One of the first things you learn as a Federal quality assurance bureaucrat is to challenge an expert badge for appropriateness to the subject at hand. Sometimes as expert badges work across subject fields and sometimes they don't. The key is knowing enough about the field to ask appropriate questions that you know the answers too before you ask them.
That is what I did with Armed Liberal on the subject of formulating American Grand Strategy.
A.L. and I have been having a long running arguement over American Grand Strategy and its salemanship to the American public. The latest round starts in the discussion threads for A.L.'s "Leadership and Challenge" post where I challenged A.L.'s "expert badge" on the subject and pointed out that the creation of Grand Strategy is a highly specialized field that neither he nor I are qualified to comment on intelligently. The difference being I know enough to know that and A.L. doesn't.
How we went from there to Armed Liberal saying I'm "Going French" you will have to ask him. Frankly, what he wrote sounds to close too a Bircher rant about the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), with comparisons to the French system of governance, for me to comfortably comment. The convergence of Left and Right in opposition to the War on Terrorism still boggles me.
Getting to the point of what I said:
bq. "The net assessment of national security requirements and its translation into grand strategy is a highly specialized field of academic study who best practitioners are currently working on or are consultants for the National Security Council and the Department of Defense."
This is a simple statement of fact. You need either an advanced degree in international relations, a specialized military/foreign affairs history background, or a extremely specialized career in Pentagon Net Assessment to be fully qualified to participate in creating grand strategy, whether directly or through the influence of your professional writing.
Let's take three examples, the first being Walter Russell Mead, the author of Special Providence and the populizer of the meme of the Jeffersonian/Hamiltonian/Wilsonian/Jacksonian schools of American foreign policy. This is Mead's C.V. from THE ATLANTIC:
bq. Walter Russell Mead is the senior fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mead is also the author of Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition. His internationally syndicated articles on economic policy and foreign affairs appear regularly in the Los Angeles Times and have appeared in major newspapers around the world, including The International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal. He has also written for The New Yorker, Harper's, and Rolling Stone, and is a senior contributing editor at Worth magazine.
Anyone spending time reading our current Grand Strategy can see Mead's influence there.
Example number two is historian John Lewis Gaddis who wrote the book "Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security" excerpts of which can be found here. Please spend some time reading them and particularly what it says about George Keenan's opinion of the United Nations and the impediment it would represent to the pursuit of American interests. Gaddis’ professional history credentials are here.
The last example is Andrew Marshall from the Pentagon Office of Net Assessment. The Washington Post has a profile on him here. Wired has an interview with him here. The Nation has a profile on him here, and the American Prospect has another profile here.
This is what the Post said of Marshall:
bq. Although he is little known to the public, Marshall is a controversial figure in defense circles for his outspoken criticism of some of the traditional pillars of U.S. strategy and procurement policy. He has questioned the usefulness of the new F-22 fighter, the crown jewel of the Air Force's acquisition program, and has called the Army's heavy tanks and the Navy's aircraft carriers possible deathtraps that ought to be phased out before they prove to be the horse cavalry of the 21st century.
and
bq. All but unknown outside national security circles, the publicity-shy Marshall is something of a legend within that world, both for his longevity and for his far-reaching network of acolytes across the government, academia and the defense industry. At 79, he is said to be the only current Pentagon official who participated in the entire Cold War, beginning in 1949 as a nuclear strategist for the Rand Corp., then moving to the Pentagon as a civilian official in 1973. He has been kept in his current job by every president since Richard M. Nixon.
At this point A.L. is probably going "Ah Ha! Trent just made my point!" Nope. I am merely pointing out how specialized the appropriate 'expert badge' for Military Net Assessment and Grand Strategy are and how small and specialized a field those who hold it are in.
There have been one minor and three major grand strategic changes for American foreign policy since 1940. The FDR Administration formulated the first major change without public debate in 30 months (from 1943 through 1945) to create the post WW2 world. It resulted in, among other things, the founding of the UN and the Bretton-Woods agreement on world finances.
The next major American strategic realignment was adopting "Containment." The planning for which started in May 1947 with Secretary of State George Marshall's creation of a Policy and Planning Staff in the State Department, through the debate started by George Keenan's "Mr. X" article published in FOREIGN AFFAIRS, to the issuance of National Security Council Document No. 68, approved by President Harry S Truman on April 14, 1950. Again, the development of this Grand Strategy was the realm of experts, not public debate. That came later when the strategy was sold to the American public.
The one minor change in American Grand strategy was when in 1982 Ronald Reagan modified NSC-68 strategy from "Containment" to "Roll-Back." This is chronicled in the book "Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union," by Peter Schweizer. Academic liberals are disputing the results of this change, but however they quibble; the Soviet Union's death was not from natural causes. Ronald Reagan murdered it economically with the help of the Saudis and his national security people under Bush41 made sure the final passing was quiet and boring.
Again, this Grand Strategy was developed in secret without public debate. It's sale to the public went well, as Reagan's 1984 reelection proved out. The Post-Vietnam Democrats never reconciled themselves to the strategy, and with the Collapse of the Soviet Union plus the election of Bill Clinton as President, they didn't have to trouble themselves over it.
The last and most recent major realignment of American Grand Strategy was published by the Bush Administration in May 2002 here. It took from September 2001 to May 2002 for it to be written, rewritten and vetted through the multi-agency approval process. The first three months of that period were devoted to the Afghan campaign, so in essence, the Bush Administration turned on a Grand Strategy dime in six months. It is a monument to their professionalism and skill that they pulled it off.
Here is the real difference between Armed Liberal and myself.
A.L. keeps claiming that either there is no Grand Strategy, or if there is one, that it hasn't been sold well enough for his tastes. He is wrong on both counts. There is a strategy and like Reagan in 1984, Bush43 has already sold his Grand Strategy to the general public. They bought it with the results of the 2002 mid-term election.
Today, like with Ronald Reagan's Administration, Democrats are in denial and they are doing a anti-war immitation of George Wallace in the school house doors screaming "Stop the world, I want to get off," as change in the world streams right by them.
What Armed Liberal wants from the Bush Administration isn't to sell _the public_ on Bush's Grand Strategy. It is to sell the _Democratic Party_ on it so his pro-war liberal faction can run it for their mutual benefit.
This is too French for words.
Trent, you've missed my point by such an immense gap that I'm scratching my head.
I've never claimed once that working this 'grand strategy' out is some kind of democratic exercise (except indirectly, via the ballot box).What I have claimed - over, and over, and over again - is that a 'grand strategy' that is kept so far away from the American people that they have no idea what we're doing - except spending treasure and blood - is a strategy for failure.
I've argued that Bush needs to 'spread memes', 'inform', and 'sell'. I've neversuggested that he should allow Howard Dean - or anyone else - to frame his foreign policy. You claim he already has - well, gosh, we'll just have to disagree. The American public isn't looking for your approval or for mine.
Your notion of 'expert badges' on issues like this is errant nonsense. We are talking politics, not policy - and by definition, politics is a participant's sport. The issues that I am raising are as old as the Peloponnesian War, and have been discussed by historians and theoreticians from the West, from China, from Japan, and from India (and I'm sure from other places, but I haven't read them).
I'll charitably assume that you're preceding from a genuine misconception, rather than a cynical effort to frame a discussion in a way that marginalizes all voices of whom you don't approve.
Quite simply, in suggesting that policy need only be formed and appreciated by elites, you have absolutely joined the French. Their citizens 'consume' policy and politics as a form of soap opera, because they know that their positions have no import. You'd suggest that we do the same in America.
Sorry, not happening.
With this, I'll step out of what is doubtless becoming a discussion boring to everyone but you and me.
A.L.
(edited to remove unnecessary comment)
Trent, I don't think this is quite right.
A technocracy exists and has long existed to provide intellectual currency to foreign policy concepts. But these ultimately wither at the vine without a political leadership that believes in it, and can articulate it to the public.
George Kennan is nothing without Harry Truman or the other early Cold War presidents; similarly, Reagan came into office with a very particular vision and surrounded himself with a variety of intellectuals to polish it. But the vision came from the president and was popularly presented: "the Evil Empire."
What Armed Liberal is saying, I think correctly, is that Bush has not presented in full his reasons for Iraq. He adopted a neocon foreign policy without properly explaining it to the public, which does indeed leave him vulnerable to the aburd WMD stuff -- because Bush allowed the debate to be framed as a WMD issue, partially because he stuck with the UN far too long for his own good. In that forum, the issue was always about WMDs.
Belatedly there's been some attempt to shift the emphasis -- see Tony Blair's recent speech before Congress. These other motives always existed, and in some limited fashion had been publicly presented, but they really did not assume their proper prominence ex ante.
Bush could have and should have said more about the humanitarian dimension here, and the need to reform the Middle East. For bureaucratic reasons, as Paul Wolfowitz himself recently admitted, the administration settled on WMDs as their primary casus belli.
This was a mistake, and an avoidable one.
You cannot make this funamental political error go away by hiding behind a foreign policy mandarinate; and when Armed Liberal claims you are adopting a French defense, he scores a palpable hit.
Armed Liberal,
I think your argument lives and dies on the question of whether or not GWB has presented his Grand Strategy to the American people, and whether or not they agree. While I think the final word on the question will be the 2004 Presidential election, I think that there have been many polls on the subject that have provided useful guidance.
I don't think the general public believes Bush is running without a plan. Moreover, I think they are basically on the same page with him as to what that plan entails. The general thrust of your argument sounds like the "we need to have a national debate" complaints of the Democrats last year.
Trent is generally correct that the anti-war Democrats and the liberal media establishment (NYT, et al.) has reacted to Bush's plan with distaste and has responded by claiming that Bush has no plan. Bush, however, is under no obligation to respond to the implied "nope, try again" when this dismissal contains not the slightest attempt at an honest critique.
Since 9/11/01, Bush, Cheney, and several members of their administration have given numerous speeches and interviews concerning the threats of international terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and the unthinkable combination of the two. I've found the guidance from the White House to be clear and unambiguous. I understand that there are people who don't agree with GWB's assessment of the situation, but the burden on Bush is to EXPLAIN, not CONVINCE. He has done the first; I doubt the second is possible for those not convinced by now.
- I'm not sure how grand what Bush was selling really was, especially in a seller's market of American people who are scared shitless.
- Trent can be correct about the expertise angle only in a very limited sense. That limited sense is that for any given topic on this site, there is always someone more informed - perhaps professionally so - than you or I. So what?
I think you both make points. Mind if I triangulate for a moment? Ah never worked hah'der on anything in mah life than ah did in that Grand Strategy debate.
First, knowledge is important and some aspects of our strategic goals have always been and should be secret.
Trent is presenting the history accurately, but incompletely.
1) Walter Russell Mead "the populizer of" - engages in these debates in public for a reason. He has consistantly argued (for example, in Special Providence) that the foreign policy establishment should engage the American people in these debates more, not less.
2) Foreign Affairs is hardly a Top Secret Document; Kennan wrote under a pseudonym but the debate was in a public forum, not top secret coorespondence.
Similarly, the Truman Doctrine, again, was not exactly a State Secret and there was a public debate over what our policy and goals (strategy) towards the Soviet Union should be - it was Democratic to the point that the "Progressive" Left of the Democratic Party split and ran an alternative candidate in '48 precisely because Truman's policies were not a state secret and they disagreed.
3) Let's talk Reagan; again, elements of the policy were secret, but if one looks at such things as In His Own Hand and Reagan's War, it is clear that Reagan had openly expressed his views on confronting the SovWorld and initiated a democratic debate on the subject before he was even in office - one of the reasons he was controvercial.
Now, I think that there is a degree to which when Trent talks of Grand Strategy he means it in the sense of a technical term, one that covers all the things in official, detailed strategic analysis and documents, and what Armed Liberal is talking about is Grand Strategy in a more popular sense, one that covers the things that are and always have been a matter of public discourse, what general strategic goals we should attempt to pursue and how to engage other nations.
Also, Trent, when you write:
"What Armed Liberal wants from the Bush Administration isn't to sell the public on Bush's Grand Strategy. It is to sell the Democratic Party on it so his pro-war liberal faction can run it for their mutual benefit."
I'm surprised A.L. and others haven't made more of this. First, American foreign policy has always been best when it is based on broad support, including key bipartisan support.
I think G.G. is right in saying that the general public doesn't believe that Bush is acting without a plan, but the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party sure does - in no small part because their politicians, who really know better, encourage such thinking. (The Left of the Democratic Party knows Bush has a plan, understand it in terms similar to our understanding, and they loathe it rather than support it).
If a pro-War Democrat adopts our Grand Strategy and runs on it and wins, hell, I'd rather have that than a Democrat who doesn't adopt it, runs against it, and wins. I favor partisan success of the Republicans but I favor the success of America in the war more, and I'll be glad, not disgruntled, to see Liberal candidates who - sincerely, not insincerely - "run [on] it to their" - and I hope our - mutual benefit.
IMO, that last paragraph is the weakest statement in Trent's post here and reveals an attitude that Bush should keep the policy secret not because America needs it secret but because the Republican Party and conservative movement shouldn't give the Democrats and Liberals any help in joining in. Me? I'd rather see them help sell the policy rather than chipping away at it. If this means running as Kennedy did against Ike's successor, as More-Staunchly-Pro-Defense-and-Anti-Soviet-than-Thou, I'd rather see that than what we're seeing.
Yes, Democrats are in denial. If A.L. and those like him can bitch-slap them into supporting our Grand Strategy with arguments that it will be better for them than continuing to be Sgt. Shultzes (at best) "knowing nothing, seeing nothing" and anti-Warriors at worst, then that will help us all.
Then we'll argue over who's really a "disaster" domestically and who isn't, but at least we'll be able to sleep better knowing that whoever wins the elections, they'll work to keep us safe and insure that we emerge from this in a more secure situation, rather than pandering to the Patty Murray vision. At least I know I'd sleep better.
I also do think Bush takes opportunities to explain, in ways that reach people, what we're trying to accomplish - the portion of his speech before the Urban League yesterday is just one example. Arguably he needs to do more, especially in ways that short-circut the media instruments that filter his words before they reach the American people.
Correction: It was Sam Barnes who posted the post I thought was mostly on - not that G.G.s post was wrong, but Sam's was the one I was refering to.
Btw, one asside: if this stuff is mainly the province of the professionals, what the blazes has much of the Bloggosphere been doing over the last couple years in debating what our strategies and goals should be?
I'm surprised that more people haven't pointed that out; the debates over the war have been an example of civic debate on the topic - at times at its best and as we would most want it to be (and as those who decry & bemoan the decline of democratic discourse in this country don't notice), at times at its most debased (but enough about the Hard Left comparing people to NAZI Fascists). But it's been about what our strategic goals & vision should be and whether it is or isn't what it should be, and how best to achieve those goals and whether we're advancing them in the best way possible or not.
Let me try a shot in the dim, if not in the dark.
One of the ways that something like a grand strategy will get communicated is through a mediative process of intelligent comment & criticism. I'm not old enough to remember what happened back in the 40s & 50s, but I can't help thinking there was more of that then than there is now. If so, then its fading or disappearance would be quite significant.
Somewhere in the Winds of Change archives is some discussion by Trent on the near-disappearance of the Dem foreign policy establishment.
My impression since 9/11/01 is that much, maybe most, criticism of Bush's foreign policy has been "compartmentalized," attacking various moves by questioning their consistency of standards & making some sort of presumption that any strategic coherence among the differing responses must be something conspiratorial & nefarious, e.g. a corporatist pursuit of oil. I'm trying to say, that much such criticism has not seen the Administration's logic clearly enough to criticize it. I don't know how to account for it. I don't think it's 100% cynicism. I guess a lot of people don't want to confront the strategic logic (they'd have to admit it's good?) or the problems to which it responds (I think that may be it -- the future holds the prospect of too much change, too many new kinds of problems & dangers -- but I don't know).
So, among many of the Administration's supporters, there is some kind of understanding & support of the "grand strategy." But among many other Americans, there is not so much disagreement as unawareness plus misconstrual in terms of American "greed" & so on. One one hand, one could say, this is the Dems' fault, it's up to the loyal opposition to provide the intelligent criticism & comment that would also result in the grand strategy's communication to those who look to the Dems for light. This system sounds almost odd now since the break-down of non-partisanship on foreign policy. On the other hand, the Administration is left with an American people of whom a considerable portion don't have any idea of the Administration's bigger picture as anything more than the shreds of rhetoric that some Dem leaders portray it as. I'm trying to work this to the point where one can see both Trent & Armed Liberal as making sense, but where the character of American politics constitutes a different background than it used to. I think there is a problem but I'm not sure whose it is.
I'm not convinced that the Left Wing doesn't understand or know the plan, as Porph contends. Dean has certainly made it clear in his speeches that the he understands the plan and disagrees. Kerry says he understands the plan, supports it in principle but disagrees with the methods. Why should we believe that those who support Dean don't understand the plan? Okay, maybe those who support Kuchunik don't understand, but the rest of them...they understand, they just don't like it. And most just don't like it because Bush implemented it.
I don't buy the argument that the American public is unaware of the generals of the plan. The fact that the televised media focuses almost completely on the negative side of the Iraq situation and yet polls still indicate strong support for the battle of Iraq indicates to me that despite what the talking heads want the pub to believe indicates to me that the average Joe gets it in a general sense. Moreover, supports it for the most part.
re: based on broad support
That was demonstrated fully when the vote came down in the 70 percentile back in October (was it?)
Not all dems are as lost in the wilderness of BushBashing. Leiberman, for example, gets it, supports it, and could possibly knock Dean out of his strong position. It's early yet. I think Kerry gets it but is too spineless to resist his baser impulse to admit it. He'd rather pander the the BushFear Factor than stick by his original position, a la Clinton's waffling techniques. Gephart too for that matter. Clinton, although his motives can be questioned, the holy saint of the dems, gave his support and I suspect McAuliffe is busy rewriting at this moment. The dems are listening. They just don't like it.
Why? The moonbats are out of touch with reality. The midrangers can't stand it that Bush is at the helm. The centrists are too reserved. This will change and is. The centrist will be emboldened to speak more forcefully on this as Leiberman did this AM on the morning news and Bayh did at his recent media event.
Here in the blogosphere people seem to understand. Where I live, most people seem to understand. Maybe in AL's region people don't understand. In which case, his assesment would be understandable.
By no means scientific, my observation is that most people understand the master plan if not the details. And I agree in spirit with Trent and Den Beste that we don't need to know the details. Certainly a great bit of print media has spelled it out thoroughly. Articles are passed around offices. Links are exchanged through the networks. People, by and large, get it.
Re what is best for America? I agree with Porph here. I'd vote for a dem if that dem assured me he was going to stick with the plan over anyone who wasn't in keeping with the plan. Party is irrelevant when it comes to the long range ramifications of faltering on the plan.
Here is a topic I wish AL or Trent would argue over. Why is it that some liberals and lefters would refuse a plan that specifies a victory for the US? What is this phenomenon I call white man's guilt? Those who would refuse the plan because of Bush's involvement. Those who secretly relish a victory for Dean and our failure in Iraq. Those ultra elite folks who live large in the belly of the beast, relish in its succor while in their heart of hearts they'd love nothing less than to see the US brought down a peg.
Tell us about the psyche of the moon bats and midrange democrats, AL...Trent...Porph...GG. THAT should prove a lively discussion.
CBK
Speaking of discussions. Have you WOCers thought about installing an actual forum here? I imagine you would have many very lively and enlightening debates. Just a suggestion.
Let me expound a bit on this white man's guilt and the plan.
Of those people who I know well enough to debate politics who are against the plan, don't like it because they aren't in agreement that the US is correct.
They don't agree that we should protect our own interest over the interests of other countries. The answers most frequently given are the collective guilt of slavery, past disasters of our foreign policy. We are not better than other countries. In fact we are worse. We supported Stalin so why should we oust Saddam? Capitalism isn't so great, look at the poverty. What freedom we have will be repealed when Ashcroft is through with us. We aren't so moral, look at slavery, the American Indians. What gives us the right to export our system when our system is so unfair? We should not ever attack unless we are first attacked. And even if we are first attacked, as in 9/11, we deserved it because we let Israel run ramshod over the Palestinians. AND...suffice it say...it's all our fault. We of a thousand collective guilts. Please destroy us now. This American life is so vulgar.
Oh, the hardcoredems I know get the plan. They just can't fit the plan into their blametheusfirst schema. Their guilt of our power and influence (why should we have nuclear weapons and Saddam not? Why should Israel have nukes and the Syrians not?). Their reluctance to judge other cultures against our own (our system is no better than the Baathist, why should their citzenry die and succumb to kapitalism? What has kapitalism done for our urban poor? Socialism isn't so bad...Communism has never been truly implemented. It could be better...who knows). Their disdain when someone who supports our efforts makes even the slightest sign of patriotism or nationalism (just look at that blind patriotism! LockStep Bushites. Egads!). The eyes roll and the lips sneer. It is so much like that Harrison Bergeron short story (Vonnegut). The giant deserves to be whacked. It's so unfair.
CBK
CBK, in my comment above, I wrote:
"(The Left of the Democratic Party knows Bush has a plan, understand it in terms similar to our understanding, and they loathe it rather than support it)."
But I pretty much agree with what you wrote other than that. We'll see where Lieberman ends up; right now he's still, IMO, trying to have it both ways a bit. His latest speech wasn't horrible, though.
And I forgot the number one argument from those who know the plan but rebut it...
the UN is the world's moral arbiteur and we should adhere to them. Who are we to go against "the whole world" and do whatever we like? The arrogant US looking out for our selves instead of cowtowing to the UN and France.
It still comes up the same. Some perverse guilt over our position in the world. Viva egalidad!
CBK
On & shortly after 9/11/01, there was quite a spurt of talk about numerology, Nostradamus, & so on. For people with some inclination toward that sort of thing, it was, in the worn phrase, a way of making sense of it all, & of dealing with the terror of it. During the first year after 9/11/01, it sometimes seemed to me that leftists were doing something like that. Most people paying attention are aware that the world is entering a period of increased danger because of the increased pace of the general development of weaponizable technology. Future shock, future terror. What choices do leftists face? Sign on to the despised, forsworn, many-years habitually denounced "establishment" approach of peace & security through strength -- or retreat into the quasi-mystical security of ritual leftist complaints & arguments like what CBK so well listed.
The study of moon bats is the exclusive province of specialist sociologists - and they all work for AL! (The sociologist, not the moonbats.)
Actually, how can they understand the plan if they are supposed to be in denial? (The moonbats, not the sociologists.)
More on moon-battery:
We start with a big disagreement: I think you have Continental, British and American moonbats, whereas it is AL's position that they all part of the same species.
I also think that American moonbats are the misbegotten progeny of John Stuart Mill, whereas Porphy presumably thinks they were fathered by Rousseau.
G.G.: That's certainly true, and I have the parallels on my side {*_+}
But I wouldn't be one to exclude J.S.M.s influence on them, either; I actually do believe that there is a connection there, and I don't hold Mill in unquestioned respect. I could talk about the ways in which his Utilitarian outlook is ultimately responsible for the "Great Switch" in Liberalism and also how the ways he defines free speech helped foster in some at least the attitude that questioning or criticizing the speech of the Enlightened = Censoring them and creating a social "chilling effect", &tc.
CBK: Yah, I've been hammering this Sanctification of the UN & International Community (The "Holy and Apostolic International Community") over at my site. . .pretty much since I launched it.
G.G. (again): I think A.L. does see a distinction, but sees them as Species within a Genus and that what is alike in them is ultimately more important than what differentiates them.
ForNow,
Public debate on policy has improved considerably since the Worlsd's First BBS.
I have been around since 1944 and have participated in political debates since 1960 or so. Debate has never been better.
I have never had as much intelligent aid or opposition as I do now.
Before computers only newspaper people or those in government got to regularly and thouroughly debate the issues. Now we have talk radio and the internet.
What is even better is that debates that once took years can be fully covered in weeks.
The good old days weren't better. I was there. I was one of the early hackers who dimly saw the potential. Dimly was with the light of 1,000 suns. The reality has been 10,000 suns or more. My mate and I were fortunate to participate in what we knew was a revolution in human conciousness. "Support the revolution, buy a computer" was our motto. We put it on T shirts. I had the honor of designing the I/O board that went into the world's first BBS. My idea was that we would hook up all the Nobel Prize winners and such. It turned out even better. Every one is connected. All over the world.
cbk,
Victory for the US?
It would destroy what is left of the dream of the collective.
Communism is gone. Socialism is starting to crack.
It is a scary world for those with redistributionist and other coercive dreams.
Bush's new social spending is counter to the actual trends in the world and needs to be reversed.
Individual liberty is coming back in style. The Supreme Court even said so in Lawrence. The politicians have been mouthing it for years. In time we will make them live up to their promises. Better if not perfectly.
Chance has it that I ran across this piece through InstaPundit this morning.
"CONFESSIONS OF AN ANTI-SANCTIONS ACTIVIST"
http://www.meforum.org/article/548
Although not about our domestic politics explicitly, it demonstrates the willful ignorance of the selfloathing moonbatted blameamericafirst brigade...or those who would vote against what is best for US.
Fascinating read, IMO.
CBK
EXCERPT:
*********************
Our uncritical treatment of the Iraqi regime was not a case of ignorance. It was the result of a deliberate choice we made among our priorities. We had to decide which moral challenge we wanted to make. We chose to limit that moral challenge to the U.S. policy of maintaining sanctions against Iraq. We were never particularly interested in or suited to challenging Saddam and his regime over their invasion of two neighboring states, the systematic genocide against the Kurds, or Saddam's consolidation of one of the most violent internal security systems in the world.
We often justified this choice in terms of American patriotism: we felt an obligation to challenge U.S. policies because we were trying to help the United States become a more responsible member of the world community. Because we were U.S. citizens (for the most part), we felt we had a special responsibility to attempt to modify U.S. policies. We had no control over Iraqi policies—so we convinced ourselves. Needless to say, this was wholly disingenuous on our part. Who, if not foreign nationals, could apply pressure on the Iraqi regime to change its behavior? Iraqis certainly could not. And often such pressure succeeded. For example, when U.N. officials applied such pressure over the periodic terminations of oil exports, it usually worked, and oil flowed again soon afterwards.18
*********************
A.L., Flavio,
I repeat, the sale to the American public has been made, money exchanged and goods delivered. Of necessity the sale of grand strategy to the public is painted in broad brush strokes and not the minutia that A.L. keeps demanding for his political faction.
The public can only hold Presidents accountable in war via elections and to date they have ratified Bush's policies and strategy by giving him the Senate and a Republican majority government. Too keep it, Bush has to "Just win baby" and he is doing just that.
The people you two are concerned over are the Democatic intelligencia to include Democratic leaders and the Media, which amount to the same thing.
Face it, with the public, Bush doesn't need them. He only needs to know how to beat them, as Reagan did before him.
Before the war the intelligencia wanted to talk about were weapons of mass destruction. The Democratic leaders because they were warning against any action and the media types because it moved advertising dollars by attracting eyeballs to TV sets and by selling papers.
When Eleanor Clift says stuff like this:
"...Around the country, people aren’t worried about uranium from Africa. They are worried about the almost daily killing of our boys in Iraq. The 16 words have to be seen in the context of developments on the ground in Iraq. Clearly Bush got a boost with the elimination of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, whose demise suggests progress toward the larger goal of ridding Iraq of Baath Party loyalists. It is probably inevitable now that Saddam will be found.
“This is proof that God looks after George W. Bush,” said a Republican strategist, who dubbed the timely deaths of Saddam’s sons, “Bush’s Magoo moment.” Bush is like the hapless cartoon figure Mr. Magoo who stumbles unaware through mishap after mishap but somehow manages to emerge unscathed."
And you see things like this in Philidelphia papers:
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/6378981.htm
"Still, the real question for those who prefer their Bush presidencies in one-term doses is not whether today's attacks are fair, but whether they are smart.
My instinct is no. At some point - three months or six months or 12 months from now - indisputable proof of Saddam's weapons will emerge. When that happens, what will shrill, wrongheaded liberals who weirdly sound as if they're staking everything on Saddam Hussein's honesty seem to be but... a bunch of shrill, wrongheaded liberals!"
And then read letters from the front like this at web sites like Andrewsullivan.com:
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2003_07_27_dish_archive.html#105954068606282325
"LETTER FROM IRAQ II: Chief Wiggles lets another soldier in intelligence share his blog. It's a fascinating cri de coeur, mainly against Western journalists and their attempt to undermine the liberation of Iraq:
I would recommend that the journalists who so perversely attempt to conceal and eradicate the knowledge of the good we have done examine their purposes for doing so, and weigh once again the awesome responsibility they have in crafting perceived reality for millions. Reality is often not what we wish it to be, and frequently contains elements we wish it did not, but where is the value in embracing a world of falsehood, however we prefer the lie? Now that the sword has done its job, it is time for the pen to convey, in brilliant ink unspoiled by the tainting hues of ignorance or malice, the ongoing work in its most objective truth, so that the deeds of history, good and ill, may be more fully judged, and the world we and our children shape be founded on pillars of truth.
He's particularly incensed by a piece in the Times of London, decrying allied treatment of Iraqi prisoners:
His account of living conditions for prisoners was almost laughable. He attempted to paint a picture of misery and abuse through his description. You know what? He may have been right . . . but there are several hundred thousand Americans and allied soldiers living in the same conditions or worse that he cares absolutely nothing about. Spoken of are prisoners who are held in tents with temperatures reaching "up to 122 degrees" with no relief. There's a reason why it's 122 degrees inside the tent, and that's because the outside ambient temperature is 131, and there are precisely the same temperatures in my tent, and every soldier's tent in this country. I know well what it is to wake up in the morning lying in a pool of sweat that the taut material of my cot cannot absorb. There are soldiers even now who don't have tents to provide shade, who are rationed two MREs a day, who preciously horde their allotment of water, trying to figure out how keep enough water in their bodies when anything they drink immediately sweats out. For well over two months at the camp here, latrines consisted of ditches with wooden planks and tubes half-buried in the sand for urinals."
You know the intelligencia is in trouble and Bush is doing all right with the war effort.
What I am upset with Bush is his out of control domestic spending, his ducking the expansion of our ground forces and his unwillingness to appoint a Governor-General to run Iraq.
None of those things are of immediate importance besides what is going on in Iraq right now and behind the curtains with Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. This is what the 2004 elections are going to be about.
Porph, Sam, ForNow,
I said the following to Joe Katzman in my post "Dumb and Dumber -- The Two Schools of Democratic Foreign Policy."
"Joe,
What is left of national security Democrats don't make up a corporal's guard with respect to the Democratic party.
When President Clinton came into office, the best national security Democrats were those on the Congressional staffs for the Armed Services committees and their members. They were taken enmass over the Clinton' Defense and NSC staff without adequate replacements, and as executive level appointees, they are now too senior to go back to those staff jobs on the Hill. They have now either burrowed into the Senior Executive Service or gotten jobs as lobbyists. In either case they are lost to the Democratic Party as paid political, pro-national security, activist cadre. Democratic members of Congress on the Armed Service Committees have been hiring Republican national security experts as their staff since for lack of qualified Democrats.
Outside those groups, those who are left have no institutional $upport in the Democratic Party to put them in think tanks or foundations to develop ideas when out of power. The creeping PC/leftist group think in academic hiring and tenure has denied them that hidey-hole as a place to develop ideas as well. So there is no career ladder inside the Democratic Party any more for national security minded Democratic operatives to climb.
At best, compared to Republican hawks perched in the Republican-funded think tanks and foundations, credentialed Liberal Hawks are third raters.
Worse, none of the potential "Liberal Hawk" Democratic leaders are going to get professional class advise without the "Republican taint." The Democratic Party's "Liberal Hawk's" inability to accept that 9/11/2001 made America's deployment of global anti-ballistic missile defenses a certainty, and communicate that to the rest of the party, is a case in point of the problem.
So, Joe, where is the downside of thwacking the Democrats every time on national security in the Ann Coulter style?
At this point building a bridge between the remaining "Liberal Hawks" in the Democratic Party and the Republicans will see their final exodus
from the former into Republican neo-con ranks.
The only way Democrats as a party are going to learn on national security is to have their face rubbed in it such that Democratic political leaders and money men create a career ladder for Democratic national security experts the way the Republicans have."
Trent:
You mentioned the SDI and I've been thinking about it off and on since Bush put it back on the front burner.
I think Reagan new it wasn't feasible, at least with 80's tech, but he pursued it anyway. Was it just another way to force the Soviets to spend more on defense?
Based on reports, it appears that it may not be feasible with our current technology, or perhaps easily defeated with lower tech counter measures.
Now, if this is true (and I'm sure that it is), and Bush knows it, what could the real reasons be to invest in this technology? Is it just another way to enusre American military supremcy? Or is misdirection? What kind of research could the SDI be a cover for?
Please define what you mean by "not feasable."
What I am reading is the usual inside baseball of budget politics and political resistance to a new military technology.
Now that the ABM Treaty is gone, the BMDO is looking at multiple warhead interceptors to deal with enemy ICBM launches.
Each incoming ICBM will have to deal with a swarm of coordinated sensors on the interceptor's kill vehicles looking at it's "threat cloud" from multiple view points and perhaps across multiple sensor wave lengths.
Now that the Soviet Union is dead. The threat profile is for threat launch pulses of up 10 missiles that have no where near the throw weight of the SS-18. Nor is the threat as technically advanced or responsive as no Third world nation has the test ranges necessary to validate the usefulness of ICBM decoys versus American sensor technology.
A defense able to stop 95% or more of the warheads in 10 third world ICBMs is both feasable and affordable.
And please remember, the purpose of American global missile defenses is to make the world safe for American gunboat diplomacy.
Trent:
I understand your position. Mine isn't that firm, either way, with respect to feasibilty. However, an argument is not what I was looking for.
Can you get past the "if" in my question, i.e. what if SDI is a misdirection, and get to the "then", i.e. what could really be going on as a black project with these SDI funds?
Isn't this something that may be interesting to talk about? I'm not trying to lead you into a rhetorical ambush here, just intersted in you opinion. That's all.
M. Simon,
What you say is heartening & encouraging, & I'm inclined to believe it, & I will keep it in mind as a perspective.
Still, & yet, I wonder to what extent it applies to the American public at large. Many people do not use the Internet to learn of discussion & debate. Many of these are Dems & libs who grew up relying on their leaders & major columnists to expound & explain the important issues -- or at least to point in the general direction of the salient ideas. There was a significant degree of non-partisanship in foreign policy. Now not only has that broken down, but the Dem public has for its supposed shedders of foreign-policy light, with few exceptions the clueless, the rhetorical tactician, & the moonbat, not to mention the ideological cocktail napkin like Maureen Dowd in service of the decorative & tone-setting function of The Martian Gazette er I mean The New York Times.
All of this -- this break-down in the reasonably accurate communication of foreign-policy issues to the Dem public -- could be going on at the same time as the heartening developments that you talk about. It may even be in part a reactionary response to those good developments. I don't always take the "maybe we're both right" tack, but what you said sounds sensible & based in experience. Yet even if there are many forums now such that the foreign-policy debate has better & swifter currents of intelligence than it ever did, was the foreign-policy debate on the nationally most publicized level ever so simultaneously partisan & asymmetrical IQ-wise as it now?
Again, the idea that I'm striving to save, while admitting the cogency of yours, is that the process of intelligent comment & criticism by a loyal (& intelligent) opposition has been an essential part of the system on which the USA had depended for decades for the communication of grand strategy to the American public, & that the break-down of said process is a cause & symptom (in a cycle, I guess) of the ignorance or misconstrual by a considerable portion of the reasonably educated American public regarding the Administration's foreign policy & the issues to which that foreign policy is a response. And if that's the case, then to my mind it defies simple assignment of "responsibility" as to whose "job" it is to remedy the situation -- the Dems or the Administration. The system under which those jobs or roles were "assigned" has broken down.
Trent,
Thanks for reproducing some of that. After I first read it a while back, I said a few things along its lines to a connected (but no longer politically active) Dem whom I know. This person responded by speaking of embarassment at being a Dem because of Dem leaders' failures to even understand the foreign policy that they criticize. Of course, that's just one Dem, & a comparatively moderate one. But I've taken it as a sign that, even when viewed from near the inside, the many Dem leaders still approximate to their caricatures.
Regarding the alleged absence of a "Grand Strategy," let's cut to the chase (as to does it really matter if we have a clearly articulated "Grand Strategy", as defined by A.L.).
One qualifier: For the purposes of subsections 1 through 7, "anyone" is defined to mean rational folks who are not consumed by a blinding, partisan hatred of Bush, as those who are consumed by a blinding, partisan hatred of Bush really have no influence on this conversation.
1) Does anyone really think Bush is waging the war on terrorism on an ad hoc basis?
2) Does anyone really think the WMD's won't be found in Iraq?
3) Does anyone really think Saddam won't be found (and probably killed)?
4) Does anyone really think the American electorate (assuming no major terrorist attack at home) isn't going to continue to trust Bush more than ANY Democrat on nation security in '04?
5) Does anyone really think national security won't be the top issue in the '04 election?
6) Does anyone really think that if/when Bush is re-elected, he will change national policy toward the war on terrorism, regardless of A.L.'s concerns? And, finally,
7) Does anyone really think the American people will stop supporting the war on terrorism as long was we continue to make measurable progress?
So, unless you've answered "Aye" to any of the above questions (allowing for assumptions and the possible exclusion of question no. 3) in good faith, how does the issue of whether we have a "grand strategy" really matter?
Lurker,
My responses to "doubters" of missile defense has been conditioned by a 20 year long history of lies and distortion by leftist activists on the scale of what we see on Iraq.
Early 1980's electronics technology was up for the sensor/kill vehicle part of the SDI equation. It was much less ready for the command and control network behind it. Kill vehicle accuracy in test conditions was between 50% and 75%. Combat conditions and the normal quality variation in military procurement would have knocked 30%-50% off that accuracy rate. Hit to kill interceptors would have had a 5%-30% hit rate in combat. Pretty good for war with a 1st generation technology and enough to deny a certain decapitation first strike with the Soviet SS-18 fleet.
They would not have defended our cities from a programed, concentrated countervalue attack.
The "special effects" in SDI testing was that they put radio beacons in some of the ICBM targets for the hit-to-kill interceptors to home in on in case the primary seeker/guidance payload didn't work. This salvaged a great deal of close approach sensor telemetry.
From that effort was spun the story that all of SDI was a fake. It was not.
The American military and intelligence services fed a great deal of disinformation to Soviet intelligance as a part of the mind game Reagan and CIA director Bill Casey were playing with the Soviet leadership. Stories about SDI break throughs were a regular feature of this effort.
Those Soviet agents also fed back stories to Western newsies and leftist politicos about SDI being impossible that were dutifully parroted.
So SDI was both a real weapons R&D program and a black propaganda effort aimed at the Soviet leadership's fear of American technological capability. The American victory in the race to the moon scared the piss out of them and they didn't want to go there again.
Trent,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It just seems to me that the money, at least for this second round of research, could have been better spent on anti-terror, especially nuclear materials tracking, detection, and proliferation.
Thats what got me to thinking that the whole thing could be cover for a deeper black program, like the "brilliant pebbles" concept or hunter/killer sats, or something. I was hoping you might have some thoughts along those lines.
in regards to ASAT technologies, it's my understanding that we have had satisfactory capabilities since the mid '80s. I don't think there is a need for a program to cover this capability.
Regards Trent:
I worked the antisattilite program in the 80s, and it was killed for operational, not technical reasons. It worked, after a fashion, but there were reasons why that particular platform was not useful to the military. Still, the remaining items were mothballed, and could have been used in some circumstances given a little pilot training before the mission.
Regards Trent:
I worked the antisattilite program in the 80s, and it was killed for operational, not technical reasons. It worked, after a fashion, but there were reasons why that particular platform was not useful to the military. Still, the remaining items were mothballed, and could have been used in some circumstances given a little pilot training before the mission.
Regards Trent:
I worked the antisattilite program in the 80s, and it was killed for operational, not technical reasons. It worked, after a fashion, but there were reasons why that particular platform was not useful to the military. Still, the remaining items were mothballed, and could have been used in some circumstances given a little pilot training before the mission.
Ilogged on the site cause am conducting a research on Black American "Break throughs" that new shows and stuff invented in the 80's, but it seems there's nothing here for proof and research work.
Ilogged on the site cause am conducting a research on Black American "Break throughs" that's new shows and stuff invented in the 80's, but it seems there's nothing here for proof and research work.