They have us, you know - President Bush and Prime Ministers Blair and Howard. We’re running around saying that London and Madrid are paying the price for the preventive war in Iraq, but they’re replying, quite correctly, that the terrorist attacks on the West began long before our shock and awe treatment of Baghdad.
We say – know - that we’re right, but they simply trump us with the facts – the true facts. Or do they? In actuality, they’re simply sophists arguing irrelevant points. Our enemy is al Qaeda – and all of the splinter groups that are operating in its name. Our argument should never have been framed by stating that the jihadists are blowing up innocent Spaniards and Brits because we attacked Saddam.
Rather, our major thrust should be that we are encouraging the proliferation of terrorist ideology and the recruitment of Islamists intent on destroying us by having created a breeding ground of disaffected bombers based on a set of circumstances that have proved to be incorrect and that seem close to unraveling toward the absolutely false.
The Iraq War was undertaken because Saddam’s military had weapons of mass destruction and was in the process of developing even more deadly systems. Further, Saddam’s regime was acting in concert with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda against the West. After all the inspections and commissions, we know now that these reasons were wrong. Moreover, it looks as though the reasons were not only false but they may well turn out to be known to have been false before Coalition forces set foot on Iraqi soil.
Clearly Afghanistan was a different story. The Taliban was overtly harboring al Qaeda leaders and was protecting hundreds of terrorists and their training facilities. After 9/11, we demanded that Afghanistan give up the criminals who openly proclaimed responsibility for the attacks in the United States and for many others against our interests abroad.
We moved into Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban and routed al Qaeda. But, instead of finishing that task, we moved to topple the Baathist regime in Iraq. In the process, we lost our focus on the hunt for Osama bin Laden. While we put them on the run, we did not finish the job. Resources that could have been used in a fight that the American people overwhelmingly supported and in which virtually all civilized nations agreed were instead diverted away from Afghanistan and committed to the War in Iraq that nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on the West.
Now we have two open sores, and our military is bogged down in pacifying two nations. Our leaders have committed us to a war that is killing hundreds and wounding thousands of our troops, a war that his killed tens of thousands of people we claim to be befriending, a war that is costing billions of dollars, a war that was unnecessary, a war that slows our fight against our enemies.
Stop saying the War in Iraq caused the attacks in Spain and Great Britain. It didn’t and it’s giving the perpetrators of this illegal preventive war ammunition to tweak your noses. Let’s get our stories and our facts straight.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Friday, July 22, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
Put the Blame on Plame
Much has been made about the Valerie Plame case, but one point that I’m sure is high one the list of CIA undercover operatives that I haven’t seen made in the media is the impact of her outing on national security. I’ve seen it said that Plame’s life is in danger, but I think that’s hyperbole.
What bothers me is – if indeed the lady was an undercover agent charged with turning foreign nationals to our side – that all of the foreign nationals she recruited are in mortal danger, along with folks she didn’t recruit but with whom she might have become friendly with during her tours in other countries.
Clearly, those who dropped the dime on Plame, whether or not they broke the law have damaged the ability of our agents now operating in other lands to recruit people to our side.
It’s an old story. Someone identifies those who’ve been won over and they pay with their lives, and it endangers the lives of current CIA agents in the field doing recruiting. My guess is that this side of the story is being ignored by the administration as it serves its short term goals. Sadly, it also hurts the long term interests of the nation.
The right wing is jumping up and down in defense of those identified as the sources of leaks while ignoring the real damage to the nation. Shame on them!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
What bothers me is – if indeed the lady was an undercover agent charged with turning foreign nationals to our side – that all of the foreign nationals she recruited are in mortal danger, along with folks she didn’t recruit but with whom she might have become friendly with during her tours in other countries.
Clearly, those who dropped the dime on Plame, whether or not they broke the law have damaged the ability of our agents now operating in other lands to recruit people to our side.
It’s an old story. Someone identifies those who’ve been won over and they pay with their lives, and it endangers the lives of current CIA agents in the field doing recruiting. My guess is that this side of the story is being ignored by the administration as it serves its short term goals. Sadly, it also hurts the long term interests of the nation.
The right wing is jumping up and down in defense of those identified as the sources of leaks while ignoring the real damage to the nation. Shame on them!
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Stab in the Back
In 1918, German military leaders recognized that continued fighting could lead to the collapse of their forces with extraordinary negative results on the nation. The determination to sue for peace was made and an Armistice ending the fighting in The Great War was signed with the allies.
This turn of events was a shock to the German people who had been supportive of the war and, seeing their army still occupying significant territory of enemy nations, were led to believe that high level treachery was responsible for the humiliating end to hostilities. Thus was born the `Stab-in-the-Back’ theory whereby their valiant soldiers, after glory in the East, were sold out when victory in the West was still possible.
Our commander in Europe, General John Pershing, was prescient in seeing the Armistice as a likely failure without a clear demonstration to the German people that their military had been defeated in the field of battle. He was overruled in his recommendation that the fighting continue.
Attempts at democratic government in Germany after World War I failed due to the horrible peace treaty ending the war and the terrible economic depression that was felt across the globe. Adolph Hitler cleverly exploited the armistice, the Treaty of Versailles, the bad times, and – as much as the other reasons – the `Stab-in-the-Back’ to achieve political power and begin his quest to control Europe.
Since World War II, the U.S. has fought many wars in which the goals were less than the complete conquest of those fighting on the other side. Many Americans who had come to understand the nature of the power the nation had developed and acquired as a result of our involvement on the war and our growing economic might were appalled by the limited goals set out by our leaders in the new age.
The Korean War led to one of the great internal conflicts and tests of our Constitutional institutions. General Douglas MacArthur, representing a very popular strain in the body politic, went public with a demand for far more than just a stalemate on the peninsula. The conflict boiled over when President Truman relieved the general of command. The brouhaha that followed included a strain of the earlier `Stab-in-the-Back’ argument raised in Germany. President Truman became for a time one of our most despised presidents and chose not to run for reelection based on the likelihood that he would lose.
The `Stab-in-the-Back’ argument did not fit the situation in Vietnam nearly so well. Despite sending significant forces to the war, stalemate was never achieved, and it was likely that far greater force would have to be applied if a real victory or even the appearance of one were to be achieved. By the time the conflict reached its final stages, there was a growing consensus in the population that the war could not be won within the limits of sacrifice the nation was willing to undergo. Besides, after long fighting, many of the original supporters of the war had become its opponents.
But, as pointed out most clearly by Andrew Bacevich in his recent book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, the neoconservatives, the Christian Evangelical right, and a body of military intellectuals seized upon the low point of Vietnam to make an argument that can easily be construed to have more than a passing resemblance to the `Stab-in-the-Back’ of old, and the resurrection of military power was a clear result of their push.
Over the next generation the coalition on the right capitalized on such arguments to advance itself politically to achieve substantial control over the federal government. By the time of our attack on Iraq, It captured both Houses of Congress and the presidency.
I’ll skip the arguments of whether we should have attacked Iraq. My position that the war represented a preventive rather than preemptive attack and should never have taken place is known to my readers.
We are in Iraq with all of its broken crockery. We’re backing a process that may lead to a national government that will be accepted by the various ethnic and religious elements to the point that it may hold together. The President as Commander-in-Chief has stated that we will stay until he is certain that the government of Iraq reaches that point. Such an outcome over the next four years would be the best possible result.
Sadly, the seed has been planted that if the U.S. is not willing to stay the present course in Iraq we will betray our troops and their sacrifices. This, of course, sets up a national referendum for the 2008 election cycle in which the voters will have to choose between prematurely bringing home the troops or by continuing the adventure into the indefinite future. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that defeating the insurgency could take up to twelve years.
At this point, the far left, the Democratic Party, and most independents see such an election contest as a positive thing. They see a change in the party controlling the White House and the probable capture of one House of Congress between now and then as great outcomes. Absent startling change in the situation, unless I die or am incapacitated, I will be voting for this outcome. (Please no laughing if I don’t make it.)
But this will not be the end. Nothing ever ends in politics and the seeds of disaffection have already been sown. Failure to stay the course is tantamount to a `Stab-in-the-Back’ for the troops who have sacrificed so much for us. The pendulum that is clearly swinging in the direction of those with a realistic outlook of foreign policy could move back the other way in the blink of an eye.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
This turn of events was a shock to the German people who had been supportive of the war and, seeing their army still occupying significant territory of enemy nations, were led to believe that high level treachery was responsible for the humiliating end to hostilities. Thus was born the `Stab-in-the-Back’ theory whereby their valiant soldiers, after glory in the East, were sold out when victory in the West was still possible.
Our commander in Europe, General John Pershing, was prescient in seeing the Armistice as a likely failure without a clear demonstration to the German people that their military had been defeated in the field of battle. He was overruled in his recommendation that the fighting continue.
Attempts at democratic government in Germany after World War I failed due to the horrible peace treaty ending the war and the terrible economic depression that was felt across the globe. Adolph Hitler cleverly exploited the armistice, the Treaty of Versailles, the bad times, and – as much as the other reasons – the `Stab-in-the-Back’ to achieve political power and begin his quest to control Europe.
Since World War II, the U.S. has fought many wars in which the goals were less than the complete conquest of those fighting on the other side. Many Americans who had come to understand the nature of the power the nation had developed and acquired as a result of our involvement on the war and our growing economic might were appalled by the limited goals set out by our leaders in the new age.
The Korean War led to one of the great internal conflicts and tests of our Constitutional institutions. General Douglas MacArthur, representing a very popular strain in the body politic, went public with a demand for far more than just a stalemate on the peninsula. The conflict boiled over when President Truman relieved the general of command. The brouhaha that followed included a strain of the earlier `Stab-in-the-Back’ argument raised in Germany. President Truman became for a time one of our most despised presidents and chose not to run for reelection based on the likelihood that he would lose.
The `Stab-in-the-Back’ argument did not fit the situation in Vietnam nearly so well. Despite sending significant forces to the war, stalemate was never achieved, and it was likely that far greater force would have to be applied if a real victory or even the appearance of one were to be achieved. By the time the conflict reached its final stages, there was a growing consensus in the population that the war could not be won within the limits of sacrifice the nation was willing to undergo. Besides, after long fighting, many of the original supporters of the war had become its opponents.
But, as pointed out most clearly by Andrew Bacevich in his recent book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, the neoconservatives, the Christian Evangelical right, and a body of military intellectuals seized upon the low point of Vietnam to make an argument that can easily be construed to have more than a passing resemblance to the `Stab-in-the-Back’ of old, and the resurrection of military power was a clear result of their push.
Over the next generation the coalition on the right capitalized on such arguments to advance itself politically to achieve substantial control over the federal government. By the time of our attack on Iraq, It captured both Houses of Congress and the presidency.
I’ll skip the arguments of whether we should have attacked Iraq. My position that the war represented a preventive rather than preemptive attack and should never have taken place is known to my readers.
We are in Iraq with all of its broken crockery. We’re backing a process that may lead to a national government that will be accepted by the various ethnic and religious elements to the point that it may hold together. The President as Commander-in-Chief has stated that we will stay until he is certain that the government of Iraq reaches that point. Such an outcome over the next four years would be the best possible result.
Sadly, the seed has been planted that if the U.S. is not willing to stay the present course in Iraq we will betray our troops and their sacrifices. This, of course, sets up a national referendum for the 2008 election cycle in which the voters will have to choose between prematurely bringing home the troops or by continuing the adventure into the indefinite future. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that defeating the insurgency could take up to twelve years.
At this point, the far left, the Democratic Party, and most independents see such an election contest as a positive thing. They see a change in the party controlling the White House and the probable capture of one House of Congress between now and then as great outcomes. Absent startling change in the situation, unless I die or am incapacitated, I will be voting for this outcome. (Please no laughing if I don’t make it.)
But this will not be the end. Nothing ever ends in politics and the seeds of disaffection have already been sown. Failure to stay the course is tantamount to a `Stab-in-the-Back’ for the troops who have sacrificed so much for us. The pendulum that is clearly swinging in the direction of those with a realistic outlook of foreign policy could move back the other way in the blink of an eye.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Thursday, July 14, 2005
TRUST BILL - REALLY!
Why should you read my novels – or anyone else’s? Frankly, there’s no reason to unless I – and they - prove worthy of your trust. Why should you read my blog? Again none, except for two tiny benefits compared with the books; they’re free and they’re short – bargains in cash and time. My words are no more valuable than anyone else’s - unless you have developed a certain minimum level of confidence in my thoughts or comfort in my way of expressing them, yet I regularly ask for your precious time. That’s ridiculous!
Your time is the most valuable thing you have to offer any commentator, so you should rightly reject demands by those asking you to consider their points of view. Still, without outside opinion your life would much emptier. You have to trust somebody. Some would more readily buy into many of the positions of the New York Times; others would be more comfortable with The Wall Street Journal. I could go on with this comparison indefinitely and, for example, juxtapose Rush Limbaugh and Jane Fonda, but you get the point; there are an indefinite number of points of view all seeking your time.
Al Bundy of Married…With Children was way ahead of Wild Bill. Many of the Bundys of the world whose lives were changed by playing high school ball decide that their best shot at the brass ring would be to open sporting goods stores. Likewise many among us who like to eat or, especially, cook, decide they could easily and profitably run restaurants. Sadly, most of such dream roads lead, like Al’s, not to the Biblical Hell but to selling women’s shoes, to bagging groceries or, worse, to writing government memos.
But those with strong opinions never learn. We‘re just not as smart as Al Bundy; we won’t simply fail, drop it, and smell the socks. We’re know it alls who understand terrorism, the War in Iraq, or whatever and can’t stop telling you that George has it all wrong. Is Rush Limbaugh that much smarter than everyone else? When listening to him – which I do far more often than my liberal friends would like to hear – I often find him funny but almost never compelling. But old Rush has tens of millions of listeners, so who’s Wild Bill to say the man is a charlatan milking the red state rubes and their disaffected blue state blowhards?
When Wild Bill makes a statement, many get angry. “I’ve known that jackass for fifty years, and he hasn’t made any sense yet. Who does he think he is, Rush Limbaugh?” The better question might be, who does Rush think he is? Rush Limbaugh?
All of us seeking your time, if not your money, hold ourselves out to be not only communicators but great pontificators. But who says that Richard Cohen, Rush, E. J. Dionne, Jr, Robert Novak or Wild Bill is worth a fig or a minute? Well we can start with publishers and station owners; they bet their money on these guys – okay, and Maureen Dowd and Ellen Goodman, et al – and gals. Still the blogosphere is now loaded with tens of thousands of madmen and madwomen screaming to be heard.
What’s a reader to do? Trust Bill! Not really, but as you sample you’ve got to take some chances. Some of the bloggers are nuts; others are so clearly partisan is to be unworthy of your attention and, of course, that most precious of all things, your time.
All I can do is promise to be as thoughtful and reasonable as I can be, and I’ll even try to be clear and down to earth in my presentations. I won’t KNOWINGLY steal from anyone else’s material. And I’ll try to entertain while presenting my point of view.
I’m quite flattered that despite having gone on semi-sabbatical many of my regulars and an occasional newcomer will check in to see if I’ve posted anything new. While this used to be a daily electronic rag it has become a semi-monthly, at least until the next election cycle rolls around but it’s heartening to know that people are at least glancing at the site.
So even if you’ve read one of my novels, if I’ve amused you even slightly, get out there and tell somebody else to spring for one.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Your time is the most valuable thing you have to offer any commentator, so you should rightly reject demands by those asking you to consider their points of view. Still, without outside opinion your life would much emptier. You have to trust somebody. Some would more readily buy into many of the positions of the New York Times; others would be more comfortable with The Wall Street Journal. I could go on with this comparison indefinitely and, for example, juxtapose Rush Limbaugh and Jane Fonda, but you get the point; there are an indefinite number of points of view all seeking your time.
Al Bundy of Married…With Children was way ahead of Wild Bill. Many of the Bundys of the world whose lives were changed by playing high school ball decide that their best shot at the brass ring would be to open sporting goods stores. Likewise many among us who like to eat or, especially, cook, decide they could easily and profitably run restaurants. Sadly, most of such dream roads lead, like Al’s, not to the Biblical Hell but to selling women’s shoes, to bagging groceries or, worse, to writing government memos.
But those with strong opinions never learn. We‘re just not as smart as Al Bundy; we won’t simply fail, drop it, and smell the socks. We’re know it alls who understand terrorism, the War in Iraq, or whatever and can’t stop telling you that George has it all wrong. Is Rush Limbaugh that much smarter than everyone else? When listening to him – which I do far more often than my liberal friends would like to hear – I often find him funny but almost never compelling. But old Rush has tens of millions of listeners, so who’s Wild Bill to say the man is a charlatan milking the red state rubes and their disaffected blue state blowhards?
When Wild Bill makes a statement, many get angry. “I’ve known that jackass for fifty years, and he hasn’t made any sense yet. Who does he think he is, Rush Limbaugh?” The better question might be, who does Rush think he is? Rush Limbaugh?
All of us seeking your time, if not your money, hold ourselves out to be not only communicators but great pontificators. But who says that Richard Cohen, Rush, E. J. Dionne, Jr, Robert Novak or Wild Bill is worth a fig or a minute? Well we can start with publishers and station owners; they bet their money on these guys – okay, and Maureen Dowd and Ellen Goodman, et al – and gals. Still the blogosphere is now loaded with tens of thousands of madmen and madwomen screaming to be heard.
What’s a reader to do? Trust Bill! Not really, but as you sample you’ve got to take some chances. Some of the bloggers are nuts; others are so clearly partisan is to be unworthy of your attention and, of course, that most precious of all things, your time.
All I can do is promise to be as thoughtful and reasonable as I can be, and I’ll even try to be clear and down to earth in my presentations. I won’t KNOWINGLY steal from anyone else’s material. And I’ll try to entertain while presenting my point of view.
I’m quite flattered that despite having gone on semi-sabbatical many of my regulars and an occasional newcomer will check in to see if I’ve posted anything new. While this used to be a daily electronic rag it has become a semi-monthly, at least until the next election cycle rolls around but it’s heartening to know that people are at least glancing at the site.
So even if you’ve read one of my novels, if I’ve amused you even slightly, get out there and tell somebody else to spring for one.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Thursday, July 07, 2005
This is London!
In this dangerous new world and deadly new war we’re in, people have a great interest in America’s reaction to previous crises, especially as it relates to those in our midst suspected of treacherous behavior.
Quite by chance, I’ve been studying such matters for many years. I must make the disclaimer that I am not a true scholar of such events and movements but rather an avid amateur reader. Long before 9/11, I was taken by the Sacco and Vanzetti case and wrote a novel about it. There can be no doubt that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that a significant number of immigrants and citizens were smitten by the philosophy of anarchy. Most people take anarchy to be the absence of government and a chaotic state in society. But in its long life in America and Europe, anarchy was and is a well thought out – if silly – philosophy. In it man was an innocent and good creature until the forces of materialism corrupted men who used the levers of power to enslave the masses to the forces of materialism.
My bottom line with regard to Sacco and Vanzetti was that they were clearly committed anarchists. Whether they were guilty of the two murders for which they were executed has kept far more experienced scholars than Wild Bill in fodder for going on a century. When I began my review of the case, I thought that they were innocent. After much reading I tend to think the Morelli gang of Providence did the bank job for which their lives were taken by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1927. But Sacco and Vanzetti may indeed have done it. My true complaints about the case were about the way they were abused by the legal system. In this, I have not changed my mind even a slight bit.
After America’s experience with anarchy from the mid nineteenth century until the end of the Soviet experiment just over a decade ago, you might think that socialism, anarchism, communism and related approaches to governance and economic organization would have taken a long holiday, but it is clear from the reaction of at least a sub set of the protesters against globalism that anarchy is alive and kicking as are many other philosophies of redistribution of wealth.
The anarchists in America were indeed violent. There were many incidents of terror attributed to them, and I suppose that a good number of them were actually committed by these people. In the aftermath of World War I, President Wilson’s government worked hard to eradicate these cells of law breakers – to the point that the civil liberties of all were threatened. Many people attribute the Sacco and Vanzetti case to this overreaction. At least as it goes to their treatment under the law, I agree.
Since it is known by many that I’ve been working on a novel about the Japanese Internment during World War II, people, especially those who pride themselves on open mindedness concerning the aftermath of 9/11, continually assert that we must not allow what happened to America’s Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese descent in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor to be visited upon America’s resident Muslims. I completely agree.
But there are significant differences between what happened in the days leading up to and following Pearl Harbor and those surrounding 9/11. The attack on Pearl Harbor was perpetrated by the Japanese government and military. So far as I have been able to determine, not a single resident alien or citizen of Japanese ethnic stock was ever arrested or convicted for an act of supplying strategic information to the Japanese government or for an act of sabotage against this country. Yet some 110,000 ethnic Japanese were removed from the Western parts of the country and deprived of their freedom – some for more than four years, simply because of their race and ethnicity.
The situation today is far different. The nation and its leaders, including President Bush have gone out of their way to differentiate between Muslims of many ethnic groupings and the terrorists who carried out the attacks of 9/11. But the great differences in the events of 1941 and 2001 is that the former were carried out by a nation state with no proven assistance from within the nation while the latter was conducted by agents of al Qaeda operating within our midst.
It appears to me that our government, an imperfect institution of laws and men, did not respond as well as it might have in either instance. In World War II under circumstances described by many historians and novelists, we gathered the Japanese together and exiled them internally until the threat receded. In the aftermath of 9/11, the government lashed out in a preventive war against Iraq. The reasons given for the war have proven to be incorrect, but we are caught up in that war and in the larger war against those who attacked us in September 2001. Iraq is now clearly part of that war and we must muddle through it as best we can in the fight against terror.
But what are we to make of the potential terrorists in our midst. Wild Bill an absolute opponent of the War in Iraq does not dispute that there are jihadists among us who would kill and maim our citizens as they killed and wounded innocents in Madrid last year and as they did today in London. How should we react? Certainly not by rounding up our Muslim friends and neighbors and putting them in concentration camps.
But we are demanding that our government protect us from these evil people. What should the government do? For starters they better examine our position in Iraq to see how we can get off this tiger’s back. When we turned on Saddam, we committed resources that might well have been better used in Afghanistan, a nation whose government was harboring our adversaries and which thus became our enemy. The Taliban remains elusive and has not been eradicated and remains capable of attacking our small force in the country. Al Qaeda, clearly wounded and on the run, still commands the allegiance of cells of terrorists around the world who would destroy us. But our forces are tied up in Iraq where al Qaeda operatives have made common cause with domestic insurgents with different goals – even probably toward the United States and its allies.
Is our country truly at war? The president says we are, but those of us who lived through World War II find day to day life significantly different in these two wars, as we might expect. But the one great resource that focuses our attention on the states of the Middle East, oil, is of greater concern nearly three years into the conflict than at the beginning. The latest version of a national energy policy does almost nothing to reduce our dependency on this commodity for many years to come. It would be one thing if our citizens were consuming this resource in spite of the policies of our government, but that just isn’t the case. Our national policy encourages us to travel, drive, and enjoy our gas guzzling cars. There is no hint of sacrifice. The policy is that technology will ultimately save us from the rapacious nations now tormenting us with their oil policy.
Well Wild Bill has digressed from the subject of terrorists in our midst to national energy policy, a common error among the outraged. The true bottom line is that if we’re at war let’s put the nation on a war footing. First, let’s get the troops needed to support the new Iraqi government over there and let’s get them the arms and armaments needed to do the job. Let’s then be truly committed to get out of Iraq and to get the requisite resources to Afghanistan where they’re needed. Clearly that situation is becoming a problem again.
Let’s spend the money necessary to defend us against internal terror. We are not committed to doing the job. For example, the budget authority is for 10,000 new border patrol agents, yet the president has asked for only two percent of that figure.
The hollow talk that we’re fighting in Iraq to engage the terrorists there before they can come here must cease. With the carnage that occurred in London today the war is here as far as I’m concerned. Let’s get statements of support from all of the major Islamic institutions that they do not support the terrorists and let’s square away the problems identified in the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, pronto. Four years after we’re attacked is too long. The president is passing out Medals of Freedom to any number of people who did not do what was required of officials in their positions. Working hard 24/7 is not enough.
This is a bad day. What happened in London should be common cause for all Americans. Let’s start sacrificing. Let’s cut the B.S. and start doing the right thing.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Quite by chance, I’ve been studying such matters for many years. I must make the disclaimer that I am not a true scholar of such events and movements but rather an avid amateur reader. Long before 9/11, I was taken by the Sacco and Vanzetti case and wrote a novel about it. There can be no doubt that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that a significant number of immigrants and citizens were smitten by the philosophy of anarchy. Most people take anarchy to be the absence of government and a chaotic state in society. But in its long life in America and Europe, anarchy was and is a well thought out – if silly – philosophy. In it man was an innocent and good creature until the forces of materialism corrupted men who used the levers of power to enslave the masses to the forces of materialism.
My bottom line with regard to Sacco and Vanzetti was that they were clearly committed anarchists. Whether they were guilty of the two murders for which they were executed has kept far more experienced scholars than Wild Bill in fodder for going on a century. When I began my review of the case, I thought that they were innocent. After much reading I tend to think the Morelli gang of Providence did the bank job for which their lives were taken by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1927. But Sacco and Vanzetti may indeed have done it. My true complaints about the case were about the way they were abused by the legal system. In this, I have not changed my mind even a slight bit.
After America’s experience with anarchy from the mid nineteenth century until the end of the Soviet experiment just over a decade ago, you might think that socialism, anarchism, communism and related approaches to governance and economic organization would have taken a long holiday, but it is clear from the reaction of at least a sub set of the protesters against globalism that anarchy is alive and kicking as are many other philosophies of redistribution of wealth.
The anarchists in America were indeed violent. There were many incidents of terror attributed to them, and I suppose that a good number of them were actually committed by these people. In the aftermath of World War I, President Wilson’s government worked hard to eradicate these cells of law breakers – to the point that the civil liberties of all were threatened. Many people attribute the Sacco and Vanzetti case to this overreaction. At least as it goes to their treatment under the law, I agree.
Since it is known by many that I’ve been working on a novel about the Japanese Internment during World War II, people, especially those who pride themselves on open mindedness concerning the aftermath of 9/11, continually assert that we must not allow what happened to America’s Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese descent in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor to be visited upon America’s resident Muslims. I completely agree.
But there are significant differences between what happened in the days leading up to and following Pearl Harbor and those surrounding 9/11. The attack on Pearl Harbor was perpetrated by the Japanese government and military. So far as I have been able to determine, not a single resident alien or citizen of Japanese ethnic stock was ever arrested or convicted for an act of supplying strategic information to the Japanese government or for an act of sabotage against this country. Yet some 110,000 ethnic Japanese were removed from the Western parts of the country and deprived of their freedom – some for more than four years, simply because of their race and ethnicity.
The situation today is far different. The nation and its leaders, including President Bush have gone out of their way to differentiate between Muslims of many ethnic groupings and the terrorists who carried out the attacks of 9/11. But the great differences in the events of 1941 and 2001 is that the former were carried out by a nation state with no proven assistance from within the nation while the latter was conducted by agents of al Qaeda operating within our midst.
It appears to me that our government, an imperfect institution of laws and men, did not respond as well as it might have in either instance. In World War II under circumstances described by many historians and novelists, we gathered the Japanese together and exiled them internally until the threat receded. In the aftermath of 9/11, the government lashed out in a preventive war against Iraq. The reasons given for the war have proven to be incorrect, but we are caught up in that war and in the larger war against those who attacked us in September 2001. Iraq is now clearly part of that war and we must muddle through it as best we can in the fight against terror.
But what are we to make of the potential terrorists in our midst. Wild Bill an absolute opponent of the War in Iraq does not dispute that there are jihadists among us who would kill and maim our citizens as they killed and wounded innocents in Madrid last year and as they did today in London. How should we react? Certainly not by rounding up our Muslim friends and neighbors and putting them in concentration camps.
But we are demanding that our government protect us from these evil people. What should the government do? For starters they better examine our position in Iraq to see how we can get off this tiger’s back. When we turned on Saddam, we committed resources that might well have been better used in Afghanistan, a nation whose government was harboring our adversaries and which thus became our enemy. The Taliban remains elusive and has not been eradicated and remains capable of attacking our small force in the country. Al Qaeda, clearly wounded and on the run, still commands the allegiance of cells of terrorists around the world who would destroy us. But our forces are tied up in Iraq where al Qaeda operatives have made common cause with domestic insurgents with different goals – even probably toward the United States and its allies.
Is our country truly at war? The president says we are, but those of us who lived through World War II find day to day life significantly different in these two wars, as we might expect. But the one great resource that focuses our attention on the states of the Middle East, oil, is of greater concern nearly three years into the conflict than at the beginning. The latest version of a national energy policy does almost nothing to reduce our dependency on this commodity for many years to come. It would be one thing if our citizens were consuming this resource in spite of the policies of our government, but that just isn’t the case. Our national policy encourages us to travel, drive, and enjoy our gas guzzling cars. There is no hint of sacrifice. The policy is that technology will ultimately save us from the rapacious nations now tormenting us with their oil policy.
Well Wild Bill has digressed from the subject of terrorists in our midst to national energy policy, a common error among the outraged. The true bottom line is that if we’re at war let’s put the nation on a war footing. First, let’s get the troops needed to support the new Iraqi government over there and let’s get them the arms and armaments needed to do the job. Let’s then be truly committed to get out of Iraq and to get the requisite resources to Afghanistan where they’re needed. Clearly that situation is becoming a problem again.
Let’s spend the money necessary to defend us against internal terror. We are not committed to doing the job. For example, the budget authority is for 10,000 new border patrol agents, yet the president has asked for only two percent of that figure.
The hollow talk that we’re fighting in Iraq to engage the terrorists there before they can come here must cease. With the carnage that occurred in London today the war is here as far as I’m concerned. Let’s get statements of support from all of the major Islamic institutions that they do not support the terrorists and let’s square away the problems identified in the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, pronto. Four years after we’re attacked is too long. The president is passing out Medals of Freedom to any number of people who did not do what was required of officials in their positions. Working hard 24/7 is not enough.
This is a bad day. What happened in London should be common cause for all Americans. Let’s start sacrificing. Let’s cut the B.S. and start doing the right thing.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Thursday, June 30, 2005
NO TIMETABLE, REALLY!
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
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
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
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