Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Has Jacob Weisberg Discovered the Rosetta Stone for the Iraq War? In ‘The Bush Tragedy’ Weisberg propounds a logically coherent, if altogether chilling, unfolding of the Iraq War story. At its center is a literally paranoid Dick Cheney and a coterie of acolytes drunk on the same Kool Aid. They believed all that WMD, operational Al Qaeda contacts, we will be greeted as liberators stuff, and, sealed away in their own world, would entertain only confirmatory evidence, dismissing anything else pretty nearly apriori. Consideration of alternative courses of action were likewise dismissed in cavalier fashion. Add to that, with an America threatened by Acts of War, Cheney’s well documented fixation with the ‘Unitary Executive’, wherein the Constitution is understood to devolve all power and prerogatives relating to the President’s war authority upon the executive branch without exception, up to and including control of any and all flows of information. Finally, into the mix falls a psychologically flawed President, without a capacity to critically reflect upon either himself or the world around him, and a Dick Cheney who understands just how to exploit the situation.   It is almost as if three hermetic seals fall into place. The Unitary Executive, which seals the White House from all examination - let alone the normal checks and balances; an undying Hobbesian Cold War ideological intoxication holding sway inside the bubble, and a critically limited President, rendered psychologically susceptible to certain possibilities which open in the post 9/11 world, folded under the wing of a man who understands the situation and is willing and able to exploit it. 9:00:40 PM    comment []

Change Election in Danger of Being Hijacked For a long time, more or less two thirds of the American people have indicated they believe the country is on the wrong course and needs to change direction. Nearly every poll has highlighted change as the electorate's principle concern. For the matter to now begin to turn on the question of whether or not we might elect a woman or a black man President betrays this well expressed concern, and the country's interests. No one proposes that electing a black man will solve the problems of the economy, the Iraq War, and the leadership role America should pursue in the world after 9/11 - let alone the finding the right direction for the country. Nor is anyone proposing electing a woman President would accomplish those ends. Electing some particular woman, or some particular black man, perhaps, but that is another question. So who is skewing the matter in the direction of race and gender? Who would benefit? Clearly the Republicans. A choice between a woman and John McCain, or between a black man and John McCain drains attention away from the real issues of concern. You can bet, in many and various ways, the right wing machine will echo with increasing force these attempts to reorient the debate. And of course our Main Stream Media will be all too easily suckered into aiding and abetting this ‘game’, not least because it fits in so readily with their flogging of the horse race aspect of elections. In 1960 Kennedy famously offered: I am not the Catholic candidate for President, I am a candidate for President who happens to be Catholic. So now Hillary Clinton is not the woman candidate for President of the United States, but a candidate for President of the United States who happens to be a woman, and Barack Obama is not the black candidate for President, but a candidate for President who happens to be black To turn the debate on the point of race or gender turns it away from the question of the where the country is going and how it is to get there. The REAL concern of the electorate at this moment.   8:57:34 PM    comment []

The Numbers     For those opposed to Bush et al Tom Oliphant has written a wonderful book: Utter Incompetents. Hardly a rhetorical flamer, it is far more full of light than heat. Page after page after page Oliphant just lays out the ‘record’, and allows the evidence to accumulate. For the anti-Bushie, dabble in it as you will [and you will!], it is like catnip.   Be that as it may, at the books conclusion, Oliphant lays out a series of simple numbers that devastate. I will return to these in a moment, but, as the book – of necessity - ends with the status of things in 2007, consider the interview with Chuck Hagel conducted by Charlie Rose March 28, 2008:   http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/03/28/2/a-conversation-with-senator-chuck-hagel   It is as ‘up to date’ as possible, but not yet available as either video or transcript – one assumes it will be shortly. Hagel clearly seconds many of Oliphant’s points and makes reference to a new poll that shows 81%[!!!] of the country believes we are on the wrong course.   And so back to those numbers.   [It would be nice if I could ‘cut and paste’, but I will have to enter text by hand, and apologize for any ‘typos’ in advance – note that Oliphant’s numbers are matter of public record, being nothing more than poll data, which, in the aggregate, define a truly stunning reality]   From pages 271 – 272 ‘Utter Incompetents’ 2007 by Thomas Oliphant, Thomas Dunne Books, St Martins Press 2007:   "President Bush’s Polls did more than just go poof.   As his days dwindle down to precious few, his handling of  the presidency has cost him what once were his most appealing qualities – and, in a way the foundations of his standing as president.   In the Washington Post/ABC News surveys early in his administration most people (including most people who disagreed with him)on major issues) considered Bush honest and trustworthy, by 63 to 34 per cent in the last survey before the 9/11 attacks. In January of 2007 the result was 57 – 40 percent negative.   Another part of his foundation was a once wide spread felling that the outwardly affable Bush understands ordinary Americans and their problems. That was the view by 61 – 37 percent margin in survey in early 2003, shortly after the terrorist attacks. By 2007, the result was67 to 32 percent negative.   Americans also once saw strength in him. Just before the 9/11 atttacks sent those ratings into the stratosphere, Bush was seen as strong national leader by a 55 – 43 percent margin. In early 2007, the result was negative by almost the reverse margin, 54 to 45 percent.   Above all Americans had long considered Bush the kind of person to be trusts in a crisis. That was the view by 60 to 37 percent in the late summer of 2001.  Nearly six years later, the verdict was 56 to 43 per cent negative. One important reason for the harsh judgment was an overwhelming view of Bush as stubborn and unresponsive. By 63 to 36 percent, the American public declared him  unwilling to listen to different points of view."   Now just THINK about this, in an era of great and grave consequence, by significant and consistent margins,  the American people believe the President of the United States is untrustworthy, does not understand them, is stubborn, unresponsive and unwilling to listen to different points of view, is NOT a strong leader, and NOT to be trusted in a crisis.   What conceivably could be more damning! Or Chilling! And not least as it defines the trashing of possibly the greatest Presidential asset of them all: the bully pulpit.   81%[!!!] of the country believes we are on the wrong course. 8:52:52 PM    comment []

Matrices     Matrix mathematics is one of the most powerful tools employed in modern science. A matrix is envisioned as an array of elements to be brought to bear (more of less simultaneously) on phenomena.  If the elements of the matrix are well chosen and weighted, the ‘operation’ of the matrix on the phenomena in question will produce a prediction which matches experimental observation. The virtue of the conceptualism is that it opens a way to assessment of complex interacting systems in which factors can in act  simultaneously – or nearly so - in various directions.   The possible usefulness of such an approach to historical and geopolitical matters is pretty nearly intuitive, since such matters are all too often understood to be complex realities in which competing elements, inclining one way and another, act more or less simultaneously to influence the evolution of events. OF COURSE no predictions made in tangled human and societal matters can, or should be proposed to, approach anything like mathematical rigor.   Nevertheless, I will try to take the approach ‘out for a spin’ with reference to the Iraq War. (The ‘test’ will be does application of the matrix lead logically to the historical observation.)   To begin with, there were too many ways the war could go too far wrong, and too few it could go as right as we would need have it go once we began it. Specifically we would need to have a stable, democratic, pluralistic, prosperous Iraq within a time frame effective in challenging the appeal of radical Islam within the Arab/Muslim world. This was more than a little like saying we were going to run the table five straight times in Vegas. While the all too many elements which might act against success  could stand alone, as well as operate  in concert, the brighter possibilities, which clearly appeared less probable, needed to come off in concert, lowering the probability for success still further. In short the ‘matrix’ out of which the Iraq War would evolve was heavily dominated by elements arguing against its success. The one positive element in the matrix that seemed like a ‘sure thing’, was a quick and easy victory by the American military.- and that indeed happened.  For about 10 minutes  we were, in fact, greeted as liberators – and 10 minutes was all it was ever likely to be – after that it became: ‘When are you leaving?   In prospect: It was a dumb war!   You might consult ‘Choices’ posted to my blog site in October 2002    Now let us consider the ‘purple finger’ elections of January 2005. An immense success, the Bushies proclaimed them, and worked them assiduously for every rose colored glasses, count our chickens before they are hatched advantage they could yield. Yet it was apparent from the beginning that those elections were set up to produce an avatar of secular division: Vote for me, I’m Shia! Vote for me, I’m Sunni! Vote for me I’m Kurd! In the event the Sunnis declined to participate, exacerbating the rigorously sectarian outcome. Add to this the bed rock reality that a government with, of necessity, no record, would in a short time, need to find enough young men willing to fight for die for a unified Iraq which the government itself in no way embodied. The body of young men from whom such force might be fashioned, would be counter posing what was a vision of  an Iraq little more that a faint glimmer on a far too distant horizon, with their far more immediate – and ‘purple finger’ affirmed - loyalties to family, tribe, and above all, their identities as Sunni, Shia and Kurd. Here we had a matrix crushingly dominated by elements whose operation predicted EXACTLY the reality which evolved from January 2005 forward. [Laid out in three pieces posted to my blog site January 30, 2005.]   Finally, let’s consider The Surge.   I proposed recently in a post to OpenDemocracy: 'The Surge is Working': Flip Side on March 1, 2008, that there were likely aspects (elements in a matrix) to be added to the simplistic ones the administration was carefully (as ever) singling out to its advantage. My principle citation in the post was an article by a one Chris Hedges, some of whose assertions were not ‘common knowledge’ at the time, but which have been widely acknowledged since. Listening to the administration, you would not have gleaned, for example, that we had been systematically paying the Sunnis fighting to suppress their former foreign Jihadi allies. Hedges said we had  . . . . and we had. It appears to be emerging that the more complex matrix I supposed is, in fact, responsible for how things are evolving now.  That matrix inclines rather strongly towards increased trouble, not ‘success’, let alone ‘winning’  For a broader consideration of elements in play you might consult ‘The Insurgency’ at my blog site: http://blogs.salon.com/0001185/   FINALLY,  I emphasize this is a conceptual approach. It can only yield useful results if the matrix devised is as intellectually rigorous as the one who proposes it can manage. It will be of no use to put together elements after one’s own desires, ignoring other possibilities, or short changing or over emphasizing the weight of some elements as opposed to others. Perhaps the best ‘rule of thumb’ would be that suggested by Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink’. Gather as much evidence and experience as you can, let it stew, and wait for the moment when things snap into focus. In the end, given the complexities involved in human societies, there is no substitute for informed intuition. We can strive to cultivate that, and, in so doing, witness well for democracy in our own time – perhaps the most any generation of Americans can count on the opportunity to contribute.   “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” 8:48:59 PM    comment []

‘The Surge Is Working’: Flip Side   ‘The surge is working’ appears to be one more ‘rose colored glasses', ‘count your chickens before they’re hatched’ huckstered to us by the administration, its right wing coterie and John McCain(!) and is all too likely to be naïve, and dangerously so.   In this light, please consider:   http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080225_the_calm_before_the_conflagration from Chris Hedges.   It sets out exactly what I suspect - and have sketched below in 'The Insurgency', to be the nature of a likely and significant reality lurking beneath the blue skies, pretty balloons, straight on to morning, we’re winning in Iraq screed the right wing echo chamber, and John McCain(!) have been urging so insistently upon us.   Now I don’t propose this confirms I have been right, but it strongly suggests my caution on the dangerous naïveté we may be courting WAS correct.   I do not endorse all that Hedges proposes, but if his numbers are anywhere near correct, and Petraeus is unaware of them, it would betoken a failure of epic proportions. If he is aware of them – and he has not, and neither he nor the administration has as yet – communicated to the American people the danger they portend, it would be an almost equal failure [there IS another word I could select].   One number Hedges cites is:   "The Sunni Arabs, who make up about 40 percent of Iraq’s population, held most positions of power under Saddam Hussein."   This flies in the face of the almost universal understanding that the breakdown is 20 % Sunni, 20%  Kurd, and 60% Shia. However, it of real consequence that the Sunnis (or more particularly the broad mass of the Sunni population) believed they constituted better than 50% of the population of Iraq. The import being that the armies of young men they are amassing will believe that ,and will be further encouraged to fight thereby. Trouble!   Another place where I would take exception to Hedges:   "The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed back into the embrace of the Taliban."   No, they went back to their ages old internecine struggle for power and pelf, whose dysfunctions initially opened the door to the Taliban.   In closing, it should be noted how this definitively undercuts John McCain’s utterly simplistic and oft repeated, idea that Iraq will fall into the hands of Al Qaeda if we ‘fail’ in Iraq. How does anyone, observing armies of well armed Sunni, Shia and Kurd propose they will give up their country and its oil wealth to a small foreign collection of fanatics who are of no use to any of them. It is lunacy!     8:43:17 PM    comment []