« Cuts Both Ways | Main | Intermission »

Not beneath comment

I spent some time tonight replying to a commenter over at one of my favorite blogs - Full Context.
I attempted to make some points - again, within the frame of U.S. foreign policy - which I would have liked to have made here, had the occasion more readily presented itself. The point of departure was Tony Blair's recent speech, revisiting his ministerial casuistry for participating in the invasion of Iraq.

So, both to "promote" Full Context, as well as direct any interested person to a statement of my own that I believe raises some important points, I'll note that you can get to the thread here.

I must say that the person to whom I was replying, "Roger," strikes me as a formidable adversary - both from the substance of his remarks at Full Context, as well as his output on his own blog, Limited, Inc., which reveals an interesting and erudite writer and thinker. Looking over his writing, I'm reminded of the title of one of the sections in Nietzsche's Daybreak - "The Desire for Perfect Opponents."

By the time this post has been "published," the thread may have taken turns that I can't now anticipate - so I look forward to seeing how the discussion unfolds.

March 9, 2004 | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834205dc953ef00e55032c04b8834

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Not beneath comment:

Comments

Paul, I read your comments. And thanks for the compliment about being a "worthy adversary" -- as Walter says in the Big Lebowski, one of my fave movies.

Here's what I'd say in reply.

1. "Equally bad" -- the Ba'athist guerillas aren't animated by any ideology but that of power. So the badness, here, would depend upon uniquely upon the characters of those in power -- much as the character of the Pakistan military dictatorship is directed by the characters of those in power. Power, as we all know from Acton, corrupts (so, as we all know from experience, does weakness). From the Iraqi view -- even the Sunni view -- the success of the Ba'athist resistance would be bad news.

So, would it be equally bad news if the original Bush agenda had been implemented? I'd argue yes. If, that is, my interpretation is correct, and the U.S. in May -- especially the Pentagon -- was trying to put Chalabi in place as a puppet leader, everything that we know about the elevating of swindler/adventurers to be proxy heads of states by superpowers would predict that the Iraq would suffer from a massive kleptocracy, its armed forces would be used as a pawn of the superpower, and its resources would be stripped. This has happened in the Philippines, in Zaire, in Guatamala, etc. etc. If that agenda had permanently wrested the one resource Iraq depends on -- oil -- from the control of the nation, it would effectively have thrust Iraq back into the position it had in 1958. In other words, the nation would spiral even further down the third world ladder. Iraq and Venezuala were the co-founders of OPEC, and they operated for a very good reason -- both countries had been ripped off to an incredible extent by American petroleum concerns (and, in the case of the Iraqis, the Brits). Does this mean that there is a Chomskian corporatist combine in action here? Actually, my source is more Jonathan Kwitney, the Wall Street Journal writer who tracked the interests of the Americans who overthrew Mussadegh in Iran.

2. The moral career of nations. I have no doubt that the U.S. has a moral mission that transcends its interests at times. However, that mission is mostly with reference to its own population. That Nations operate according to their interest is a constitutive principle of nationhood. Is that bad? Only if you think that the interactions of self-interested organizations lead to bad things. Adam Smith would disagree. So the question is, are the interests of the Americans and the Iraqis synonymous? I have no reason to think that they are beyond a certain point. It would be eminently in the Iraqi interest, for instance, to strengthen ties with Iran -- but that would certainly not be in the U.S.'s strategic interest. As a thinker, one has one's own idea of what a moral polity should look like -- my own idea is that Iraq should retain its social welfare system, and make those reforms that are consonant with globalisation slowly, rather than going for a Russian style shock treatment. As an opponent of all theocracies, I would like to see Iraq resist the Islamicist temptation. And you can fill out the usual liberal list -- I'd like to see a civil society in Iraq. But civil society is not implemented from above. That is a crucial mistake, I think, of the nation building ethos -- and why I think nation building really means, prolonging the occupation of nations. Or, to give it an uglier term, colonialism. Luckily, there are viable Iraqi groups which have quite other agendas than the American, and they are coming into play. That is why even though the regime change effected by Bush is wonderful, it does not imply that the war Bush waged was wonderful. An act that has a bad intent can have a good result. That’s the imponderable element in life.

Posted by: roger at Mar 10, 2004 11:11:58 AM

Roger,
Thanks for your comment. This discussion raises too many issues to address compactly.

You would describe the U.S. invasion of Iraq as "An act that has a bad intent," which intent you apparently take to be that "the U.S. in May -- especially the Pentagon -- was trying to put Chalabi in place as a puppet leader."

That however is a non-sequitur - from the alleged fact that certain actions were contemplated last May, in the aftermath of 'major combat', there is no reason to suppose that they were the reasons for the sake of which the invasion was undertaken. Sure, they might have been - though I very much doubt it - but to undertake to infer as much from recent events runs afoul of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

As far as a coalescence of American and Iraqi "interests" goes - an interesting term which needs to be used with care - you said that "I have no reason to think that they [American and Iraqi interests] are [compatible] beyond a certain point."

Would some inchoate version of Western-style constitutional democracy count as going "beyond a certain point"? I know of no case in which the United States government has preferred a cooperative tyrant to an apparently viable constitutional republic (with stable rule of law, market economy, minority protections, etc - even something resembling the Millet system in old Lebanon), which is one reason why I do not consider your South American examples (and Mossadegh, for that matter) to be germane without careful qualification. I suspect that those qualifications would be analogous to the supplemental hypotheses stuck onto the Ptolemaic system of astronomy as the Copernican view came into focus - and have the same implication.

Whether some kind of "constitutional republic" is viable for Iraq is still an open question, but in any event I see no reason to view Chalabi as some kind of third-world "strongman" (or even, more plausibly, an Arab Shah) chomping at the bit of raw power. And that the United States would "want" Iraq to be ruled by Saddam-lite makes little sense in terms of the current world scene - and flatly contradicts the precepts of the National Security Strategy Document of September 2002. Your view entails that the latter is little more than florid rhetoric.

A huge difference between Iraq now and the Third World in the past is that the geopolitical context has been radically altered by the implosion of the Soviet Union, thanks to American steadfastness and vigilance (and yes, I'd say, "thanks to" marriages of convenience with the unsavory despots who provided a bulwark against sovietization). Hence the United States brings a new calculus and casuitry to the table, and has greater "flexibility," perhaps, in pushing for more humane and free institutions 'round the world.

Since time is fluid - and, again, as I insist, the decisions by even the best nations are unavoidably "tragic" - we are having to confront the legacy of the Cold War now - Islamism is a reaction to the mutilation of "civil society" throughout the Middle East, a condition exacerbated, if not caused, by the Cold War. Strengthen civil society there, and it's reasonable to conclude that the appeal of radicalism will be defused: the citizenry will feel that they have a stake in stability. Much easier said than done, of course, but the status quo doesn't "work."

But a Ba'athist restoration - which the murderers that comprise the Iraqi "resistance" aim at - is the complete antithesis of any kind of civil society. I'll repeat an earlier point: there's no evidence that the CPA and/or the U.S. Military have a policy of targeting noncombatants in Iraq. The intentions and actions - the moral hue - of the Americans versus the "militants" couldn't be farther apart. Even under the sinister scenario you suspect, the prospects for an inchoate civil society are markedly greater than if the Ba'athists were to prevail.

Another reason to view skeptically analogies to past coups in Third World countries is that they entailed clandestine, small(er)-scale operations, involving proxies; but Iraq has been subject to an all-out invasion by American (and British) troops. The record of American "nation-building" when a foe has been invaded and/or vanquished differs rather markedly from what was accepted as "workable" when relying upon covert ops, and for understandable reasons: not least because in the former case the "investment" has been so much greater, as was the degree of control.

There's much more that could be said, but I'll have to stop here for now. As I have said before in debates of this kind, the U.S., ex hypothesi may be "bad," but the likely alternatives are far, far worse.

Posted by: Paul Craddick at Mar 10, 2004 11:12:27 PM

Paul,
First, one comment on your post today. Surely you don't think Chirac has run France for thirty years? In 1975, the French president was the odious Giscard D'estaing. His election was hailed in this country by conservatives, since he represented the more conservative wing of the Gaullist party.

Second, your idea that the flying into Iraq of Chalabi and his paramilitaries by the Pentagon in April (before Baghdad fell) does not tell us about the intention of the Americans is interesting. If your objection is right, than you must object on the same grounds to Bush's claim that Saddam intended to build WMD. In fact, claims about intention have to be built from analyses of action. Any murder trial is built on that principle. There’s no non-sequitor, here, unless you believe that intention is radically incorrigible to any examination. So my claim may be empirically wrong, but it is logically solid.
3. There's no point in defending the ba'athists. I don't. There is a point in analyzing the events that have occurred since the fall of Baghdad. I think the American agenda for Iraq, as originally formatted, would have involved Iraq in, among other things, a war with Iran. I think ( I hope) that has been avoided. Why? Because that original agenda has fallen apart. I'm optimistic about Iraq. I think it will grope towards democracy, and civil society. And I think there is a role progressives should be playing, via NGOs, supporting the retention of the social welfare structure, rights for women, bulwarks against theocracy, etc. Iraq avoided becoming an American colony through a chain of circumstances that were, in one way, predictable – that is, it was predictable that the Pentagon’s arrogant assumption that the culture and history of Iraq were meaningless variables in the conquest and governance of the country would lead it to make horrible and amplifying mistakes. The hubris of the Pentagon reminded me of nothing so much as Edmund Burke’s description of the way the East India company treated India. Burke was right then, and his objections, given a similar instance of conquest, are right now.

What is the American role there, right now? I don't think the Bush agenda has changed, but I think that it was always subservient to the Bush political agenda, of being elected at any cost. I think the story there is complicated by disputes between different factions within the Bush administration. In my own opinion, the invasion of Iraq was not something Bush even contemplated in 2000. As a ex Tex oilman, I don't think Bush was uncomfortable with OPEC. I think he was converted -- post 9/11 -- to the Rumsfeldian view of regime change in the Middle East, the breaking of Opec, and the more robust assertion of American hegemony. And if there is one thing we know about Bush, he is an ardent convert. I expect that the American role will continue to wrongheadedly try to make Iraq function as part of a Greater Middle Eastern plan.

4. American foreign policy and democracy. There’s a good, democratic reason that America rarely supports democracy in third world countries – there’s no constituency for it. Let me give you an example. When the Taliban was brought down in Afghanistan, there was almost universal joy in the U.S. At that time, Bush promised an aid package to the Afghans that would guarantee the reconstruction of their country. He promised that the U.S. would be much more interventionist, much more involved in making a democracy work.

Well, in practice the Bush administration quickly and decisively cut down the amount pledged to almost a fifth, withdrew troops, and re focused on Iraq. Now, was there an outcry from Bush’s supporters about the reneging on the pledge to Afghanistan? Were people pounding on desks, demanding more aid to Afghanistan? No. There simply isn’t a constituency for such things. The American attitude towards the rest of the world has traditionally been, leave us alone.

Democracy is not about ideals – it is about mechanisms. The mechanism that it operates with is feed back. In most cases, there is no popular constituency for democracy in, say, Zaire, or Syria. Hence, there is a vacuum that can quickly be filled with people who have interests in outcomes in Zaire, or Syria. It is easy to capture and direct U.S. foreign policy towards these places because there is no punishment for failure. What American president is ever going to be punished because his promise to pressure Pakistan, for instance, into being more democratic goes unfulfilled? I don’t think that is going to change. What can change is that the specialized groups that try to capture U.S. foreign policy can encompass groups that lobby for civil society. But it will probably never encompass people who lobby for, for instance, greater protection of the right to unionize in Chile. Such a group is going to work against forces that can offer greater reward, at less risk, to congressmen and Executive branch staff for taking the opposite position.

This is why I am doubtful about the U.S. as a carrier of liberal ideals.

Posted by: roger at Mar 11, 2004 11:07:55 AM

Roger,

You wrote:

"I expect that the American role will continue to wrongheadedly try to make Iraq function as part of a Greater Middle Eastern plan."

If there's one thing I ask of interlocutors here, it's that they don't split any infinitives!

Kidding ...

As to Chirac, are you referring to my Huh? Iv post? So far as I know, I've never claimed - nor quoted anyone else as claiming - that Chirac was President in '75, nor that he has been in office continually since that time. Chirac was Prime Minister in '75, and then began his ignominious "friendship" with Saddam.

I stand by the allegation of non-sequitur. No one, least of all myself, denies that the U.S. has had a longstanding relationship with Chalabi, and I'll accept it as a given that he was shuttled into Iraq nearly a year ago. That's what we know; as to motivations, contingencies, and the like, they are more mysterious; viz., indeterminate. Clearly he was intended to have "some role" in Iraqi governance - but there's no legitimate argumentative "pivot" from roles entertained for him in the '90's, to firm conclusions about the role(s) for which he was slated lately (post-OIF).

But if last May there was an extant "plan" - of which I'm highly skeptical, but I'll grant for purposes of discussion - to crown King Chalabi, privatize state "owned" industries and sell them off to Halliburton, et alia, etc., I deny that that empirical datum entitles one to draw any strong conclusions about the intent - the that-for-the-sake-of-which - of the invasion itself. This is a matter of logic, not just the empirical. My point is that we have - as Hume would say - temporal succession here, but no necessary connection.

You - so I read you- had linked "bad" U.S. intent vis a vis the invasion to the alleged existence of such a plan; I deny that the conclusion follows. We know, for example, that there were many improvisations, contingencies, and the like in the American occupation of Germany following the second world war, so why preclude the same "fluidity" here?

The wider issue is that you seem to hold that, should any decent polity emerge in Iraq, it will be in spite of U.S. aims. Of that, to put it mildly, I am not persuaded. Again, I wonder what you make of the National Security Strategy Document's tack - a mostly pernicous program with a few winks and nudges in the direction of "Democracy"?!

I think you made other interesting and fruitful observations about American foreign policy and Democracy, which could serve as the bases for many further discussions (and disagreements).

At the risk of appearing to cop-out, I cannot address any of them now, as I'm leaving this afternoon for a quick weekend trip to the UK. I'm glad to carry on the discussion/debate next week.

Thanks for commenting - and with all the talk of "civil society," I'm glad that the discussion thus far has been civil.

Posted by: Paul Craddick at Mar 11, 2004 12:59:53 PM

Paul,

Civil is lukewarm praise. If we are going to praise ourselves, let’s praise ourselves for being damn interesting.

1. The non-sequitor. The only non-s. I see here is the one you keep intruding into the discussion. Of course, I’m not claiming anything like a connection as tight as Humean necessity. Hume’s not our man, here. C.S. Pierce is. What one wants is an account that finds net intentions that one can ascribe to decision makers. Granted, the Pentagon decisionmakers did not produce an agenda that was completely coherent. In fact, I would argue that was one of the reasons it was as vulnerable to reality as the Wicked Witch was to a pail of water. To expect that 1., the occupation would be paid for by Iraq’s resources, and that 2., one would successfully mount an elected figurehead to preside over this repayment for American generosity, in a country where 3., the unemployment rate is around 60%, and the post sanction per capita income is below Bolivia’s, is to engage in wholesale fantasy. However, a narrative of the Pentagon agenda that judiciously analyzes its rhetoric in the light of its actions to posit its authentic motives is the kind of thing that Pierce would like, because our criteria, here, are plausibility, coherence, and the assumption that the decisionmakers were, minimally, competent – and thus we can compare this account of the agenda to others in order to measure it on a scale of probability. Note that the concern about coherence means that if we encounter incoherence, and we also continue to posit competence, than we have to ask whether the incoherence doesn’t mask a deeper motive – in other words, whether we aren’t encountering one of the ruses of political reason.
2. Now, although you haven’t given an account, I assume that you have one, since I assume you supported the invasion (and I am as bold in my assumptions as I am in splitting infinitives). I further assume that your account would project, tacitly or openly, intentions onto the Pentagon decision makers. Granted, that is a tricky business. When Gladstone invaded Egypt in the 1880s, his portfolio of bonds benefited. Now, are we to pair these facts and say that Gladstone invaded Egypt for personal gain? I’d say that’s unlikely. Why? Because of Gladstone’s character, and because the British were (by their own lights) provoked by an Egyptian action, and finally because there is a question of proportionality. While venial motives can actuate a statesman, in the case of an important international act of state, I think the hypothesis that statesmen are pickpockets won’t do. That’s why I wouldn’t say that Iraq was invaded to benefit Halliburton.
3. I’m not going to go over and over my case. Instead, a side note about the Bush A.’s behavior before the war. Myself, I think that the Pentagon wanted, optimally, to have the liberty to do what it wanted to do in Iraq. Hence, in the beginning, Rumsfeld, or his people, did not want to go in on the model of the First Gulf war. That proved politically unpalatable. Bush then made the move to the U.N. But here is where we have to compare acts and rhetoric. If the Bush administration really wanted a Gulf War II coalition, why were they so incompetent in pursuing that goal? It was pretty obvious at the time – I wrote about this in my weblog – that if you really wanted an international force to go into Iraq, you pursue that goal by intense diplomacy, by soothing the French, by moderating the rhetoric, by all the arts practiced by Bush/Baker in 1990. Bush II knew this. Cheney knew this. They were there. Instead, Bush let Rumsfeld, his defense secretary, become his most prominent spokesman during the build-up. Rumsfeld’s continual stream of anti-European remarks were calculated to make any final concession by the Europeans seem a defeat. There were no face saving measures, here, at all. Why? My idea is this: The Bush people did not want to share power and decision making about Iraq, the way the first Gulf War coalition did. The British were, and have been, no problem. We say jump, they jump. But the French, Germans and Russians are a different matter. So why not arrange things so that if they do join a coalition, they will be marked from the beginning in such a way as to sap their power? That was the course embarked on. That was the bad faith shown in going to the U.N. It isn’t an uncommon strategy – aggressors don’t often proclaim they are going to aggress, but manipulate rhetoric to make it look like they are only responding to aggression. Hitler was a past master at this. So was Napoleon.

Does this mean I am suggesting that Rumsfeld sat down with Cheney and plotted this all out? No, of course not. Rather, it organized itself around Rumsfeld/Cheney’s goal of maximum U.S. leaway. As Rumsfeld continued his jingoistic chatter, it caught on with Bush’s constituency. The feedback, in other words, was positive – at least domestically. That swayed Bush. And that meant that Bush allowed Rumsfeld to become more and more the spokesman for the Administration.. That is how organizations operate – with a set of long term intentions that are either changed by the means to achieve them or that change those means.

Hope you like the U.K.
Cheers,
R

Posted by: rogerg at Mar 12, 2004 1:42:28 PM

Roger,

You averred,

"The only non-s. I see here is the one you keep intruding into the discussion."

Good one! Having read your rejoinder, I'm inclined to agree with you, having happily noticed your abjuration (sorry clarification):
"While venial motives can actuate a statesman, in the case of an important international act of state, I think the hypothesis that statesmen are pickpockets won’t do. That’s why I wouldn’t say that Iraq was invaded to benefit Halliburton."

Heavens to Betsy! That's exactly what I've taken pains to establish. Juxtaposing that conclusion with statements earlier in the same paragraph, your nuanced position would seem to be that you suspect that such might be the case - meaning you allow for the possibility, and credit it as plausible. Fair enough; I allow for the possibility - and don't.

As usual, you've assembled some fine phrases; I thought that "... a narrative of the Pentagon agenda that judiciously analyzes its rhetoric in the light of its actions to posit its authentic motives is the kind of thing that Pierce would like, because our criteria, here, are plausibility, coherence, and the assumption that the decisionmakers were, minimally, competent ..." was especially well put.

I doubt that "coherence" is the appropriate term to express the idea you have in mind, since it pertains to the literal compatibility ("compossibility") - sc., possible co-existence - of notions. In the context of praxis, an incoherent "plan" would be to aim to keep dry at all costs, and take a dip in the pool in the meantime. But your example - the apparent absurdity of which seems to turn on the Iraqi economy being toast - doesn't entail a literal incoherence, but rather "farfetchedness." Is this, then, a "functional incoherence"? I wouldn't say so - but rather, just a bad plan. Every incoherent plan eo ipso has little chance of succeeding (because it has no chance of succeeding), and hence is a bad plan; but, conversely, not every bad plan is "incoherent."

To emphasize an earlier, related point to which you didn't respond, what you imprecate as an "incoherent" plan can, more charitably, evince improvisation, lack of perfect information, temporal restrictions, the fluidity of events, contingency, and so on (or even "incompetence," but not necessarily in the sense which is the object of your jeremiad; rather as an entailment of man's fallibility). The point bears emphasizing because you're far too hasty in seizing on alleged incoherence as the thin end of the wedge to establish malign intent.

As to your section (3), your remarks suggest that going to the UN could only have implied one thing - an attempt to duplicate in every particular the vaunted coalition of the first Gulf War. But that is to pose a false alternative, and mischaracterizes the Bush A.'s intentionality. Having allies was considered a desideratum, not an actual sine qua non; the latter was never affirmed rhetorically, nor was it the case existentially. The administration was willing to exert a certain amount of effort to try to win co-operation in a military campaign; all other things being equal, surely it's better to have more rather than fewer allies. But we know that things weren't - never are - "equal," so the decision had been made early on (laudably, in my view) to act with or without co-operators. Thus, so the view went, despite the perfidy shown vis a vis Iraq by the Russians, French, and Chinese in the '90's, it was worth a try, and time was needed to deploy our troops into the theater, in any event.

I find it interesting that the run-up to the war is constantly characterized as a failure of "diplomacy." Why wasn't it a failure of judgment on the part of the putative "allies" to respond to a forceful appeal to conclude 12 years of the (further)immiserization of the Iraqi people, and end the chicanery and intolerable ambiguity issuing from the regime of Saddam Hussein? Or, more baldly, a failure of Security Council members to act as if their impotent dicta mean anything?

Hence, to speak, as you do, of "bad faith" in going to the UN is illicit; going to the UN was as much about bringing around corrupt Security Council members to a position of prudence, as it was trying to mollycoddle them into granting permission that was desired, but ultimately not needed.

Paul

Posted by: Paul Craddick at Mar 16, 2004 10:12:37 PM

Paul, I'm sorta out of breath today, so let me reply to a little bit of what you are saying, and reserve a larger reply for later.
I can't remember -- did I talk about Gladstone? -- yes, good, I went up and looked. Anyway, as I said before, I am not looking for personal benefit when I am looking at the system that legitimated the thinking of the decision makers that got us into Iraq, but an ideological system in which personal benefit is just the particular positive feedback affirming a general stance.

So what is that ideology? I would say that there are some bits of it that are generally held, and some bits that aren't. Certainly I think, for Wolfowitz, the central state in the Middle East is Israel. I don't think that is true for Cheney, but, for his own reasons, he can ally with Wolfowitz on this point.

To me (and here I differ from everybody), the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been much overblown in importance by both right and left.

But the part of the ideology that Cheney is for is a radical expansion of the power of corporations, and their entrance into domains traditionally reserved for the state. Ironically, it is an entrance sustained by the increase of state power in one crucial area -- the military.

Okay, what evidence would we search for if we think that the war against terrorism is being conflated with the effort to extend corporate power?

There's an interesting story in the Guardian about an interview Jay Garner -- yesterday's man -- gave to some English media outlet. Here's a quote that I will use later:


Jay Garner, the US general abruptly dismissed as Iraq's first occupation administrator after a month in the job, says he fell out with the Bush circle because he wanted free elections and rejected an imposed programme of privatisation.
In an interview to be broadcast on BBC Newsnight tonight, he says: "My preference was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can, and do it with some form of elections ... I just thought it was necessary to rapidly get the Iraqis in charge of their destiny."

Asked by the reporter Greg Palast if he foresaw negative repercussions from the subsequent US imposition of mass privatisation , Gen Garner said: "I don't know ... we'll just have to wait and see." It would have been better for the Iraqis to take decisions themselves, even if they made mistakes, he said."

I think that Garner's comment shows that he is a true Burkean conservative. I am not a conservative, far from it, but I've read deeply and sympathetically in Burke and the Whiggish tradition into which he was blended, and from the perspective of that position, what was wrong with the Pentagon planners was a radical lack of imagination plus the holding to a Cheney style ideology. Imagination is the first sacrifice that ideology demands. So, we get a scenario in which one imposes a radical free market system (such as we don't have in the U.S., much as Grover Norquist might like it), and instead of following through on what such a scenario would entail, one pre-determines the result: the results have to be good. Similarly, such primitive logic is used about U.S. intervention. The U.S. is good -- people like good things -- the Iraqis are people -- hence the Iraqis will like the U.S. -- except the wicked ones. That one could have interests other than the U.S. and still be good is simply discounted, here.

I think a similar lack of imagination -- that is, a lack of a sense of how Iraq society is held together below the state level -- is what vitiated the first phase of the American effort, and what will vitiate attempts to make Iraq reflect a mindset that is confined to D.C. I don't quote George Wallace very often, the podunk racist, but his phrase pointy headed bureaucrats is very apt for the ideologues in the Pentagon.

But more in a bit. Let's talk about feedback, too. I'd really like to know why there's been a failure, on the right, to hold Bush to certain promises. In particular, I can't understand at all how they let him get off on the sort of benign neglect of Afghanistan. But I have a theory. The theory is, really, nobody gives a damn about Afghanistan unless they have to. That isn't a moral proposition -- merely a social observation. If it is true, than one wants some account of how that indifference effects foreign policy.


Posted by: roger at Mar 18, 2004 9:22:54 PM