In his speech to the nation the other night, President Bush said that if we stay the course in Iraq we can win. Is that true? It all depends on how you define victory. If that triumph equates to the victory that Senator George Aiken of Vermont supported for Vietnam: a declaration of victory and a quick trip home for our troops, it shouldn’t be much of a problem. If on the other hand, we mean something akin to the defeat inflicted upon Japanese nation and the remake of the government of that country accomplished after World War II, I’m not nearly so sure.
Let’s be frank, we’re viewed as infidels by true believers in the Islamic world, and they are more than a little uncomfortable with us occupying a country central to that civilization. Wouldn’t Westerners be slightly out of whack if France had the huge oil reserves of Iraq and was being occupied by the Egyptian army; especially, if the occupiers had toppled even our favorite Frenchman in the process, dear old Jacques Chirac. Despite France being a secular corner of Christianity and quite unloved by Americans at this time, many Western Christians – even a few from the U.S. - would be entering the country from across the borders with Spain and the Low Countries trying to undermine the occupiers and punish the French security forces collaborating with the infidel occupiers.
What have we wrought in Iraq? At best, we’ve toppled a corrupt and aggressive regime and replaced it with a puppet government that we are propping up until some sort of legitimate power can come along, hopefully one that can defend itself and will remain relatively dependent on us for its continued well being. Read that as meaning it will continue to pump oil to the markets of the world with some degree of security from insurgents or terrorists, however those labels are defined. It’s likely that most of the Arab countries and those other powers geographically nearby would not be too offended by this outcome, providing the U.S. were clearly not creating a puppet that required our indefinite physical presence over many decades.
Almost all supporters of the president and the preventive war undertaken in Iraq and a majority of those of us who thought the attack was illegal, immoral, and stupid now see this as the best possible outcome – one worth further sacrifice. That said, we’ve got to get going. No more lies from the administration, no more Pollyanna B.S. from Dick Cheney about how wonderfully well things are going in Iraq and how the insurgency is in its last throes.
The President and Secretary Rumsfeld are going to have to stop treating the nation's citizens like a bunch retarded jackasses. And let's just drop the usual pap that if the commanders in Iraq want more troops, all they have to do is ask. Those military bureaucrats know that asking is not how they’re going to win promotions and Medals of Freedom. The President has to cave on this point. He’s got to offer more troops, arms and armaments and make it clear that those who take the offer aren’t going to be sent to Iraq if they do. Oops, I forgot; they’re already in that armpit.
No one has publicly acknowledged the dream of strategic bases in Iraq to defend against incursion from the Iran and other countries to the west. Most of us believe that was part of the reason for the war, but the President has got to say it isn’t in our plans. We’re not going to set up permanently in the Iraqi desert. One more dream probably harbored by the neocons just has to be skewered for the benefit of those Westerners opposed to the war and for Muslims everywhere.
The President refuses to set a timetable for withdrawing our troops. He says that if we did that the terrorists would just wait for that date and have at us as we left. That’s partially true – the part about them throwing rocks at the ships carrying our troops away. The terrorists already know we can’t stand the heat and that we’re as good as gone, but if it makes the people who made this war happy, we’ll play along with their charade. We won’t set a timetable for withdrawal.
That said, the Iraqis in power and those who will come to power over the next few years have to know that we’re leaving – very soon but without a timetable, mind you. We’ll set them up with sufficient troops, police and equipment to defend themselves and their institutions, and then we’ll leave. They also have to know that we’re not coming back. We can’t. They have to sink or swim without our troops.
Those who would topple or take over the new government have to understand that our financial and security support would end as soon as they made a move on the government. We may not be able to come back and occupy Iraq, but we still have lot’s money, airplanes, and cruise missiles and it’s likely that we could re-topple them. We sure made life miserable for Saddam without attacking; too bad we changed our policy
The bottom line is that the administration and the neocons have created a catastrophe for America. Our allies knew it and tried to warn them; our competitors and enemies knew it and loved it; many Americans knew it and begged them not to; but they prevailed and here we are. We broke the pottery, and we’re sure as hell paying for it. We may own it, but we’re more than willing to give it back in whatever state of repair we manage and with lots more glue and money.
The terrorists know that that they’ve got us by our privates. That we can whip them in Iraq and it will be over is a joke. We may be able to drive them out of Iraq, but if we don’t leave, it will never end. The American people know that they’re being lied to. All we want is for Bush to get us out of this mess that he created. We all know that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam wasn’t playing footsy with Osama.
But the situation has changed since our fatal move. The jihadists are now really in Iraq, and we’ve got to establish a government that can handle them. The key ingredient in the new situation is that we must leave as quickly as possible and stop this mad talk of reforming another civilization. Democracy for the Iraqis, Saudis, Indonesians or any other country must come from within. All the ranting by Bush about reforming the world has got to stop
Train those Iraqis, send more troops. Stop the lying and start getting ready to vacate the premises.
It is said that Americans hate Congress but love their Congressman. If your Congressman is supporting this mad venture with any more than an eye to leave, vote him or her a great new retirement package and get them into a glamorous new career on K Street.
Regardless of how this comes out, support divided government. A government with one party controlling the White House and both Houses of Congress brought us this fiasco just as another one brought us Vietnam. Don’t perpetuate it. Think about it; your vote counts!
Blog On!
Wild Bill
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Support Our Troops
Support Our Troops! Of course I do, but tell me what it means?
I have been an opponent of the Iraq War since the idea was first floated, yet I swear I'm a supporter of the troops, perhaps as great as those who cheered as the Used Car Salesman In Chief proclaimed an end to hostilities on the flight deck of the Abraham Lincoln so very long ago.
Just what does the cliche, Support Our Troops, mean? Does it mean that I want to stay in Iraq until the casualties rise to double those already incurred? Until we've broken the army and the bank? Hardly. Perhaps it means I support getting them the armored Humvies they should have had so long ago; you bet I do.
Does it mean mindless support of the policy to spread freedom to all nations? Not if it means I have to buy into the bunkum that replaces the slam dunk guarantee that we would find weapons of mass destruction as soon as Saddam was toppled. Surely you remember the performance by Secretary of State Colin Powell before the U.N. Security Council when he showed slides of weapons lurking under every rock in the desert sun? We're still looking - but it's a big country.
Of course you remember when Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was derided - and retired - for saying it would take more than 200,000 American troops to pacify a conquered Iraq? Of course you do, but that's long gone as problem. The latest word from the UCSIC is that everything is going swimmingly in Iraq and that as soon as morons like Wild Bill - and you, dear reader - get with the program and support our troops, then those evil jihadists will see that resistance is futile and throw up their hands in surrender to freedom and the American way.
I bought one of those ribbons today, and I'll mount it on my car like everyone else as soon as someone explains rationally what the hell it means. I'm waiting.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
I have been an opponent of the Iraq War since the idea was first floated, yet I swear I'm a supporter of the troops, perhaps as great as those who cheered as the Used Car Salesman In Chief proclaimed an end to hostilities on the flight deck of the Abraham Lincoln so very long ago.
Just what does the cliche, Support Our Troops, mean? Does it mean that I want to stay in Iraq until the casualties rise to double those already incurred? Until we've broken the army and the bank? Hardly. Perhaps it means I support getting them the armored Humvies they should have had so long ago; you bet I do.
Does it mean mindless support of the policy to spread freedom to all nations? Not if it means I have to buy into the bunkum that replaces the slam dunk guarantee that we would find weapons of mass destruction as soon as Saddam was toppled. Surely you remember the performance by Secretary of State Colin Powell before the U.N. Security Council when he showed slides of weapons lurking under every rock in the desert sun? We're still looking - but it's a big country.
Of course you remember when Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was derided - and retired - for saying it would take more than 200,000 American troops to pacify a conquered Iraq? Of course you do, but that's long gone as problem. The latest word from the UCSIC is that everything is going swimmingly in Iraq and that as soon as morons like Wild Bill - and you, dear reader - get with the program and support our troops, then those evil jihadists will see that resistance is futile and throw up their hands in surrender to freedom and the American way.
I bought one of those ribbons today, and I'll mount it on my car like everyone else as soon as someone explains rationally what the hell it means. I'm waiting.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Thursday, April 21, 2005
The Gardening Conspiracy
While wild, Wild Bill is a very ordinary fellow. Into his seventies, his mid-life crisis passed more than three decades ago at a net cost of $161. He loves his wonderful suburban wife of well over forty years standing. McMansions and Bentleys do nothing for him. He’s into coaching his granddaughter’s softball team and attending music, drama, and athletic contests that demonstrate just how talented all his second generation offspring really are.
Since the wife and I never had a joint hobby, when the children fledged the nest, we decided like so many of our regular cohorts to take up the beautiful and harmless pastime of gardening. Since we knew nothing about landscaping or growing plants, we had no idea what we were getting into. We laughed at the cartoons of obsessive boaters and golfers, but surely gardening would be different. Even those eccentric old ladies can take time from their petunias to talk about their cats. Gardening is a hobby for the gentlest of folks.
Well, Wild Bill and his consort have been at it for well over two decades, and we know just how wrong we were. We’re working on our third yard, and, of course, it’s not right - it never was and never will be. Fortunately, our enemy this time is a tiny twenty-two by fifteen foot patio garden, so we’re not quite as badly defeated as we were by the two previous opponents. Still, we’re always just hours from throwing in the trowel and letting nature consume what we have wrought.
Wild Bill’s had an epiphany! Gardening is a conspiracy. The ultimate conspiracy designed to save the nation with its budget deficits and Social Security trust fund shortfall from the aging Baby Boomers who are bearing down on it. All of our national problems – Medicare, Medicaid, Personal Accounts, trade and budget deficits, all – are simply red herrings to draw attention away from the Gardening Conspiracy.
It appears so innocent. The President proclaims Arbor Day; the Department of Agriculture develops still one more perfect pear tree; the Environmental Protection Agency approves a new and effective organic pesticide; the National Park Service creates new plantings at its park entrances across the land; local and national newspapers unleash their slightly paunchy middle aged garden writers - the true pit bulls of this cabal; publishing houses trot out their latest coffee table titles on great gardens of the world; misleading mortality statistics are leaked by the National Institutes of Health and the Census Bureau touting the benefits of the fresh air and moderate – ho, ho, ho – exercise provided by gardening. Lies! All lies! Gardening will kill you. It will kill us all.
At great risk to Wild Bill, the following precepts that guide the conspirators were surreptitiously garnered from the cabal and are offered for your protection:
All plants are mortal. They die within days after the guarantees expire.
Brown spots spread rapidly.
Black spots spread more rapidly than brown spots.
Plants that appear ill are.
Plants that look healthy are not.
Carefully following the planting instructions ensures that your plants will succumb more rapidly.
You watered too little or too much, depending on what you confessed to the nurseryman about the deceased plant in your car.
Your first choice on plant placement is always wrong – as are all subsequent choices.
The hole is never deep enough.
These precepts are by no means exhaustive. They are merely samples from the more than 200 drawn from the files of the conspirators.
The lesson is simple. If you are a gardener, STOP. If you are thinking of becoming a gardener, DON’T. Just say NO. Your life, happiness and Social Security Benefits depend on it.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Since the wife and I never had a joint hobby, when the children fledged the nest, we decided like so many of our regular cohorts to take up the beautiful and harmless pastime of gardening. Since we knew nothing about landscaping or growing plants, we had no idea what we were getting into. We laughed at the cartoons of obsessive boaters and golfers, but surely gardening would be different. Even those eccentric old ladies can take time from their petunias to talk about their cats. Gardening is a hobby for the gentlest of folks.
Well, Wild Bill and his consort have been at it for well over two decades, and we know just how wrong we were. We’re working on our third yard, and, of course, it’s not right - it never was and never will be. Fortunately, our enemy this time is a tiny twenty-two by fifteen foot patio garden, so we’re not quite as badly defeated as we were by the two previous opponents. Still, we’re always just hours from throwing in the trowel and letting nature consume what we have wrought.
Wild Bill’s had an epiphany! Gardening is a conspiracy. The ultimate conspiracy designed to save the nation with its budget deficits and Social Security trust fund shortfall from the aging Baby Boomers who are bearing down on it. All of our national problems – Medicare, Medicaid, Personal Accounts, trade and budget deficits, all – are simply red herrings to draw attention away from the Gardening Conspiracy.
It appears so innocent. The President proclaims Arbor Day; the Department of Agriculture develops still one more perfect pear tree; the Environmental Protection Agency approves a new and effective organic pesticide; the National Park Service creates new plantings at its park entrances across the land; local and national newspapers unleash their slightly paunchy middle aged garden writers - the true pit bulls of this cabal; publishing houses trot out their latest coffee table titles on great gardens of the world; misleading mortality statistics are leaked by the National Institutes of Health and the Census Bureau touting the benefits of the fresh air and moderate – ho, ho, ho – exercise provided by gardening. Lies! All lies! Gardening will kill you. It will kill us all.
At great risk to Wild Bill, the following precepts that guide the conspirators were surreptitiously garnered from the cabal and are offered for your protection:
All plants are mortal. They die within days after the guarantees expire.
Brown spots spread rapidly.
Black spots spread more rapidly than brown spots.
Plants that appear ill are.
Plants that look healthy are not.
Carefully following the planting instructions ensures that your plants will succumb more rapidly.
You watered too little or too much, depending on what you confessed to the nurseryman about the deceased plant in your car.
Your first choice on plant placement is always wrong – as are all subsequent choices.
The hole is never deep enough.
These precepts are by no means exhaustive. They are merely samples from the more than 200 drawn from the files of the conspirators.
The lesson is simple. If you are a gardener, STOP. If you are thinking of becoming a gardener, DON’T. Just say NO. Your life, happiness and Social Security Benefits depend on it.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
It's Smoke Not Fog
This note is to let the FOBs (Friends of Bill – where’d I hear that one?) know there’s still angst in Annandale.
The fog of war is very real, but smog would be a better term since smoke is an integral component of the haze that obscures the horror. For example, after almost sixty years, the record is reluctantly giving up the truth that the bomber raids on German cities were immoral – contrary to the apologies made at the time and during the intervening decades. The basis for the raids was that the deaths of innocent civilians were moral as they would hasten war’s end and that the extraordinary number deaths of allied crewmen was justified as they were more than made up in deaths among the Luftwaffe pilots and the losses of German planes in defense of the fatherland. It was wrong on all counts and probably known to be so by the commanders.
Thousands of Americans lives were lost after the determination had been made that the war in Vietnam could not be won within the parameters established but before a graceful exit could be staged. This was known to President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and many other leading political, civilian and military leaders. But the Wall of the memorial to that conflict does not differentiate between those who died before or after they knew, it was simply made longer.
We are more comfortable with the lies and obfuscations of our enemies. Hitler’s treachery in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia is easily understood and believed. Saddam’s poison gas attack on his Kurdish countrymen is called to our attention regularly – and rightly. Stalin’s pact with Germany to divide Poland is never to be forgotten
But the smoke blown by our own hangs heavier and longer and is harder to penetrate. That Roosevelt certainly knew that there was no security need to intern the Japanese Americans during World War II is galling. The dilemma posed by signing Executive Order 9066 or entering the war without the support of all major West Coast political powers weighs heavily to this day, especially among the president’s admirers such as me.
That Lyndon Johnson intentionally overstated the Tonkin Gulf incident to galvanize support for the Vietnam War can no longer be disputed. That the prime push for the Iraq War was made within days of 9/11 before any connection with the events in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon in Arlington could be made is becoming clearer even to those predisposed to see no evil.
To gird for war, governments lie. It is the job of government to propagandize, and the line between lies and stretching the truth is easily crossed by the zealous. Sometimes it takes years or even decades for these lies to be outed.
We are caught in Iraq and daily press releases from the White House, the Pentagon and other official paper mills about how well we are doing and how soon we will be free only add thick smoke to the smog. We need an EPA to protect us from such bunkum in the air. Perhaps in a decade we may see that we entered this fray to gain strategic advantage in the Persian Gulf while thoughts of permanent bases in Iraq danced in the heads of those dreaming of hegemony over the oil riches. It clouded the minds of the neocons and made liars of them.
We will soon have our wish of a puppet government in Baghdad dependent upon us for its survival. There can be no democracy until a sovereign government stands for election without the need of our guns to bolster its security services in defense against its own disaffected citizens.
Naturally, this would have all been an exercise of intellectual baloney had weapons of mass destruction been found. Then the lie that we were protecting the security of the United States and its allies would always be run up the flagpole of reasons for the war.
As it stands, we’re buying oil for almost sixty dollars a barrel – after an investment of almost 2,000 American lives, 15,000 wounded , about 20,000 dead innocent Iraqis, and there was that $300 billion; how many barrels of oil would that have purchased?
Saddam was not lying when he said there were no weapons of mass destruction, but he was toppled for that very lie according to our President, Vice-President, and Secretary of State. Our reasons for the attack on Iraq have been revised to that of extending liberty and democracy; that certainly clears the air.
I forgot there’s another point. After all the blood and money poured into the sand, Saddam would have gladly sold us the oil for the same sixty bucks a barrel. What could we have done with that $300 billion? Continued to fund the Pentagon’s R&D budget at previous levels, reduced those pesky budget deficits, really gone after Osama bin Laden, continued to maintain a carrier group for projecting power in places like the Taiwan Straits, and lots of other things. But we’re spreading democracy – at least where there’s oil.
I'll be back!
Blog On!
Wild Bill
The fog of war is very real, but smog would be a better term since smoke is an integral component of the haze that obscures the horror. For example, after almost sixty years, the record is reluctantly giving up the truth that the bomber raids on German cities were immoral – contrary to the apologies made at the time and during the intervening decades. The basis for the raids was that the deaths of innocent civilians were moral as they would hasten war’s end and that the extraordinary number deaths of allied crewmen was justified as they were more than made up in deaths among the Luftwaffe pilots and the losses of German planes in defense of the fatherland. It was wrong on all counts and probably known to be so by the commanders.
Thousands of Americans lives were lost after the determination had been made that the war in Vietnam could not be won within the parameters established but before a graceful exit could be staged. This was known to President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and many other leading political, civilian and military leaders. But the Wall of the memorial to that conflict does not differentiate between those who died before or after they knew, it was simply made longer.
We are more comfortable with the lies and obfuscations of our enemies. Hitler’s treachery in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Russia is easily understood and believed. Saddam’s poison gas attack on his Kurdish countrymen is called to our attention regularly – and rightly. Stalin’s pact with Germany to divide Poland is never to be forgotten
But the smoke blown by our own hangs heavier and longer and is harder to penetrate. That Roosevelt certainly knew that there was no security need to intern the Japanese Americans during World War II is galling. The dilemma posed by signing Executive Order 9066 or entering the war without the support of all major West Coast political powers weighs heavily to this day, especially among the president’s admirers such as me.
That Lyndon Johnson intentionally overstated the Tonkin Gulf incident to galvanize support for the Vietnam War can no longer be disputed. That the prime push for the Iraq War was made within days of 9/11 before any connection with the events in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon in Arlington could be made is becoming clearer even to those predisposed to see no evil.
To gird for war, governments lie. It is the job of government to propagandize, and the line between lies and stretching the truth is easily crossed by the zealous. Sometimes it takes years or even decades for these lies to be outed.
We are caught in Iraq and daily press releases from the White House, the Pentagon and other official paper mills about how well we are doing and how soon we will be free only add thick smoke to the smog. We need an EPA to protect us from such bunkum in the air. Perhaps in a decade we may see that we entered this fray to gain strategic advantage in the Persian Gulf while thoughts of permanent bases in Iraq danced in the heads of those dreaming of hegemony over the oil riches. It clouded the minds of the neocons and made liars of them.
We will soon have our wish of a puppet government in Baghdad dependent upon us for its survival. There can be no democracy until a sovereign government stands for election without the need of our guns to bolster its security services in defense against its own disaffected citizens.
Naturally, this would have all been an exercise of intellectual baloney had weapons of mass destruction been found. Then the lie that we were protecting the security of the United States and its allies would always be run up the flagpole of reasons for the war.
As it stands, we’re buying oil for almost sixty dollars a barrel – after an investment of almost 2,000 American lives, 15,000 wounded , about 20,000 dead innocent Iraqis, and there was that $300 billion; how many barrels of oil would that have purchased?
Saddam was not lying when he said there were no weapons of mass destruction, but he was toppled for that very lie according to our President, Vice-President, and Secretary of State. Our reasons for the attack on Iraq have been revised to that of extending liberty and democracy; that certainly clears the air.
I forgot there’s another point. After all the blood and money poured into the sand, Saddam would have gladly sold us the oil for the same sixty bucks a barrel. What could we have done with that $300 billion? Continued to fund the Pentagon’s R&D budget at previous levels, reduced those pesky budget deficits, really gone after Osama bin Laden, continued to maintain a carrier group for projecting power in places like the Taiwan Straits, and lots of other things. But we’re spreading democracy – at least where there’s oil.
I'll be back!
Blog On!
Wild Bill
Sunday, March 20, 2005
American Militarism
Andrew J. Bacevich has written a book for the ages. His The New American Militarism: How Americans Are seduced By War, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, ISBN 0-19-517338-4, is the most coherent analysis of how America has come to its present situation in the world that I have ever read. Bacevich, Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and holds a Ph.D. in history from Princeton. And he is retired military officer. This background makes him almost uniquely qualified to comment on the subject.
Bacevich admits to an outlook of moderate conservatism. But in ascribing fault for our plight to virtually every administration since W.W. II, he is even handed and clear eyed. Since he served in the military, he understands the natural bureaucratic instincts of the best of the officer corps and is not blinded by the almost messianic status that they have achieved in the recent past.
His broad brush includes the classic period, the American Revolution – especially the impact of George Washington, but he moves quickly to the influence of Woodrow Wilson and his direct descendants of our time, the Neoconservatives. The narrative accelerates and becomes relevant for us in the depths of the despair of Vietnam. At that juncture, neocon intellectuals awakened to the horror that without a new day for our military and foreign policy, the future of America would be at stake. At almost the same time, Evangelical Christians abandoned their traditional role in society and came to views not dissimilar to the neocons. America had to get back on track to both power and goodness. The results of Vietnam on American culture, society, and – especially – values were abhorrent to both these groups.
The perfect man to idealize and mythologize America’s road back was Ronald Reagan. Again, Bacevich does not shrink from seeing through the surreal qualities brought to the Oval Office by Reagan to the realities beneath them. The Great Communicator transformed the Vietnam experience into an abandonment of American ideals and reacquainted America with those who fought that horrible war. Pop culture of the period, including motion pictures such as Top Gun and best selling novels by many, including Tom Clancy completely rehabilitated the image of the military.
The author describes how Evangelical leaders came to find common cause with the neocons and provided the political muscle for Reagan and his successors of both parties to discover that the projection of military might become a reason for being for America as the last century closed.
One of his major points is that the all volunteer force that resulted from the Vietnam experience has been divorced from American life and that sending this force of ghosts into battle has little impact on our collective psyche. This, too, fit in with the intellectual throw weight of the neocons and the political power of the Evangelicals.
Separate from but related to the neocons, Bacevich describes the loss of strategic input by the military in favor of a new priesthood of intellectual elites from institutions such as the RAND Corporation, The University of Chicago and many others. It was these high priests who saw the potential that technology provided for changing the nature of war itself and how American power might be projected with `smart weapons’ that could be the equivalent of the nuclear force that could never be used.
So it was when the war we are now embroiled in across the globe – which has its antecedents back more than twenty years – that all of these forces weighed heavily on the military leaders to start using the force we’d bought them. The famed question by Secretary of State Madeline Albright to General Colin Powell: “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” had to have an answer and the skirmishes and wars since tended to provide it.
Bacevich clearly links our present predicaments both at home and abroad to the ever greater need for natural resources, especially oil from the Persian Gulf. He demolishes all of the reasons for our bellicosity based on ideals and links it directly to our insatiable appetite for oil and economic expansion. Naturally, like thousands of writers before him, he points out the need for a national energy policy based on more effective use of resources and alternative means of production.
It is in his prescriptions that the book tends to drift. The Congress must do its constitutionally mandated jobs or be thrown out by the people. Some of his ideas on military education are creative and might well close the gap between the officer corps and civilians that he points to as a great problem.
But it is the clearly written analysis that makes this book shine. It should be a must read for those who wonder how we got to Iraq and where we might be heading as a society. The nation is in grave danger, and this is a book that that shows how we got to this juncture. Where we go from here is up to us. If we continue as we are, our options may narrow and be provided by others.
READ THIS BOOK!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Bacevich admits to an outlook of moderate conservatism. But in ascribing fault for our plight to virtually every administration since W.W. II, he is even handed and clear eyed. Since he served in the military, he understands the natural bureaucratic instincts of the best of the officer corps and is not blinded by the almost messianic status that they have achieved in the recent past.
His broad brush includes the classic period, the American Revolution – especially the impact of George Washington, but he moves quickly to the influence of Woodrow Wilson and his direct descendants of our time, the Neoconservatives. The narrative accelerates and becomes relevant for us in the depths of the despair of Vietnam. At that juncture, neocon intellectuals awakened to the horror that without a new day for our military and foreign policy, the future of America would be at stake. At almost the same time, Evangelical Christians abandoned their traditional role in society and came to views not dissimilar to the neocons. America had to get back on track to both power and goodness. The results of Vietnam on American culture, society, and – especially – values were abhorrent to both these groups.
The perfect man to idealize and mythologize America’s road back was Ronald Reagan. Again, Bacevich does not shrink from seeing through the surreal qualities brought to the Oval Office by Reagan to the realities beneath them. The Great Communicator transformed the Vietnam experience into an abandonment of American ideals and reacquainted America with those who fought that horrible war. Pop culture of the period, including motion pictures such as Top Gun and best selling novels by many, including Tom Clancy completely rehabilitated the image of the military.
The author describes how Evangelical leaders came to find common cause with the neocons and provided the political muscle for Reagan and his successors of both parties to discover that the projection of military might become a reason for being for America as the last century closed.
One of his major points is that the all volunteer force that resulted from the Vietnam experience has been divorced from American life and that sending this force of ghosts into battle has little impact on our collective psyche. This, too, fit in with the intellectual throw weight of the neocons and the political power of the Evangelicals.
Separate from but related to the neocons, Bacevich describes the loss of strategic input by the military in favor of a new priesthood of intellectual elites from institutions such as the RAND Corporation, The University of Chicago and many others. It was these high priests who saw the potential that technology provided for changing the nature of war itself and how American power might be projected with `smart weapons’ that could be the equivalent of the nuclear force that could never be used.
So it was when the war we are now embroiled in across the globe – which has its antecedents back more than twenty years – that all of these forces weighed heavily on the military leaders to start using the force we’d bought them. The famed question by Secretary of State Madeline Albright to General Colin Powell: “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” had to have an answer and the skirmishes and wars since tended to provide it.
Bacevich clearly links our present predicaments both at home and abroad to the ever greater need for natural resources, especially oil from the Persian Gulf. He demolishes all of the reasons for our bellicosity based on ideals and links it directly to our insatiable appetite for oil and economic expansion. Naturally, like thousands of writers before him, he points out the need for a national energy policy based on more effective use of resources and alternative means of production.
It is in his prescriptions that the book tends to drift. The Congress must do its constitutionally mandated jobs or be thrown out by the people. Some of his ideas on military education are creative and might well close the gap between the officer corps and civilians that he points to as a great problem.
But it is the clearly written analysis that makes this book shine. It should be a must read for those who wonder how we got to Iraq and where we might be heading as a society. The nation is in grave danger, and this is a book that that shows how we got to this juncture. Where we go from here is up to us. If we continue as we are, our options may narrow and be provided by others.
READ THIS BOOK!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Saturday, March 19, 2005
What Went Wrong
In an op-ed column in today’s Washington Post, Andrew J. Bacevich demolishes the neocon ideological underpinnings of the Iraq War. Despite my incompetence with computers, I have worked hard to make sure that today’s posting has a hot button to this extraordinary article. It is a must read for anyone with doubts about the war – or for that matter, those without doubts.
Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University where Wild Bill roamed half a century ago when that great institution still admitted mildly ADHD crazies from Brockton, MA.
Bacevich is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was awarded his Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton. He served in the army and retired as colonel. This guy understands the military and what has happened to this nation during the period from the end of W.W.II to the present like no one else I’ve come across.
That the professor happens to think very much like me on these matters clearly demonstrates his competence. I wrote to him this morning and complimented him on the fine article. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only difference that I’ve been able to discern between our positions is that he knows of what he writes while I rant from the position of concerned citizen.
His new book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, that arrived here yesterday and will be reviewed for you as soon as I am able, promises to be a blockbuster.
Please read the article, it is the clearest and most incisive piece on how America went wrong in Iraq that I’ve ever seen.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48480-2005Mar18.html
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Bacevich is a professor of international relations at Boston University where Wild Bill roamed half a century ago when that great institution still admitted mildly ADHD crazies from Brockton, MA.
Bacevich is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was awarded his Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton. He served in the army and retired as colonel. This guy understands the military and what has happened to this nation during the period from the end of W.W.II to the present like no one else I’ve come across.
That the professor happens to think very much like me on these matters clearly demonstrates his competence. I wrote to him this morning and complimented him on the fine article. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only difference that I’ve been able to discern between our positions is that he knows of what he writes while I rant from the position of concerned citizen.
His new book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, that arrived here yesterday and will be reviewed for you as soon as I am able, promises to be a blockbuster.
Please read the article, it is the clearest and most incisive piece on how America went wrong in Iraq that I’ve ever seen.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48480-2005Mar18.html
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Sunday, March 13, 2005
A Cold Day on Wall Street
The Used Car Salesman in Chief’s efforts to close the deal on private Social Security accounts is going about as well as Willy Loman’s last road trip. That said he’s changing his pitch. Since the main resistance seems to be coming from geezers like Bill, he’s now running around looking for senile blue haired crowds to cheer when he says they’re protected. Even in this he’s stumbling as sign waving perky old grandmothers shout him down.
It’s all well and good to promise us fogies that we’ll be safe under his program of personal accounts. But presidents can change their minds. “Read my lips, ” was a whopper told by UCSIC’s Dad on the way to tax increase signing in the Rose Garden.
As an aside the UCSIC promised to put 10,000 border patrol officers on the job at the Mexican border over the next several years. His own budget for 2006 cut that baby out. But, even assuming his sincerity in something really important like personally signing the check for Grandma’s dog food, the UCSIC can only keep his promise until noontime on January 20, 2009 – not very far at all into the privatization scheme. The same goes for those honorable boys and girls working on Capitol Hill. As Mark Twain once opined, “The legislature’s in session; lock up the women and children.”
With something like ten trillion borrowed dollars required to fund the switchover to private accounts over the next three decades, who’s to say that even well intentioned government officials will find that difficult if not impossible given whatever crisis de jour happens along. Bumps in the road can happen; some of us remember the Great Depression, W.W.II, Korea, Vietnam, and even 13% home loans under Smiley from Georgia. During each of these little twists, Washington pols did their damnedest to rob Peter to pay Paul.
If in a couple or three decades from now those private accounts head south for a winter vacation when a deep chill hits Wall Street and there’s a three percent cost of living increase due for those millions of folks now fifty-five years old and older who are still around, there’ll be heat on those fine successors to the present incumbents in the Congress to defer that raise until next year.
So while Wild Bill won’t be around to write a nasty little blog calling those charlatans by the names they deserve, take his word for it and don’t rush to call your senator’s office and encourage him to make your grandchild rich. Let’s be cool and just save old FDR’s program. He lashed those nasty representatives of Wall Street plutocrats into voting for Social Security. Don’t let the UCSIC let their grandkids get their paws back in your wallets.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
It’s all well and good to promise us fogies that we’ll be safe under his program of personal accounts. But presidents can change their minds. “Read my lips, ” was a whopper told by UCSIC’s Dad on the way to tax increase signing in the Rose Garden.
As an aside the UCSIC promised to put 10,000 border patrol officers on the job at the Mexican border over the next several years. His own budget for 2006 cut that baby out. But, even assuming his sincerity in something really important like personally signing the check for Grandma’s dog food, the UCSIC can only keep his promise until noontime on January 20, 2009 – not very far at all into the privatization scheme. The same goes for those honorable boys and girls working on Capitol Hill. As Mark Twain once opined, “The legislature’s in session; lock up the women and children.”
With something like ten trillion borrowed dollars required to fund the switchover to private accounts over the next three decades, who’s to say that even well intentioned government officials will find that difficult if not impossible given whatever crisis de jour happens along. Bumps in the road can happen; some of us remember the Great Depression, W.W.II, Korea, Vietnam, and even 13% home loans under Smiley from Georgia. During each of these little twists, Washington pols did their damnedest to rob Peter to pay Paul.
If in a couple or three decades from now those private accounts head south for a winter vacation when a deep chill hits Wall Street and there’s a three percent cost of living increase due for those millions of folks now fifty-five years old and older who are still around, there’ll be heat on those fine successors to the present incumbents in the Congress to defer that raise until next year.
So while Wild Bill won’t be around to write a nasty little blog calling those charlatans by the names they deserve, take his word for it and don’t rush to call your senator’s office and encourage him to make your grandchild rich. Let’s be cool and just save old FDR’s program. He lashed those nasty representatives of Wall Street plutocrats into voting for Social Security. Don’t let the UCSIC let their grandkids get their paws back in your wallets.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Group Think
According to today’s Washington Post, in 2003 in Samaarra, Iraq, an Army intelligence sergeant went to his commanding officer and dropped a dime on members of his unit concerning abuses being perpetrated on Iraqi detainees. The commander, in turn, accused the sergeant of being delusional and ordered him to undergo psychiatric evaluation in Germany despite having been judged stable by a psychiatrist at his own base.
The sergeant had recommended that the intelligence unit be transferred away from the Samaaran base before members of the unit killed some of those incarcerated. He accused fellow soldiers of asphyxiating prisoners, pulling their hair, striking them, and staging mock executions.
These and similar charges are disturbing and are grist for many opponents of the war. While counting myself among that group and, of course, disgusted by the charges of abuse, I served in the army during and shortly after the Korean War and saw how pressure can influence behavior. In my first novel, A Tattered Coat Upon A Stick, I described an incident in which during war games atrocities were perpetrated by one team against another. That incident actually happened. We diffused the situation before anyone was seriously injured, but it left a vivid impression on me. (I hasten to add that I never served in or even near combat.)
I understand how these things can happen, especially in the climate of fear and pressure described by those court martialled for the Abu Ghraib incidents, and it leads me to a belief in group think. Bureaucracies - public, military, and private – get caught up in a climate of paranoia and can go mad. Think about the Holocaust, the Gulags, and even companies such as Enron and one can only conclude that bureaucratic madness took place in each case – not that these actions were in any way equivalent.
One of my history professors was German born and described to the class how he and his peers were forced to go to Nazi rallies. Of course we’ve all seen newsreels of the prewar rallies in which the fantastic pagan rituals of torch lit parades and mass hailing and saluting of Hitler took place to the sounds of Wagner and powerful martial music. The professor had an inside view and described the feelings of those massed for the event. Everyone was watching everyone else and the climate of fear was such that all feared being turned in as a non-believer and thus performed as madly as possible.
In the Soviet Union, dissidents were often sent to psychiatric hospitals. In the United States we thought that this was a sign of bureaucratic corruption, but in retrospect I wonder if it was not the case of true believers unable to comprehend that their vision of the world was not honest and that of the opposition mean spirited.
While I don’t know the circumstances in this case, I’m more than sympathetic to both the sergeant who appears to have been grounded in reality and the commander who simply could not comprehend anything but the institutional dynamic.
So it is in our larger society today. During the past election we saw and heard some amazing charges made against both candidates for president. These are big boys, so I don’t worry about them, but I have to wonder about their followers who in a different era with little prodding could burn their opponents at the stake.
Well it was something to ponder, but the clock on the wall just struck four and it’s time to go.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
The sergeant had recommended that the intelligence unit be transferred away from the Samaaran base before members of the unit killed some of those incarcerated. He accused fellow soldiers of asphyxiating prisoners, pulling their hair, striking them, and staging mock executions.
These and similar charges are disturbing and are grist for many opponents of the war. While counting myself among that group and, of course, disgusted by the charges of abuse, I served in the army during and shortly after the Korean War and saw how pressure can influence behavior. In my first novel, A Tattered Coat Upon A Stick, I described an incident in which during war games atrocities were perpetrated by one team against another. That incident actually happened. We diffused the situation before anyone was seriously injured, but it left a vivid impression on me. (I hasten to add that I never served in or even near combat.)
I understand how these things can happen, especially in the climate of fear and pressure described by those court martialled for the Abu Ghraib incidents, and it leads me to a belief in group think. Bureaucracies - public, military, and private – get caught up in a climate of paranoia and can go mad. Think about the Holocaust, the Gulags, and even companies such as Enron and one can only conclude that bureaucratic madness took place in each case – not that these actions were in any way equivalent.
One of my history professors was German born and described to the class how he and his peers were forced to go to Nazi rallies. Of course we’ve all seen newsreels of the prewar rallies in which the fantastic pagan rituals of torch lit parades and mass hailing and saluting of Hitler took place to the sounds of Wagner and powerful martial music. The professor had an inside view and described the feelings of those massed for the event. Everyone was watching everyone else and the climate of fear was such that all feared being turned in as a non-believer and thus performed as madly as possible.
In the Soviet Union, dissidents were often sent to psychiatric hospitals. In the United States we thought that this was a sign of bureaucratic corruption, but in retrospect I wonder if it was not the case of true believers unable to comprehend that their vision of the world was not honest and that of the opposition mean spirited.
While I don’t know the circumstances in this case, I’m more than sympathetic to both the sergeant who appears to have been grounded in reality and the commander who simply could not comprehend anything but the institutional dynamic.
So it is in our larger society today. During the past election we saw and heard some amazing charges made against both candidates for president. These are big boys, so I don’t worry about them, but I have to wonder about their followers who in a different era with little prodding could burn their opponents at the stake.
Well it was something to ponder, but the clock on the wall just struck four and it’s time to go.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Friday, March 04, 2005
Our Discomfort
As the sole hyper power, the United States has many unfriendly competitors and more than a few mortal enemies. Even friends and traditional allies find our power and our ability and willingness to project it discomforting. Not only do we have to deal with traditional sources of power, but since 9/11, it has become apparent that the ancient art of terror is now the source of another great worry.
Sadly, by attacking Iraq, we have given comfort to those who wish bad things for us. Our forces are concentrated in a manner that we have very limited flexibility with our ground troops and far less than we should with our air and sea elements. As we pour blood and treasure into the sand in Iraq, we do ourselves little good in the field of fighting terror and we are weakened in our dealings with other national powers.
Our entire defense budget has had to be reprogrammed to support the Iraq War. I’ve pounded on this issue before and won’t go beyond saying that the retirement of the USS John F. Kennedy limits our ability to project power around the world and deferment of a number of weapons systems limits us in other ways.
So as our leaders say things are moving swimmingly in Iraq I find this government-speak quite hollow. We’re $200 billion into the fray and we’re pouring $4.3 billion more into the sand each week, and that says nothing about the human cost to us and the Iraqis. For very modest costs, the Jihadists are tying up the entire military structure of the United States. Not only are they tying up the 150,000 troops in the country – with all of their arms, armaments, and support equipment - but far more in Kuwait, Germany, and other countries around the world, including here at home that are needed to supply and support the mission.
While $4.3 billion a week is an extraordinary sum, I wonder if it includes all of the supporting costs being incurred around the globe? In any event, the terrorists are able to perfect their hostile techniques at low cost and use the war to add to their forces. All the while many traditional nation states cry crocodile tears at our plight. Even our commanders on the ground acknowledge the usefulness of the fight to the terrorists as a source of recruiting.
There are positive signs throughout the Islamic world. The neoconservative view that many of the repressive governments throughout the Civilization have little popular support is demonstrable. That the theocracy is shaky in Iran, that various elements in Lebanon have put aside their differences to pressure the Syrians, that Saudi Arabia is feeling the pinch and pressuring the Baathists are all well and good but provide no assurance that Western style democracies are in the offing.
By going to War in Iraq, our political power against Iran and North Korea – two far more dangerous states – is greatly diminished and our military capability is degraded to the point that the option is not frightening to either government.
Two years ago, our power to dictate to rogue states and to fight terrorists in places like Afghanistan was beyond question, but by attacking a power that had no weapons of mass destruction and which posed little threat to us or our allies, we have weakened ourselves immeasurably. Of course, we’re still the world’s great power, but anyone who thinks we have the flexibility and political clout we had before this mad neocon adventure has found the source of really good stuff.
The Iraq War is a calamity, the greatest since Vietnam. But it is not a completely negative experience. We have been pushed into realizing that we do not live in a world that is ours to do as we please. The president has quietly tried to mend fences with our traditional allies. Every dark cloud has a silver lining.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Sadly, by attacking Iraq, we have given comfort to those who wish bad things for us. Our forces are concentrated in a manner that we have very limited flexibility with our ground troops and far less than we should with our air and sea elements. As we pour blood and treasure into the sand in Iraq, we do ourselves little good in the field of fighting terror and we are weakened in our dealings with other national powers.
Our entire defense budget has had to be reprogrammed to support the Iraq War. I’ve pounded on this issue before and won’t go beyond saying that the retirement of the USS John F. Kennedy limits our ability to project power around the world and deferment of a number of weapons systems limits us in other ways.
So as our leaders say things are moving swimmingly in Iraq I find this government-speak quite hollow. We’re $200 billion into the fray and we’re pouring $4.3 billion more into the sand each week, and that says nothing about the human cost to us and the Iraqis. For very modest costs, the Jihadists are tying up the entire military structure of the United States. Not only are they tying up the 150,000 troops in the country – with all of their arms, armaments, and support equipment - but far more in Kuwait, Germany, and other countries around the world, including here at home that are needed to supply and support the mission.
While $4.3 billion a week is an extraordinary sum, I wonder if it includes all of the supporting costs being incurred around the globe? In any event, the terrorists are able to perfect their hostile techniques at low cost and use the war to add to their forces. All the while many traditional nation states cry crocodile tears at our plight. Even our commanders on the ground acknowledge the usefulness of the fight to the terrorists as a source of recruiting.
There are positive signs throughout the Islamic world. The neoconservative view that many of the repressive governments throughout the Civilization have little popular support is demonstrable. That the theocracy is shaky in Iran, that various elements in Lebanon have put aside their differences to pressure the Syrians, that Saudi Arabia is feeling the pinch and pressuring the Baathists are all well and good but provide no assurance that Western style democracies are in the offing.
By going to War in Iraq, our political power against Iran and North Korea – two far more dangerous states – is greatly diminished and our military capability is degraded to the point that the option is not frightening to either government.
Two years ago, our power to dictate to rogue states and to fight terrorists in places like Afghanistan was beyond question, but by attacking a power that had no weapons of mass destruction and which posed little threat to us or our allies, we have weakened ourselves immeasurably. Of course, we’re still the world’s great power, but anyone who thinks we have the flexibility and political clout we had before this mad neocon adventure has found the source of really good stuff.
The Iraq War is a calamity, the greatest since Vietnam. But it is not a completely negative experience. We have been pushed into realizing that we do not live in a world that is ours to do as we please. The president has quietly tried to mend fences with our traditional allies. Every dark cloud has a silver lining.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Roses Are Red
For a change of pace, I offer the following:
In practicing the craft of novel writing, I have come upon certain truths – at least for me. The most important is that writing a novel is far more like the job of a craftsman such as an old time shoemaker rather than some sort of pyrotechnic display of creativity and inspiration.
Unless an author is a genius, he or she needs support and guidance. Virtually everyone agrees that reading what the masters have created is a good place to begin. Another good source for me has been the systematic analysis of the masters by competent novelists and teachers of writing. A small shelf in my library is burdened by these books.
Another truth is that I’m not going to make any money from my writing. That’s no big deal; I’m retired and do it because it’s fun and there are certain things that I want to get off my chest and into print. More than 10,000 novels are published every year and the vast majority of them produce very little income for their authors. Some of these books are very good, better than a substantial portion of those that succeed financially. Mine are definitely in that latter category. On the bright side, with the copyright laws now in place, my grandchildren may well be able to have annual pizza parties in my memory for decades to come – of course drinks will be extra and Dutch treat.
Before tiring of it and quitting for lack of adequate financial reward, I used to teach writing and give lectures on the subject for modest honoraria. In the lectures, I invariably described the work habits of some of the greats such as Thackery, Dickens, and Twain. While they were all geniuses, their work habits were those of crazed craftsmen. For example, Dickens committed about 2,000 words per day to paper in long hand. In contrast, when really cranking in mid-novel, I average a little over 500 new words each day.
The point of this posting is that at my last lecture in late 2004, a woman in the audience challenged me on this work bench approach to writing. It seems that she was a poet. (There are no longer poetesses are there?) She said that my workman like approach might well be alright for a pedestrian novelist but that she was an artist who leaped out of bed in the middle of the night to write down a couplet or two that come to her in her dreams.
The fairly large (large is the operative word here) audience sided with me – most of them apparently aspiring pedestrian novelists - but I did not have really good points to refute the poet and said that whatever worked for each person was right.
Only lately did the response that I wish I made come to mind. I have no quarrel with the lady's methodology and work habits and never disputed them. My answer should have been that of a novelist. My books have all come to me in relative flashes. Over the next few days, I refined the stories in my mind and the research necessary to place them in historical context went on from there for whatever period was required, usually months.
Novelists then outline their projects, some on paper and others, like me, in their minds’ eyes. The point is that the inspiration for the couplet comes not much more swiftly than that of the novel, but producing a 100,000 word novel simply takes a lot more time than writing down a sonnet that is running around in one’s head. In the case of a long book, it makes little sense to write oneself into exhaustion and collapsing.
One production example that jumps to mind is War and Peace; I don’t know how long it took Tolstoy to get the job done, but the Mrs. typed the document through six complete revisions. I won’t get into the question of marital devotion but that case must be in the top ten percent
Couplets and long novels don’t take a lot more time in the inspiration phase, but writing down something like Moby Dick takes a little longer than Roses are red, Violets are blue…
Blogging, in contrast, is easy.
Wild Bill
In practicing the craft of novel writing, I have come upon certain truths – at least for me. The most important is that writing a novel is far more like the job of a craftsman such as an old time shoemaker rather than some sort of pyrotechnic display of creativity and inspiration.
Unless an author is a genius, he or she needs support and guidance. Virtually everyone agrees that reading what the masters have created is a good place to begin. Another good source for me has been the systematic analysis of the masters by competent novelists and teachers of writing. A small shelf in my library is burdened by these books.
Another truth is that I’m not going to make any money from my writing. That’s no big deal; I’m retired and do it because it’s fun and there are certain things that I want to get off my chest and into print. More than 10,000 novels are published every year and the vast majority of them produce very little income for their authors. Some of these books are very good, better than a substantial portion of those that succeed financially. Mine are definitely in that latter category. On the bright side, with the copyright laws now in place, my grandchildren may well be able to have annual pizza parties in my memory for decades to come – of course drinks will be extra and Dutch treat.
Before tiring of it and quitting for lack of adequate financial reward, I used to teach writing and give lectures on the subject for modest honoraria. In the lectures, I invariably described the work habits of some of the greats such as Thackery, Dickens, and Twain. While they were all geniuses, their work habits were those of crazed craftsmen. For example, Dickens committed about 2,000 words per day to paper in long hand. In contrast, when really cranking in mid-novel, I average a little over 500 new words each day.
The point of this posting is that at my last lecture in late 2004, a woman in the audience challenged me on this work bench approach to writing. It seems that she was a poet. (There are no longer poetesses are there?) She said that my workman like approach might well be alright for a pedestrian novelist but that she was an artist who leaped out of bed in the middle of the night to write down a couplet or two that come to her in her dreams.
The fairly large (large is the operative word here) audience sided with me – most of them apparently aspiring pedestrian novelists - but I did not have really good points to refute the poet and said that whatever worked for each person was right.
Only lately did the response that I wish I made come to mind. I have no quarrel with the lady's methodology and work habits and never disputed them. My answer should have been that of a novelist. My books have all come to me in relative flashes. Over the next few days, I refined the stories in my mind and the research necessary to place them in historical context went on from there for whatever period was required, usually months.
Novelists then outline their projects, some on paper and others, like me, in their minds’ eyes. The point is that the inspiration for the couplet comes not much more swiftly than that of the novel, but producing a 100,000 word novel simply takes a lot more time than writing down a sonnet that is running around in one’s head. In the case of a long book, it makes little sense to write oneself into exhaustion and collapsing.
One production example that jumps to mind is War and Peace; I don’t know how long it took Tolstoy to get the job done, but the Mrs. typed the document through six complete revisions. I won’t get into the question of marital devotion but that case must be in the top ten percent
Couplets and long novels don’t take a lot more time in the inspiration phase, but writing down something like Moby Dick takes a little longer than Roses are red, Violets are blue…
Blogging, in contrast, is easy.
Wild Bill
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Next Stop, Funny Farm
Some near and dear say that I must get over Iraq. They indicate that I’m beginning to sound like an opponent of the Mexican War still smarting over it in the eighteen eighties.
So what if Iraq was a violation of international law, if it is costing $4.3 billion per week, that we continue to lose lives and suffer casualties, that our Army and Marines are overstretched as a result, that recruitment is suffering, that we have to retire the USS John F. Kennedy; that weapons systems must be cancelled or deferred.
I’m accused of not being able to read the paper. Isn’t it clear that freedom is indeed on the march? The Syrians are scurrying to get out of Lebanon. Mubarak really is a two party man after all. Peace is at hand between the Israelis and Palestinians. (I gave Bush an unambiguous compliment on this on Presidents’ Day.) Women will be driving cars in Saudi Arabia in just months.
Even the French have thrown in the towel; Jacques and George are raising the dickens with Assad over pulling out of Beirut. The tyrannical regimes in the Arab world are collapsing like houses of cards. George Bush is the most important president since Franklin Roosevelt. The neocons were right all along. Why can’t I get on the right side of history?
I can’t. Bush took this nation to war under false pretenses. The attack on a sovereign power that posed no threat to us and that is bleeding us dry physically and fiscally is a cancer that must be resolved – and it can’t be in the short or medium terms. The war on terror is neglected because of it, and our homeland is more vulnerable due to it.
Red herrings are everywhere: Social Security is in crisis; private accounts are what are needed; freedom is at hand in Egypt; and so on. Each one is drawn across the trail, but nothing stanches the flood of money or blood in Iraq.
Am I wrong? Tell me. I need to hear it.
Bill
So what if Iraq was a violation of international law, if it is costing $4.3 billion per week, that we continue to lose lives and suffer casualties, that our Army and Marines are overstretched as a result, that recruitment is suffering, that we have to retire the USS John F. Kennedy; that weapons systems must be cancelled or deferred.
I’m accused of not being able to read the paper. Isn’t it clear that freedom is indeed on the march? The Syrians are scurrying to get out of Lebanon. Mubarak really is a two party man after all. Peace is at hand between the Israelis and Palestinians. (I gave Bush an unambiguous compliment on this on Presidents’ Day.) Women will be driving cars in Saudi Arabia in just months.
Even the French have thrown in the towel; Jacques and George are raising the dickens with Assad over pulling out of Beirut. The tyrannical regimes in the Arab world are collapsing like houses of cards. George Bush is the most important president since Franklin Roosevelt. The neocons were right all along. Why can’t I get on the right side of history?
I can’t. Bush took this nation to war under false pretenses. The attack on a sovereign power that posed no threat to us and that is bleeding us dry physically and fiscally is a cancer that must be resolved – and it can’t be in the short or medium terms. The war on terror is neglected because of it, and our homeland is more vulnerable due to it.
Red herrings are everywhere: Social Security is in crisis; private accounts are what are needed; freedom is at hand in Egypt; and so on. Each one is drawn across the trail, but nothing stanches the flood of money or blood in Iraq.
Am I wrong? Tell me. I need to hear it.
Bill
Monday, February 28, 2005
Three Card Monte
The United States under George W. Bush has as its great foreign policy goal the spread of freedom and democracy to the four corners of the globe. Since we found none of the weapons of mass destruction that were the reason for overthrowing the regime in Baghdad, the spread of democracy has become the ex post facto rationale for the Iraq War while the United Nations resolutions that we unilaterally enforced to save that world body turned out not to have been a big deal after all.
The cost of the Iraq War alone now exceeds $200 billion and will certainly more than double before we can walk away. As we approach the $10,000.00 spending mark for every man woman and child in Iraq to prosecute the war and enforce the peace, it is clear that this is a financially disastrous as well as a debilitating military quagmire in which we are caught.
This says nothing about the hidden and deferred costs of the war such as restocking arms and armaments used up in the desert sand, the cost of veterans’ compensation and hospitalization for our dead and broken bodies, the cost of expanding the army to its newly increased quota, the additional cost of recruiting as bonuses have to double and triple and as more recruiters must be assigned.
The cost of the War is also degrading our other armed forces and home defenses as we put off the purchase of new weapons systems, retire the Navy carrier USS John F. Kennedy, and as we fail to find the money to adequately protect our major ports and cities.
Naturally, as the cost of the war is kept off budget, the deficit grows accordingly and our dependence on countries such as China, South Korea, and Japan to fund it grows each day.
Even if a few of President Bush’s ideas for Social Security were found by the Congress to have merit, there is no way these reforms can be implemented in any but a token manner as the amount of debt that would have to be taken on by the nation is simply too onerous.
Our budget and trade deficits are burgeoning even as the incomes of ordinary Americans stagnate while our plutocrats grow richer and more callous. But all of our major present problems can be traced to the Iraq War.
The president is a master of three card monte in which he is the supreme tosser. His aids; the ropers, Cheney, Rice and a host of neocons continue to draw marks in. But as more and more citizens see through the game, it always gets back to the same queen, Iraq, which he hides with every trick at his disposal.
Even as administration apologists scream that liberal media is undercutting them, they stock the press with ringers and ropers – using tax money in many cases. But every day more voters see that there is no real plan for anything except getting through the day to maintain power.
We’ve been badly used by these neoconservative incompetents.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
The cost of the Iraq War alone now exceeds $200 billion and will certainly more than double before we can walk away. As we approach the $10,000.00 spending mark for every man woman and child in Iraq to prosecute the war and enforce the peace, it is clear that this is a financially disastrous as well as a debilitating military quagmire in which we are caught.
This says nothing about the hidden and deferred costs of the war such as restocking arms and armaments used up in the desert sand, the cost of veterans’ compensation and hospitalization for our dead and broken bodies, the cost of expanding the army to its newly increased quota, the additional cost of recruiting as bonuses have to double and triple and as more recruiters must be assigned.
The cost of the War is also degrading our other armed forces and home defenses as we put off the purchase of new weapons systems, retire the Navy carrier USS John F. Kennedy, and as we fail to find the money to adequately protect our major ports and cities.
Naturally, as the cost of the war is kept off budget, the deficit grows accordingly and our dependence on countries such as China, South Korea, and Japan to fund it grows each day.
Even if a few of President Bush’s ideas for Social Security were found by the Congress to have merit, there is no way these reforms can be implemented in any but a token manner as the amount of debt that would have to be taken on by the nation is simply too onerous.
Our budget and trade deficits are burgeoning even as the incomes of ordinary Americans stagnate while our plutocrats grow richer and more callous. But all of our major present problems can be traced to the Iraq War.
The president is a master of three card monte in which he is the supreme tosser. His aids; the ropers, Cheney, Rice and a host of neocons continue to draw marks in. But as more and more citizens see through the game, it always gets back to the same queen, Iraq, which he hides with every trick at his disposal.
Even as administration apologists scream that liberal media is undercutting them, they stock the press with ringers and ropers – using tax money in many cases. But every day more voters see that there is no real plan for anything except getting through the day to maintain power.
We’ve been badly used by these neoconservative incompetents.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Look At It This Way
Let’s look at Iraq from a different perspective. How long will we be there? Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld – rightly, in my judgment - says that no one can accurately predict how long the coalition forces will be required to stay. That said, a number of variables have not been considered, at least publicly.
The President has said that we’ll stay only as long as we’re needed and no longer. He’s also said that if the legitimate Iraqi government asks us to leave, the United States will honor the decision. That sounds very good, even hopeful, but there are things in the background that have not been fully vetted for the public.
One of the most important reasons for our intercession in Iraq - as compared for example: to our reticence in Sudan – was the oil. When the constitutional government of Iraq is up and running next year, there is likely to be great pressure from the population and many power centers for the coalition to be sent home. That seems normal enough. But one thing I’ve learned about government – we could call it a law of nature – is that those in power do everything they can to remain in power. That goes for democracies, plutocracies, tyrannies, monarchies, and any other form or philosophy of government that one can conceive.
A year from now the newly formed government in Iraq will be hearing from all sides that they should kick us out of the country. Fair enough. That government will also find – I’m absolutely certain – that there is great interest in how the nation’s oil will be controlled and the income from it distributed. That means that major players not in power would like to be and that should be no surprise to anyone. What does that mean for the coalition? A long stay in Iraq would be my guess.
The new government will not ask us to leave until and unless it is certain of its ability to maintain power. The lives and riches of literally tens of thousands of people will depend on the government's ability to maintain its grip on power and on the spigot of the great national natural resource, oil. It is the simply the nature of human beings to act this way. The government will have Iraqis – encouraged by the tribal and political structure from within the country and by foreign powers – conspiring to overthrow it and to redistribute power and riches in a different manner. The rule of law and that beautiful new constitution be damned.
The whiff of conspiracies designed to kick the legitimate government from power and to seize the wealth of the nation will force the government to act with an abundance of caution as it relates to the protecting coalition. That critics of the Bush Administration scream for and will raise their voices still higher for a timetable means little. We have chosen to ride this tiger, and we will have to remain mounted until the new government in Baghdad is supremely confident of its ability to maintain itself.
I have opposed this war since it was but a gleam in the eyes of these foolish neoconservatives, but all with an ounce of realism about them must see that there is no choice but for the coalition to stay. It is sad that the government of the U.S. did not think this through, but we’re going to continue suffering casualties and pouring treasure into the desert sand for a very long time, and none of this will raise our standing in the Muslim world.
There were no weapons of mass destruction. Reprehensible as the government of Saddam was, it posed no threat to our national security. The war on terror has worsened as a result of this fiasco. None the less, we must no go on indefinitely.
Despite the president’s great skill at diverting us from reality, Iraq is and will remain our greatest problem for the indefinite future. Sadly, it is keeping us from dealing with terror and economic problems of great concern.
It is a terribly sad situation that these neocons have gotten us into
Blog on!
Wild Bill
The President has said that we’ll stay only as long as we’re needed and no longer. He’s also said that if the legitimate Iraqi government asks us to leave, the United States will honor the decision. That sounds very good, even hopeful, but there are things in the background that have not been fully vetted for the public.
One of the most important reasons for our intercession in Iraq - as compared for example: to our reticence in Sudan – was the oil. When the constitutional government of Iraq is up and running next year, there is likely to be great pressure from the population and many power centers for the coalition to be sent home. That seems normal enough. But one thing I’ve learned about government – we could call it a law of nature – is that those in power do everything they can to remain in power. That goes for democracies, plutocracies, tyrannies, monarchies, and any other form or philosophy of government that one can conceive.
A year from now the newly formed government in Iraq will be hearing from all sides that they should kick us out of the country. Fair enough. That government will also find – I’m absolutely certain – that there is great interest in how the nation’s oil will be controlled and the income from it distributed. That means that major players not in power would like to be and that should be no surprise to anyone. What does that mean for the coalition? A long stay in Iraq would be my guess.
The new government will not ask us to leave until and unless it is certain of its ability to maintain power. The lives and riches of literally tens of thousands of people will depend on the government's ability to maintain its grip on power and on the spigot of the great national natural resource, oil. It is the simply the nature of human beings to act this way. The government will have Iraqis – encouraged by the tribal and political structure from within the country and by foreign powers – conspiring to overthrow it and to redistribute power and riches in a different manner. The rule of law and that beautiful new constitution be damned.
The whiff of conspiracies designed to kick the legitimate government from power and to seize the wealth of the nation will force the government to act with an abundance of caution as it relates to the protecting coalition. That critics of the Bush Administration scream for and will raise their voices still higher for a timetable means little. We have chosen to ride this tiger, and we will have to remain mounted until the new government in Baghdad is supremely confident of its ability to maintain itself.
I have opposed this war since it was but a gleam in the eyes of these foolish neoconservatives, but all with an ounce of realism about them must see that there is no choice but for the coalition to stay. It is sad that the government of the U.S. did not think this through, but we’re going to continue suffering casualties and pouring treasure into the desert sand for a very long time, and none of this will raise our standing in the Muslim world.
There were no weapons of mass destruction. Reprehensible as the government of Saddam was, it posed no threat to our national security. The war on terror has worsened as a result of this fiasco. None the less, we must no go on indefinitely.
Despite the president’s great skill at diverting us from reality, Iraq is and will remain our greatest problem for the indefinite future. Sadly, it is keeping us from dealing with terror and economic problems of great concern.
It is a terribly sad situation that these neocons have gotten us into
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Monday, February 21, 2005
Middle East Peace
I’ve been beating up something awful on the Used Car Salesman in Chief, but sometimes even Wild Bill has to step back and offer a tip of the cap to the man. I thought President George W. Bush’s policy toward Israel and the Palestinians was, for virtually his entire presidency, a disaster. I am convinced that I was wrong in that assessment.
An acolyte of Samuel Huntington, I was of the view that it was up to the U.S. to rein in its client state, Israel, and, on the other hand, to defend it against its enemies. I was a victim of stodgy thinking on the part of previous presidents. (In his defense, Wild Bill like so many others is never wrong except when he has been victimized.)
From Truman to Clinton and with virtually every other president in between, our policy has been to walk the line between being protector of Israel and an honest broker with her Arab neighbors. It’s gotten us, Israel, and the Palestinians nowhere.
President Bush, like many a parent of fighting children, decided that both sides in this issue were too bellicose and too sure of both the backing of their friends and that the U.S. would never let them fight it out to exhaustion. They and Wild Bill were wrong. All that shuttle diplomacy over fifty years, all those walks in the woods at Camp David, all that hand wringing by American presidents, all of the foreign aid, none of it gained peace for the combatants.
George W. Bush’s policy of hands off benign neglect has worked. Of all the things Wild Bill has ever said about this president from calling him wrong in Iraq to ridiculous on Social Security it’s been a long time since he hasn’t regarded George Bush as a lot smarter than the Democrats and the media have ever given him credit. And in this case, Mr. Bush was brilliant.
A high percentage of Israelis and Jews around the world came to the conclusion that the long time policy of Israel toward the Palestinians had a fatal flaw. That no matter how many settlements were seeded on the West bank and Gaza, demography would inevitably make it impossible for Israel to sustain its long held views toward these outposts. But it was not going to be an American president who was going to impress this upon the Israelis or their government. It would be done by home boys or nobody.
Obviously, a goodly number of Israelis have understood this for years, but as it took a Richard Nixon, the great anti communist, to cut the Gordian knot of establishing relations with Red China so it would take a powerhouse from Likud to show the way in Israel. Ariel Sharon is that man. Only a leader with a life long record of toughness on the question could have performed this great task.
So, after four years of both sides throwing everything they had into the fray, they have concluded that peace may be the only or at least the best option. Wild Bill, not being anywhere near an expert on the nuances of the issues separating the sides, will wind down here. The pain of the pullback from Gaza will be intense. The same goes for what lies ahead for many of the settlements on the West Bank.
The Palestinians have had four years to examine their policy and it too is laden with pain. But after all the suffering, an independent Palestine that includes recovery of much of its pre 1967 land and some reasonable access to Jerusalem looks mighty good. The almost impossible decision on the right of return for Palestinians has not been settled publicly, still nobody’s screaming, “Stop!”
Two men are to be given credit for the journey and the twists and turns that got us here, George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon. Wild Bill on this Presidents Day Holiday takes a respite from his job of beating up the president on his flawed policies in Iraq and on the Domestic scene, and, as Herblock of the Washington Post did for Richard Nixon, and give him a clean shave and a pat on the back. He’s right!
An acolyte of Samuel Huntington, I was of the view that it was up to the U.S. to rein in its client state, Israel, and, on the other hand, to defend it against its enemies. I was a victim of stodgy thinking on the part of previous presidents. (In his defense, Wild Bill like so many others is never wrong except when he has been victimized.)
From Truman to Clinton and with virtually every other president in between, our policy has been to walk the line between being protector of Israel and an honest broker with her Arab neighbors. It’s gotten us, Israel, and the Palestinians nowhere.
President Bush, like many a parent of fighting children, decided that both sides in this issue were too bellicose and too sure of both the backing of their friends and that the U.S. would never let them fight it out to exhaustion. They and Wild Bill were wrong. All that shuttle diplomacy over fifty years, all those walks in the woods at Camp David, all that hand wringing by American presidents, all of the foreign aid, none of it gained peace for the combatants.
George W. Bush’s policy of hands off benign neglect has worked. Of all the things Wild Bill has ever said about this president from calling him wrong in Iraq to ridiculous on Social Security it’s been a long time since he hasn’t regarded George Bush as a lot smarter than the Democrats and the media have ever given him credit. And in this case, Mr. Bush was brilliant.
A high percentage of Israelis and Jews around the world came to the conclusion that the long time policy of Israel toward the Palestinians had a fatal flaw. That no matter how many settlements were seeded on the West bank and Gaza, demography would inevitably make it impossible for Israel to sustain its long held views toward these outposts. But it was not going to be an American president who was going to impress this upon the Israelis or their government. It would be done by home boys or nobody.
Obviously, a goodly number of Israelis have understood this for years, but as it took a Richard Nixon, the great anti communist, to cut the Gordian knot of establishing relations with Red China so it would take a powerhouse from Likud to show the way in Israel. Ariel Sharon is that man. Only a leader with a life long record of toughness on the question could have performed this great task.
So, after four years of both sides throwing everything they had into the fray, they have concluded that peace may be the only or at least the best option. Wild Bill, not being anywhere near an expert on the nuances of the issues separating the sides, will wind down here. The pain of the pullback from Gaza will be intense. The same goes for what lies ahead for many of the settlements on the West Bank.
The Palestinians have had four years to examine their policy and it too is laden with pain. But after all the suffering, an independent Palestine that includes recovery of much of its pre 1967 land and some reasonable access to Jerusalem looks mighty good. The almost impossible decision on the right of return for Palestinians has not been settled publicly, still nobody’s screaming, “Stop!”
Two men are to be given credit for the journey and the twists and turns that got us here, George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon. Wild Bill on this Presidents Day Holiday takes a respite from his job of beating up the president on his flawed policies in Iraq and on the Domestic scene, and, as Herblock of the Washington Post did for Richard Nixon, and give him a clean shave and a pat on the back. He’s right!
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Pool
Judgment has been rendered; the New Deal and The Great Society are unsustainable and they must go. The corporate and financial leadership has decided that if America is to be competitive, the social safety net must have bigger holes. Social Security, health care, pension benefits, everything must be on the table.
In the March 10, 2005 edition of the New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman in his brilliant essay and book review, America’s Senior Moment, mounts a great defense against the leadership’s judgment but it may not penetrate the national psyche (See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17771).
The leadership has looked at our major competitors, The European Union, Japan, Russia, and China, and concluded that America must become leaner and meaner if it is to maintain its economic leadership. The Used Car Salesman in Chief, now that his military adventure in Iraq has come unglued, has found the great purpose of his second term and, I might add, his medium. He roars about the country selling his great vision of the ownership society that will be bought with borrowed money.
It has been determined by the leadership that the cradle to the grave benefits programs of European countries and Japan are not the way to go. While Krugman dramatically destroys many of the assumptions of the leadership’s new ideal in America, I fear that few are really listening to anyone but the car salesman.
I shouldn’t put this all on Mr. Bush. In the nineteen seventies under Jimmy Carter, it was decided that federal and military pensions were unsustainable, and both program were changed. The Federal Civil Service defined benefits program was cut by almost fifty percent, and employees hired after its adoption live in a hybrid world of reduced benefits and defined contributions. These are generous, but the government’s obligation is significantly reduced.
Similarly during President Carter’s administration, deregulation of major industries, including airlines, undermined the benefits programs of workers in these industries. Over the years since Carter, many other defined benefits programs in American industries have been under funded and are unable to meet their obligations.
So The Car Salesman in Chief has proclaimed Social Security to be in crisis, and he has stated that he has a plan to correct the situation, but, of course, no plan has emerged – nothing, it’s all problem and no solution, except that we must have private accounts and borrow trillions of dollars to get them up and running. As our Harold Hill traverses the boonies selling his trombones and cornets to save us from today’s version of `pool’, there is little but hot air to determine the necessity of the effort. But we’ve got to buy it.
As we enter into trade agreements that undermine the wages of American workers and that ship their jobs to low wage countries, we learn that our economy is doing great and will get better if we only we will continue to strip it of manufacturing jobs and capacity and still more robust when we reform – scuttle - the remnants of the New Deal and The Great Society.
It is amazing that this pitch is working more effectively in Red States than in Blue ones. Many Red States are far more dependent on New Deal and Great Society programs, yet these folks cheer loudest as our Harold Hill points to the future when we’ll all be playing Sousa on our new trombones and cornets. Franklin Roosevelt with Social Security and farm subsidy programs saved America, including – perhaps even especially – those states colored scarlet, and perpetrated a peaceful revolution that saved the American capitalism in the 1930s. But we don’t need these programs any longer, so preacheth Harold.
Wild Bill feels he’s watching a surreal version of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in which the Salesman is playing Lenny and assuring George that there’ll be bunnies and kittens. Well we all know how Lenny solved George’s problems. I don’t mind snake oil, but it really is those on the bottom who will be most adversely impacted. And they’re screaming for the changes at full throat.
Oh well, it’s Happy Hour.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
In the March 10, 2005 edition of the New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman in his brilliant essay and book review, America’s Senior Moment, mounts a great defense against the leadership’s judgment but it may not penetrate the national psyche (See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17771).
The leadership has looked at our major competitors, The European Union, Japan, Russia, and China, and concluded that America must become leaner and meaner if it is to maintain its economic leadership. The Used Car Salesman in Chief, now that his military adventure in Iraq has come unglued, has found the great purpose of his second term and, I might add, his medium. He roars about the country selling his great vision of the ownership society that will be bought with borrowed money.
It has been determined by the leadership that the cradle to the grave benefits programs of European countries and Japan are not the way to go. While Krugman dramatically destroys many of the assumptions of the leadership’s new ideal in America, I fear that few are really listening to anyone but the car salesman.
I shouldn’t put this all on Mr. Bush. In the nineteen seventies under Jimmy Carter, it was decided that federal and military pensions were unsustainable, and both program were changed. The Federal Civil Service defined benefits program was cut by almost fifty percent, and employees hired after its adoption live in a hybrid world of reduced benefits and defined contributions. These are generous, but the government’s obligation is significantly reduced.
Similarly during President Carter’s administration, deregulation of major industries, including airlines, undermined the benefits programs of workers in these industries. Over the years since Carter, many other defined benefits programs in American industries have been under funded and are unable to meet their obligations.
So The Car Salesman in Chief has proclaimed Social Security to be in crisis, and he has stated that he has a plan to correct the situation, but, of course, no plan has emerged – nothing, it’s all problem and no solution, except that we must have private accounts and borrow trillions of dollars to get them up and running. As our Harold Hill traverses the boonies selling his trombones and cornets to save us from today’s version of `pool’, there is little but hot air to determine the necessity of the effort. But we’ve got to buy it.
As we enter into trade agreements that undermine the wages of American workers and that ship their jobs to low wage countries, we learn that our economy is doing great and will get better if we only we will continue to strip it of manufacturing jobs and capacity and still more robust when we reform – scuttle - the remnants of the New Deal and The Great Society.
It is amazing that this pitch is working more effectively in Red States than in Blue ones. Many Red States are far more dependent on New Deal and Great Society programs, yet these folks cheer loudest as our Harold Hill points to the future when we’ll all be playing Sousa on our new trombones and cornets. Franklin Roosevelt with Social Security and farm subsidy programs saved America, including – perhaps even especially – those states colored scarlet, and perpetrated a peaceful revolution that saved the American capitalism in the 1930s. But we don’t need these programs any longer, so preacheth Harold.
Wild Bill feels he’s watching a surreal version of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in which the Salesman is playing Lenny and assuring George that there’ll be bunnies and kittens. Well we all know how Lenny solved George’s problems. I don’t mind snake oil, but it really is those on the bottom who will be most adversely impacted. And they’re screaming for the changes at full throat.
Oh well, it’s Happy Hour.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Saturday, February 19, 2005
It's Granny! She's Got Her Bag!
It seems that everybody’s down on Grandma, at least all the free market Republicans. She’s accused of chewing up resources that could be better used by younger more productive people. Not only does she gobble up Social Security payments, she practically inhales Medicare and may even someday be faced with sucking up Medicaid. The question seems to be heading toward, “Why doesn’t the old fart make like an Eskimo and drift away on an ice flow?”
Since I live with one of these grandmas, I feel obligated to mount a defense for the old bats and try to offer reasons why that kind might not be so bad to keep around, at least for a while. As you young folks go about reforming Social Security try not to think only negative thoughts about the oldsters. Remember you may well be a granny or grampa one day too, unless, of course, they take you to the vet’s and put you to sleep.
As the president keeps reminding us, most workers contribute more than 6% of their wages into the system for well over forty years, and their employers are dunned a like amount. The government borrows from the fund at the low rate of T-Bills thus saving taxpayers a goodly sum over the period. Now, instead of investing program funds at a better rate itself, the president proposes to let individuals make such investment while it borrows trillions to prop up the system.
Obviously, tax liability on 85% percent of Social Security payments provides significant income to the feds at least from all those rich seniors which are the ones that everyone complains about.
Another factor that is lost in the discussion on Social Security, federal, and private defined benefit pension programs is that at least when Grandma was young, it was a social good to provide job openings for younger generations of workers by buying out the incumbents. You may recall from reading about the Civil War that doddering clerks were unable to keep up with the burgeoning paper work due to their physical and mental incapacity and decline. They had no choice but to work until they fell face first on their desks. In actuality, that’s the way it was everywhere until the New Deal. We’re rethinking that one, and Granny will have to soldier on into the sunset.
Many of the elderly contribute to the present boom by providing off books services to workers in the form of baby sitting and other minor work that maintain the productivity of the working generation. Wild Bill opines that more of that goes on at the lower income levels where it is more desperately needed. Obviously, that service ranges from almost nothing to practically supporting the whole operation while the productive generation puts food on the table. Also because of many a Granny, the lucky minority also puts money in 401Ks and contributes their 6% to granny’s current Social Security check.
Next time you’re in the hospital – naturally, we hope it’s only to visit the sick – look around and note that many of the unpaid volunteers are a little older than you. When Granny’s broke, health care costs will have to rise as she will require a wage to do that job. Grannies also read to your kids at school. I guess we’ll have to budget an aid for that job when Granny has to bag groceries. That reminds me, a lot of old folks are working for pay – and paying all kinds of taxes – even as this is written.
Seniors pay a great deal more in local taxes than they take in the form of services. While this can be written off their federal liability, their net property tax is far greater than their local benefits. Also many millions of home owning seniors who are exempt from federal taxes because of low income pay a local tax tariff. This eases the burden on workers who – if they have children – are heavily subsidized as they prepare for the burden of paying for college. Naturally, seniors continue to support state schools if they pay state taxes and millions of them do.
But by far the biggest subsidy that goes to the elderly is in the form of health care, including nursing home care. This federal subsidy in the form of Medicare and Medicaid – which spills over to become a state problem as well - is terribly expensive. But there are mitigations to these benefits as well. For earlier generations, many were sandwiched by two other generations needing their physical and financial support. Much about what the president rails about came about because a lot of folks didn’t want to be saddled with Grandma just hanging around the house.
These are hidden subsidies for the working middle class as well as for the direct beneficiaries. People today have enough trouble raising and caring for junior without the added burden of putting old Mom up in the closet.
The social compact works in many ways and to attack it frontally sometimes opens up things that are not usually taken into account. Times have changed since the majority of grannies lived in the back bedroom of the middle aged, so as you think about cutting Grandma off the federal teat, remember she may have to come live with you. Not to worry, you’ll treasure those memories when you move in with your own little junior.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Since I live with one of these grandmas, I feel obligated to mount a defense for the old bats and try to offer reasons why that kind might not be so bad to keep around, at least for a while. As you young folks go about reforming Social Security try not to think only negative thoughts about the oldsters. Remember you may well be a granny or grampa one day too, unless, of course, they take you to the vet’s and put you to sleep.
As the president keeps reminding us, most workers contribute more than 6% of their wages into the system for well over forty years, and their employers are dunned a like amount. The government borrows from the fund at the low rate of T-Bills thus saving taxpayers a goodly sum over the period. Now, instead of investing program funds at a better rate itself, the president proposes to let individuals make such investment while it borrows trillions to prop up the system.
Obviously, tax liability on 85% percent of Social Security payments provides significant income to the feds at least from all those rich seniors which are the ones that everyone complains about.
Another factor that is lost in the discussion on Social Security, federal, and private defined benefit pension programs is that at least when Grandma was young, it was a social good to provide job openings for younger generations of workers by buying out the incumbents. You may recall from reading about the Civil War that doddering clerks were unable to keep up with the burgeoning paper work due to their physical and mental incapacity and decline. They had no choice but to work until they fell face first on their desks. In actuality, that’s the way it was everywhere until the New Deal. We’re rethinking that one, and Granny will have to soldier on into the sunset.
Many of the elderly contribute to the present boom by providing off books services to workers in the form of baby sitting and other minor work that maintain the productivity of the working generation. Wild Bill opines that more of that goes on at the lower income levels where it is more desperately needed. Obviously, that service ranges from almost nothing to practically supporting the whole operation while the productive generation puts food on the table. Also because of many a Granny, the lucky minority also puts money in 401Ks and contributes their 6% to granny’s current Social Security check.
Next time you’re in the hospital – naturally, we hope it’s only to visit the sick – look around and note that many of the unpaid volunteers are a little older than you. When Granny’s broke, health care costs will have to rise as she will require a wage to do that job. Grannies also read to your kids at school. I guess we’ll have to budget an aid for that job when Granny has to bag groceries. That reminds me, a lot of old folks are working for pay – and paying all kinds of taxes – even as this is written.
Seniors pay a great deal more in local taxes than they take in the form of services. While this can be written off their federal liability, their net property tax is far greater than their local benefits. Also many millions of home owning seniors who are exempt from federal taxes because of low income pay a local tax tariff. This eases the burden on workers who – if they have children – are heavily subsidized as they prepare for the burden of paying for college. Naturally, seniors continue to support state schools if they pay state taxes and millions of them do.
But by far the biggest subsidy that goes to the elderly is in the form of health care, including nursing home care. This federal subsidy in the form of Medicare and Medicaid – which spills over to become a state problem as well - is terribly expensive. But there are mitigations to these benefits as well. For earlier generations, many were sandwiched by two other generations needing their physical and financial support. Much about what the president rails about came about because a lot of folks didn’t want to be saddled with Grandma just hanging around the house.
These are hidden subsidies for the working middle class as well as for the direct beneficiaries. People today have enough trouble raising and caring for junior without the added burden of putting old Mom up in the closet.
The social compact works in many ways and to attack it frontally sometimes opens up things that are not usually taken into account. Times have changed since the majority of grannies lived in the back bedroom of the middle aged, so as you think about cutting Grandma off the federal teat, remember she may have to come live with you. Not to worry, you’ll treasure those memories when you move in with your own little junior.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Dollars in the Sand
Not counting the human cost for our troops, our allies, or for Iraqis, the administration has asked for a supplemental appropriation for Iraq that amounts to $4.3 billion per week. This does not include the war in Afghanistan, homeland security or anything else in the supplemental such as tsunami relief.
So $614 million per day, $25.6 million per hour, or $460,000 per minute - your choice on units of time - are being poured into the sand in Iraq. Extrapolate that over truly difficult potential adversaries such as Iran or North Korea and it is easy to see why we must realign ourselves with our friends.
After all the sloganeering about freedom and that the Iraqis are better off without Saddam, we need some accounting for this fiasco.
So $614 million per day, $25.6 million per hour, or $460,000 per minute - your choice on units of time - are being poured into the sand in Iraq. Extrapolate that over truly difficult potential adversaries such as Iran or North Korea and it is easy to see why we must realign ourselves with our friends.
After all the sloganeering about freedom and that the Iraqis are better off without Saddam, we need some accounting for this fiasco.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Question Authority
Before the world of blogging opened before him, Wild Bill was an inveterate writer of letters to editors – and a damn successful one with numerous letters appearing in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and many other smaller papers. But it was such a pain to have to boil one’s thoughts down to the very small number of words under the tiny maximums permitted. And, of course, about ninety percent of them didn’t make it while the stupid rants of lesser lights filled space that could have been used to educate and entertain the readers.
But blogging changed everything. Bloggers could say what they wanted at any length they chose. The only limit was their perception of the patience of the readers they’d lured to their sites. Since last August, I haven’t written a single letter to an editor, relying on my blog to serve as bait for as many readers as possible. I’ve been lucky, and the number who tune in on my pieces increases slightly with each posting.
But under prodding from a few wise guy friends and relatives, my weakness was exploited and I sent a poison pen missile to the local section of the Washington Post about a proposal by the Fairfax County, VA Park Authority to single out seniors for a rate increase to play golf. It was fun, my old mean streak shown like a beacon.
Wild Bill’s not the even handed angel he portrays when his personal ox is gored. Here’s his little dab of spilled bile.
“To the Editor:
The Fairfax County Park Authority has looked into the future and completely misread it. Instead of seeing the need for more open space that might be used by its citizens for recreation, it has determined that the best course of action is to identify one of the groups most in need of such facilities and the one most likely to use them in off peak hours – seniors – and to price out the poorest among them. Naturally, they expect these same seniors – the largest growing group of taxpayers in the county by the Authority’s own reckoning – to support Park Authority bonds.
The proposed increase in fees for seniors on county golf courses makes no sense. I’m in my seventies and play golf at Pinecrest, Burke Lake, Greendale, the two courses at Twin Lakes, and on semi-public facilities throughout the region about once a week during the fair weather months, so I’m subsidized to the tune of about $100.00 per year under present policy.
The Authority is correct in its assumption that seniors will grow both in number and as a percentage of the county’s residents, but for them to work backward from that to the solution that poorer seniors must be driven from these courses by draconian price increases defies logic, especially since – at least as it relates to Pinecrest, Greendale, and Burke Lake, the facilities most often cited in the media – the authority has its facts wrong. The idea that seniors are overwhelming these courses is simply not true.
No serious affluent golfer of any age would play these courses on a regular basis. Anyone with means and serious intent is a member of a country club or plays the rapidly proliferating semi-private courses throughout the region that compete aggressively for off peak affluent players. Most of the golfers playing Burke Lake, Pinecrest and Greendale are far from wealthy, and I invite the members of the Authority to check these parking lots for BMWs and Mercedes.
That senior charges should increase while junior golfers retain their present rates is rank age discrimination and defies logic. The increase for seniors is designed to head off an avalanche of golfers, while the junior fees are set to encourage growth of play to develop the customers of tomorrow. In view of the new holes coming on line in Lorton, are there really going to be too many off-peak players?
Taxes on senior owned property increases far faster than their retirement income and they are under great cost pressure. Yet they are called upon – begged – to support school and park bonds. While the Authority judges seniors to be daft, if the proposed rate increase for seniors stands, older members of the community would be foolish to support any future park bond issues.
Seniors are generous in support of children through our votes and our taxes. So to demonstrate where the county’s priorities lie, the Authority proposes to remove one of the small subsidies from seniors who pay far more taxes than they get in services and continue to subsidize school age youngsters to play golf. Seniors pay taxes, do not require new roads, don’t attend school, and don’t play subsidized golf on the weekends so, “Off with their heads!” This seems a poor way to preserve the social compact within the county.
Obviously, the intent of the new rate schedule is to ration play by cost, to increase income, and to reduce wear and tear on the facilities. I won’t argue with those goals but would point out that an independent study will almost certainly show that virtually all prime tee times on the three courses above and both Twin Lakes courses are reserved long before play begins. It is obvious that an economic model that does not result in some open spots indicates a rate schedule that is too low. Therefore, it is clear that the Park Authority is trying to balance its budget on golfers who play on off peak hours.
The proposed rate increase is based on faulty analysis, is discriminatory, and will result in bad public policy. See you at the polls!
Sincerely,”
Life’s too much fun not to question authority.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
But blogging changed everything. Bloggers could say what they wanted at any length they chose. The only limit was their perception of the patience of the readers they’d lured to their sites. Since last August, I haven’t written a single letter to an editor, relying on my blog to serve as bait for as many readers as possible. I’ve been lucky, and the number who tune in on my pieces increases slightly with each posting.
But under prodding from a few wise guy friends and relatives, my weakness was exploited and I sent a poison pen missile to the local section of the Washington Post about a proposal by the Fairfax County, VA Park Authority to single out seniors for a rate increase to play golf. It was fun, my old mean streak shown like a beacon.
Wild Bill’s not the even handed angel he portrays when his personal ox is gored. Here’s his little dab of spilled bile.
“To the Editor:
The Fairfax County Park Authority has looked into the future and completely misread it. Instead of seeing the need for more open space that might be used by its citizens for recreation, it has determined that the best course of action is to identify one of the groups most in need of such facilities and the one most likely to use them in off peak hours – seniors – and to price out the poorest among them. Naturally, they expect these same seniors – the largest growing group of taxpayers in the county by the Authority’s own reckoning – to support Park Authority bonds.
The proposed increase in fees for seniors on county golf courses makes no sense. I’m in my seventies and play golf at Pinecrest, Burke Lake, Greendale, the two courses at Twin Lakes, and on semi-public facilities throughout the region about once a week during the fair weather months, so I’m subsidized to the tune of about $100.00 per year under present policy.
The Authority is correct in its assumption that seniors will grow both in number and as a percentage of the county’s residents, but for them to work backward from that to the solution that poorer seniors must be driven from these courses by draconian price increases defies logic, especially since – at least as it relates to Pinecrest, Greendale, and Burke Lake, the facilities most often cited in the media – the authority has its facts wrong. The idea that seniors are overwhelming these courses is simply not true.
No serious affluent golfer of any age would play these courses on a regular basis. Anyone with means and serious intent is a member of a country club or plays the rapidly proliferating semi-private courses throughout the region that compete aggressively for off peak affluent players. Most of the golfers playing Burke Lake, Pinecrest and Greendale are far from wealthy, and I invite the members of the Authority to check these parking lots for BMWs and Mercedes.
That senior charges should increase while junior golfers retain their present rates is rank age discrimination and defies logic. The increase for seniors is designed to head off an avalanche of golfers, while the junior fees are set to encourage growth of play to develop the customers of tomorrow. In view of the new holes coming on line in Lorton, are there really going to be too many off-peak players?
Taxes on senior owned property increases far faster than their retirement income and they are under great cost pressure. Yet they are called upon – begged – to support school and park bonds. While the Authority judges seniors to be daft, if the proposed rate increase for seniors stands, older members of the community would be foolish to support any future park bond issues.
Seniors are generous in support of children through our votes and our taxes. So to demonstrate where the county’s priorities lie, the Authority proposes to remove one of the small subsidies from seniors who pay far more taxes than they get in services and continue to subsidize school age youngsters to play golf. Seniors pay taxes, do not require new roads, don’t attend school, and don’t play subsidized golf on the weekends so, “Off with their heads!” This seems a poor way to preserve the social compact within the county.
Obviously, the intent of the new rate schedule is to ration play by cost, to increase income, and to reduce wear and tear on the facilities. I won’t argue with those goals but would point out that an independent study will almost certainly show that virtually all prime tee times on the three courses above and both Twin Lakes courses are reserved long before play begins. It is obvious that an economic model that does not result in some open spots indicates a rate schedule that is too low. Therefore, it is clear that the Park Authority is trying to balance its budget on golfers who play on off peak hours.
The proposed rate increase is based on faulty analysis, is discriminatory, and will result in bad public policy. See you at the polls!
Sincerely,”
Life’s too much fun not to question authority.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Monday, February 14, 2005
Not in Our Stars But In Ourselves
Human beings can rationalize anything, and for most the answers are always simple.
I was saddened to read of the Neo Nazi demonstration in Dresden. Anyone who has studied World War II or read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut has empathized with the residents of that great old city and felt despair at the sight of the bodies and the ruins. Now the Neo Nazis have found in this tragedy the victimhood needed to dilute blame for the Holocaust.
They have found common cause with residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in blaming the allies, especially the United States, for what happened in February 1945. Fortunately, most Germans reject that notion and accept national guilt for crimes of the Third Reich.
It is so easy to blame others for our difficulties. If only the Kulaks would give in the new Soviet man could appear. Twenty million deaths later, the Soviets were no closer to a stateless society than when the purge began. Germany’s economic problems of the twenties and thirties were the fault of the Jews.
There seem to be four great answers to political and economic difficulties: it’s somebody else’s fault; it must be collectivized; the state must control the economy; and the market will make us free. Men and women of my era have seen each of these answers come a cropper.
Despite the greatest failure of collectivism of all time, there is never a shortage of those screaming for nationalization of industries and for the reeducation of the rest of us. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are not alone in calling for redistribution as the answer to a nation’s needs.
Even as Hitler’s Germany was being consumed in its own excesses, strong men from the right were being born and preparing to cure the ills of such disparate societies as Chile, Iraq and a host of other states.
Even as communism fades in China, the regime saves itself by taking on the qualities of gangsterism so representative of National Socialism.
While here in the U.S. as the memory of the Great Depression fades from our national memory, many are intent on dismantling the tools that saved us from the excesses of the market. Laissez faire policies that brought us robber barons in the nineteenth century are being recycled in our own time to create a capitalist class of great wealth even as the national standard of living stagnates.
Words like business cycle and crash have been banished from our lexicon. Ownership has new meaning as we happily ignore or forget that everyone was welcome to participate in the market run up of the nineteen-twenties.
Progressives of both of our political parties saw a role for government in a capitalist society. But now the watch word from one side is that liberals want to socialize and impoverish and from the other that capitalist excess has already crossed the line to right wing excess.
The answers are harder than the slogans that parties proclaim. But those who seem to understand this are marginalized. We centrists must never give up. It is up to us to demand that the rules of reason and law must not disappear.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
I was saddened to read of the Neo Nazi demonstration in Dresden. Anyone who has studied World War II or read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut has empathized with the residents of that great old city and felt despair at the sight of the bodies and the ruins. Now the Neo Nazis have found in this tragedy the victimhood needed to dilute blame for the Holocaust.
They have found common cause with residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in blaming the allies, especially the United States, for what happened in February 1945. Fortunately, most Germans reject that notion and accept national guilt for crimes of the Third Reich.
It is so easy to blame others for our difficulties. If only the Kulaks would give in the new Soviet man could appear. Twenty million deaths later, the Soviets were no closer to a stateless society than when the purge began. Germany’s economic problems of the twenties and thirties were the fault of the Jews.
There seem to be four great answers to political and economic difficulties: it’s somebody else’s fault; it must be collectivized; the state must control the economy; and the market will make us free. Men and women of my era have seen each of these answers come a cropper.
Despite the greatest failure of collectivism of all time, there is never a shortage of those screaming for nationalization of industries and for the reeducation of the rest of us. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are not alone in calling for redistribution as the answer to a nation’s needs.
Even as Hitler’s Germany was being consumed in its own excesses, strong men from the right were being born and preparing to cure the ills of such disparate societies as Chile, Iraq and a host of other states.
Even as communism fades in China, the regime saves itself by taking on the qualities of gangsterism so representative of National Socialism.
While here in the U.S. as the memory of the Great Depression fades from our national memory, many are intent on dismantling the tools that saved us from the excesses of the market. Laissez faire policies that brought us robber barons in the nineteenth century are being recycled in our own time to create a capitalist class of great wealth even as the national standard of living stagnates.
Words like business cycle and crash have been banished from our lexicon. Ownership has new meaning as we happily ignore or forget that everyone was welcome to participate in the market run up of the nineteen-twenties.
Progressives of both of our political parties saw a role for government in a capitalist society. But now the watch word from one side is that liberals want to socialize and impoverish and from the other that capitalist excess has already crossed the line to right wing excess.
The answers are harder than the slogans that parties proclaim. But those who seem to understand this are marginalized. We centrists must never give up. It is up to us to demand that the rules of reason and law must not disappear.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Rainbow Over The Potomac
There is hope! Wild Bill is clean and sober and sees a rainbow through his window.
While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was giving the Europeans a taste of good old American common sense and a bit of a schoolmarm tongue lashing that they just have to put all those bad feelings about Iraq behind them and get with the program, we have to realize dear readers that the scolding was for consumption in the American hinterland. And Rush and Sean and Ann and G. Gordon and all the rest will use Condi’s words as bedtime stories of the faithful.
Red staters will cheer as Condi tells “old Europe” just what must be done to spread the Bush doctrine of freedom throughout the world and why they better leap to our side. The message for consumers in Fargo and Lincoln is that Jacques Chirac should simply ignore the past and get on with life.
But there is another message being sent to the international community, a serious and somber one. Yesterday, in watching Donald Rumsfeld interact with both wounded Americans and Iraqi police recruits, I was struck by how old and weary he appeared. The always ebullient Rummy just plodded through his obligatory hand holding and moved on to the next bed. Reading Doonsebury this morning – I get my Sunday comics a day early – I was stunned to see that Gary Trudeau had picked up on this even earlier than me.
When Rumsfeld returned to Europe for a conference on security in Munich, it was clear that Rummy speaks for a badly chastened administration. He openly acknowledged that the U.S. will be unable to sustain the war on terror without outside help. Bloomberg reports that for Rumsfeld, force is, “always the last resort.” And that in the fight against terror there will be a need for contributions from “many governments.”
“It must be clear that one nation can’t defeat the extremists alone,” Rumsfeld said. “Neither can any one nation successfully combat the asymmetrical threats of this new era. It will take the cooperation of many nations to stop the proliferation of dangerous weapons.” This is hardly the Rummy of two years ago when “Mission Accomplished” was the marquee headline.
Beneath the surface of the bold and brave rhetoric of the president and the Secretary of State there is a realization that there are limits to American power and that we were wrong in Iraq. What we need now is cover from our real allies as we are forced to withdraw from Baghdad. Rummy was almost begging for it, and I think that Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac are clever enough to provide it.
So while we bask in the glow of the January 30 elections in Iraq, we are preparing those who supported the adventure for the idea that the Iraqis will have to sink or swim on their own. We can cover them for a while with troops and aid, but it will be up to them to survive on their own. Democracy and freedom are great words for Inaugural Addresses, but when the rubber hits the road in Baghdad, the government and constitution in place will bear only slight resemblance to our own. The government may well have the consent of the governed, however, and that’s the best we can do..
So while Condi gives the French what for and as Rush and the rest rail at the United Nations, reality is setting in at the Pentagon and – you may be sure – in other buildings in Washington. There is hope for the nation this morning.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was giving the Europeans a taste of good old American common sense and a bit of a schoolmarm tongue lashing that they just have to put all those bad feelings about Iraq behind them and get with the program, we have to realize dear readers that the scolding was for consumption in the American hinterland. And Rush and Sean and Ann and G. Gordon and all the rest will use Condi’s words as bedtime stories of the faithful.
Red staters will cheer as Condi tells “old Europe” just what must be done to spread the Bush doctrine of freedom throughout the world and why they better leap to our side. The message for consumers in Fargo and Lincoln is that Jacques Chirac should simply ignore the past and get on with life.
But there is another message being sent to the international community, a serious and somber one. Yesterday, in watching Donald Rumsfeld interact with both wounded Americans and Iraqi police recruits, I was struck by how old and weary he appeared. The always ebullient Rummy just plodded through his obligatory hand holding and moved on to the next bed. Reading Doonsebury this morning – I get my Sunday comics a day early – I was stunned to see that Gary Trudeau had picked up on this even earlier than me.
When Rumsfeld returned to Europe for a conference on security in Munich, it was clear that Rummy speaks for a badly chastened administration. He openly acknowledged that the U.S. will be unable to sustain the war on terror without outside help. Bloomberg reports that for Rumsfeld, force is, “always the last resort.” And that in the fight against terror there will be a need for contributions from “many governments.”
“It must be clear that one nation can’t defeat the extremists alone,” Rumsfeld said. “Neither can any one nation successfully combat the asymmetrical threats of this new era. It will take the cooperation of many nations to stop the proliferation of dangerous weapons.” This is hardly the Rummy of two years ago when “Mission Accomplished” was the marquee headline.
Beneath the surface of the bold and brave rhetoric of the president and the Secretary of State there is a realization that there are limits to American power and that we were wrong in Iraq. What we need now is cover from our real allies as we are forced to withdraw from Baghdad. Rummy was almost begging for it, and I think that Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac are clever enough to provide it.
So while we bask in the glow of the January 30 elections in Iraq, we are preparing those who supported the adventure for the idea that the Iraqis will have to sink or swim on their own. We can cover them for a while with troops and aid, but it will be up to them to survive on their own. Democracy and freedom are great words for Inaugural Addresses, but when the rubber hits the road in Baghdad, the government and constitution in place will bear only slight resemblance to our own. The government may well have the consent of the governed, however, and that’s the best we can do..
So while Condi gives the French what for and as Rush and the rest rail at the United Nations, reality is setting in at the Pentagon and – you may be sure – in other buildings in Washington. There is hope for the nation this morning.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
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