September 9, 2004, OK... let's try again
We all owe (yet another) debt of gratitude to our hurricane-battered Mistress of Movable Type, Kathy Kinsley, for diagnosing our server problem, enabling us to comeback... again... with... a vengeance. So, thanks again, Kathy.
So much to talk about. (Well, not really, but I'm supposed to say that!)
I fear this will be a den Beste length post. So be it.
Two troubling themes I'd like to tie together. The first one comes straight from Kathy's blog, where you can read my "clash of civilizations" comment and Kathy's response. The second comes from the Unseen Editor concerning eerie parallels between John Kerry and fellow Yale/Skull and Bonesman/war hero/careerist ass coverer George H.W. Bush. And Kaus is on the job to continue to tell us that Democrats' best reaction in light or recent post-convention polling which has taken Bush from politically dead to back in the thick of it... is panic.
So we'll lay out the brief thesis, antithesis (sort of) and synthesis and then discuss...
Clash of Civiliations ("thesis")
Many erroneously believe that the leading problem in the world right now is Islam, or even fundamentalist Islam specifically. But I submit that Islam is simply the latest symptom of something that we can quickly recognize once we throw away filters we have developed as "civilized people", and realize that our thought processes are by and large aberrational.
Give Attilla the
Hun A Gattling gun and it
won't be too much fun.
--the talking dog, (c) 2004
Most people in this world live pretty crappy subsistence lives-- despite our living in the space age, they are barely living above the way their ancestors did hundreds, even thousands of years ago. But many, many people are rapidly being thrust into the modern era; hundreds of millions are joining middle classes around the world. We are rapidly evolving into the global village-- though we're not there yet.
But people's fundamental belief structures do not keep up with how they lead their physical lives in many cases. Indeed, when you slice through Hitler's ideology, it would be very hard to distinguish from Medieval (or earlier) Germanic tribal beliefs, including tree worship, ancestor worship and the like; what made it dangerous was when this mindset was accompanied with first class, first world weapons and logistics. A pathological abnd hateful ideology that in one era would result in a pogrom against the nearby Jewish shtetl, which might result in the stabbing or shooting deaths of, at most, dozens, can, thanks to modern weapons and logistics, kill millions.
Fast forward around 50 or 60 years to the present, and change Germanic tribal to Arabic tribal, and we are at precisely the same place. While the weapons at Hitler's disposal included a major industrial state and some of the best scientists, engineers and military logisticians in the world, the weapons at the hands of our current Islamist nemeses include the internet, the interconnectedness of the world, very open societies, and high tech weaponry available to the highest bidder, which will, if we don't successfully combat this menace, include nuclear weapons.
What we have are people who, as late as the mid 20th century, would act out their petty hatreds and grudges by riding around on horseback and camel, and stabbing or shooting nearby nomads or settlements, again, killing at most dozens. Now, with some ingenuity and some decent explosives, they can kill hundreds, sometimes thousands at a time. (Am I saying, btw-- that this means Nazi Germany was a greater threat than Al Qaeda and the Islamist extremists? Why yes-- yes, I am. It turns out that Hitler and Nazi Germany with the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht and U-boats, and the USSR with the Red Army and hundreds of ICBMs some of which presumably worked, were an existential threat to us all, whereas the Islamists-- right now at least-- are not.)
That said, what we are dealing with is what I would call "pre-rational" people. In the Middle Ages and earlier, people had no problem fighting and dying for very little because, hey-- their lives kind of sucked as it was, and that was the prevailing ethos. We had hoped we had moved past that. Turns out, we left out a few billion people, and some of them (God help us) managed to get themselves stoked up with Saudi sponsored hatred and Saudi money, and formed Al Qaeda, whose mission seems implausible to us, but not to its members. Don't get me wrong: A.Q. has some "modern" gripes with us-- our support of Israel over the Palestinians in anything but an even handed way, our presence on, and interference in the affairs of, the Arabian peninsula, our support of dictators in the region-- that we can deal with because we can understand them. But their methods-- attacks on innocent civilians far removed from their gripes, strike us as alien.
The problem is they are coming from a mindset where the enemy consists of a clan or tribe of maybe a few dozen people, where everybody knows everybody knows everybody. Industrialization hasn't caught up to them-- except in the weapons and tactics department. But in their world, if a member of the tribe insults them, the entire tribe is fair game for revenge. And that seems to be where we are.
John Kerry = George H.W. Bush ("antithesis")
The Unseen Editor points out oodles of similarities between Kerry and Bush-- not the current one, but Bush Pere. Both are Yale skull and bonesmen out of top prep schools and New England aristocracy; both were war heroes later portrayed as wimps and pussies by cowards and draft evaders; they are distantly related (as is Bush, Jr.) But its not these things-- its the fact that both seem to have been political "careerists"-- not so much a record of accomplishment so much as a record of having held office-- and both seem to be habitual ass-coverers.
Regardless of what he says, would John Kerry have invaded Iraq last year? Certainly not. Would George H.W. Bush? Seeing as he actually pulled back troops chasing down the Iraqi Republican Guard, unquestionably not. Is this a bad thing? I'm not saying that-- I'm saying that Bush Pere is a fuck of a lot closer in every way to Kerry than he is to his own son. Frankly, many people voted for Bush the Younger believing he would behave (despite his rhetoric and own limited record in Texas) like the moderate, flip-floppy Bush Pere (Don't believe me? think "Read My Lips; No New Taxes.")
Now, personally, as many of you know, I consider Bush Pere (I did once vote for the s.o.b.) to be pretty much evil incarnate-- a key player in a rather vast and effective crime family. But as President, he was much more of an ass-coverer than Junior. Junior takes chances. Frankly, I've said that he takes them rashly and badly, and as a result, people die unnecessarily and there are other bad consequences-- but Junior is not afraid to act-- and act aggressively if he perceives a need to do so.
The War on Terror TM Requires Action (synthesis)
All that said, we the American voters have to be extremely careful now-- and I suspect the tightly moving polls we are watching are showing just that.
George W. Bush is, frankly, a terrible President. The economic numbers reflect a gross irresponsibility; to cut taxes for the rich at the same time a deficit mounts and a war is fought is just unacceptable, for example. Further, he is gutting environmental and worker protections, and is moving our tax system so that only working people bear the entire tax burden. Frankly, his performance prior to 9-11-01 was unacceptable: no question, his Administration had other priorities than battling Al Qaeda and these dark forces.
HOWEVER... what matters to most people right now is who will do a better job at combatting our new world wide enemy-- which, as noted above, most of us-- including the Bush Administration-- simply do not understand well enough to combat. In tarring Kerry as a pussy, the GOP (naturally) smears him with his record of votes against numerous weapons systems-- many of which were also opposed by, oh... Dick Cheney... Not fair at all.
No. What IS fair is to ask Senator Kerry now what is response is. He insists he would have gone into Iraq knowing what he knows now (question 1: then why shouldn't we vote for GWBush who said the same thing?), then Kerry insists he would have run the Iraq war better and differently without any specifics as to how, and he gives us a Bob-Shrum-ism about firehouses in Baghdad but not in New York or Boston. Well-- fair question-- and one Midwestern swing voters (they're out there) desperately want to know: What will John Kerry's policies be on the war on terror, dealing with Al Qaeda, dealing with Iraq, and protecting this nation against a growing worldwide menace of the possibility of Medieval psychopaths getting their hands on nuclear weapons?
We know GWBush's answer: crazy wars against the wrong countries. But... John Kerry's response has (as far as I can tell) utterly evaded the question.
My OWN answer is to apply maximum pressure- military, diplomatic, economic, complete with carrots and sticks-- to stop nuclear proliferation immediately. If necessary, we have to buy North Korea's arsenal, buy out Iran's arsenal (or at least Russian contracts to provide their arsenal), and do what it takes to get the genie back in the bottle. AND pursue OBL and A.Q. to the ends of the Earth. AND try to modernize the rest of the world to isolate the maniacs (so we can crush them) within their own societies, and THIS DOES mean massive foreign aid, including and especially REMOVAL OF ANY AND ALL TRADE BARRIERS THAT HURT POOR COUNTRIES-- from us and Europe; our farmers' greed will not be allowed to be the cause of our annihilation (and yes, its that simple).
Kerry doesn't have to give this answer (indeed, its a politically bad answer). But Bush has, at least, thought of an answer. And Kerry continues to evade.
The American people need to have a better choice than a bad answer and no answer. Because if that's the choice, I think they'll pick the bad answer. And I'm not fully convinced they wouldn't be justified in doing just that.
Comments
Next time shoot me an e-mail instead of letting me discover you are down! Not that I'm sure I could have done anything Sunday anyway... electric was still flickering and I was blogging from laptop (which doesn't have my database fixit programs). Though I could have told you your host needed to fix your quota!
Posted by Kathy K at September 9, 2004 5:26 PM
Fingers too tired in hitting the keyboard from lack of exercise?
Posted by Just Wondering at September 9, 2004 11:29 PM
I'm afraid you are right that (what you consider) a bad answer will be chosen over no answer at all.
I think Bush has made some mistakes but I don't think going into Iraq was the wrong thing to do. I agree with you completely on free trade and there are quite a few other issues that bother me about Bush (can Ashcroft be called an issue?).
But I keep getting the feeling that Kerry would do nothing at all.
Posted by Kathy K at September 10, 2004 9:02 AM
Kathy--
Bingo. As you suggested to me in e-mail, there are and were legitimate GEO-POLITICAL reasons to have invaded Iraq (need to withdraw US forces from Saudi kingdom, sanctions long-term untenable,
Saddam likely to renew WMD programs IF sanctions ever lifted, no-fly zone maintenance not "free", etc.)
Not ONE of these reasons was enunciated as a justification for this Iraq adventure. NOT ONE. At least by Bush or Cheney. The American people might very well have supported the Iraq war within 6 months or so of 9-11 (I went so far as to pledge support for Bush's reelection HAD HE DONE SO), as part of a defensive-offensive strategy, mobilizing the American iron when it was hot, recognizing (honestly) that we really DO have probably decades of trouble ahead of us with this. AND-- national sacrifice. SUR-TAXES for the rich to pay for this-- NOT INSANE, IMMORAL TAX CUTS FOR THEM (and yes, in war time, asking our grandchildren but not our millionaires to pay for our security is IMMORAL). JOINT SACRIFICE is part of the equation-- not asking poor people's children to fight and die alone, as if we were watching from a luxury box and munching nachos and cheering.
I've said many times that Iraq may yet (somehow) work out, and make sense in hindsight. And I have suggested to you that Bush's half-assed strategy may, at least, ACCIDENTALLY solve or emliorate the world terror problem.
In contrast, we have NO IDEA what Senator Kerry would actually do, but we have a good idea that his ass-covering personality would lead him into a pure reactive mode (not that this is necessarily bad, btw), but this may not be enough.
Kerry has approached this all wrong. If he accepts Clinton's advice and ignores this issue, he will lose (which, btw, is what Clinton wants so Hillary can "save us all" in 2008, and
my liberal friends, please spare me.)
Kerry MUST enunciate some kind of vision as to how he will deal with this potential world-ending (picture OBL with 20 IBMs) situation. MUST. Cheaper health care won't help us recover from nuclear holocaust.
I'll make it easy for him: KERRY CAN VOW TO CONTINUE THE PRESIDENT'S WORK ON THIS. Its actually a smaller bone to Bush than you would think. A ju-jit-su move. Acknowledge that, like the Cold War, both parties were as hawkish as they needed to be to get it done-- and this is NOT A PARTISAN ISSUE (like Bush wants it to be) BUT AN AMERICAN SECURITY ISSUE. Then, with the AMerican people satisfied that either way, their security is covered (or at least, they can be sure the Dem isn't planning on CAPTIULATING), and make their vote on other things. Like health care, the deficit and the environment.
But that's just me.
Posted by the talking dog at September 10, 2004 10:27 AM