retaliation against al Qaeda in the heart of primordial Afghanistan that removed the Taliban in 7 weeks, when we were all warned that the U.S., like the British and Russians of old, would fail; (3) oversaw the removal of Saddam in 3 weeks—after the 1991 Gulf War and the 12-years of 350,000 sorties in the no-fly-zones, and various bombing strikes, had failed. (4) Ah, you say, then there is the disastrous 3-year insurgency—too few troops, Iraqi army let go, underestimated “dead-enders” etc.?
But Rumsfeld knew that in a counterinsurgency (cf. Vietnam 1965-71) massive deployments only ensure complacency, breed dependency, and create resentment, and that, in contrast, training indigenous forces, ensuring political autonomy, and providing air and commando support (e.g., Vietnam circa 1972-4) is the only answer—although that is a long process that can work only if political support at home allows the military to finish the job (cf. the turn-of-the-century Philippines, and the British in Malaysia). He was a good man, and we were lucky to have him in our hour of need.
James Webb
I received a lot of angry private email objecting to a pre-election syndicated column I wrote for Tribune Media Services, in which I criticized the Allen campaign’s attack on Webb’s shocking passages in some of his novels, along with the lamentable trend to confuse fiction with reality (http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson110606.html.) I thought the Allen tact was both silly and wrong to equate a novelist with his literary characters, especially in wartime landscapes where realism is essential to a chronicle of battle and its effects on men.
I also wrote that Webb had led an exemplary life, and it might be a good change to have a novelist as a Senator. I know the campaign was cruel on both sides, but it was both an ethical and practical mistake to go after the veteran Webb on his literary characterizations, especially when his record of public service had long ago proved that he was a principled person. If the Democrats are to recapture any stature as a serious party, it will be because of moderates like Webb, whom I have always respected and admired. So no apologies here.
Be careful of what you wish for
Liberals used to deplore realists—a James Baker (“F*** the Jews” or “Jobs, jobs, jobs”), a Brent Scowcroft (letting the Shiites and Kurds get mowed down by helicopter gunships in late February/early March 1991), or George Bush Senior shaking down the Japanese et al. to pay for the first Gulf War and then leaving Saddam in power to “balance” Iran. But now with Baker and Gates sort of back, and apparent greater reliance on the first Bush’s realism, it will be interesting to see what the Democrats in the House will do—especially if there is a realist-Right and anti-war Left convergence that gives up on Iraq and comes home.
Weird Politics
Since 9/11 I have been fascinated by the Nation/American Conservative affinities—and especially how the “Don’t Support Dictators” abroad protests of the 1960s morphed into a sort of ‘See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya’ about Iraq (cf. Sen. Rockefeller’s statement that the world was better off with Saddam or liberal Dan Rather’s postwar lamentation that it was quieter driving in Baghdad when he used to interview Saddam). Equally interesting is the smash up when multiculturalism (e.g., no culture can be any worse than the West) hits the right-wing, fascistic agenda of Islamic fundamentalism. What an “Other” or “People of Color” Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood are!
I thought something was haywire in the late 1990s when I spoke on California campuses and would see the Hamas booths in the free-speech plazas—right next to the usual 1960s-style teach-ins where Chicanos, blacks, Native Americans, women, etc. handed out pamphlets and megaphoned on American sins. So how did anti-Semitism, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, homophobia, and suppression of free expression synchronize with these groups’ complaints against supposed American fascism?
But it is not just Leftists who are getting what they wished for, but a lot of the neoconservatives as well. It may be that true, as one pundit wrote, that Mark Steyn and myself are about the only two left that both support the war—despite the mistakes—and Rumsfeld in general. But after reading for three years from almost every neoconservative pundit that Rumsfeld should go, they now will get their wish. The only problem is that Gates is more a Baker-realist than a neo-Wilsonian. I suggest they go back and read The Generals’ War or Crusade and review the discussions about not going to Baghdad. That decision, whether right or wrong, was based entirely on realpolitik, not thousands of Iraqis who rose up on our call to overthrow Saddam. Now it might have been defensible not to go to Baghdad in 1991(I would disagree: it was a terrible mistake), but was abjectly amoral to call for insurrection, and then when Kurds and Shiites took us at our word, to have abandoned them.
Oh California, I Barely Knew You!
A frequently asked question: “How can you live in California with the political insanity?” And my usual answer, “I couldn’t live anywhere else.” This last week I stayed in the mountains at Huntington Lake (ca. 7,000 feet). It was bright blue, about 70 degrees, and the lake and forest absolutely deserted. I have traveled in the mountains of Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and the highlands of Greece and Turkey, and nothing is more beautiful than the Sierra corridor from Yosemite to Sequoia. It is almost a freak of nature—that in an hour you can drive straight up from the Valley floor and be in another world. Or on a clear day from up at Kaiser Pass see the Coast Range 100 miles away—and be in San Francisco or Santa Cruz after a four-hour drive.
One of the last things my 86-year-old grandfather told me—he lived in this house from 1890-1976 and had inherited it from his grandmother who built it in 1871—was “to thank God every day that we live in such a beautiful place.” He meant the vineyards between Fresno and Visalia, and the Central Coast where he had a tiny cabin at Morro Bay that he co-owned with 10 other farmers (he sold his share in the 1970s for $2,000). At 23 I thought that his adulation for his native state was parochial (In my conceit I was puffed up for having left the farm and lived a year in Greece and seen much of the Mediterranean), and also blinkered, since Rees Davis had only been to New Mexico once. But now I realize, as in most other things, he was right all along: the natural environment of California is an aberration, especially the 100-mile proximity of a long-coastline, Mediterranean hills, enormous interior valley, and high Andes-like mountains. Our state’s tragedy, of course, is that so often we have not lived up to what nature gave us, or at least what generations past bequeathed.
It is dangerous to be a laudator temporis acti I grant, but California between 1955 and 1970 was a magical place, full of can-do idealism about the UC system, and its new campuses at Irvine and Santa Cruz, the freeway systems like the new I-5 north-to-south route, and modern airports at LA and SF, the dams and hydoelectric grid, the part-time state Legislature, and the commitment to the melting pot.These days we can hardly add a third lane to a highway someone else built, and talk about blowing up dams not building them. LAX is a disaster; so is UC Merced. And what we used to invest in infrastructure, we now pay out in entitlements and then borrow for minimum maintenance on what our grandfathers created.
And the most disturbing fact? That such a lapse is no accident, but simply a collective reflection on my own generation. After all, when I compare my parents and grandparents–their hard work, self-sacrifice, courage, suffering, and investment for others-to the record of their own progeny (i.e., my generation of this 6th-generation California family), then sadly it all becomes clear. And I am sure other Californians can do the same: ponder their grandparents’ lives versus their own, and then, presto!, comprehend the fate of their state the last fifty years.
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74 Comments
1. Chuck Rostkowski:I spent 1958-59 at the Army Language School and for a 19 year old from a frozen corner of Vermont the Monterey Coast was the closest to heaven I ever got. Nothing was so beautiful as San Francisco before the 1960’s downtown building boom got under way. Because of many “roads not taken” I never got back, but I think of it often and your thoughtlful post of what it was like was a welcome read on a morning when I once again had to think of what life under a Democratic Congress will be like.
Nov 9, 2006 - 6:50 am 2. TJ:Webb’s writing is indefensible on any level. I would have been slightly more comfortable with it had it been NON-fiction. I could then have understood that it was an painful account of what the man saw rather than a glimpse into his own mind.
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:26 am 3. Jim O'Sullivan:His writing reflects a deeply troubled soul. As was once said, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
A pet peeve: it’s “tack,” not “tact.”
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:37 am 4. Mark Buehner:Im not here to rip Rummy, but to bury him… but still- one of the other fundamental rules for fighting an insurgency is to isolate the area from outside support. We failed miserably at that, to the extent that it could be said we never even really tried to monitor the borders early on, much less seal them.
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:37 am 5. Julie:Rummy might also have known that providing for the material wellfare of the occupied is another
requirement for success. Our failure to restore basic electricity to Iraq (yes, i know all the terrible hurdles- they are irrelevant) is another nail in the coffin.
Chuck, I can’t believe your comment! I could have written it myself, save for I attended that same school in 1990-1, came from the comparitavely dismal midwest, and unfortunately haven’t gotten back there either (to live, anyway). Closest to heaven I ever got.
You’re a lucky man, VDH.
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:42 am 6. Don Parnell, Sr.:Thanks to James Webb for the thoughtful reference to the accomplishments of Secretary Rumsfeld. It is always tempting – and apparently very easy – to lambaste those who commit themselves to signifiant public service. In the case of Donald Rumsfeld, he took on a job that most could not, and would not, attempt. He dealt with the conditions he found, and did so in the midst of the most destructive and vitriolic invectives ever hurled at a public figure in the U.S.
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:42 am 7. Paat:We do owe him a debt of gratitude, and we should put his service in the larger perspective of U.S. foreign policy, past wars, new threats, and an unacceptably vicious political climate.
Respectfully,
Don Parnell, Sr.
Yours is the best postmortem of the election yet. Gates chills me; I fear his appointment is an affirmation of the Iraq Study Group, which will amount to Vietnam-style surrender against our jihadi enemies and our media enemies at home.
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:47 am 8. Rob Perelli-Minetti:Here’s a hearty second to your comments of the California of our youth – I’m only 5th generation California – when the Big U had only to ask to receive (and mostly made good use of what the tax payers provided, the transportation system was built and the state was reasonably well run. The days when Southern California TV stations railled about the state senate controlled by the “cow counties” before the US Supreme Court did a way with geographic state senate districts rather than population based districts, and people were still basically decent – liberal in the Bay Area (esp. labor dominated San Francisco with the red longshoremen like Harry Bridges), rather red in Hollywood, and moderately conservative outside the cities, except in deeply conservative Orange county. The California whose political tone still reflected the reforms enacted by Hiram Johnson after the Progressives threw out the Southern Pacific/Democratic machine in 1910.
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:48 am 9. Michael McAlpin:I, being a Army brat, lived across the width and breadth of the US. I spent 4 magical years living in the “Seed Capital of the World”, Lompoc, CA, about 60+ miles north of Santa Barbara. Even more fortunately, I was there when the California public school system was the first in the nation. By the time I finished sixth grade (1963), I had taken courses that required proficiency in logic, beginning algebra, trigonometry and a smattering of geometry. We were also required to demonstrate our reading capability & capacity using the Stanford Research Associates (SRA) reading system.
I am forever grateful to the state of California, as it was in the late 50’s & early 60s. Without that sound education, I would not have been as academically or financially successful.
I wish we could bring the best of those times forward to today’s California.
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:48 am 10. Webutante:How fortunate you are to be born in such an amazing landscape. I remember the first time I arrived in California: after flying into LAX, I took a small plane to San Luis Opispo up along the coastal mountain range. When we landed I felt I had died and gone to heaven: the colors, the light, the landscape, almost supernatural in its energy and beauty.
As someone who would rather be outdoors than anywhere else, I still come back to CA every chance I get and am in awe of her natural beauty and amazing hiking opportunites. Especially love Big Sur and Coastal Trails combining mountain and sea vistas, like nothing else in the world. But I even love the trails on the edge of LA out of Will Roger’s State Park where you can hike all the way to Malibu and beyond almost forever…
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:54 am 11. Dave Begley - Omaha:I read the section on Secr. Rumsfeld and I said out loud, “Exactly right.”
1. He won TWO – not just one – wars in record time and the saving of many Americans lives. That achievement, in and of itself, is remarkable.
2. We NEVER heard the flip slide to a smaller troop presence. As VDH pointed out, Iraq would have even less incentive to get its own troops trained if we would have had 300,000 “occupiers.”
Two things I’m really bitter about: 1. The constant second-guessing and demonization of Rummy and the failure to realize how tough war is. As if Joe Biden or John Kerry could do a “smarter” job. 2. The failure of the Administration to coherently push back and articulate why more troops was a bad idea and deadlines for withdrawal is a completely insane idea.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:04 am 12. Brian J. Dunn:Well, add a third (though unknown) to the list of people who both still support the war in Iraq and think dumping Rumsfeld was a poor reward for his good service.I suspect we will miss Rumsfeld before too long.
We voted to go to war against Saddam’s butcher regime and I don’t recall the authorization to use force resolution having an expiration date. Nor does the oath our troops take have any loophole that allows them to stop fighting to defend us when polls drop below a certain number.
So my support for the war doesn’t expire either.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:07 am 13. Michael Sullivan:I spent 76-77 at the Army Language School and the Monterey Coast was absolutely beautiful although it was getting crowded and expensive. I remember spending most of my weekends scuba diving along the coast or driving to San Francisco or Big Sur. I passed through with my wife about 10 years ago driving the coastal highway from LA to San Francisco and, although the scenery is as beautiful as ever, the Carmel-Monterey area was way too crowded.
I really want to visit the Yosemite area though.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:10 am 14. Steve Cooper:If Webb is such a principaled guy, why did he welcome Bill Clinton’s support when he told us he had no absolutely no respect for him not but 5 years ago? His principals went out the window as soon as he signed up to run as a Democrat.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:22 am 15. jtc:“Mark Steyn and myself are about the only two left that both support the war…”
Especially when it is hard, stand fast. Let posterity be the final arbiter. Some of us are still standing with you.
–jeffrey condon
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:23 am 16. 2lk5jrtfq082:“Mark Steyn and myself are about the only two left that both support the war—despite the mistakes—and Rumsfeld in general.”
I keep hearing about all the mistakes but I would like to know what they are. People get killed in war, enemies change tactics. The Iraq liberation was a tremendous success, unless you want the situation resolved before the next comerical break.
It removed Saddam who had wmd capabilities. It “converted” Kadaffi. It increased security for our allies in the region; Arab countries and Israel alike. It drew thousands of fanatic terrorists into a trap where they were killed.
How many years did we have troops in Japan and Germany after WW2? Guess what, they’re still there.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:33 am 17. Reinaldo Garcia:In the 1950s and 1960s, my father used to tell me that California was always the harbinger of the future. “You wanna know what the rest of America will look like in twenty years?” he’d ask. “Look around you now.” He’s still right. But not in a good way.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:42 am 18. Stephen Rittenberg:Thanks for the beautiful description of a part of the country I’ve never seen. Now that the trio from hell–Baker, Scowcroft and Brzezinski–are back, it’s a consolation to know such timeless beauty exists.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:46 am 19. Robert Kenney:I’m nobody, but you may count me among those who still support the war and Rumsfeld.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:49 am 20. Lamont Pittman:I agree that failure to remove Saddam in 1991 was a missed opportunity but not a blunder on the part of the elder President Bush. It is often forgotten that Bush received Senate authorization to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait by a slim 52-47 margin and by a 250-183 margin in the House. The debate for authorization was contentious and even a strong defense supporter like Democrat Senator and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn voted nay, much to his subsequent political misfortune.
Nevertheless, Bush’s mandate was very limited and unfortunately did not extend to regime change, only removal of Iraq forces. In that context, he successfully built an international coalition and the rest is history. Had he pressed the advantage to Baghdad the coalition would have collapsed and the Democrats most assuredly would have initiated Impeachment proceedings. Under the circumstances, Bush had no choice but to halt the advance once Saddam’s forces were ejected.
I also agree that our encouragement and later abandonment of the post-Desert Storm insurrection was a disgrace.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:59 am 21. Chip Fussell:Re: your Rumsfeld post:
Last week Professor Reynolds posted the comment of mine below.
EVEN MORE: Reader Chip Fussell emails:
My son is a USMA educated (ranked 50th in a class of almost 1,000) CPT in Army Special Forces. On January 3, 2005 his team was ambushed in Afghanistan, he was seriously wounded and came as close to dying as I think possible and not die. One of his men, a John Kerry educationally challenged SGT who had a BS in Chemistry and was an NCAA cross country champion was killed, and another of his team members ultimately lost a leg. The IED that imitated the ambush did the damage, the team repelled the small arms follow-up with what I imagine was over whelming ferocity. My son recovered in time to return to his team on the Pakistan border and accomplish quite a lot in the war on terror.
Having said that, I voted for President Bush in large part so that Rumsfeld would remain as Sec. of Defense, and I continue to support the President and the Secretary as does my son and almost everyone with whom he has contact in the Army.
For the record, I am a registered Democrat and have always been, although my Dad, retired from the Air Force to Harrison, Tennessee, left to join the Repubs and my son, more influenced by my Dad, is a Republican.
Re your California post:
I have been very lucky. My Dad was a career Air force officer, so though I was born in the south, I first came to California in 1956 via a graveled highway 120 over Tioga Pass and down into Merced. My buddies and I went swimming in the irrigation canals that summer.
A couple of years later we were back in Sacramento, and I got to play in the, by then, abandoned hops barns across Folsom Blvd from the brand new housing tract we had moved into. The year we arrived was the last year hops were harvested in those fields.
My Dad’s last assignment in 1964 was at Norton AFB in San Bernardino where the brand new housing tract in which we lived was amidst the last of the orange groves that had carpeted the valley.
I commuted between San Bernardino and SF State over Tehachapi Pass as it was being widened to four lanes and then CA 58 to CA 33 and north, or US 99 up the valley in a 1965 MG Midget.
My first assignment after AFROTC was in Sacramento at Mather and then to Castle AFB in Merced for the same B-52 CCTS my Dad had attended 13 years earlier. My wife, whose Italian grandmother had been born in San Jose in the later 1890s, made fresh strawberry pies all summer with 25 cent a quart berries.
In 1973 we returned to SF and we moved into an apartment at Lombard and Leavenworth, $460 a month with a view from downtown to Fisherman’s Wharf and a garage! Then we bought a home constructed in 1909 near the UCSF campus in 1978 for $129,500. It has a view of the Pacific and the Golden Gate. It’s now appraised at $1.5 mill. My older children must now decide what to do with it now that their mother has died and it is theirs.
1955 to 1970. I would add maybe 5 years, but no more. You can still be in the City, especially on a foggy wind whipped night and it doesn’t feel any different. You can drive across the Valley on 58 or up it on 33 and pretend nothing has changed. You can go to Mono Lake and spend 5 days like I did with my daughter a last month and you can think California has changed little.
It is a great place for all the reasons you describe. But it was a better place before the boomers beat a path to its shores in the late 70s. Gold, the Depression, and the Boomers. Each of those assaults brought something good and something not so good. But your land is still there, God Bless you and your family, and no matter what the enviroalarmist fear, I believe Yosemite will survive the tourists, the Sequoias will survive the LA smog, and the coastline will survive…it just may not remain as far to the west as it presently lies.
My son majored in Mil Hist at USMA. He has read all of your books, and I was just thinking the other day how the blogsphere has given voice to your thoughts in away that would never have happened before. That’s a great thing.
As the 11th hour of the 11th Day of 11th month approaches I wish you a peaceful Veteran’s Day.
Nov 9, 2006 - 9:01 am 22. Colin Glassey:Speaking as someone who spent years visiting and camping in the High Sierra around Route 4 (Arnold to Lake Alpine), I love it: the exposed granite, the scattered trees; the icy cold lakes nestled among the douglas fir trees; the deerbrush on the low ridges. You can travel just about any direction you want. Walking cross-country is easy in the High Sierra, as is climbing the rough but generally solid rocks to attain high vistas. As John Muir put it, its a Range of Light.
Nov 9, 2006 - 9:01 am 23. Jeff Cauthen:VDH,
Your comments regarding California are spot on. I was born in Visalia and had relative in Sanger, Reedley, and Dinuba. I love California and now live in San Diego (where I was raised) after time in Los angeles and the Bay Area. It just hurts that the Bay Area wackos are running this wonderious place into the ground.
Keep up the good work and wonderful writing.
Best regards,
Jeff Cauthen
Nov 9, 2006 - 9:08 am 24. Francis:Other than exchanging Callifornia for the Côte d’Azur I agree completely. The countryside here is beauritfil and pretty rare too. There are not too many places in the world where you can go from 0 to 1 mile altitude in about 10 miles distance. Or where you can spend Christmas sunbathing on the beach then drive for an hour to go skiing.
Nov 9, 2006 - 9:09 am 25. David Thomson:George Allen is a jerk. Still, I would have preferred that he won the contest against James Webb. But this didn’t happen—and I am compelled to find a silver lining in a defeat which helped allows Harry Reid to be the leader of the U.S. Senate. There is a decent possibility that Webb will the Democrats worst nightmare. He is instinctively pro-military and not inclined to embrace the Daily Kos agenda. Moreover, he barely won in the conservative state of Virginia. This alone may keep him on the straight and narrow. Keeping his constituents happy is nonnegotiable if Webb desires to be reelected. Oh well, we will see.
Nov 9, 2006 - 9:20 am 26. Robert Mandel:I was stationed at Moffet Field in 1959,and then returned to here in 1966.It is hard to believe the vast cultural change(s) that have taken place.I live on the coast in a lovely little(for now) town.But that is is fast changing also.Bob Mandel – Ventura
Nov 9, 2006 - 9:26 am 27. Ray Caldwell:As a Virginia resident (and voter) I can only say that the Webb-Allen campaign has been scurrilous on both sides. But unlike you, I have no idea what Webb believes in. His peregrination from his military service and writing “Fields of Fire” to joining up with the present-day Democratic Party seems inexplicable, or only explicable in terms of opportunism. Churchill crossed the aisle, Webb has crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
Nov 9, 2006 - 9:34 am 28. John Hawkins:Well, there are at least three of us who still support the war and Rummy. We need someone like him at the State Department…
I am a Native Californian too, and I think that lets me understand what the Greeks meant when they talked of Heroes whose like the world would never see again. How could the puny mortals of today build such wonders? Or Tolkien’s elves, lingering for a while in a beautiful realm that is slowly decaying for want of care.
But such thoughts are common in Autumn. Spring can be quite beautiful.
Nov 9, 2006 - 10:11 am 29. Lance:Wow! I too attended language school at the Defense Language Institute-Presidio of Monterey. We used to spend our weekends in SF after that short drive North from Monterey. And I too am choking down the idea of having to cope with life under a Democratic Congress. I wrote a rather bleak post called Dems Win: Goodbye America – Hello Ameristan. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Nov 9, 2006 - 10:30 am 30. Apollo Morgan:I spent five years in Southern California and travelled throughout the state. The degree of infrastructure collapse was astounding to me, and the inability to even maintain it(much less expand) was a little upsetting.
It makes me think of Ghan-buri-Ghan in Return of the King. “Many paths were made when Stonehouse-folk were stronger. They carved hills as hunters carve beast-flesh. Wild Men think they ate stone for food.” Californians live among the work of their parents and grandparents, and haven’t a clue how it all got there.
Nov 9, 2006 - 10:48 am 31. Rumbear:Mr. Hanson,
Nov 9, 2006 - 11:24 am 32. John Moore:Regarding Huntington Lake and Kaiser Pass et al…shhhhhhh! They do not exist…..you were at Lake Tahoe. Everybody should see Lake Tahoe. Yeah, go to Lake Tahoe. There is no Huntington Lake or Kaiser Pass. Now, carry on.
Regards,
Da Bear
Re: Rummy. I think the administration made a huge mistake just after 9-11 in not restoring the military to larger troop numbers – not in the cold war formations, but at least with lots of troops so that we could deal adequately with several failed nations at once. The political capital was there, and it was allowed to dissipate.
It is not clear how the US can win a war such as that in Iraq. Obviously, we have the military capability, but it is not at all clear that we have the national will. I fear that the Islamofascists are right in believing that we have no spine for a real fight. Vietnam showed that in a less existential war.
…
The problem with California is too many Californians, exactly because the geography is so wonderful. I lived there twice – Bay Area in the mid ’60s and LA in the early ’70s, and loved it. From Moffett Field, I was a few hours from Emigrant Basin’s alpine terrain, and an hour from San Francisco’s “Paris of the West” (and, in those years, hippy heaven).
But now I am away from the crowds and high prices, and at least some of the crazy politics until too many Californians move here to AZ and turn it blue.
Nov 9, 2006 - 11:59 am 33. Bob C:Re your comments on Jim Webb…I suppose you’d have to have been here in VA to see that his ‘principles’ include the kind of mud slinging that so many have accused George Allen of doing. Webb stood by as his campaign and proxies dredged up anonymous accusations of supposed 30 year old racism, quoted accusations from admitted Democrats who sought his defeat, comments from Larry Sabato, who has lost all credibility as a dispassionate observer in my eyes, vile references to his Jewish heritage..the list is a long one. Somehow, Webb has escaped scrutiny on how his campaign behaved, apparently by you as well.
Jim Webb served his country bravely and honorably in the Marine Corps. His first foray into elective campaigning reveals that he has not brought the same honor to the political arena. His campaign was disgusting.
Nov 9, 2006 - 12:16 pm 34. Laurence Oeth:When I moved west from Florida to attend UCBerkeley, my dad said “we’ll never see him again.” It didn’t turn out that way, not entirely at least, but VDH is correct about California in the 70’s. I was there just in time to enjoy the fruits of many generations’ labor.
Since then, investment in infrastructure has lagged badly behind population growth…drowned in “process” to the point that even the pittance funded is (my estimate) 50% consumed in paper. Can’t drive on paper, can’t drink paper, can’t breath paper. But it does wonderfully well to fund the white collar welfare so necessary to maintain support for the many other dependent groups clinging to the crumbs shared by government.
More corrosive than the lack of public works, is the mindset of the population which accepts this as normal. It’s only normal for declining civilizations.
Yes, VDH, we’ve been eating our seed corn for 40+ years now. I think we need a book about how Roman citizens fended for themselves and their families AFTER the Visigoth sacking…
Nov 9, 2006 - 1:04 pm 35. P. Ami:I borrow heavily from my most respected historians and, as I don’t have the personal background to speak of how my home-state was run in the sixties, I can only think of it as it relates to the general trend of history. There is no question that, as one of the Pacific States, California was not fully entrenched in the “progressive” movements that characterized the longer developed states of western civilization until the 1960’s. What was already well established in the Eastern states of the US or the People’s Republics in Europe or even the first modern welfare government of Germany under Bismarck our civilization was, in the 1960’s, making its decadence felt in California with the building of our highways and damns. As the great works by Jacques Barzun have discussed, with far greater insight and points of reference then are available to me, our culture has reasoned itself into believing that freedom is the condition of unconditional benefit. California, in the middle part of last century, was one of the last places one could go and find yourself unintruded upon. Certainly less so then one is accustomed to in properly civilized centers. It was in the building of the roads, the building of damns and the entry of the bureaucracies that lay claim to such accomplishments that the leftist principles took a hold of California and brought along the notions of unconditional benefit. By the late 1960’s the California UC system was the first to break down under the expectation of diminished authority. Authority today is considered derogation. Having a strong opinion is equated with fascism, unless the opinion is popular. As one looks at comment boards on articles dealing with, as an example, the Israeli-Arab conflict my response to much of the weak thinking one reads is, “Might may not make right, but neither is it wrong”. The same can be said meaningfully, although perhaps hopelessly, in American school systems. The popular contempt for authority came to California in a strong way and with it came the great forgetting that few historians have the character to combat. I have great respect for your work in trying to repopulate our thoughts with classical antiquity, its symbols and traditional meaning, yet I find that you have misnamed what ails California and in misnaming things we bring misery into the world. It is not that California has lost its can-do vitality. All of Western Culture is wasting its great reservoir of energy on self-defeating guilt and resource wasted on the unfit and California was just later in joining that trend then others. Charity should not be institutionalized, especially if what you must give away are standards of excellence. The good sense of equality under the law has degenerated to social equality and that is simply not reflective of reality. The rhetoric of No Child Left Behind might assume that some nice people have little education but not everyone can keep up in learning. We stunt the growth our national education is meant to encourage due to the belief that everyone can learn. This belief is demonstratively untrue. In losing our best minds to popular equality we are losing more then one state of the Union. We are lost of a state of mind, that state being excellence.
Nov 9, 2006 - 1:12 pm 36. Sandrina Lopetegui:And don’t forget Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.
Nov 9, 2006 - 1:51 pm 37. Judith:With Condi/Baker/Scowcroft/Gates in house, won’t be surprised when they pressure Israel Chamberlain-style to make grand “concessions” to the Arabs, hoping that w/ appeasement the Jihadist alligator will eat the US last. But these pusillanimous Bush-I “realists” better preempt Iran’s plans to wipe Israel off the map or they’ll lose the Israeli-leverage card w/ the Arabs & EU. Yeah, being facetious here, but in this new post-election environment, it’s suicide from all directions for Israel.This lone valiant democracy in the Middle East better muster the dignity to defend & rely on itself first, saying no to the State Department/Baker/Condi Arabists of the world, & the majesty of world approval will follow.
Nov 9, 2006 - 2:53 pm 38. Roy:Sometimes I think that the self destructiveness of California is directly related to the state’s beauty. It seems like a sort of fable where someone endowed with every advantage, beauty, wealth, and the admiration of all, can not see what they have and decry it’s value while at the same time congratualiting themselves on how perfect they are.
The trash I see on the streets of San Francisco, the decay of infrastructure and the uglification of an entire state is awe inspiring, but not nearly so awe inspiring as the “preservation” of ’60s era San Francisco tract housing or congested and broken down freeways that are not improved because if they were improved it would encourage people to drive on them.
The decadence of this state is incredible, but I think it is related to the beauty, which has always been deceptive. People think California is Eden, or at least was, but farming it required back breaking industry and some of the greatest engineerng the world has ever seen, and without its farms its cities could not exist. But now all the work is “done” and everything we have is credited by the San Franciscan, or Santa Monican to “natural abundance” and any attempts to maintain or improve the works that enabled it are treated with contempt.
Nov 9, 2006 - 3:31 pm 39. Pierre Legrand:Dr. Hanson thank you for a wonderful article. As I sit here and wonder where the first bit of “negotiation” by Al Qaeda will fall on us it is good that people such as you are with us. There is no doubt that with the American publics imitation of Spain that Al Qaeda will waste no time in pushing us even harder into oblivion. The Democrats will crumble with the first blow…not people like James Webb who while honorable was terribly misinformed about the war in Iraq. No people like Pelosi, Kennedy, Leahy and the rest of a terrible cast of cowards.
It breaks my heart to know that my children will not grow up in the optimistic marvelous world I saw while sitting on my Grandmothers knee. Such a dreamworld flitting away from cowardice…such a darn shame.
Thank you again sir.
Nov 9, 2006 - 3:50 pm 40. Billyboy:Dr. Hanson, thank you for the post!
I too believe Secretary Rumsfeld did a great job and was also never afraid to face the heat of the media or blowhards in Congress.
While I hate to see him go, I would have dreaded seeing him answer the wailing siren of leftist and rightist losers.
Being a conservative independent from the great state of California, I hope and pray the Democrats finally show leadership and work with Republicans to stamp out the fascist hoardes that are around and amongst us. It will be interesting to watch Nancy Pelosi balance between the newbie moderates in her party versus the old school leftists.
As for the Sierras, I’m partial to the Lake Tahoe area where I spent many a year bumming around (skiing in the winter, golfing/biking in the summer). We’ve had a place there for 30 years and would never think of selling.
It is still possible in one day to ski powder in the morning, water ski on the bluest of blue glass (Tahoe) and make it to San Francisco for a fine meal, then dance all night!
Thank you for your presence! I was able to catch you at the Commonwealth Club event in Lafayette recently (I thanked you at the very end for the story of your Uncle you never met and your “lucky charm”).
Still a native Californian and grateful to my Grandparents for making their way here so many decades ago.
Cheers!
Billy
Nov 9, 2006 - 4:45 pm 41. Michael Haines:California 1955-1970. It truly was magical. I was 13-28 living in Glendale. Went to UCLA. San Diego when I was in the Navy (between deployments) and then the Bay Area for law school and many, many years. I now live at Lake Tahoe. I love California. If there were one vote I could take back it would be to change the legislature from part time to full time. Everything went downhill from there.
Nov 9, 2006 - 5:00 pm 42. Eduardo Lopez:“But Rumsfeld knew that in a counterinsurgency (cf. Vietnam 1965-71) massive deployments only ensure complacency, breed dependency, and create resentment, and that, in contrast, training indigenous forces, ensuring political autonomy, and providing air and commando support (e.g., Vietnam circa 1972-4) is the only answer”
No, the first rule of a military occupation is that you establish full control of the territory. If we had done that, the insurgency could never have gotten off the ground.
Also, when the insurgency did get going, Rumsfeld denied it for many months. Remember how he kept saying it was only a small number of “dead-enders?” How could he have been pursuing an effective counter-insurgency strategy when he refused to admit there was an insurgency?
Nov 9, 2006 - 5:51 pm 43. Eduardo Lopez:By the way, I agree that fighing an insurgency is an 8-10 year project. That is why back in late 2003 President Bush — remember him? — should have given a televised speech to the public explaining what we were in for, in detail, including how hard it would be, how many US solidiers would likely be killed, what is the recommended strategy for counter-insurgency, how much it would cost, and so on. And then occasional follow-ups to make sure the public really understood the project.
That would have prepared the public so that, for instance, they could not be manipulated by insurgency tactics like uping the number of US troups killed in the weeks before an American election.
Instead the administration told us things were going just fine and steadily getting better, which meant the public was not ready for the inevitable hard times that were ahead.
Nov 9, 2006 - 6:29 pm 44. Joan Thomson:I always enjoy reading your commentaries, both political and personal, especially your Swedish heritage. My Swedish immigrant grandparents pastored a Swedish Covenant church for a time in Kingsburg; they even named one daughter “Fornia.” I moved away from California at the age of 8, vowing to come back. I married and returned in 1957, and though the freeways are congested, the weather and beauty are unsurpassed. My husband agrees.
Nov 9, 2006 - 6:55 pm 45. Lee W. Dodson:There have always been men who do our hard jobs for us, the thankless, but necessary, tasks that require keen insight, yea, even prescience. It is not rare that these visionaries are vilified, nor is it uncommon that their achievements are belittled by lesser individuals, but the truth is that genius is rarely recognized by its contemporaries.
Mr. Rumsfeld did not need the job, he had a good one. He did not need a pinnacle to crown off his legacy, he’d already served many times and well. And, as we were reminded daily by the press and the liberals, the Secretary didn’t need the aggrandizement for his ego, he was well supplied in that category.
He took the job for the challenge, certainly, but the overriding reason this terrifically talented guy spent his energy, intellect, stamina, and courage was because he knew it was his duty.
Duty is an underused word of late because so few can be bothered with such mundane matters….probably the reason our troops in the field know why they’re there and the reason the critics don’t get it.
Mr. Rumsfeld understands what his grunts understand…duty…that’s why he was good at it. We owe him.
Thank you, Mr. Secretary. When it counted, you did your duty.
Nov 9, 2006 - 7:44 pm 46. FredTownWard:While I won’t even TRY to defend the idiocy of the Allan campaign, James Webb’s campaign has made it impossible for me to retain ANY respect for a man I used to greatly admire and now view with more contempt and disgust than any modern politician NOT surnamed Clinton, and no I’m not talking about his novels’ “naughty bits”.
First, I don’t see any POSSIBLY acceptable excuse for Webb having run TWO campaigns with anti-Semitic tactics, first the primary, then the general. Even Webb-supporting left-wing Jews admit that they find this conduct disturbing and impossible to defend as mere coincidence, just not disturbing enough to even consider voting for the Republican. (One gets the impression that Adolph Hitler would get their vote as long as he had a D after his name because they could always blame Bush for any resulting genocide.) Seriously, when was the last time a serious American major party candidate tried to win an election with anti-Semitism? When was the last time it worked?
Second, I don’t think there has been this blatant an example of using one’s military record in order to get elected and enact a policy of defeatism since the McClellan campaign of 1864, and McClellan had the likely excuse of probably not knowing any better. (I don’t think Kerry counts because I believe you have to stay decided on a particular course of action for at least an hour or so in order to call it a policy position.) What exactly has changed so that Webb now thinks that another generation of Americans, particularly another generation of combat veterans, need to experience the political defeat, retreat, and humiliation that he “enjoyed” after Vietnam? And why does he think that the terrorists he plans to abandon Iraq to will not make use of Iraq’s oil reserves in order to come after us here?
Add in more evidence of youthful racism than anyone could come up with about Allan and more than a whiff of misogyny while criticizing letting women into the military, a position that other people managed to hold and express without essentially dismissing female volunteers as sluts and whores, and you are left with what appears to be a pretty twisted piece of work. Maybe I should give Mr. Webb the benefit of the doubt and assume he really is just a bit stupid, but that’s somewhat hard to reconcile with the rest of the facts.
Oh well, at least James Webb is no Benedict Arnold!
Benedict Arnold was MUCH more heroic before he betrayed his country after deciding it couldn’t possibly win the war it was engaged in because of what he considered the idiots running it.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:05 pm 47. Wacky Hermit:Life under a Democratic Congress will be pretty much like life under a Republican Congress, except that we probably won’t be able to buy that new used car to replace our old clunker. Once the tax cuts are rolled back, our taxes will go back up to where they were before the tax cuts… which will cost us about what we would have spent on the car. I guess we’ll just have to make our 14 year old rustbucket last two more years…
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:15 pm 48. Jim Glendenning:I was a young Navy pilot stationed at NAS North Island in the 50s. I often ferried airplanes from San Diego to NAS Alameda. My preferred route was to fly along the coast at 500 feet (and sometimes less) taking in the magnificent scenery. It was then, and still is, a coastline of unparalleled beauty. As a callow young man without vision, I had no idea how fortunate I was.
I have also camped, hiked and climbed in the Sierra from Tahoe to Sequoia. You are so right. It is a mountain paradise without compare. And so close to the San Joaquin Valley and the coast.
It is, unfortunately, a magnet for people and I have not been there for many years.
Thanks for the memories.
Nov 9, 2006 - 8:31 pm 49. Liana:I too am a huge fan of Rumsfeld, I’ve actually wept and anguished over the news of his departure. Maybe it is time for it, I just don’t like it! I’ll appreciate his time as Sec. of Defense for the rest of my days. A patriot, a decent and good man who was horribly vilified by liberals, the msm and did not deserve it, they were not worthy to tie his shoes. Politics/shmolitics. I too love my state, California. From the desert to the sea, the mountains and all her lovely valleys. Born second generation on my Fathers side and first generation on my Mothers. Feel strongly tied to the terra firma here. Have traveled hither and yon, lived in another state for a few years, and longed to be back home, dreamt about it, yearned for it, what a joy to come home. Don’t ever want to live anywhere else.
Nov 9, 2006 - 9:07 pm 50. john chiappini:Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the top Sec. Defense since Cap Winberger(spell).
Nov 10, 2006 - 6:54 am 51. Stan Tillinghast:He recocnized early on that the wars we will be fighting will be mostly asemetric wars. This did not sit well with a lot of the old Army brass who liked their big Armor and Infantry Divisions not the small quick strike units.
As far as securing the Iranian and Syrian borders from insergents, well, look at our borders. And you will see the problem.
Berkeley was heaven on earth for anyone with a bent toward academics, until around 1966. I agree completely with VDH about the state of the state back then–Pat Brown was a great governor.
Nov 10, 2006 - 9:17 am 52. H. Short:Unfortunately our prosperity had built into it the “trust-fund child” syndrome: my generation took for granted the great things we were given, and squandered our moral and political capital; built up with such sacrifice. I wonder if it can be any other way.
Perhaps I am the only conservative who thinks Mark Steyn is a 5th Columnist.
Yes, he writes the conservative line very well; but there are serious problems here. Not the least of which is that he writes so well people tend to think he knows what he is writing about all the time. He doesn’t.
For instance, he doesn’t have a clue about demography. His latest book is supposedly based on that subject but in reality the foundation of his argument rests simply on the failed unsustainable social-economic fallacy which is the European welfare state.
What he is superb at, is taking the European elitists to task and exposing them for the ignorant egotistical fools that they are. But then it takes one to know one, doesn’t it?
It is somewhat irritating to see conservatives in the US adopting Mr. Steyn as one of their leading spokesmen. They seem confused by the fact that while Mr. Steyn is an ‘American’ he is not a citizen of the United States. He is a Canadian. He is a loyal subject to her Britanic Majesty; he is an articulate man of the world. He is not a patriotic citizen of the United States of America. There are large differences here conservatives in the US would be well advised to consider.
For instance, when Mr. Steyn says that Fortress America does not exist, because the US can NOT control its borders, conservatives should really pay attention to that negative. They should pay attention and consider that ‘Americans’ (citizens of the US of A, not Canada) have for most of their history been known throughout the world for their ‘can do’ attitude. A negative dropped into a book is a subtle thing, but the goals of 5th Columnists are often accomplished by the subtle arts. If a leading conservative spokesman says we Can’t, then perhaps we Can’t, can we?
Perhaps we should reconsider and acknowledge the sad truth that we are not as our forefathers, and should instead turn to those superior beings who know best for us. Of course we’ll have to give up that delusion of being responsible individuals and citizens of a Republic. I’m sure Kerry and his European mentors will be willing to take up their burdens of titles and obligations and care for us, and Mr. Steyn the Royal DJ will be more than willing to entertain us by playing all the old classics, telling us tales of how noble those old song writers were, and if we’re lucky he’ll even play a few cords on a piano and hum a few bars as we drift off into oblivion…
Victor Davis Hanson, on the other hand does know what he talks about when he writes a book. He is a true ‘American’ patriot, who can write a short article about California and make you smile and remind you of not only this country’s beauty, but of those qualities of our people which have made her unique in all the world and in all of history.
We all owe him a debt of thanks for caring enough to do that for us, and also for reminding us that Donald Rumsfeld is also owed our thanks.
Nov 10, 2006 - 10:37 am 53. Michael Kennedy:Thanks for your defense of Rumsfeld. I wonder if you’ve seen the (I think) parody speech by Rumsfeld. I can’t find it now but he attributes the announcement after the election to a clever plot to steal the limelight from the new majority leaders. The speech is so good, it may not be a parody.
I was sitting with my two brothers-in-law last Saturday after dinner talking about the war. They are both retired military (Navy and Marines) and both ex-fighter pilots. They agree that Rummy has been the best Sec Def we have ever had. I suspect that 90% of the military under the grade of O-9 agrees.
I came to California to college in 1956 and have lived here ever since. It is sad to see the deterioration of the state the past 25 years. In 1956, Los Angeles was a beautiful place, even with the smog that was worse then than now. San Francisco has a more spectacular setting for scenery but has deteriorated as badly.
I gave up on the public schools about 1983, when my son was 18 and the public high school faculty finally convinced me that they were uninterested in teaching. My other children attended private school and I feel sorry for the kids trapped in uncaring inner city schools.
I wonder about our future as I suspect we will learn that President Bush will actually be more comfortable with Democrats than anyone suspected.
Nov 10, 2006 - 11:31 am 54. Uhlenspiegel:I agree with your comments except for your reference to Baker and Gates as realists. I believe there is distinct differnce between Realism and Realpolitik. While Gates and Baker may consider themselves Realists, their brand of policy is really a variation of Bismarck style Realpolitik, and has little to do with Morgenthau’s Realism.
Nov 10, 2006 - 12:36 pm 55. Squashblossom:My 90+ mother truly inhabited San Francisco as a financially comfortable child and young adult, as her comments when passing various neighborhoods attest (”…took dancing lessons from Mrs.X there”, … “Arlene So-and-So’s mother gave the nicest parties there”,…). During the depression her mood didn’t change with her finances, and she recalls living happily as a newly-wed on Alta Vista Terrace in SF (no basin; brushed their teeth in the bathtub), walking down to the wharf to pick up fresh crabs, Larrabarrue’s (sp?) french bread and wine and picknicking on the living room floor with best friends. That picture contends for charm honors with that of her parents when they were young parents, sitting up in bed laughing and eating oyster loaves from Maye’s Oyster House after my grandfather’s poker nights.
To my mind, a singular difference between those scenes and today’s Californian “foodie” and wine-tasting behavior is the absence of self-conciousness, the spontaneity. Nowadays, along with many other blots on the scene, the poseurs are thick on the ground here in Northern California.
Nov 10, 2006 - 1:30 pm 56. Eduard Lopez:Actually, in the run-up to the war Bush should have given a speech explaining the various ways things might go, good or bad, once our military defeated Saddam’s army. Instead we were told it was 100% certain that the occupation would go about as good as one might imagine.
By the way, Victor, what did you have to say at the time? Did you tell people it was possible that the the Iraqi government would collapse and there would be a Baathist insurgency with al Queda joining in? Or did you follow the administration line?
Nov 10, 2006 - 6:32 pm 57. gs:It’s no small thing to anticipate the impending need for major change in an institution like DoD, but it’s an even larger thing to make the change happen.
Rumsfeld may have been unproductively harsh with some who did not share his vision, but I give him credit for exerting his best effort. It’s not clear whether anyone could have done better under the practical circumstances Rumsfeld encountered.
One way or the other, history’s verdict on Rumsfeld will be overshadowed by its verdicts on George “Mission Accomplished” Bush and on the other SecDef in the administration, Richard Cheney…and on the American people and our political system.
Nov 10, 2006 - 8:02 pm 58. Robohobo:Mark Buehner – “Our failure to restore basic electricity to Iraq (yes, i know all the terrible hurdles- they are irrelevant) is another nail in the coffin.” Uh, that betrays a basic lack of knowledge of Iraq before invasion. I get this from a LtC in the Texas Nat’l Guard who was there. The only parts of Iraq that had electricity, much less full time power, were those where Saddam’s cronies lived. The rest of the country was dark, all the time. I have to paraphrase my friend, but, ‘..we didn’t have to rebuild the infrastructure, we had to build it. It is a common mistake to assume that there was modern infrastructure in Iraq outside of the areas owned by Saddam’s men.’ That is from someone, on the ground and doing the job. The bombing campaign took out the power stations that served the elite.
Sorry, I could not let that go, so many people are just wrong about conditions in Iraq pre-invasion.
VDH – My aunt and her husband lived in Exeter just outside of Visalia. They owned a cabin or something at an area of the central coast. After WWII, where he flew bombers in the Army Air Corps, they settled there, raised a great family, grapes, oranges and walnuts. The furthest my aunt got from there was Visalia when her husband became too ill to farm anymore. Unfortunately, they had to sell the farm to afford his care. They were never wealthy, but they were happy. You may have known them and we can discuss that, just email me. My aunt always talked exactly about the area leading into the Sierras and the central coast in the same general terms that you did. She passed last year and this post of yours reminded me of her.
Thanks,
Nov 11, 2006 - 4:08 am 59. Carl Cornejo:The Hobo
Having given up entirely on Hollywood’s materialism through its focus on flashy cars, clothes, and jewels in favor of all the great newsmakers of the decade of George Walker Bush — from Condi to Pope Benedict XVI to Mahmoud “Show me the Mahdi” Ahmadinejad — I find particularly interesting the fact that The Wall Street Journal still supports Rumsfeld and the war in Iraq as a platform for democratic globalism but also ardently approves of President Bush’s “comprehensive” immigration reform as a manifestly massive boost for transnational corporate interests. Oh, wait. I already think Charles Krauthammer’s democratic realism may be an even better idea to vindicate once those messianic mullahs in Tehran — led as satanically as ever by President Armageddon — acquire the nuclear bomb and set about destroying Israel and building the foundations for the arrival of the Twelfth Imam, the establishment of their vaunted totalitarian caliphate, and thus the ensuing age of apocalyptic Shiite tyranny and enslavement of the entire world under Islamic law, better known as sharia.
As for the 2008 presidential election, there may be an interesting factor to consider ascending from Oregon:
Michael Charles Smith, a professing agnostic and moderate Republican who claims to be frustrated by the surge of right-wing Christian fundamentalism, has launched a presidential campaign in Oregon to take back the Republican Party.
Unfortunately, I am, to say the very least, skeptical of Mr. Smith’s capacity to understand the absolute urgency behind stopping the Islamic Republic of Iran, to say nothing of the realism that I’m seeing out of the Council on Foreign Relations. You see, Michael Charles Smith believes that economic globalism and a massive debt constitute greater threats to the American way of life than Islamic fascism. Sadly, everything I’ve seen out of Tehran tells me that if Iran really does successfully detonate nuclear weapons in Washington, D.C., New York City, and other major American cities, then ALL other political discussions and debates will lose their importance because, to put it bluntly, we’ll be dead… very, very dead. Speaking of the 2008 election, Dr. Hanson, I am curious: Of the current likely Republican candidates, which would you support and why would you support that candidate?
Nov 11, 2006 - 9:19 am 60. steve:I am a New York who studied at UC Berkeley from 1978-1980. It was already pretty congested. Native Calfornians would tell me about growing up in California in the ’50s and ’60s. It sounded magical. It must have been the greatest place on earth.
Nov 11, 2006 - 11:10 am 61. Brownie:Anyone who has read James Webb’s book “Born Fighting”, about the Scotch-Irish, should realize that he has not only basically mythologized this group of Americans (I happen to be one of them) but that he also intends to be the “strong leader” that he spends quite a lot of time describing in his book. He obviously sees himself as an Andrew Jackson type populist, thereby appealing to the large Scotch-Irish population, and also their “strong leader” that they will follow to the gates of Hell.
Problem is, as he also admits, getting the Scotch-Irish to organize themselve as a movement or in his opinion an ethnic group is next to impossible. Sort of like herding cats as our Southern friends would say. And, as he also noted, the Scotch-Irish were the first in this country to identify themselves as simply Americans. So first of all, he is going to have to convince us that we are indeed an ethnic group and stop thinking of ourselves as Americans only and then he is going to have to convince us that he is our “strong leader”. Don’t think that is going to happen if most are anything like me and view him as a back-stabbing turncoat.
Oh, and, in my opinion, most of his books that I’ve read are really quite good. Some more than quite good. Too bad he didn’t stick with being a writer.
Nov 11, 2006 - 12:11 pm 62. Miriam:What a way to treat a loyal public servant–turfing him out like a servant who is caught stealing the silver.
Bush has surrendered to the “realists” who brought us the present mess.
Nov 11, 2006 - 1:50 pm 63. 49erDweet:Thanks for your great comments re: California. Spent lots of years in eastern Madera county, and fully appreciate your remembrances. Is suddenly driving through downtown Shaver Lake still a challenge?
Have a slightly different take on Rummy, but agree he was emminently successful – and needed – for most of the reasons you mentioned. But his initial failure to secure Iraq’s borders – wow, is that deja vu or something? – was a misstep.
I just can’t help wondering who he groomed to take his place, and why that stalwart didn’t do so at least a year or two ago, when the dhimmocrat handwriting was clearly on the wall?
Thank for your constant thoughtful analysis. Your insights are extremely encouraging to an old timer.
Nov 11, 2006 - 4:02 pm 64. Kevin Bove:It is “tact,” not “tack.”
Kevin Bové
Nov 11, 2006 - 7:11 pm 65. Larry Rasczak:“…training indigenous forces, ensuring political autonomy, and providing air and commando support (e.g., Vietnam circa 1972-4) is the only answer…”
The problem with that plan is that it assumes the Iraqis are capable of, and willing to, step up to the plate and do what it takes in terms creating a stable, non-corrupt civilian government, professional, loyal, non-corrupt police force, and professional military forces that are willing to fight and loyal to said stable civilian government.
This does not seem to be the case in Iraq.
As far as I can tell Rumsfeld’s plan was that after the Liberation of Baghdad the music would swell, the credits would roll, a class of good looking, well educated, English speaking Iraqi Jeffersonian democrats would magically appear to take the reins of a universally popular government; and Iraqi would become some sort of an Islamic Switzerland, like Turkey only more progressive.
But the Iraqis did not behave like the French, and the Dutch did in 1944, or like the Poles and Czechs and Hungarians did in 1989. Instead they behaved like Iraqis. This is because (suprise!) they are NOT the French, Dutch, Polish, Czech or Hungarian, they are Iraqi. This should not have been a surprise, but somehow it seems that, to Rumsfeld at least, it was.
The Iraqi people aren’t the Europeans; they weren’t raised in a Liberal Judeo-Christian culture; so it should not be a surprise that they don’t share Liberal Judeo-Christian values, or behave the way Americans or Europeans (who were raised in a Liberal Judeo-Christian culture) would. (There is a reason why Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East.)
There is a UN Statistic that says more books get translated into Spanish in one year (approx 10,000) than have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years! In a nation with no Luther, no Hobbes, no Locke, no Mayflower Compact, no Federalsit Papers, no Jefferson, no Hamilton, no Madison, no Ayn Rand, and no Hayek, you don’t get a lot of Libertarians and Jeffersonian democrats! In the Islamic World The Renaissance and the Enlightenment are still very literally “just things that happened to other people.”
The first rule of Strategy is that you never base your plan upon the actions of someone you can not control. Rumsfeld repeatedly violated this rule. He assumed that Iraqi exiles would flock to the “Iraqi Liberation Army” (remember that?). He assumed the Turks would let us move in through their country. He assumed that Iraqis would not consider the Liberation of their Capital to be an opportunity for mass looting and the theft of national cultural treasures. He assumed the Iraqis would be less concerned with settling sectarian scores and lining their own corrupt pockets than with building a free and prosperous nation. He assumed the Iraqis would not sabotage their own oil resources, or blow up their own Holy Places. He assumed their politicians would make personal sacrifices to work together for the common good. In short he assumed that even though the Iraqis had not been raised in a Liberal, post- Enlightenment, Judeo-Christian culture, they would act exactly as if they had been.
He was wrong.
Nov 11, 2006 - 8:00 pm 66. Richard "Ricardo" Munro:1) Dr. Hanson, of course, you are right about Rumsfield. He has the reputation as a martinet but the got the job done and has accomplished much. Remember Trajan conquered Mesopotamia in three years and so did the British in 1915-1918 but both occupations blew up in savage insurrections. Ultimately, indigenous forces will have to defend their democracy on their own. The only caveat I have is that we must protect Kuwait and Southern Iraq and deny those oil resources to our enemies at while we live in the Age of Petroleum. The only way to win the war on terror is to go beyond petroleum and thus pull the financial plug on Al Qaida.
As far as Jim Webb is concerned one cannot criticize him for making deals with his Democratic sponsors. In their desparation to get a so-called majority they have given a man who was considered an arch-enemy to feminists and peaceniks a club. I would be very surpised indeed if Webb turned ultra liberal on us. In fact he is more conservative than many Republicans. I am sure he won because he got a substantial male, Marine and veteran vote a vote that has eluded the Democrats for years simply because he is a manly Democrat that such men feel they can trust. Webb is also right that the is an invisible ethnic group that is awakening to its strength and that is the people who are descended from the fringe people of the British Isles. Such people were never English and have always been outsiders to a large extent to the power elites. Call them what you like, the Scotch-Irish, the Gaels or the Celts, that feeling is still out there and Webb capitilized on this feeling; his kilted brother played the pibrochs loud and clear at his victory party. I can’t remember a Democratic gathering for more than 40 years that had so many current and ex-Marines present.
As far as California having great natural beauty yes this is true. As I too live in the San Joaquin Valley and know Morro Bay, los Osos and Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon I can see yes there is great natural beauty there.
But for a combination of history AND natural beauty nothing can surpass the Northwest of Scotland (particularly Loch Maree).
I like an appreciate California but have watched Arvin and Bakersfield go down the LA road; none of my children want to live here and I am only staying here until I retire and then intend to retreat to a quieter less anarchic and less taxified quarter.
With Arnold we have avoided present disaster but I fully expect the tax and spend Demcrats to permanently control both houses in Sacramento and win back the governorship.
I have been a school teacher for more than 20 years and I can tell you that I have noticed a change among students.
1) they are lazier and more defiant and as one of the posters said seem to believe all authority is derrogation. They wear ipods in their ears, cheat like mad and refuse to study except to go through the motions. The majority have no interest in learning or culture. They are only interested in themselves, sex and hedonism. More and more California reminds me of the Last Days of Pompeii.
2) It used to be one phone call to the parents about bad behavior would bring about change but now it just opens a window to the moral chaos and one expects defiance and vituperation from that quarter as well. What can’t be cured must be endured but to keep the students on task is a constant battle.
Nov 12, 2006 - 11:54 am 67. M. Simon:Jim O’Sullivan,
Re: tack
It is a naval term meaning a change in course to take advantage of the wind without changing your general direction.
Nov 12, 2006 - 5:36 pm 68. M. Simon:H. Short,
Of course America can control its borders.
Over 90 years of drug prohibition proves that.
Nov 12, 2006 - 7:56 pm 69. M. Simon:Kevin Bove,
The word you are thinking of is tactic. A synonym is tack (nautical term).
Tact just does not fit the useage.
Nov 12, 2006 - 7:59 pm 70. Anonymous:VDH: “I thought the Allen tact was both silly and wrong…”
Dictionary.com: tact /tækt/ –noun
1. a keen sense of what to say or do to avoid giving offense; skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations.
Yeah, clearly it’s tack, not tact. I think now Allen and tact should no longer be used in the same sentence.
Must be something about the Army Language School (now the Military Language Institute). My Dad went there in 1955 after growing up in New Jersey. I grew up in Los Angeles, not New Jersey. California is really something else, and perhaps, maybe a bit redder (politically) than it’s been in some time. Hopefully, the National Republicans won’t continue to treat California like it’s a complete lost cause anymore.
Nov 13, 2006 - 1:23 am 71. douglas:oops, last comment was mine-
Nov 13, 2006 - 1:24 am 72. Rob:I am less concerned about Rummy’s sins and more interested in the motivations of the unnamed people who leaked and hated him. Figuring out that will bring enlightenment into / about many a dark corner.
Nov 13, 2006 - 8:07 pm 73. Joe Toboni:VDH. There must be something special about the Left Coast. My Dad had lived in New Hampshire since 1977 and spontaneously moved out West last year.
Nov 14, 2006 - 1:01 pm 74. Aaron:It strikes me that the term “realism” as applied to the school of foreign policy thought is a dignified way of saying “the school of belief that our own nation cannot, and should not attempt to, oppose evil and change the world for the better.” Not very different from traditional (and certainly current) Eurowonk policy or from the civilizational ennui that now accompanies Europe to sleep.
Telling indeed that this is a platform that “liberals” identify with.
Nov 14, 2006 - 8:20 pm