The Prison Of The Present

[|Bunghole|]

The Prison of the Present

By Victor Davis Hanson



Listen to the present televised hysteria. Too few troops! No, too many still there! The CIA is out of control! No, it is weak and irrelevant! The Iraq mess only empowered Iran! No, its democratic experiment is the best way to undermine that neighboring theocracy.



Such frenzy of the 24-hour news cycle is now everywhere, as we are lectured that our victories over the Taliban and Saddam Hussein have caused as many problems as they solved. But in war aren't choices usually between the bad and the far worse?



So often victory leads not to utopia, but only something better. Take our past ambiguous successes.



Recall that the outcome of America's horrific, but successful, Civil War that ended slavery led not to racial harmony. Instead followed over a decade of failed Reconstruction and another century of Jim Crow apartheid in the South.



We saved a reeling Britain and France in World War I. But an isolationist United States did not occupy a defeated Germany. So we fought a resurgent Hitler little more than twenty years later, who talked of the 'stab in the back,' while he bragged that imperial Germany had withdrawn unbeaten from foreign soil.



The outcome of World War II (note the sudden need for the Roman numerals) was not perpetual peace or even the freedom of Eastern Europe, but rather its enslavement and a Cold War of a half-century.



The United States prevailed in saving South Korea. Yet it still bequeathed a lunatic nuclear communist state to our grandchildren.



Gulf War I was a smashing success. But it was followed by the slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites and Kurds, twelve years of no-fly zones, and yet another war against Saddam.



Almost every controversy in this present war also proves to be a rehash of the past.



Poorly armored Humvees? Thousands, not hundreds, of Americans perished, in thin-skinned Sherman tanks ("Ronson lighters") that never were up-armored even at the end of World War II.



Too few troops? In late July 1944 as Gen. George Patton raced eastward through France, the topic never came up. But by autumn as several under-strength American armies suddenly stalled on the distant Rhine, national recrimination replaced the earlier euphoria. What fool planner had advocated a broad-front advance into Germany with far too few soldiers?



Did removing Saddam empower Iran? No more so than ending Nazism gave more opportunity for our "ally" Stalin to enslave Eastern Europe.

Why was our Iraqi intelligence so poor in assessing the potential for postwar insurgency? The same was asked how some surprised American divisions near the end of World War II were nearly annihilated by Germans in the Bulge and by the Japanese on Okinawa?



Won't Iraq require years of occupation? We hope not. But years after our victories, American troops are still residing in Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, and the Balkans.



The point of these historical comparisons is not to excuse our present mistakes by citing worse ones from the past--or to suggest that all wars are always the same. Much less should history's examples be used to stifle necessary contemporary criticism that alone leads to remedy. Rather knowledge of the capricious nature of wars of the past can restore a little humility to our national psyche. We need it. Ours is the first generation of Americans that thinks it can demand perfection in war. Our present leisure, wealth, and high technology fool us into thinking that we are demi-gods always be able to trump both human and natural disasters.



Accordingly, we become frustrated that we cannot master every wartime obstacle, as we seem otherwise to be able to do with computers or cosmetic surgery. Then, without any benchmarks of comparison from the past, we despair that our actions are failed because they are not perfect.



But why did a poorer, less educated, and more illiberal United States in far bloodier and more error-ridden wars of the past still have greater confidence in itself? Was it that our ancestors, who died younger and far more tragically, did not expect their homeland to be without flaws, only to be considerably better than the enemy's?



Perhaps we have forgotten such modesty because we have ignored the study of history that alone offers us guidance from our forbearers. It now competes as an orphan discipline with social science, -ologies and -isms that entice us into thinking that the more money and education of the present can at last perfect the human condition and thus consign our flawed past to irrelevance.



The result is that while sensitive young Americans seem to know what correct words and ideas they must embrace, they derive neither direction nor solace from past events. After all, very few could identify Vicksburg or Verdun, much less have any idea where or what Iwo Jima was.



In such a lonely prison of the present what are historically ignorant Americans to make of a Fallujah or an Iranian madman's threat of annihilation other than such things can't or shouldn't or must not happen to us?



So, of this present war, I think our war-torn forefathers would say to us that both messy Afghanistan and Iraq are better places without their dictators even if they never will resemble Carmel or Austin. They would add that it is not unusual to be confronted with new crises even after such apparently easy victories. And they would shrug that however scary Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran now appears, it poses nothing new or insurmountable to a confident and strong United States that has dealt with far more serious enemies in the past with its accustomed wisdom and resolve.



Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."



You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

[Homer_Rice]

Hansen would have been a great Athenian negotiator at Melos.

[Guest BlackJesus]

[b]I guess "good" is on the eye of the beholder ....



actually I take that back .... if I wipe out most of the context, actual reality, and reasoning for most of the things he sites .... then hell it makes perfect sense ....



[img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/26.gif[/img] [/b]

[Guest bengalrick]

[url="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Production/files/Taheri_0606.htm"]the real iraq[/url]

[i][b]The Real Iraq[/b]

Amir Taheri

Spending time in the United States after a tour of Iraq can be a disorienting experience these days. Within hours of arriving here, as I can attest from a recent visit, one is confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable. It is created in several overlapping ways: through television footage showing the charred remains of vehicles used in suicide attacks, surrounded by wailing women in black and grim-looking men carrying coffins; by armchair strategists and political gurus predicting further doom or pontificating about how the war should have been fought in the first place; by authors of instant-history books making their rounds to dissect the various fundamental mistakes committed by the Bush administration; and by reporters, cocooned in hotels in Baghdad, explaining the carnage and chaos in the streets as signs of the countrys impending or undeclared civil war. Add to all this the days alleged scandal or revelationan outed CIA operative, a reportedly doctored intelligence report, a leaked pessimistic assessmentand it is no wonder the American public registers disillusion with Iraq and everyone who embroiled the U.S. in its troubles.

[b]It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq. Part of the problem, faced by even the most well-meaning news organizations, is the difficulty of covering so large and complex a subject; naturally, in such circumstances, sensational items rise to the top. But even ostensibly more objective efforts, like the Brookings Institutions much-cited Iraq Index with its constantly updated array of security, economic, and public-opinion indicators, tell us little about the actual feel of the country on the ground. [/b]

To make matters worse, many of the newsmen, pundits, and commentators on whom American viewers and readers rely to describe the situation have been contaminated by the increasing bitterness of American politics. Clearly there are those in the media and the think tanks who wish the Iraq enterprise to end in tragedy, as a just comeuppance for George W. Bush. Others, prompted by noble sentiment, so abhor the idea of war that they would banish it from human discourse before admitting that, in some circumstances, military power can be used in support of a good cause. But whatever the reason, the half-truths and outright misinformation that now function as conventional wisdom have gravely disserved the American people.

For someone like myself who has spent considerable time in Iraqa country I first visited in 1968current reality there is, nevertheless, very different from this conventional wisdom, and so are the prospects for Iraqs future. It helps to know where to look, what sources to trust, and how to evaluate the present moment against the background of Iraqi and Middle Eastern history.


Since my first encounter with Iraq almost 40 years ago, I have relied on several broad measures of social and economic health to assess the countrys condition. Through good times and bad, these signs have proved remarkably accurateas accurate, that is, as is possible in human affairs. For some time now, all have been pointing in an unequivocally positive direction.

[b]The first sign is refugees.[/b] When things have been truly desperate in Iraqin 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape. In 1973, for example, when Saddam Hussein decided to expel all those whose ancestors had not been Ottoman citizens before Iraqs creation as a state, some 1.2 million Iraqis left their homes in the space of just six weeks. This was not the temporary exile of a small group of middle-class professionals and intellectuals, which is a common enough phenomenon in most Arab countries. Rather, it was a departure en masse, affecting people both in small villages and in big cities, and it was a scene regularly repeated under Saddam Hussein.

Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television setsand we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark. Many of the camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959 have now closed down. The oldest such center, at Ashrafiayh in southwest Iran, was formally shut when its last Iraqi guests returned home in 2004.

[b]A second dependable sign likewise concerns human movement, but of a different kind. This is the flow of religious pilgrims to the Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf.[/b] Whenever things start to go badly in Iraq, this stream is reduced to a trickle and then it dries up completely. From 1991 (when Saddam Hussein massacred Shiites involved in a revolt against him) to 2003, there were scarcely any pilgrims to these cities. Since Saddams fall, they have been flooded with visitors. In 2005, the holy sites received an estimated 12 million pilgrims, making them the most visited spots in the entire Muslim world, ahead of both Mecca and Medina.

Over 3,000 Iraqi clerics have also returned from exile, and Shiite seminaries, which just a few years ago held no more than a few dozen pupils, now boast over 15,000 from 40 different countries. This is because Najaf, the oldest center of Shiite scholarship, is once again able to offer an alternative to Qom, the Iranian holy city where a radical and highly politicized version of Shiism is taught. Those wishing to pursue the study of more traditional and quietist forms of Shiism now go to Iraq where, unlike in Iran, the seminaries are not controlled by the government and its secret police.

[b]A third sign, this one of the hard economic variety, is the value of the Iraqi dinar, especially as compared with the regions other major currencies.[/b] In the final years of Saddam Husseins rule, the Iraqi dinar was in free fall; after 1995, it was no longer even traded in Iran and Kuwait. By contrast, the new dinar, introduced early in 2004, is doing well against both the Kuwaiti dinar and the Iranian rial, having risen by 17 percent against the former and by 23 percent against the latter. Although it is still impossible to fix its value against a basket of international currencies, the new Iraqi dinar has done well against the U.S. dollar, increasing in value by almost 18 percent between August 2004 and August 2005. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis, and millions of Iranians and Kuwaitis, now treat it as a safe and solid medium of exchange

[b]My fourth time-tested sign is the level of activity by small and medium-sized businesses.[/b] In the past, whenever things have gone downhill in Iraq, large numbers of such enterprises have simply closed down, with the countrys most capable entrepreneurs decamping to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Turkey, Iran, and even Europe and North America. Since liberation, however, Iraq has witnessed a private-sector boom, especially among small and medium-sized businesses.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as well as numerous private studies, the Iraqi economy has been doing better than any other in the region. The countrys gross domestic product rose to almost $90 billion in 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available), more than double the output for 2003, and its real growth rate, as estimated by the IMF, was 52.3 per cent. In that same period, exports increased by more than $3 billion, while the inflation rate fell to 25.4 percent, down from 70 percent in 2002. The unemployment rate was halved, from 60 percent to 30 percent.

Related to this is the level of agricultural activity. Between 1991 and 2003, the countrys farm sector experienced unprecedented decline, in the end leaving almost the entire nation dependent on rations distributed by the United Nations under Oil-for-Food. In the past two years, by contrast, Iraqi agriculture has undergone an equally unprecedented revival. Iraq now exports foodstuffs to neighboring countries, something that has not happened since the 1950s. Much of the upturn is due to smallholders who, shaking off the collectivist system imposed by the Baathists, have retaken control of land that was confiscated decades ago by the state.

[b]Finally, one of the surest indices of the health of Iraqi society has always been its readiness to talk to the outside world. Iraqis are a verbalizing people; when they fall silent, life is incontrovertibly becoming hard for them.[/b] There have been times, indeed, when one could find scarcely a single Iraqi, whether in Iraq or abroad, prepared to express an opinion on anything remotely political. This is what Kanan Makiya meant when he described Saddam Husseins regime as a republic of fear.

Today, again by way of dramatic contrast, Iraqis are voluble to a fault. Talk radio, television talk-shows, and Internet blogs are all the rage, while heated debate is the order of the day in shops, tea-houses, bazaars, mosques, offices, and private homes. A catharsis is how Luay Abdulilah, the Iraqi short-story writer and diarist, describes it. This is one way of taking revenge against decades of deadly silence. Moreover, a vast network of independent media has emerged in Iraq, including over 100 privately-owned newspapers and magazines and more than two dozen radio and television stations. To anyone familiar with the state of the media in the Arab world, it is a truism that Iraq today is the place where freedom of expression is most effectively exercised.


That an experienced observer of Iraq with a sense of history can point to so many positive factors in the countrys present condition will not do much, of course, to sway the more determined critics of the U.S. intervention there. They might even agree that the images fed to the American public show only part of the picture, and that the news from Iraq is not uniformly bad. But the root of their opposition runs deeper, to political fundamentals.

Their critique can be summarized in the aphorism that democracy cannot be imposed by force. It is a view that can be found among the more sophisticated elements on the Left and, increasingly, among dissenters on the Right, from Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska to the ex-neoconservative Francis Fukuyama. [b]As Senator Hagel puts it, You cannot in my opinion just impose a democratic form of government on a country with no history and no culture and no tradition of democracy.

I would tend to agree. But is Iraq such a place? In point of fact, before the 1958 pro-Soviet military coup detat that established a leftist dictatorship, Iraq did have its modest but nevertheless significant share of democratic history, culture, and tradition. The country came into being through a popular referendum held in 1921. A constitutional monarchy modeled on the United Kingdom, it had a bicameral parliament, several political parties (including the Baath and the Communists), and periodic elections that led to changes of policy and government. At the time, Iraq also enjoyed the freest press in the Arab world, plus the widest space for debate and dissent in the Muslim Middle East. [/b]

To be sure, Baghdad in those days was no Westminster, and, as the 1958 coup proved, Iraqi democracy was fragile. But every serious student of contemporary Iraq knows that substantial segments of the population, from all ethnic and religious communities, had more than a taste of the modern worlds democratic aspirations. As evidence, one need only consult the immense literary and artistic production of Iraqis both before and after the 1958 coup. Under successor dictatorial regimes, it is true, the conviction took hold that democratic principles had no future in Iraqa conviction that was responsible in large part for driving almost five million Iraqis, a quarter of the population, into exile between 1958 and 2003, just as the opposite conviction is attracting so many of them and their children back to Iraq today.

A related argument used to condemn Iraqs democratic prospects is that it is an artificial country, one that can be held together only by a dictator. But did any nation-state fall from the heavens wholly made? All are to some extent artificial creations, and the U.S. is preeminently so. The truth is that Iraqone of the 53 founding countries of the United Nationsis older than a majority of that organizations current 198 member states. Within the Arab League, and setting aside Oman and Yemen, none of the 22 members is older. Two-thirds of the 122 countries regarded as democracies by Freedom House came into being after Iraqs appearance on the map.

Critics of the democratic project in Iraq also claim that, because it is a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state, the country is doomed to despotism, civil war, or disintegration. But the same could be said of virtually all Middle Eastern states, most of which are neither multi-ethnic nor multi-confessional. More important, all Iraqis, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic, and sectarian differences, share a sense of national identityuruqa (Iraqi-ness)that has developed over the past eight decades. A unified, federal state may still come to grief in Iraqhistory is not written in advancebut even should a divorce become inevitable at some point, a democratic Iraq would be in a better position to manage it.

What all of this demonstrates is that, contrary to received opinion, Operation Iraqi Freedom was not an attempt to impose democracy by force. Rather, it was an effort to use force to remove impediments to democratization, primarily by deposing a tyrant who had utterly suppressed a well-established aspect of the countrys identity. It may take years before we know for certain whether or not post-liberation Iraq has definitely chosen democracy. But one thing is certain: without the use of force to remove the Baathist regime, the people of Iraq would not have had the opportunity even to contemplate a democratic future.


[b]Assessing the progress of that democratic project is no simple matter. But, by any reasonable standard, Iraqis have made extraordinary strides.[/b] In a series of municipal polls and two general elections in the past three years, up to 70 percent of eligible Iraqis have voted. This new orientation is supported by more than 60 political parties and organizations, the first genuinely free-trade unions in the Arab world, a growing number of professional associations acting independently of the state, and more than 400 nongovernmental organizations representing diverse segments of civil society. A new constitution, written by Iraqis representing the full spectrum of political, ethnic, and religious sensibilities was overwhelmingly approved by the electorate in a referendum last October.

Iraqs new democratic reality is also reflected in the vocabulary of politics used at every level of society. Many new wordsaccountability, transparency, pluralism, dissenthave entered political discourse in Iraq for the first time. More remarkably, perhaps, all parties and personalities currently engaged in the democratic process have committed themselves to the principle that power should be sought, won, and lost only through free and fair elections.

These democratic achievements are especially impressive when set side by side with the declared aims of the enemies of the new Iraq, who have put up a determined fight against it. Since the countrys liberation, the jihadists and residual Baathists have killed an estimated 23,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, in scores of random attacks and suicide operations. Indirectly, they have caused the death of thousands more, by sabotaging water and electricity services and by provoking sectarian revenge attacks.

But they have failed to translate their talent for mayhem and murder into political success. Their campaign has not succeeded in appreciably slowing down, let alone stopping, the countrys democratization. Indeed, at each step along the way, the jihadists and Baathists have seen their self-declared objectives thwarted.

After the invasion, they tried at first to prevent the formation of a Governing Council, the expression of Iraqs continued existence as a sovereign nation-state. They managed to murder several members of the council, including its president in 2003, but failed to prevent its formation or to keep it from performing its task in the interim period. The next aim of the insurgents was to stop municipal elections. Their message was simple: candidates and voters would be killed. But, once again, they failed: thousands of men and women came forward as candidates and more than 1.5 million Iraqis voted in the localities where elections were held.

The insurgency made similar threats in the lead-up to the first general election, and the result was the same. Despite killing 36 candidates and 148 voters, they failed to derail the balloting, in which the number of voters rose to more than 8 million. Nor could the insurgency prevent the writing of the new democratic constitution, despite a campaign of assassination against its drafters. The text was ready in time and was submitted to and approved by a referendum, exactly as planned. The number of voters rose yet again, to more than 9 million.

What of relations among the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurdsthe focus of so much attention of late? For almost three years, the insurgency worked hard to keep the Arab Sunni community, which accounts for some 15 percent of the population, out of the political process. But that campaign collapsed when millions of Sunnis turned out to vote in the constitutional referendum and in the second general election, which saw almost 11 million Iraqis go to the polls. As I write, all political parties representing the Arab Sunni minority have joined the political process and have strong representation in the new parliament. With the convening of that parliament, and the nomination in April of a new prime minister and a three-man presidential council, the way is open for the formation of a broad-based government of national unity to lead Iraq over the next four years.

As for the insurgencys effort to foment sectarian violencea strategy first launched in earnest toward the end of 2005this too has run aground. The hope here was to provoke a full-scale war between the Arab Sunni minority and the Arab Shiites who account for some 60 percent of the population. The new strategy, like the ones previously tried, has certainly produced many deaths. But despite countless cases of sectarian killings by so-called militias, there is still no sign that the Shiites as a whole will acquiesce in the role assigned them by the insurgency and organize a concerted campaign of nationwide retaliation.

Finally, despite the impression created by relentlessly dire reporting in the West, the insurgency has proved unable to shut down essential government services. Hundreds of teachers and schoolchildren have been killed in incidents including the beheading of two teachers in their classrooms this April and horrific suicide attacks against school buses. But by September 2004, most schools across Iraq and virtually all universities were open and functioning. By September 2005, more than 8.5 million Iraqi children and young people were attending school or universityan all-time record in the nations history.

A similar story applies to Iraqs clinics and hospitals. Between October 2003 and January 2006, more than 80 medical doctors and over 400 nurses and medical auxiliaries were murdered by the insurgents. The jihadists also raided several hospitals, killing ordinary patients in their beds. But, once again, they failed in their objectives. By January 2006, all of Iraqs 600 state-owned hospitals and clinics were in full operation, along with dozens of new ones set up by the private sector since liberation.

Another of the insurgencys strategic goals was to bring the Iraqi oil industry to a halt and to disrupt the export of crude. Since July 2003, Iraqs oil infrastructure has been the target of more than 3,000 attacks and attempts at sabotage. But once more the insurgency has failed to achieve its goals. Iraq has resumed its membership in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and has returned to world markets as a major oil exporter. According to projections, by the end of 2006 it will be producing its full OPEC quota of 2.8 million barrels a day.

The Baathist remnant and its jihadist allies resemble a gambler who wins a heap of chips at a roulette table only to discover that he cannot exchange them for real money at the front desk. The enemies of the new Iraq have succeeded in ruining the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis, but over the past three years they have advanced their overarching goals, such as they are, very little. Instead, they have been militarily contained and politically defeated again and again, and the beneficiary has been Iraqi democracy.


None of this means that the new Iraq is out of the woods. Far from it. Democratic success still requires a great deal of patience, determination, and luck. The U.S.-led coalition, its allies, and partners have achieved most of their major political objectives, but that achievement remains under threat and could be endangered if the U.S., for whatever reason, should decide to snatch a defeat from the jaws of victory.

The current mandate of the U.S.-led coalition runs out at the end of this year, and it is unlikely that Washington and its allies will want to maintain their military presence at current levels. In the past few months, more than half of the 103 bases used by the coalition have been transferred to the new Iraqi army. The best guess is that the number of U.S. and coalition troops could be cut from 140,000 to 25,000 or 30,000 by the end of 2007.

One might wonder why, if the military mission has been so successful, the U.S. still needs to maintain a military presence in Iraq for at least another two years. There are three reasons for this.

The first is to discourage Iraqs predatory neighbors, notably Iran and Syria, which might wish to pursue their own agendas against the new government in Baghdad. Iran has already revived some claims under the Treaties of Erzerum (1846), according to which Tehran would enjoy a droit de regard over Shiite shrines in Iraq. In Syria, some in that countrys ruling circles have invoked the possibility of annexing the area known as Jazirah, the so-called Sunni triangle, in the name of Arab unity. For its part, Turkey is making noises about the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which gave it a claim to the oilfields of northern Iraq. All of these pretensions need to be rebuffed.

The second reason for extending Americas military presence is political. The U.S. is acting as an arbiter among Iraqs various ethnic and religious communities and political factions. It is, in a sense, a traffic cop, giving Iraqis a green or red light when and if needed. It is important that the U.S. continue performing this role for the first year or two of the newly elected parliament and government.

Finally, the U.S. and its allies have a key role to play in training and testing Iraqs new army and police. Impressive success has already been achieved in that field. Nevertheless, the new Iraqi army needs at least another year or two before it will have developed adequate logistical capacities and learned to organize and conduct operations involving its various branches.

But will the U.S. stay the course? Many are betting against it. The Baathists and jihadists, their prior efforts to derail Iraqi democracy having come to naught, have now pinned their hopes on creating enough chaos and death to persuade Washington of the futility of its endeavors. In this, they have the tacit support not only of local Arab and Muslim despots rightly fearful of the democratic genie but of all those in the West whose own incessant theme has been the certainty of American failure. Among Bush-haters in the U.S., just as among anti-Americans around the world, predictions of civil war in Iraq, of spreading regional hostilities, and of a revived global terrorism are not about to cease any time soon.

But more sober observers should understand the real balance sheet in Iraq. Democracy is succeeding. Moreover, thanks to its success in Iraq, there are stirrings elsewhere in the region. Beyond the much-publicized electoral concessions wrung from authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, there is a new democratic discourse to be heard. Nationalism and pan-Arabism, yesterdays hollow rallying cries, have given way to a big idea of a very different kind. Debate and dissent are in the air where there was none beforea development owing, in significant measure, to the U.S. campaign in Iraq and the brilliant if still checkered Iraqi response.

The stakes, in short, could not be higher. This is all the more reason to celebrate, to build on, and to consolidate what has already been accomplished. Instead of railing against the Bush administration, Americas elites would do better, and incidentally display greater self-respect, to direct their wrath where it properly belongs: at those violent and unrestrained enemies of democracy in Iraq who are, in truth, the enemies of democracy in America as well, and of everything America has ever stood for.

Is Iraq a quagmire, a disaster, a failure? Certainly not; none of the above. Of all the adjectives used by skeptics and critics to describe todays Iraq, the only one that has a ring of truth is messy. Yes, the situation in Iraq today is messy. Births always are. Since when is that a reason to declare a baby unworthy of life?



Amir Taheri, formerly the executive editor of Kayhan, Irans largest daily newspaper, is the author of ten books and a frequent contributor to numerous publications in the Middle East and Europe. His work appears regularly in the New York Post.[/i]

[|Bunghole|]

That's a great article, BR. I guess some people will just choose to believe what they want based on whatever they read, and discard out of hand anything that is contrary to their beliefs, even when the truth is right there in their faces....

[Homer_Rice]

You bring up a good point, Bung. It is reasonable and good to test one's genuine commitment to the pursuit of truth; one of the better ways to do this is to develop an understanding of the fundamentals of epistemology. That should be a part of the education of every child--sadly, it is not. The great battles which shape history are often rooted in epistemological differences--Plato versus Aristotle; the Sophists and the degeneration of Ancient Athens; in medieval times Nominalism versus Realism; the Rationalists versus Empiricists, which is some ways was the last great battle of the Renaissance; and even the disputes between Ibn Sina and Al Ghazali during the height of Islamic culture under the Caliphates. Another example comes to mind: how can anyone begin to understand the underlying importance of the argument between Newton and Leibniz on the provenance of the calculus without having a grasp of the epistemological issues that put those two at irreconcilable odds?

So on one hand, there is this truth: it is the eggheads of the world, as you have called them, who not only fight the most important fights in history, but who also dictate the wider parameters of the way you live your life, whether you acknowledge that or not. On the other hand, in this day and age, it is hard to begin a-fresh, if you are past the customary age of education, in working towards this kind of understanding. It isn't impossible, but the demands of "adult" life often preclude people from the intensive study, even as a matter of recreation, that would clarify much of what epistemology is about and the deeper historical implications of these disputes.

Does that mean that one cannot peel away at least some of the layers of the onion? No, imo. One could, for example, separate "content" and "provenance" into their appropriate categories, and come to judgements which can be somewhat reliable as one builds up a fair body of knowledge.

Now, all this is, well, so egghead-ish, I know. And sadly, I also know that some folks just don't have the inclination or the guts to challenge themselves on that level, for a variety of reasons. But in the hope that you are not one of those folks whose psyche goes into batshit mode when threatened by the possibility of having to change one's way of thinking, I'll give you an example of what I mean, in a non-political context.

Out in my living room I have a very old inkwell. It's a nice piece--a cast-iron base with a little embellishment on it, and on which is mounted two glass receptacles for ink, both of which revolve on a swivel to stoppers that are intended to prevent the ink from drying up when not in use.

Now, if you were to look at it, you might say, "Hey, nice antique inkwell, I bet you could get a fair price for it via an antique dealer or E-Bay," and leave it at that. I've had this conversation more than once and folks would be right, as far as they went. But it isn't for sale and I'll tell you why.

That inkwell used to belong to Thomas Jefferson, or at least, I so believe. Now, when I mention that to folks, the almost invariable reaction it draws is a skeptical--"Yeah, right..." And, at that level, that would be the healthy response. "Prove it," they might say.

I respond, "I can't prove it beyond doubt. There is no provenance, no letter or other document or even an inscription on the piece itself to prove the claim."

The next reasonable question is then: "Well, why do you say that if you cannot prove it."

I respond, "Because of family tradition and other important circumstantial evidence." In other words, the question of proof becomes a matter of collating evidence under the auspices of a certain epistemological outlook. In other words, it depends on how one makes assessments in general, as to whether or not the evidence makes a case which holds water, or whether it is just vaporous steam.

Here is that evidence.

First, this is a story passed down through the generations anecdotally, verifiable at least back as far as the mid-nineteenth century. In other words, I can trace the story being told by my grandmother's grandmother, who as a baby, was kissed by Jeb Stuart on one of his ramblings around the Union Army during the Civil War. That side tidbit is verifiable via a newspaper article of the time. She is the earliest person I know of who tells the story, though she claimed it was told to her. She is also the one who passed the inkwell to my grandmother, which was verified to me from the "horse's mouth," so to speak, before she died. So, this could lend credence to my claim. Yet, it could also mean little, as "whoppers" can often become a part of a family history, too.

So the next obvious question becomes, "What is the family's place and does this help or hinder the argument?" That part of the family is the Carr branch of my lineage. This is verifiable back into the 17th century. Among those ancestors was a fellow named Dabney Carr and the family story is that the inkwell comes through him.

So far, so good. But, still, this doesn't mean much, taken in isolation. The next obvious question is, "Who was Dabney Carr?" It turns out that Dabney Carr grew up in the Piedmont, around present day Charlottesville, and, that his best friend as a youth was, guess who? Thomas Jefferson. Verifiable. As youngsters, Dabney Carr and Jefferson made a pact to be buried next to each other. Verifiable, not only via family tradition, but also through direct physical evidence--just go to Monticello. Further, Dabney Carr married Jefferson's sister. Verifiable.

There's more evidence which proves the ties between the two families, but that ought to be sufficient for the purposes of this post. Yet, there is no direct proof that verifiably mentions anything about an inkwell passing from one family to another, or from one friend to another. All I can prove is that the claim is not an unreasonable one. Given the close nature of the friendship, I am personally inclined to say it is a probably truthful claim, more than just reasonable, and thus, I will not sell the piece. Instead, it'll find it's way to the next generation with the hope that it'll be regarded as highly by them as it has been by me and those who had it before me. Is the case iron-clad? No. But it is enough to provoke me into a certain mode of decision-making/action.

So, if you have read this far, what is my point? Actually, I have a number:

1) The pursuit of the truth requires a certain frame of mind, call it "scientific" if you will. Some people got it, some don't. Those that don't cannot understand history, the world they live in, or the principles by which the universe operates, at any important level commensurate with the level of knowledge and culture prevailing at any given historical moment.

2) Even if one is inclined towards the pursuit of truth, that's no guarentee. The content of truthfulness is inextricably tied to the method of discovery, i.e. the epistemological precepts which form a specific methodology. Some methods are provably better than others.

3) It's easy to give lip-service to the pursuit of truth, it is much harder to live by the concept. Deception is always possible, and self-deception is the most pernicious of the forms of that particular beast. So, if a person is going to "talk the talk," they had better be able to "walk the walk." Or at least be able to demonstrate that they are on the path and not off in some cul-de-sac getting a blow job from some deceiving liar.

4) Content is one thing, method another, and where they meet is usually a singularity of interest.

5) You don't have to agree with someone ideologically to evaluate the evidence, or to even find that some of that evidence holds water. But if the method and motive of the purveyor is suspect, then that needs to be considered, too. I would go further by suggesting that if the method is bad, then whatever decent evidence that is presented, tends to be in the wrong context.

Specifically:

6) Hansen is a neo-con; Commentary is a neo-con magazine. I'll read what they present, and I may agree with some of their factual representations. But, as I have decided for myself, by the dint of hard work, that Leo Strauss is mistaken and that many of his protegees are downright evil fucks, by the weight of their methodology, not to mention the effects of the implementation of that methodological orientation in the day-to-day world, I'm not inclined to be persuaded by their motives or their goals. I know that Strauss' concepts of esoteric and exoteric divisions with respect to treating the public is flat out evil and that in many ways these notions are at the root of the flood of deliberate lies told to the public as a matter of course, as well as their disregard for universal lawfulness in general, and for the norms of international law and Constitutional law in particular.

7) Lastly, the reason I made the reference to Melos is telling for those who have the epistemological balls to pursue the lead. Shit or get off the pot.

[|Bunghole|]

Homer, I would like to initiate a talk with you. Will PM you. However, I fail to see how BJ and you address the direct context of the article in the sense that expectations and tolerances for war and fighting it always fail to meet the expectations of either the war itself or the reception of said war from the general populace......
The idea is that since war is human-derived, it is imperfect in nature and execution and that we (meaning the current generation) are a bit spoiled in our expectations of the results of ANY war, because satelllites, air raids and video games have boosted our confidence beyond reasonable expectations.....

[Guest BlackJesus]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' post='270435' date='May 19 2006, 11:29 PM']You bring up a good point, Bung. It is reasonable and good to test one's genuine commitment to the pursuit of truth; one of the better ways to do this is to develop an understanding of the fundamentals of epistemology.


.........[/quote]

[img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//41.gif[/img]

[b]Nice post Homer ..... some people on here may not believe it ..... but I am not set in my views ..... and am willing to alter them when I find new information - those that see that I favored Bush over Kerry at one time should see that - however I believe that they will explain this away by saying that I have "suddenly fell off the deep end" .....

well if the deep end is where those that take the red pill go .... then so be it .....




[color="#330000"].....

also on certain things I would love more than anything to be wrong on them .... I read everything I can that supposedly supports the official story on 9/11 .... but the more I try to believe the official story ... the more it reeks of falsehood ...... believe me it would be much easier to believe the official version .... hell I slept better when I did ....
even setting aside 9/11, life was easier when I allowed myself to be overtaken with bullshit propaganda on most issues .... oversimplified versions of history were convenient .... it was comfortable .... everything easily fit into it's place and made sense .... and coincidentally I was previously just "coincidentally" always on the "right" side of justice in the world = wow what a lucky guy huh to be born in such a position to always be on the side of "justice" ......
However once cognitive dissonance sets in ..... it slowly unravels ..... and once that process starts ..... it can be a systematic "re education" of ones self ..... that is almost impossible to stop .... as long as your heart maintains the will to take the conclusions as they develop .... sometimes of course you are wrong or off base .... but everyone is from time to time ..... the difference in this process however I believe though .... is that regardless of what some on here will charge .... I believe that someone with cognitive dissonance has their heart in the right place .... and eventually as a result you start to slowly sleep better because of this .... however you realize that it is a "different" kind of sleep than before ..... [/b] [/color]

[Guest bengalrick]

[quote name='BlackJesus' post='270495' date='May 20 2006, 03:30 AM'][img]http://forum.go-bengals.com/public/style_emoticons//41.gif[/img]

[b]Nice post Homer ..... some people on here may not believe it ..... but I am not set in my views ..... and am willing to alter them when I find new information - those that see that I favored Bush over Kerry at one time should see that - however I believe that they will explain this away by saying that I have "suddenly fell off the deep end" .....

well if the deep end is where those that take the red pill go .... then so be it .....
[color="#330000"].....

also on certain things I would love more than anything to be wrong on them .... I read everything I can that supposedly supports the official story on 9/11 .... but the more I try to believe the official story ... the more it reeks of falsehood ...... believe me it would be much easier to believe the official version .... hell I slept better when I did ....
even setting aside 9/11, life was easier when I allowed myself to be overtaken with bullshit propaganda on most issues .... oversimplified versions of history were convenient .... it was comfortable .... everything easily fit into it's place and made sense .... and coincidentally I was previously just "coincidentally" always on the "right" side of justice in the world = wow what a lucky guy huh to be born in such a position to always be on the side of "justice" ......
However once cognitive dissonance sets in ..... it slowly unravels ..... and once that process starts ..... it can be a systematic "re education" of ones self ..... that is almost impossible to stop .... as long as your heart maintains the will to take the conclusions as they develop .... sometimes of course you are wrong or off base .... but everyone is from time to time ..... the difference in this process however I believe though .... is that regardless of what some on here will charge .... I believe that someone with cognitive dissonance has their heart in the right place .... and eventually as a result you start to slowly sleep better because of this .... however you realize that it is a "different" kind of sleep than before ..... [/b] [/color][/quote]


i want to point something out bj... you are the opposite of a neo-con... you are a former conservative that is now on the extreme left... instead of favoring war to the fullest, you reject it under most circumstances, under the pretext of what you have found...

[Guest Coy Bacon]

[quote name='Bunghole' post='270273' date='May 19 2006, 02:53 PM']The Prison of the Present

By Victor Davis Hanson



Listen to the present televised hysteria. Too few troops! No, too many still there! The CIA is out of control! No, it is weak and irrelevant! The Iraq mess only empowered Iran! No, its democratic experiment is the best way to undermine that neighboring theocracy.



Such frenzy of the 24-hour news cycle is now everywhere, as we are lectured that our victories over the Taliban and Saddam Hussein have caused as many problems as they solved. But in war aren't choices usually between the bad and the far worse?



So often victory leads not to utopia, but only something better. Take our past ambiguous successes.



Recall that the outcome of America's horrific, but successful, Civil War that ended slavery led not to racial harmony. Instead followed over a decade of failed Reconstruction and another century of Jim Crow apartheid in the South.



We saved a reeling Britain and France in World War I. But an isolationist United States did not occupy a defeated Germany. So we fought a resurgent Hitler little more than twenty years later, who talked of the 'stab in the back,' while he bragged that imperial Germany had withdrawn unbeaten from foreign soil.
[color="#FF0000"][b]
And "saving" Britain and France was "success" rather than failure of judgement? Meddling in the affairs of the Old World empires can be viewed as a failure to adhere to a wise isolationist policy that was an indirect cause in and of itself in the rise of a Hitler.[/b][/color]

The outcome of World War II (note the sudden need for the Roman numerals) was not perpetual peace or even the freedom of Eastern Europe, but rather its enslavement and a Cold War of a half-century.
[color="#FF0000"]
[b]Whether U.S. entry into WWII was inevitable, advised, etc. or not, the Cold War was less the result of the war than it was of Truman's actions at the end of the war and an American policy, conducted with what came to be the unspoken (or maybe spoken) complicity of the USSR, designed to fill the imperial void left by the decline of the British Empire. The Cold War amounted to the US and USSR carving up the world into imperial "spheres of influence" and engaging in the kind of limited competition that characterizes the major players in oligopolies and oligopsonies. [/b] [/color]

The United States prevailed in saving South Korea. Yet it still bequeathed a lunatic nuclear communist state to our grandchildren.
[color="#FF0000"]
[b]The US didn't save South Korea, it sided with the former collaborators with the Japanese and subjected South Korea to a long history of often brutal military rule. Chalmers Johnson cites current bitterness on the part of the South Korean masses toward the US resulting from its role in covering up the abuses of South Korea's past military regimes as an example of "blow-back". Blow-back is the unintended consequences of actions conducted by the US government in secret that the American public at least initially fails to understand because the causative role of the government is hidden to them. It's also hard to say that North Korea is actually more lunatic than nuclear Israel. [/b] [/color]
Gulf War I was a smashing success. But it was followed by the slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites and Kurds, twelve years of no-fly zones, and yet another war against Saddam.
[color="#FF0000"]
[b] Some would say that the Gulf War was a crime. The no-fly zones were the continuation of aggression against Iraq. The sanctions, sabbotatge and destruction of infrastructure resulting from the invasion killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, many of them children. The post-invasion slaughter of Shiites was the result of the kind of betrayal and trickery used to gull Saddam into Kuwait in the first place. The invasion in 2003 was not a result of the first invasion but continuation and escalation of over a decade of continuous attacks against the country - and was a purely elective affair, facilitated by outright deceit and scoundrelry.[/b][/color]

Almost every controversy in this present war also proves to be a rehash of the past.



Poorly armored Humvees? Thousands, not hundreds, of Americans perished, in thin-skinned Sherman tanks ("Ronson lighters") that never were up-armored even at the end of World War II.



Too few troops? In late July 1944 as Gen. George Patton raced eastward through France, the topic never came up. But by autumn as several under-strength American armies suddenly stalled on the distant Rhine, national recrimination replaced the earlier euphoria. What fool planner had advocated a broad-front advance into Germany with far too few soldiers?



Did removing Saddam empower Iran? No more so than ending Nazism gave more opportunity for our "ally" Stalin to enslave Eastern Europe.

Why was our Iraqi intelligence so poor in assessing the potential for postwar insurgency? The same was asked how some surprised American divisions near the end of World War II were nearly annihilated by Germans in the Bulge and by the Japanese on Okinawa?
[color="#FF0000"]
[b]There were voices in the intelligence community warning of insurgency just like there were voices debunking the WMD myth. Those voices were deliberately ignored, and shouted down when they couldn't be ignored.[/b] [/color]

Won't Iraq require years of occupation? We hope not. But years after our victories, American troops are still residing in Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, and the Balkans.
[color="#FF0000"]
[b]American troops are deployed around the globe as an imperial mechanism. The bases are the physical empire. The insertion of bases is going on in Iraq now. [/b]
[/color]

The point of these historical comparisons is not to excuse our present mistakes by citing worse ones from the past--or to suggest that all wars are always the same. Much less should history's examples be used to stifle necessary contemporary criticism that alone leads to remedy. Rather knowledge of the capricious nature of wars of the past can restore a little humility to our national psyche. We need it. Ours is the first generation of Americans that thinks it can demand perfection in war. Our present leisure, wealth, and high technology fool us into thinking that we are demi-gods always be able to trump both human and natural disasters.
[color="#FF0000"][b]
These examples have been mendaciouisly presented. [/b] [/color]

Accordingly, we become frustrated that we cannot master every wartime obstacle, as we seem otherwise to be able to do with computers or cosmetic surgery. Then, without any benchmarks of comparison from the past, we despair that our actions are failed because they are not perfect.



But why did a poorer, less educated, and more illiberal United States in far bloodier and more error-ridden wars of the past still have greater confidence in itself? Was it that our ancestors, who died younger and far more tragically, did not expect their homeland to be without flaws, only to be considerably better than the enemy's?



Perhaps we have forgotten such modesty because we have ignored the study of history that alone offers us guidance from our forbearers. It now competes as an orphan discipline with social science, -ologies and -isms that entice us into thinking that the more money and education of the present can at last perfect the human condition and thus consign our flawed past to irrelevance.



The result is that while sensitive young Americans seem to know what correct words and ideas they must embrace, they derive neither direction nor solace from past events. After all, very few could identify Vicksburg or Verdun, much less have any idea where or what Iwo Jima was.



In such a lonely prison of the present what are historically ignorant Americans to make of a Fallujah or an Iranian madman's threat of annihilation other than such things can't or shouldn't or must not happen to us?



So, of this present war, I think our war-torn forefathers would say to us that both messy Afghanistan and Iraq are better places without their dictators even if they never will resemble Carmel or Austin. They would add that it is not unusual to be confronted with new crises even after such apparently easy victories. And they would shrug that however scary Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran now appears, it poses nothing new or insurmountable to a confident and strong United States that has dealt with far more serious enemies in the past with its accustomed wisdom and resolve.



Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."



You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.[/quote]
[color="#FF0000"]
[b]
Time doesn't permit going through any more of this tripe - a mountain of red herrings and straw-men thrown up as a flack barrage against reason. The piece is pure poppycock.[/b][/color]