Garbage In, Gospel Out
– William S. Lind, discussing the operational philosophy underpinning US military intelligence.
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Samizdata quote of the dayMarch 2nd, 2007 |
 45 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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I am so stealing that for my (rather bureaucratic) workplace.
Well, 25 years ago at least, GIGO was a computer programming truism.
Oops, force of habit. I like it.
Excellent! A very widely applicable slogan, methinks.
Certainly works for UKGov.
Example (pdf). If there is any academic reading this who would accept such a paper from a student, I have PhD thesis scribbled on a beermat that I need supervising. Yet the headline figure is treated as a “fact” to be brought forward by ministers on every conceivable occasion, and is unthinkingly repeated in the media and in business press-releases all the time.
A classic intelligence failure: believing the other side’s PR. Every organisation always looks more competent than it actually is when viewed from the outside. People hide their own failings, sometimes even from themselves, and in public like to highlight their best features and downplay their worst.
I find it very interesting that US Intelligence’s PR seems to go the other way. I’m not sure if that means they’re even more totally incompetent than we think, or that they find a reputation for competent omniscience more of a problem than otherwise. Well, we’ve heard what the Swedish policy geeks going to seminars think; now I’d like to see what the front-line troops think, and compare Swede against US from the bottom up.
I did like the bit about intelligence weenies staring into their Palantirs! Very apt!
Trying to command a war from a political centre (far from the fighting) is an old problem.
Philip II of Spain tried to comand military operations from his H.Q. in the middle of Spain (by means of correspondance). Not only did this mean that (for example) he did not really know that many Spanish ships could not reload their cannons whilst at sea (as their guns could not be withdrawn), but he did not know that this might be a problem – i.e. that taking ships by boarding operations and hand to hand fighting was rather difficult in stormy northern waters.
Also plans that looked fine on the map (such as go and pick up an army from the Low Countries and then invade England with it), got approved – with their practical difficulties unknown.
The British did similar things in early stages of the wars with Revolutionary France (a couple of centuries later) with an army being sent to the Low Countries to get stuck in a bog and be hit by sickness.
As for battlefield commanders:
Haig was no coward (his record shows that), but he was impressed (as one would expect of an “Educated Soldier”) by “scientific warfare” – where a commander would not be distracted by the chaos of the battlefield, but would sit calmly in the middle of big H.Q. with lots of maps and information from reports.
This approach produced plans that had no connection with real conditions on the battlefield – and tactics (march forward slowly in big formations) that resemble those of 17th pike blocks (at least those of the early 17th century – before Swedish and German alterations of such tactics).
There was nothing wrong with such tactics on the map – the pencil would go forward.
This “scientific” approach (which sometimes included such things as every tenth man having a bit of metal on his back, which supposedly meant that artillery could see the reflections and know where to shell – I am sure it all worked perfectly on paper) spread.
Even the American Gerneral Pershing tried the “scientific” command-from-well-back and rely on reports approach – much to the disgust of the young MacArthur.
The alternative is to either command from where one can see what is going on (with all the difficulties in communicating ones orders to distant forces when dealing with a large army). Or to trust officers on the spot.
The World War II (although its roots go back long before) German approach of “mission command”, meant that the leadership would set a task but how this task was achieved was up to the men on the spot. For all the talk of “slavish Germans”, they in fact had no use for men who could only “obey orders” and did not think from themselves.
Every officer, indeed every soldier (going right down to private) had to be able to grasp the military situation and work out tactics depending on the conditions.
Of course there were demented orders from Chancellor Hitler (which got more demented as time went on), but even as late as 1944 British and American forces kept thinking that they were facing “new forces” when, in fact, they were facing forces they had already defeated (for example had smashed with air attacks).
This is because German soldiers when defeated would reform units without orders, and work out tactics (again without orders).
Nothing to do with courage. British soldiers were often very brave, but when their units were disrupted (by the blood soaked horror of war) they did not tend to reform and work out tactics for defence or counter attack. If they got no orders they would tend to break up, or just wait about (till they were destroyed or captured). The exact opposite of the sterotype presented by the films – the sterotype of the German who can do noting without orders, and the improvising Westerner.
Certainly the Germans lost both world wars, but (given how absurdly outnumbered they were) they should have lost much more quickly. It was their ability to think for themselves and put their thoughts into action that made them so dangerious.
Even in the First World War this German approach made the private units of the post war period (the Freikorps – free units) a natural thing, in a way that would be much more difficult for other nations military forces (for example the White Armies of the Russian Civil War never reached the organization and effectiveness of the Freikorps – which led to terrible results for Russia and the world), even the British “Black and Tans” are not really the same sort of thing as the German Freikorps.
Of course the Freikorps varried (from the wild Freikorps of Hamburg – to the formal Iron Division, although both showed a lack of interest in ethical concepts) but they shared the characteristic of being able to defeat enemy forces that (on paper) they should have had no chance against. Perhaps it was harking back to to the tradition of privately organized German mercenary units that out competed (and largely replaced) the Canton organizd Swiss units in the 17th century. Developing new weapons and tactics had been the mark of German mercenary units, and (unlike Italian merenary units) their objective tended to be the destruction of an enemy force.
Even during the First World War the German war effort in such places as German East Africa was largely private (with no direction or supplies from Berlin) and, even on the Western Front German storm troop units (whose tactics, indeed even uniforms were often largely up to them) often managed to cause great difficulties for the Allies (in spite of the Allies vast superiority in numbers and resources).
Of course this freedom did not extend to political questions, so the Germans might be considered “tactical individualists” (although it is really voluntary cooperation and organization – rather than strictly individual action) and “strategic collectivists”.
The British army being the opposite. Soldiers being allowed to think about questions of high politics (a lot of time was spent on political debate in the run up to the 1945 general election), but (for all the talk of “use your ….”) the British army tended to concentrate all judgements at the top and depend on detailed and inflexible orders.
Only special British forces (commandos and so on) acted in a way that all German units were expected to.
On the modern American forces:
One of the most depressing military things I have ever seen was Donald Rumsfeld explaining how decisions were made in the American military.
Information taken from various sources and passed up to the chain of command (via various committees) right up to the White House – and then down comes the decision (although there may be further delays down the chain of command if new information or judgements become available – in which case the thing goes up the chain of command again for a new consideration and then down comes the decision again, unless……..).
It is a system that would make Philip II of Spain proud. And, no, modern telephones, radios and computers do not really alter things.
Even if by some unlikely chance a decision made by this system is the correct one, by the time it comes down to the men in the field the situation will have so changed as to make the decision worthless.
I profoundly hope that Donald Rumsfeld was not telling the truth about how the American miltary does things – he was talking to mainstream journalists and (therefore) may have been seeking to mislead these enemy forces.
What to do and how to do it are things that must be decided by the man on the spot. If you must execute him if he gets it wrong and is defeated (although this is unwise) , but let him make the judgements of war.
For example, I (along with everyone else) has heard that the “rules of engagment” have been made less strict recently. However, the idea that there can be “rules of engagement” at all, perhaps shows a misunderstanding of what war is.
War is not a game or sporting event. War is about destroying the enemy.
Members of our military have called Rumsfeld’s style the 7,000 mile screwdriver.
That half a century after WW2, we still run our military that way is nothing less than an indictment of our governmental culture and maybe even our culture at large that we allow this to happen, secure in the knowledge that “hell, we won so we must be right”.
There are two points being made here: whether soldiers are trained to have the initiative to improvise, and the extent to which wars are controlled by politicians. Since I agree on the first point (and it doesn’t seem relevant to the quality of intelligence, anyway) I’ll concentrate on the second. It also seems to have diverged from the original intelligence point, but is at least related.
War is about the overthrow of the enemy. Only sometimes does that require their destruction. And politics and public support for a war are as important as the strategy and tactics on the battlefield – they are the three legs of Clausewitz’s ‘fascinating trinity’ (‘wunderliche dreifaltigkeit’).
Soldiers are the experts on tactics, and politicians should generally keep their noses out of that, but it is strategy and policy that wins out in the long run, and public support that grants the time to do it. Clausewitz was contemptuous of those who thought you could run a war according to fixed rules and principles and ignore the human element, because every war was different, having a different mix of components of the trinity, and because wars simply did not work like that – like a chess game of geometrical move and counter-move. Where popular passions were strong, the military could be given its head, but where the home population was ambivalent about the war, politics inevitably played a much larger role. Soldiers hate this, but not to acknowledge it is to deny the historical reality of war. That is probably a mistake.
The US is immensely strong in its strategy/tactics/resources leg, but in a weak position on policy, and weaker still on passion. Their enemy on the contrary is weak on the battlefield, and probably about even on policy, but tremendously strong on passion and determination. Yes, the US army can easily win its battles, but if it makes the wrong move it could lose the war because of the weakness of the other two legs, and that is why the politicians get to be in control.
Clausewitz knew it would happen this way back in 1830, long before the current Administration thought of it. You would have to come up with a very good counter-argument to say why his reasoning was wrong.
Not really because in victory, all is forgiven. In the end if you kill enough of your enemies, the ones that matter that is (which brings us back to the intelligence issue), you win and the politics adjusts accordingly.
It is not that Clausewitz was wrong but I do not think he was arguing for the 7,000 mile screwdriver. If the military can gain a military solution (and when you commit more than a hundred thousand troops, do not kid yourself that you are not seeking a military solution) then it behoves you to use them effectively.
Whilst politically imposed restrain because killing the wrong people is damaging to your cause is understandable (politicians hate being screamed at), far more damaging when fighting a war is not killing the right people. And as I said before, in victory, all is forgiven.
If you are not going to bend all your efforts to victory, you might as well just accept you do not know how to fight the war in question and go home. The US military is demonstrably effective against a uniformed enemy but it appears to be far less effective (or perhaps it is allowed to be less effective) against a more indeterminate enemy (which again brings us back to the importance of intelligence and delegated local military control based on meaningful intelligence). Insurgency wars are won by battalions and companies, not divisions and certainly not by anyone at Foggy Bottom or White Hall.
The US public is not anti-war (nor is the UK public), they are anti-not-winning-the-war and (in the USA in particular) they want results fast. This is where the ‘Powell Doctrine’ was on the money and the Rumsfeld ‘doctrine’ is not. Either commit more than ample forces and let them do what they need to do, or do not get involved at all. I had though that was what the US military had learned but it seems I was quite wrong. I would have been far less keen on the Iraq adventure had I known.
I can understand that. But it isn’t simply about not killing the wrong guys and being screamed at, it is about building political coalitions out of local materials that will stand up to rough handling when you let go of them. That means, if it is at all possible, coalitions including some of the former bad guys that you have persuaded to become good guys. On the whole, I applaud the new Iraqi government’s approach to its political enemies of trying to talk them round rather than simply shooting or jailing all opposition. That was the old way, and it has problems of its own. But this way is an approach that takes time, and involves a delicate balance between a counter-productive appeasement where you risk the perception that the harder they play the more they can gain, and leaving the putative warlords with burnt bridges and nothing to gain from politics because you refuse to forgive their past trangressions. You have to hold the dialogue open, but wait a decent interval between their most recent misbehaviour and offering the carrot, so they do not associate one with the other.
Yes, I’m sure the military could have gone and killed al Sadr a year ago without any great difficulty. And all the others would have seen that for what it was: do as we say or we’ll kill you. Agree with the government, the one put there by the Americans and with the American troops to back it up, or you’re dead. And they’d all go along with it for precisely as long as it took for the Americans to leave.
Eventually, all the others will get tired of the troublemakers and turn on them. When the consensus starts to lose patience, then you can safely make your move against them – that might even be what’s happening now. But that is not a situation you can command or force, not even from the Oval Office.
War politics is a sick game, and Middle Eastern politics often doubly so. To go in guns blazing and kill all the bad guys is too clean and easy a solution; and a most unfortunate American stereotype. You are trying to do something more akin to what you would see if all the current US political classes were wiped out and you promoted all the Republican and Democrat bloggers to form a single joint government of national unity, who have to learn how to govern a nation from scratch with a shattered economy and infrastructure. Shooting Ann Coulter or Kos really will not help.
It’s not a military problem. The military are necessary, for the time being, but they’re already doing exactly what they need to do to ensure victory, whatever it might look like. And if politicians are screwing it up it is in the political arena, not the military.
I don’t know yet. When this all started, I said it would take at least five years before they even knew which way it was going, and ten to twenty before they got there. But I still thought it was worth it, because I also saw where it would go in fifteen or twenty years if the situation was left to its own devices.
You’re right. The public want it done quickly. And to get it done at all they had to be lied to and told it would be. But that, if you’ll excuse me saying so, is a failing on the part of the people who think wars can be nice clean simple affairs. They’re lots cleaner than they used to be, but we’re not quite in John Lennon’s imaginary utopia yet. 🙂
Yes I agree it isn’t just that but to get to the point where you can make alliances with enemies, you need to eliminate the inimical enemies… such as Sadr. Sadr and the Madhi army should have been exterminated at Najaf as it would do a power of good for the post-conflict completion of things.
To give another example of how a good healthy dollop of death can work wonders for a post war polity… in Croatia, the brave defence of Vukovar against the Yugoslav (Serb) army not just bought time for Croatia to mobilise an army, it also resulted in the death of almost all the HOS, the military wing of the Croatian fascist party. At one fell swoop Dobroslav Paraga lost his armed forces and Croatia developed into a relatively normal democratic country post-war.
The way to win in Iraq is exterminate the nutters and let the meanly ‘unpleasent’ to patch up a deal amongst themselves. But you do need to wipe out the nutters.
Hmmm… 🙂
Whilst I am hardly a soul buddy of Ann Coulter, seeing her hand Jeremy Paxman his arse has made me fond enough off her to not want to shoot her with a gun.
Paul, you might enjoy this quote from Richard Simpkin in Race to the Swift:
“Dedication to superior commander’s intention combined with independence of mind is the precise opposite of the attitude that often seemed to prevail among the Western Allies in the Second World War – profound mistrust of a superior combined with enforced blind obedience to his every word.”
Our problems all began, unbeknownst to us, in the pre invasion phase. There is a fundamental non-recognition by Bush/Rumsfeld et al of what a military force is, and what a police force is.
Militaries take and hold territory. Police search out bad guys. When militaries are used for police actions, bad things happen. This is virtually unavoidable as the nature of an army is to use every means up to killing to achieve a goal. Restrained action is not a characteristic of a good military. By the same token, unrestrained action is not a good characteristic of a good police force.
Police forces can function at much lower concentrations than armies can, but they need an underlying order to be in place.
Armies can provide order, but they need to exist in comparatively very high concentrations. What B/R tried to do when they did this war on the cheap is count on the underlying order in Iraq remaining intact after we destroyed its personification. To say it differently, they counted on using the army only to destroy the structure of government, but that the civil part of it would continue.
For me the epiphany came very early on with the realization that a museum had been destroyed by looters. I thought to myself, someone is in deep for forgetting to put a squad there. Then it slowly dawned on me that NOTHING was being held. NOTHING was being protected. We were so understaffed that not hospitals, not schools, not sewer plants, not water pumping stations, not even electrical generation was being held and protected. B/R counted on the very thing we had destroyed to continue to function in its prewar capacity. An astonishing ignorance of all of war’s history. Fantastically inexcusable in a body with the power and will to initiate a war.
This army, instead of actually taking and holding anything, was being used like a quick swipe of a broom on a floor covered with down feathers. And to even less effect. It is difficult to imagine (although I’m certain Paul Marks can recite many examples) a more thoroughly botched effort conducted in absolute ignorance of history and basic military sense. I don’t know if Iraq is fixable at this point, but I think we must try. And I can and do curse our two party’s system that chooses our rulers.
Pa: The public want it done quickly. And to get it done at all they had to be lied to and told it would be. But that, if you’ll excuse me saying so, is a failing on the part of the people who think wars can be nice clean simple affairs. I disagree. Of course the tendency in the US (and maybe in the rest of the West) to get results yesterday, but that is true in normal times. I think 9/11 has changed things, and the thing that bugs me most is that Bush and Co. missed the opportunity to take advantage of the post 9/11 momentum in the public opinion. They missed that opportunity when they presented only a limited scope of both the justification for the invasion (WMD), and what it would take to really win it in the long run, in terms of time, men power and money. This was the one time that, IMO, they should and could tell the American public the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but they did not.
Mid,
Many people fail to understand that distinction. Police are for relatively orderly society where the populace are cooperative. They can operate at low concentrations and using comparatively little force because most of the people let them, and the one’s they’re chasing are similarly limited. Armies are for those situations when that isn’t true.
I know the media went on about the soldiers not being very good policemen, which is technically true, but somewhat missing the point. But I stopped paying much attention to the media about halfway through the actual invasion.
I don’t know whether B/R counted on the social order remaining intact. I think they probably expected it to, and planned on that basis, but nobody in the military expects plans to actually work. “No plan survives contact with the enemy” they say, and they mean it. They understand that in a war situation there is no point in drawing up massive detailed long-range plans and flowcharts, because they never work. You plan the outlines for a list of representative scenarios, have plenty of resources on hand, and then get ready to re-plan and adjust when you get there. Victory generally goes to the side that adjusts best and fastest.
Yes, I remember when they reported the museum had been destroyed by looters and all the treasures stolen. I also remember how there was a lot less coverage given to the later discovery that the museum curators had in fact previously hidden most of the contents in the local bank vaults. Media priorities, eh?
The looting certainly was expected (although I’ll grant you that when they looted hospitals it came as a bit of a shock) and the decision not to do anything about it was deliberate.
Because there are no police and courts operating, it is simply not feasible to arrest them (what can you do to them?), and in a war zone chasing crims down narrow alleys is a dangerous business. In past wars, the problem was dealt with simply: you lined the first dozen looters you came across up against a wall and you shot them. Word got around. But in the full media glare, to be caught on camera executing some spotty teenager in the street for stealing a TV might have seemed a bit… harsh? It is in any case a minor problem compared with keeping people alive, and it encourages the Iraqis to start getting their act together themselves – it motivates an intense desire for law and order which only the US can help supply, and which therefore gets over some of the resentment.
These are not sentiments that can be aired at a press conference, of course, but you may be sure the troops were under orders to leave looters alone, and on the few occasions when some of the lads gave some looters a kicking, it backfired horribly.
The damage done to infrastructure was certainly a cost, but a cost accepted as unavoidable and written off. Cheaper than the casualties that would be taken in trying to protect it all, certainly – hardware can be replaced, people can’t. Of such stuff are military decisions made.
Iraq is most definitely fixable. Indeed, most of it has already been fixed, to a large extent. The trouble is mainly confined to Baghdad and Western Anbar. There is more electricity being generated than ever was under Saddam. More clean water supplied. More schools and hospitals open. It still falls far short of Western standards, and a journalist can still walk into any hospital and find horror stories, but then the same might be said of our NHS, and I think I read something recently about your Walter Reed hospital, yes? That it isn’t perfect is a given. The important question is whether it is getting better, and generally speaking it is. That the media don’t want to tell you about all that is often seen in the military as deliberate.
People are used to institutions in the West; they’re used to things working, and they expect it to be fast, they see the public face institutions present, and they know how any little failure gets blown up as gross incompetence worthy of resignations. But this state of affairs has taken decades, centuries to achieve, and is in any case mostly a thin veneer. Given Iraq’s situation, it is utterly foolish to imagine you can rebuild it in a few months, or that you won’t screw up royally time and time again in the process.
Rebuilding Iraq is a great project, like building the pyramids. It is massive, enormous, expensive, frightening. But to answer your concerns, the best I can do is to repeat those remarks of J S Mill quoted in another thread.
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. […] A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice–is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
The Contest in America, the essay is called. Quite apt, don’t you think?
Alisa,
I don’t have the details to hand, but Bush and Co. certainly gave a lot more reasons than WMD for going to war. Unfortunately, most of them didn’t get through the media filter which likes to latch on to the most dramatic sounding. Chemical death poised to rain from the skies at 45 minutes notice certainly does that, doesn’t it? But it isn’t what they said, or why they said it.
The main reason for the priority given to WMD was that it was the primary legal justification for the war. There is no international law against being a tyrant, and the ones against funding terrorism are not enforced. It was somewhat akin to jailing Al Capone for tax evasion – it was all they could get him on, because he had all the judges in his pocket and the witnesses scared for their lives – and so it did take a rather prominent place in proceedings.
I think they did an experiment where they took a modern jury and gave them all the evidence that was presented at the Al Capone trial (there were some tiny points of controversy, like the police using torture to extract evidence), to see what they’d say. The modern jury acquitted him and let him go.
Times have changed.
I can remember when Donald Rumsfeld became defence secretary – he strongly attacked all the committees and slowness, and centralized command.
Of course it is natural enough for a man to want command himself (so I expected the attacks on the contralized command to go), but it was sad to see him praise the committees and other such that he had once so attacked.
You see it was not so much Donald Rumsfeld micromanaging everything himself – in the sense of quick commands, no one was in charge.
People associate the German “leader principle” with gas chambers, but someone must be in clear charge of a military operation. It is better if it is the man on the spot (and, if you must, punish him if he is defeated and toss him to the wolves if there are “human rights violations”), but it has to be someone, somewhere.
Of course if the commander is killed, those below him must know enough about the military situation and have the ability to think – so that they can take over. Ditto if the new commander is killed and so on (right down to the level of private).
On the point about protecting, power generation, water supply and …….
This is why the original plan of Central Command demanded more than twice as many men in the invasion. But think about all the problems there were kitting out even the number of Americans who did go in.
The shortaged of body armour and so on. Standing about outside water stations (and so on) without body armour would (of course) have been suicide – when one considers how many people in Iraq have AK47’s and also that many (most?) people there do not consider those outside their own family-clan to be human beings.
Had an army more than twice the size gone in (in order to try and protect the main things), it might have proved impractical to supply them.
However, this may simply mean that the attack should not have been launched. As it was, it was structured more like a raid (to overthrough the local regime) than an army of occupation. But this may have been the only practical way it could have been structured.
The U.S. Army is also rather small these days (thanks to the Clinton axe).
It is overstreatched (it even still has some men in Germany – in spite of Rumsfeld’s efforts to get everyone out of there).
The Old Guard (the fife and drum third infantry division – from 1784 to the present) has been sent to Africa, and National Guard units have been extensively used in Iraq.
Including Air National Guard – and no, pep pills are not an adequate subsitution for recent experience and training.
As for the political side.
Making complex political deals with the enemy is pointless – because they just break them.
Was nothing learned from the Paris Peace Accords?
The third in command of the Taliban was let go (admittely by allied forces – not Americans) after promising to be nice – and he just made an irritation of himself afterwards (there are a lot of graves full of the evidence of how irritating he could be), and has had to be captured again.
As for Iraq:
Al Sadr (or however he spells his name) will say anything and make any deal – and then break it.
He will describe killings he knows are the work of the Sunni or even of his own Shia fighters as done “by the Americans” or “a Zionist plot”.
The government of Saudi Arabia has recently had talks with the government of Iran (President Holy Glow is only just back in Iran).
Both sides know that the Saudi civilian population donates money and resources for the effort to kill Shia (and Americans and other infidels) in Iraq, and that the Iranian government gives support both to Shia groups and (even) to Sunni groups (yes ones that kill Shia) – anything to promote as much killing and chaos as possible.
But (of course) both sides said they would work against violence that was being organized by the Zionists and other infidels in order to divide Islam.
On legal justification for war:
As the forces of Saddam often opened fire on American and British aircraft (thus breaking the cease fire agreement) there was indeed legal justification for war.
Whether or not there were any W.M.D.s (and there may have been lots – Saddam had plenty of time to get chemical kit and so on out of the country, and quite a bit seems to have turned up in his “enemy” Syria).
However, legal justification for war (Iraq opening fire on allied aircraft, Saddam’s support for terrorism ……. and so on) does not mean that invasion was the correct judgement.
But, it is too late for these thoughts now. The war is on and must be won.
I wrote this before I saw Paul’s remarks. As usual, his command of history lays a very clear picture of the present. My remarks are in a different tone and context than Paul’s, but I think his assessment confirms mine. Particularly his points about staffing and equipment. Posting squads anywhere was logistically impossible. The logistics where inadequate. And this should have been known BEFORE the war was begun. Like he also points out, the legal justification for war is not in question. But the judgement (and I add basic intelligence and common sense) of those making that decision is seriously in question.
When you have no plan ‘B’, that is counting on. That is utterly relying on.
This is why military actions and occupations are so heavily staffed.
Well, apparently none of their representative scenarios were drawn from actual military history. And “plenty of resources”? B/R were bragging from the start about how little resources they were committing. They thought it was a good thing!
The museum I saw was room after room of vandilized debris of artifacts of ancient history. That a few of the most market valuable might have been protected in no way changed the failure of preparation by allied planners. The entire rest of your blowing off of the total breakdown of society after a great army comes blasting through seems to ignore the history of war and occupation. Troops are stationed everywhere in an occupied area. In this adventure, there were no troops. Occupation was not an option. Utter destruction of society was guaranteed.
You do tend towards understatement. It cost us finacially, politically, and ultimately in lives, peace, and safety. It very likely cost the hope of success in Iraq. If it was our intent to destroy a nation then okay. But clearly the action was sold with an entirely different justification.
The questions here are how did it arrive at that situation. And can it be rebuilt ever? Through incompetence, it looks like factions will destroy it and any rebuilding that is done will be done by and for the advantage of our (ultimately greater) enemies.
Over all, your rhetoric is romantic and excuse making. All we need to do is look to Bush senior and Gulf I. With far more (many times more?) military power, he attempted much less and achieved everything he attempted. His treatment of the Shia was inexcusable but perhaps not totally unintended. He had a history in both international diplomacy and in the CIA, and he certainly seemed to have a much better grasp of reality and respect for history. In light of knowledge gained since Gulf II, he was more successful than we realized.
Humanitarian reasons never was given as a reason for the invasion. It is a beneficial side effect, but if we are going to invade nations for humanitarian reasons, there were a lot better choices available and a lot better outcomes possible.
“When you have no plan ‘B’, that is counting on. That is utterly relying on.”
They had a plan B. They also had plans C, D, E, F , and G. But what happened was eventuality Q or Z or something. In a military campaign there are an exponential number of things to go wrong.
You guys get so wound up when someone tries to plan an economy centrally, why do you think something as complex as a military campaign would be any different? In fact, this is precisely how this discussion started. You wait until things happen and then the men on the ground try to figure out what to do. And then, as with the economy, when everyone is standing around screaming about why didn’t they plan for this, they try to do something. And then you all stand round screaming about how they’re trying to interfere and they should leave it alone.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
“This is why military actions and occupations are so heavily staffed.”
No! No! No! Small and agile, not big and bureaucratic! Have you lot gone all Statist on me?! 😉
“none of their representative scenarios were drawn from actual military history”
They all were, but there’s an awful lot of military history. And there’s also that danger of generals always wanting to fight the last war.
“B/R were bragging from the start about how little resources they were committing.”
Yep. Was, and is. Efficiency improvements mean they can get far more from far less than they used to. ‘Plenty’ does not have to mean a lot. You go to war with the army you’ve got. You go to war with the politicians you’ve got, too.
“The museum I saw was room after room of vandilized debris of artifacts of ancient history.”
Then you must have seen a different one to me. I recall seeing smashed display cases and a lot of mess, and there were some less valuable pieces damaged and stolen. Yes, the TV people told you what you were seeing, but empty cases can have all sorts of possible explanations. More.
Artifacts of ancient history are damaged all the time. When Saddam excavated those three artificial lakes on the site of Babylon, he probably destroyed 15 metres of history from the time of Hamurabi. We have ourselves done immeasurable damage to archaology in the past, and no doubt continue to do so.
The irreplaceable value of cultural heritage, and all that; but is it worth people’s lives, and if looters had insisted on getting in would you really have shot and killed people for trying?
“Utter destruction of society was guaranteed.”
And yet, strangely enough, society is still there and thriving. I think you need to take your guarantee back to the shop and complain. 🙂
They had a bit of looting for a couple of weeks. Then the Mullahs told them to stop it, and things settled down again. And we didn’t have to shoot anybody in the process, and a bit of wealth got redistributed; the former of which I most definitely agree with, and the latter I wouldn’t automatically condemn until I knew the background.
It is a major exageration to call it “the total breakdown of society” after that first two weeks. They certainly needed help, but society was buzzing along quite satisfactorily.
“It cost us finacially, politically, and ultimately in lives, peace, and safety.”
Nope. I think you may be confusing the limited breakdown resulting from the abandonment of government and the looting with the chaos that resulted from the insurgents, terrorists, and rising militia. Those latter certainly cost lives, peace, and safety, but without them the transitional authority would have had things back on the rails in a couple of months. The looting cost a certain amount of money, nothing more.
“It very likely cost the hope of success in Iraq.”
Ha! Ha! Now you’re making with the funny jokes, yes? It didn’t affect the chances of success in the slightest. The initial chaos would have happened anyway, and letting it run its course probably saved us some in the long run. The insurgency was driven by outside influences, and would also have happened anyway. A faster recovery might have slowed it, but it wouldn’t have stopped.
I’ve already said, Iraq is most eminently fixable, and the problems that put that at risk are political. It is a matter of how long it takes for the Iraqi politicians to put together a functional system of coalitions and compromises, versus how long it takes for the media lies and distortions to persuade the American public to force a withdrawal. Absolutely the only people in the world who can definitely cause this to fail, and to defeat and humiliate America, are the American public themselves. In the longer run Iran have a decent chance to be able to muck it up too, but not while the Americans are there.
“The questions here are how did it arrive at that situation. And can it be rebuilt ever?”
The answer to the first question is three decades of Saddam, the Iran-Iraq war, Gulf War I, and the UN sanctions. The answer to the second question is the same as for any country. After its own civil wars, could America be rebuilt, ever? Yes, if the people of that country rebuilt it.
That’s what it all comes down to. It is not up to America or the coalition or the UN to rebuild it, it is up to the Iraqi people, and the success or failure of the venture rests upon them. All we can give them is the time and space to do so. They fully intend to do so if you’ll let them. So far, they’re doing remarkably well.
The alternative is to abandon the ideal of defending liberty. To say, we’d really like to help you, but it’s all too messy, we can’t do it perfectly, it costs us too much. The sight of all that messy reality makes us feel queasy, we’ll walk down the other side of the road here, if you don’t mind. Peace and flowers, man.
Historically speaking, this has been one of the cheapest, cleanest, best run campaigns in the history of warfare ever, with one of the lowest death rates. But the combination of ubiquitous cameras and unrealistic expectations born of ignorance, not to mention that creeping anti-American schadenfreude, has managed to persuade you all it’s a disaster beyond any other.
If you are so easily fooled, no wonder the governments can lead you around by the nose so easily. Liberty is expensive! And we are all no longer willing to pay even this smaller price.
If you knew this sort of thing would be the result, would you ever rebel against your own government? Even if it was as tyrannical as Saddam? Because if you don’t think this price is worth it, you’ve already lost. All your talk of the second amendment, it’s all empty, and you are entirely reliant on the kindness of politicians. It is what Osama has been saying for decades, you know. You may have got a big gun but you’ll never again dare pull the trigger, and all your enemies know it.
Now you’ve made me all depressed. I’m going off to lie down in a dark room for a while. I might play some John Lennon.
Pa, I have some glasses gone missing. Do you have them? The have sort of pink colored lenses. You might even say ‘rose colored’. The future as if played out was easily forseeable. I hope this new general really has a new plan and that he is given the equipment and troops and leeway to carry it out. Lindsey Graham seems to have a pretty good grasp of things.
I’m not going to labor through a refutation of your points. But your perspective of the past is certainly not a foundation for the future.
I will contest one staggerinly wrong statement of yours. You said “After its own civil wars, could America be rebuilt, ever?” The answer to any student of US history ‘No. It was irretrievably destroyed’. The United States of America ceased to exist as a consequence of that war. What we have now is the Unified State of America. You should read Paul Marks on this topic. He especially makes some pointed observations of how the slavery was prevented from being effectively ended through open borders and striking down fugitive slave laws so that the really intended consequences of the war (One nation, … indivisible) could be achieved. Slavery could have been ended much more quickly and without nearly the 1/2 million death toll, but slavery wasn’t what that war was about. So I ask you, what is this war really about? There are those here who believe it is about breaking down the remaining restraints on government.
Your stands on various points are contradictory. You seem to be coming down on both the sides of “liberty is expensive” and “we can do it on the cheap”. I’ll grant you the first one and totally reject the second. It was and is the belief in our society that we can do things in a cheap and half-assed manner that is a, or the, major root of our failures. We are trying to get security cheaply by giving up liberty. We are trying to fight wars cheaply by not staffing or equipping them appropriately. We are trying to do social programs by borrowing money. I could go on. Pa, it is your kind of attitude that is leading us to certain failure. You can quit lecturing me about the expense of liberty and explain why it didn’t apply in this case.
By attempting this war on the cheap and dirty, it has cost us and everybody else far more lives money and time. Compare Gulfs I and II. One was funded up front, fought a far more difficult campaign against a real, not shadow military machine, had a more realistic expectation of what could be achieved (by some views including my own, too modest) and yet you are somehow trying to defend the Gulf II method.
Your synopsis at the end reminds me of an old joke my father used to tell about the farmer who was saving money by teaching his horse to not eat. The experiment had all the markings of success but the horse died so we’ll never know for sure how it would have turned out.
Leave on enough light to read Nietzsche.
Pa: “It is what Osama has been saying for decades, you know. You may have got a big gun but you’ll never again dare pull the trigger, and all your enemies know it.” This is the reason why Iraq had to be invaded, humanitarian, security and economic concerns being only secondary, IMO. The US had to finally show the ME, and indeed the world that we are not what Osama thinks we are. Bush had to realize this very clearly (I don’t know if he did), and make this very clear to the American people. If he really wanted to do this, no amount of media spin and selective reporting could prevent him: a speech to the Congress could do the trick quite easily (remember the “axis of evil” speech?). I don’t know which is worse, that he did not actually realize it, or that he did, but kept quiet about it.
I actually agree with many of your points, but you just cannot keep blaming media for everything.
Whoever is right, we have got to win the war now.
“What do you mean WE – you are not going”.
Well if someone wants to hire an unfit malcoordinated 41 year old who has not fired a rifle in almost 20 years – I will go (I have nothing else on at the moment).
Paul,
I am afraid you are right. I wish you could have seen Lindsey Graham on Meet the Press. He layed out a very clear case of just how important this has become. A clear thinking person will find away to make his points and he did. When the transcript comes up, you may want to check it out. Most of what he said is common sense, but it is refreshing to hear it from a politico.
Mid,
I can promise you I don’t have your rose tinted glasses. 🙂 What I was trying to say was not that everything is rosy, because it isn’t; but neither is it as bad, when set in proper context, as you have been led to believe.
My cheap/expensive contradiction is again a matter of context. “I need a new car, but they’re so expensive – where can I get a brand new 3 Series BMW for under $1,000?” Cars are unavoidably expensive, I say. It takes a lot of technology and labour to make them. “It’s dreadful how the car manufacturers are so incompetent they can’t make cars without blowing a fortune. And they won’t do 500 mph, either. How can I possibly get to work in time when they go so slow?” I reply, compared to cars of the past, cars today are incredibly cheap, through greater efficiency, better technology…, in short, capitalism. You get far more power for far less money and far more of us are rich enough to be able to afford it. “They’re expensive…, they’re cheap…, I think you must be ripping me off. If I can’t get one for $1,000, I’ll just have to walk, instead.”
What I mean of course is that liberty is more expensive than the public think it ought to be, and yet is roughly the right price/speed for the enormous complexity and difficulty of the task, and far, far cheaper than wars of liberation have been in the past. And yet, there are people who would rather walk the Long March backwards than pay the price asked.
(By the way, I quite like Nietzsche – a dreadfully misunderstood author in my view. :-))
Alisa,
Thanks. I do reserve a certain amount of my blame for people who read/watch mainstream media. 😉
Seriously, you’re right. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and the media tends to sell what it thinks its customers want. Some of the stunts they pull in their Middle East coverage are so outrageous that I can’t see how it could be other than deliberate, but there are plenty of others chipping off the same block.
The military and government I’m sure could have done this better. There isn’t a human endeavor where that couldn’t be said. I’m not so bothered by criticism of their competence, which is always healthy, as by the misleading impression it all gives that it is a disaster we do not want to repeat. That is precisely the impression the enemies of freedom would want to give.
Pa, I assume as you say this that they are also calling up reserves and guard units and drafting (excuse me, there is no draft) extending and reactivating the service contracts of past active duty military personal after their scheduled and in some cases ‘guaranteed’ retirement dates where you live, too. That is what is happening all over the US. The National Guard (state’s militias) is now serving as regular army. Except they are not and were never intended to be.
People here are trying to combine serving in the military with having a life after military. They are finding out that there is no ‘after military’. Parents of small children are missing irreplacable parts of their children’s lives because they had been enlisted with lies. Because there is no draft, the whole brunt is falling on those who have already served and are recalled. It’s gone past politics. You need to realize that we have little military and nobody in their right mind is enlisting because it is no longer a secret. Enlisting is for LIFE.
I agree with what I understand your goals to be. But you really need to look at how much longer we can sustain even what we are doing now. The party is about over and the piper is holding out his hat.
I have become quietly but intractably angry at our rulers on both sides of the aisle. This anger is everywhere present in the US. The only reason it isn’t more apparent is because it doesn’t have an outlet and the people who share the anger don’t agree on the solutions yet. It is not a topic of conversation, but everyone seems to have a trigger word that will set them raving. I believe we are as a nation becoming amenable to the idea of a strong leader. I do NOT think this is a good thing. If we really do get one, we can only hope that it is somebody with more integrity than ambition. A little bit of wisdom would be nice to.
Mid: so are you saying that we should not have invaded
Iraq in the first place, because our military is not big enough, or should we have reinstated the draft for the purpose of the invasion? Seriously, I’d like to have your opinion. Hindsight is easy and all that, but it can also be very useful, as we can learn from our mistakes.
BTW, I’ll just add that the goal of building a democracy in Iraq seemed like a silly idea to me from the beginning. Per my previous comment to Pa, I always thought that we just had to go in, kick Saddam out (the point being to make an example of him), and go back home ASAP.
Alisa, like you (I think) I was amazed at how rapidly and cavalierly this administration pissed away the world’s concern and sympathy. From the start I was confused at “Why Iraq? Why now?” I am certainly no fan of Clintonian ethics, but he would have gotten enough milage out of the 9/11 attack for a walk on Mars.
We didn’t have the military in place to do Iraq. This administration knew this. They also knew that people were very doubtful and would need to be convinced that it was necessary before any standard of living concessions would be tolerated. So, not having a case, they announced that everybody should keep spending and having a good time. But if it is serious enough to go to war, and if it is serious enough to abrogate our rights in such sweeping ways, then it is serious enough for all of us to undergo a little standard of living hardship too. ‘What price freedom?’ The fact that they were afraid to ask made me wonder if they really had even a shred of a case in Iraq. They probably counted on getting their invasion as long as the voters didn’t feel the immediate burden of it.
One has to ask ‘why?’ When I was taught American history in school, we were also taught temporary deprivations in order to redirect resources into war was how you finished the job quickly and got back on with life. It seemed to me when the war on terror was announced that we were being expected to accept a lifestyle change into a permanent state of war and a permanent state of domestic and international war powers being authorized to government. I still believe this. History shows quite clearly that the American civil war was only sold as a war against slavery. It’s real purpose was because Lincoln and a large component of the population wanted to reforge the federation as a single nation. He had to be dragged into the emancipation proclamation, it wasn’t part of his plan. The issue of slavery was ancillary to the bigger plan. It was calculatingly used to serve the unified government agenda.
Anybody who opposed the civil war as the best means to end slavery was painted as being pro-slavery. I think many of us are becoming concerned that something similar is happening with the war on ‘terror’. While the governments of the US and UK and several others announce all the great new measures they require to conduct this war on ‘terror’, they simultaneously appear to be doing as much as they can to foment more terrorism. I look at Gulf I and Gulf II. Forget domestic human rights, that argument could be applied all over the world. Look at the threats from terrorism since the Iraq invasion. Are there more or less threats? Were prewar threats coming from Iraq? Is the Islamic world more or less tolerant of terrorism? The list of worsenings goes on. The only rationally good thing I can see that has come to the US from the Iraq war is that we have placed a target population overseas and withing easy reach of the terrorists and it is presumably drawing fire away from our home turf.
A cynical person would wonder why we have as citizens to bear the loss of our liberty and privacy but not of our standard of living. Are we learning to be contented concubines for a rapacious state?
Back to Iraq, armies fight nations, not individuals. This farce we are conducting of troops trying to pick the evil bomber burka out of the pedestrians on the sidewalk is and will be a failure because an army is not an indigenous police force.
At this point what? The million dollar question. One thought that keeps recurring to me is that we should do our best to make sure that every man and women in Iraq has access to personal weapons of defense. Then provide military style support to any group who’s actions we like and military discouragment to any group who’s action we don’t like. For any faction to get large enough, it needs territory. If it holds territory, military means will work against it. If we assure the citizens are armed, then holding a geographic area to account becomes morally more tolerable.
Some things are certain. History is history, we can’t change it. The future will come whether we have a good plan for it or not. Politicians have proven themselves untrustworthy throughout history. Now is certainly not an exception. I seriously believe that in the next six years we in the US will undergo an upheaval that will change our nation as it hasn’t been changed since the second federal constitution was ratified.
“I always thought that we just had to go in, kick Saddam out (the point being to make an example of him), and go back home ASAP”
Repeat as needed.
That is exactly what we should have done.
Mid,
I’m not going to comment on the business of calling up reservists. There are all sorts of interesting issues there I could pursue, but they’re a separate topic. There are subjects that make me irritable, too.
On the main topic, I think now our viewpoints are too different to be reconciled. I say they did have the military to do Iraq, and that there are fewer threats than there would have been if we had rolled over, although as you rightly say the threat is by no means gone. It is a matter of credibility: they’re betting the farm that if they can just hang on long enough that we’ll surrender to them. The only way to stop them is to demonstrate, once and for all, that we won’t: that their attempts are utterly hopeless. It isn’t the invasion of Iraq that has encouraged their attacks, but the impression that their terrorist tactics are working to shake America’s determination. Militarily they’re losing all over the show, but so long as they can keep that out of the news, they’re in with a chance politically.
However, it is clear by now that nothing will persuade anyone of this until it’s done. In a couple of year’s time, we’ll find out which of us was right.
I’m not persuaded of the benefits of militias and warlordism – arming the population has already led to stuff like the mehdi’s army – but that’s an argument that has already been lost. The geographic area they wound up holding was Fallujah – it didn’t seem to end up being regarded as morally any more tolerable.
Yes, there will no doubt be upheavals to come. Either you will accept “a lifestyle change into a permanent state of war” (because be assured, Jihad is indeed a permanent state of war and always has been) or you will withdraw from the world until the war comes to you, after all your allies have been picked off one by one.
But like I said, I don’t think many people are inclined to be persuaded just yet, and only time will tell.
I see Senator L.G. quite a lot – although on Fox (or “F.N.C.” as some there like to call it these days) rather than MSNBC (although I have got that station to). The days when people in Britain just had to take the propaganda line from B.B.C., I.T.V., C4 (yes I know, if only it would blow up) and C5 (five stations all giving the same leftist slant on the news) are over.
On enlistment – in spite of reservists being recalled, I have not heard that enlistment is in trouble. “Rednecks” (although it is not just Rednecks who are enlisting) expect life to be shit (and to end in a nasty way) – so when it is they are not shocked. Although what “Honest Abe” would think of an army that is dominated by Southerners I am not sure (although some of the best men in the Union army were Southern – such as General Thomas from Virginia).
As for the war – now that just about everone is sure it is going down the drain, I have a sneaking feeling we may win.
Well now, Pa. There in that statement you just demonstrated fundamentally irrational your ‘plan’ is. How do you propose to demonstrate that something will never happen? I’m sensing a ‘for the rest of forever’ somewhere in your ‘solution’.
And speaking as someone who knows fundamentalism and as someone who is not in denial about the direction oil money is traveling, they can hang on a lot longer than we can. That is why we need a new plan. The status quo has no future for us. This idea that order can be imposed from the top down is not only impossible for us to achieve, it is nearly impossible for any coalition of determined enemies to achieve. These kinds of nations have always either been dominated by one group or broken into pieces. Balkanization, anyone?
The two choices they/we have are to move control down to the individual level by guaranteeing each individual the right to claim and defend their property and their person, or to divide the country and let each sector purge itself of aliens. My preference is for a nation of individuals.
Then why do you propose it? If you are equating individual self defense with one faction disarming the rest, I think you misunderstand. Arming the law abiding population is the reverse of what you get when warlords take over an area. When warlords take over, the first thing they do is disarm their possible opponents. Frankly, Pa, one faction already has disarmed the rest in Britain. Is it a good thing? Is that the future you see for Iraq? Are you safer now than you were when everybody in Britain could have guns?
Wait just a doggone minute!!! Did I even just go along with your utterly absurd assumption that we actually can disarm the warlords and terrorists?!! State your plan. I want to hear it. While your at it, maybe you can win the war on drugs!
In a couple of year’s time, we’ll find out which of us was right.
You seem to have bought into the sales pitch that Al Qaeda = Saddam. They had virtually nothing to do with each other. I’d venture that Jordan and Syria had more dealings. Are we to invade Jordan? You’ve never stated exactly why you think Saddam was so critical to the war on Islamic terrorism that we had to invade. That’s something else you need to lay out and defend.
We had bucket loads of good will and put together a genuine coalition from a great many nations and overthrew the regime in Afghanistan. The world and particularly the Islamic world got the message. Supporters of Islamic terrorism got a very clear and well recognized warning of the price of supporting terrorism. With the attack on Iraq, unmeasurable damage has been done to the war on Islamic terrorism. Whatever this administrations motivations may have been, I seriously doubted then and still doubt that ‘terror’ was more than a convenient excuse.
I refuse to accept war as a permanent state and martial law as the way all life will forever after live, now that somebody discovered terrorism. This government is conducting a war on Americans and is doing little good and much bad by greatly energizing the change of secular Islamics into fundamentalist Islamists.
And lastly, I expected better from you than a resort to “if your not with us, your helping them” level of argument. You have said absolutely nothing to indicate that you actually see any future other than ‘wait and see’, ‘things will get better’. ‘Trust me.’
I think we must win in Iraq. But your’s and your soul mates’ utter refusal to admit anything is wrong, and your refusal to consider fundmental or even ancillary changes to goals, strategy or tactics is not helping one iota.
Mid, I think you’re reading things into my answer that I didn’t actually say. Like I said, its obvious now that our views are irreconcilable. I’m not asking you to trust me on this, I’m saying that it’s pointless arguing.
If you’re still interested in my reasons, I’d be happy to go through all your points above, but I don’t think it will do any good. I think you’re angry and after proving me wrong, rather than finding out what I think and why, and that ain’t going to work! From what you know of me, do you really think I’m inclined to be “fundamentally irrational”?
I’ve said what I wanted to say, and I understand why you don’t agree. It wouldn’t be the first time we didn’t agree on something; I’m sure it won’t be the last.
Now then:
## You may saaaay that I’m a dreamer… ##
## But I’m not the only one… ##
## I hope somedaaaay you’ll join us… ##
Pa, I could easier hang a coat on a puff of smoke than find anything solid in your comments.
I have a paraphrase of Clausewitz. “The greatest enemy of a good plan is unwarranted optimism from planners in an alternative reality”
The entire theatre is messed up because we are seeking the symptoms of success without knowing what the substance will be. Democracy? GMAB!
I find in this thread such incomprehensible irreconcilables as your statement “Eventually, all the others will get tired of the troublemakers and turn on them.” (With what?!) followed by your later conclusion that providing those others with the means to carry out your hope would lead to warlords.
You make statements like “The way to win in Iraq is exterminate the nutters and let the meanly ‘unpleasent’ to patch up a deal amongst themselves. But you do need to wipe out the nutters.”
Wiping out the nutters is not a plan. It is an wish. Do you have a plan for achieving this? Carpet bombing? I’ve proposed a means that indigenes could actually stand a chance of doing it and you rejected it out of hand. You acknowledge that armies are not police, but you offer nothing of substance.
You offer no alternative methods, just wishes for outcomes. We’ve had enough of that. That is how we got to this point.
I gave up rereading your remarks at that point. If you actually suggested something substantive farther down, my apologies.
I don’t think that statement you quote was one of mine. (Perry’s, I think.) But I’ll try once more anyway, even though I’m pretty confident it isn’t going to do any good.
I’ll take your most recent post first.
You first say “The entire theatre is messed up…” as if that was beyond argument. I’ve been following progress in Iraq on a fairly casual level; I watched the success of the rivers campaign, Fallujah went very well once they got around to doing it, pacification efforts in places like Tal Afar received a very positive response from the Iraqis, and the increasing cooperation against al Qaida from a dozen of the Anbar province tribes suggests that they at least think the Americans are going to win. As I understand it, the violence is mainly confined to Baghdad and Western Anbar now, with most of the rest of the country moderately peaceful (although distinctly rough in places) and with the Iraqis having taken over security for themselves. I’ve also noted the statistics on the reconstruction, published by the Army engineers, and note the number of schools, water and sewage facilities, telephone exchanges and improved electricity supply delivered. And the most widely raised issue, the number of deaths, is to the numerate at least quite reasonable.
There is a lot of sectarian violence in Baghdad (or there was, recent reports show it dropping quite dramatically, although it is too early to tell for sure yet) and the remnants of al Qaida are still active, although under heavy pressure in Anbar.
It is by no means a satisfactory situation and we have a great deal of work to do yet before it is, but why is there all this hysteria about disasters, quagmires, and how we have to scrape together whatever little dignity we can and make a last stand before we retreat? We believe we won the battle of Passchendaele, despite nearly half a million casualties in a little over three months, and now you have lost fewer in Iraq than you’ve lost some years in peactime, and you’re all in a panic.
The political situation there is undoubtedly difficult, and if people lose patience with the process it could still all go to rats, but at the moment the Iraqis seem quite optimistic, and the main actual threat to the process at least until the next US presidential election seems to be coming from the Democrats, and even they seem to be backing off some of their earlier threats.
I cannot, by any means, guarantee that things are going to work out. It will be some years yet before we know. But so far as I can see, things are going in the right direction, and a lasting peace is at least feasible.
Now, besides the usual screeching of the anti-war lefties and the MSM, can you tell me why are you so confident the entire theatre is messed up?
Next, why do you find a contradiction between the other groups in Iraq getting tired of the troublemakers and turning on them, and the unwisdom of arming teenaged religious fanatics from a cult that likes to beat themselves with metal spikes? I mean that they would turn on them politically, and tolerate the government taking them out. With what? With the police and to some degree the Iraqi Army of course. While there was indeed no police in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, there is quite a large Iraqi police force now. You arrest them, or if they pose a danger and won’t let themselves be arrested, you kill them. I think they did more or less the same to the mobsters in America, too.
And while military means can do more than keep the problem under control, the ultimate answer is the political one, when people understand that they’re best of doing it the civilised way, and that crime will no longer profit them.
OK, let’s go back to the previous post now, where I was being “fundamentally irrational”. This I think was provoked by the relatively simple claim that terrorists do terrorism because it wins concessions and status from us, and because they believe that we will surrender to them if they’re determined enough. It is like kidnapping for ransom – if you pay the ransom, everybody will see an opportunity for profit, and next week you’ll be faced with three more kidnappings, and so on. Whereas if you send the special forces in to kill everybody in sight, or at the very least don’t pay the ransom, well even the dimmest of kidnappers will soon realise it’s a pointless activity.
The problem with terrorism is because we’ve been paying the ‘ransoms’. Slugs like Yasser Arafat got to sit at the top table, billions are paid out to totalitarian regimes, we grant favours and trade deals and roll out the red carpet to people who are worse than serial killers. And ultimately, they get themselves a better deal when it comes time to settle up. They would be fools not to take advantage! And of course the only way to stop it is to stop paying, and persuade them that we really mean it.
It requires no impossible proofs of negatives, only political commitment fully understood and supported by the people. So long as you guys keep giving the impression you think the way to reduce terrorism is to negotiate with them, to be nice to them, perhaps even to surrender and do what they want (which in the case of Islamism is to let them take over the world), the terorrism will continue.
And if, as you say, they can hold out longer than you; then you’ve already lost. You had might as well start teaching your kids Arabic, because they’re going to need it as dhimma under the new Caliphate.
You repeat the common anti-war story that we know Saddam had nothing to do with al Qaida. Not true. There is a certain amount of evidence Saddam made a number of diplomatic contacts with al Qaida, provided them with documents and resources, and allowed them to set up terrorist training camps in Iraq. Probably not enough for a court full of “human rights” lawyers, but enough that it is more credible than not. And there are more terrorist groups in the world than al Qaida and Saddam definitely and openly had his finger in many of their pies. It is true that there is no evidence Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, which is what it is usually conflated with, but that is a very different point.
Your other bit about thinking I said you could disarm the population – I didn’t say that, and the reason I said that the argument had already been lost was because having been armed it was now too late. All I was saying was that it was a bad idea. Warlords don’t disarm their rivals, they either recruit them or kill them. You join one of the gangs, or you find yourself in a gang of one and promptly die.
By the way, you still do have quite a lot of support from 9/11. Your supporters can do their best to help you by doing so quietly, however. I don’t think that those who have fallen away ever really supported you; they just had to say they did until an excuse to back away presented itself. The French were officially on Hitler’s side in WWII, with the Vichy government, and yet we count them now as having been on the victors’. There are still people in Europe who support you and will fight on your side.
My apologies for the misquote. Your actual statement was that “it is about building political coalitions” and that “To go in guns blazing and kill all the bad guys is too clean and easy a solution;” and Perry was pointing out that you can’t do that without solving the underlying problems.
I do not know where Perry stands on arming the rest of (in other words the law abiding part of) the population. I suspect he would be in favor of it, but that is only my guess.
I think Perry is unduly optimistic if he thinks we can find the terrorists, I think you are euphorically optimistic if you think the police are the solution. If police can not stop even spontaneous street crimes in the UK, how do you think police can stop premeditated attacks? But it is reassuring to see from one of your links about their efforts to bring law to the nation, “It is reaching out to deal with other aspects of mess and to counter relatively ‘benign’ violations-like breaking the ‘odd and even’ traffic rule, defensive irregular roadblocks and unlicensed kiosks and stalls” Lord knows, we mustn’t let people sell things without the proper authorizations. Hhmmm… Isn’t this the British method of fighting serious crime? Glad to see Iraqis have adopted it. I’m sure it will effect their crime trends the same way it is effecting yours.
There is a sure way to made me quite confident that everything will work out. What is necessary is the Israeli method of arming the victims. As we will never be able to make the mid-east a ‘gun-free’ zone, we need to make sure the bad guys don’t have a monopoly on the tools of self defense.
Well, for one thing, the war in Afghanistan has been turned into a war on drugs.
For two, we are implementing top down control and vesting all power in political institutions. While that can create the appearance of peace, it is not stable.
For another, we simply don’t have the money for anything. You can say our government is making bad choices over what to go in debt over, but unless you can figure out how to cut social spending in the US, you have to acknowledge that we are running out of money and credit.
And besides that, by my math the US is paying out $1732 per capita on military spending and the UK is paying $843. Less than half. So your denials of our financial situation and suggestions that all we lack is willpower have a hollow ring to them.
And I guess the steady escalation in the number of civilians dead is (for us inumerate) just another sign of how things are improving?
And you are still playing word games. I said:
Which you restated as:
Now, I ask you based on this one (of many) conflicted pictures you hold, who’s picture of the people of Iraq is pessimistic? Your’s or mine? And the assumption implicit in your statement is that those “religious fanatics” do not already have weapons of all kinds. You need to substantiate that claim.
The implicit assumption in that statement is that they are not opposed to the violence now and we have to poitically inspire them to tolerate “the government taking them out”? Pa, your arguments and assumptions they are based on are so internally contradictory that it is an exhausting exercise to step you through them. In this case, it sounds like you are proposing a civil war between armed government on one side, and armed jihadists on the other, with the people going to ballot boxes to choose the winner. I still don’t understand, what is this great terror, and I’ve found it in other contexts, that you have against allowing people to defend themselves. As long as you insist on a government monopoly on personal defense, combined with the democratic majority selecting that government, there will be either civil war or tyranny of the majority.
Ah, yes. The Prohibition. That worked. Seriously, what does work in this country is civilian participation in law and order. The only time in years I called the police for help (a potentially rabid animal) they wanted me to go get one of my guns and shoot it. You really don’t understand a society that is permitted to defend itself.
You mean like stop buying oil?
My pessimism comes not from the situation in Iraq. It is as good as can be expected, all factors considered. Maybe even a little better. My pessimism comes from ‘plans’ like yours that are what we realistically must expect will and are be attempted by our ‘leaders’*. I read the Iraq constitution and I see a hopelessly conflicted Euro style document that contains everybody’s demands. Even though they are totally in contradiction. When I find out that grandmas in the market places are packing heat, my confidence will skyrocket. When I find out that some rich and politically connected foreign investor had to find a different factory location because there was no eminent domain for the ‘public good’, I’ll feel some bliss.
You measure success by a reduction in symptoms. I measure it by a reduction in the causes. And for now, all of the causes (and most of the symptoms) are still in place.
The first (post 9/11) war in Afghanistan was the right way to face terrorist supporters. The second (drug) war in Afghanistan and Gulf II are not. Your irrational insistence that the Gulf II way is the only way and that if I don’t understand that then I “might as well start teaching … kids Arabic, because they’re going to need it as dhimma under the new Caliphate” is just another case of ‘let’s negotiate to do it my way’.
You like to ignore my repeated (in many times and places) statements that we must win this war and insist that if I don’t want to do it your way I am either a defeatist or anti-war. And you have deteriorated to arguing like Euan Gray, with perpetual mistatements of your opponents words and claims. I said Jordan has more to do with Syria than Saddam had to do with Al Qaeda. You change this into an entirely different statement and then attack the statement you pretend I made.
I have little stomach for seeing us create another Saudi Arabia or Iran. That is what our present methods will achieve. As long as we keep a big stick aimed at their heads, they will be like Saudi Arabia or the Shah’s Iran. As soon as we drop the stick, we will have an Ayatollahs Iran.
The only battles I have the stomach for are either those that are defending my turf, (and this one has horribly botched that goal, Afghan and Gulf I did it much much better) or spreading the concept of individual life liberty and property. Gulf II is also badly botching that. But in both categories, some hope can still be held out.
*I have a hard time calling people who follow the Nielsen, Zogby, Times etc polls, “leaders”, hense the scare quotes.
Mmmm. Much better.
Let’s see now. No, I don’t think the police are the solution, they are only part of the solution, as they are anywhere else. You rely on self-interest and social institutions to keep most people from wanting to be bad guys, and the police assist the citizenry in mopping up the rest, as much as they can. I’m not sure what you mean by the police not being able to stop spontaneous street crime in the UK – they do stop some street crime, and they cannot stop all of it. The same can be said, of course, for any anti-crime measure, including arming the citizens. Your sarcasm against people selling things without authorisation is misplaced – the stated reason for getting rid of them is that they block the street for the emergency services. That doesn’t sound totally unreasonable to me.
We’ve discussed the idea of arming the populace before, and I don’t intend to pursue the whole thread again except to note, as I did there, that I have no great terror of people having guns. I simply don’t think it’s a solution – it neither increases nor decreases the incidence of crime, and if it does anything, it simply increases the stakes. Arming the victims is a fine goal, if you can figure out which ones they are. You cannot simply limit it to the victims. If you’re going to have guns, and guns are indeed freely available and widely bought in Iraq, then you will inevitably also give them to the fruitcakes. And while most people will only carry them for self defence, the fruitcakes will use them offensively and without provocation, and they will not be discouraged by the threat of armed response for the simple reason that they are fruitcakes.
The idea of restricting gun ownership is not to stop people defending themselves (which it wouldn’t do anyway since guns are of little to no use for self-defence), but to try to apply some sort of vetting to limit the fruitcakes who will abuse them getting hold of them. In a society like America where fruitcakes are comparatively rare, universal gun ownership is not so much of an issue. Hand them out to the kiddies to stop playground bullying, why don’t you. But in Iraq, I’m not so sure they’re ready for it. But like I said, that’s where we’re already at, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The fanatics have lots of guns, and they have used them to enforce reigns of extortion, torture, and murder.
OK, your gun argument is a reasonable one, even if I disagree. The point about not buying oil is not. We don’t buy oil to stop terrorism, except indirectly in the sense that we want the trade that goes with non-terrorist friendly relations to look attractive to them. You know perfectly well that what I meant was defeatism and appeasement and negotiating in response to threats of violence. And of course I didn’t mean Prohibition, I meant that the principle means of dealing with the mob isn’t vigilante citizens hunting them down. And although I can understand how you might have interpreted it that way, the implicit assumption in my statement isn’t that they’re not opposed to violence, it is that they are opposed to the government executing or jailing political opponents; and that while they don’t like their violent connections, they see it only as a power play where a renunciation of violence is to be exchanged for more influence. Only if they can be convinced that it isn’t, or that the price is too high, will they sanction more lethal sanctions.
Now we come to your reasons for pessimism, and an oddball lot they appear. You don’t like the Constitution, because it seeks to address everyone’s demands. I can’t presume you mean you want one that only addresses one party’s demands and stuffs all the rest, so presumably you believe there is some absolute, ideal Constitution made up of timeless principles that they should have understood instinctively. And if the local people didn’t agree with your selection of timeless principles, well, you’d just have to make them for their own good. I’ll freely grant that I am putting words in your mouth here, but that’s because I can’t understand the words you say.
We jump from this to grandmas packing heat as the solution. OK, suppose I told you that grandmas were indeed packing heat on the street. And now I’ll ask you how grandma is supposed to respond to half a dozen mehdi army idiots with AK47s and RPGs who have set up a roadblock ahead? Pull her gun out, do a side roll into cover, and start plugging away? How does she respond to a suicide bomber or an IED? How does she deal with all the dead idiots’ friends coming round to say hello later on? The nutters are well-used to fighting people with guns. You really think they will be greeted by clouds of bullets everywhere they go from heat-packing grandmas? 🙂
Well, that was pretty amusing, but now we find another reason you’re concerned about Iraq’s chances is that they have eminent domain for rich foreigners. My, that’s almost anti-Capitalist, isn’t it? I would imagine that if anything the problem is the opposite, and that with low unemployment, the locals would welcome a bit of foreign investment and new business, and might be inclined to grease a few palms to see that it comes their way. But even if it isn’t, eminent domain will stand little chance against all your factory workers getting shot with the guns everyone has. You’ll note that when the fruitcake muttawa want the local liquor shop to shut down, they don’t use bureaucracy and eminent domain to do it.
After your humorous interlude, you start getting sensible again. That Afghanistan has turned into a drugs war is a sensible point. There are reasons for trying to stop the opium trade besides a puritan dislike of drugs – principally that the proceeds fund the warlords – but I agree that it is a problem they haven’t fixed. I’m glad you liked the first part of the Afghan campaign, although I’d suggest such a measure is only temporary unless you can get the country on its feet again. The Taliban openly stated that all they were doing is fading into the population until the Americans were gone. The moment you turn your back, it’ll take them about two or three years to put it back the way it was. That’s why you have to hang around and fix things and set up a solid economy.
And now you’re back to calling me irrational again. I’m not insisting that Gulf II is the only way to do it, I’m insisting that it is a way to do it, that so far it is working, and is not a disaster in progress as claimed. Furthermore, I am claiming that it is the claims that it is a disaster that are fuelling the attacks, because they believe that if you think it is a disaster, you’ll be more inclined to give up. If you had said things are going OK but they could be going better, I might be more sympathetic.
I take your point that you are proposing an alternative way of fighting rather than giving up, but if so, then you are saying in effect that they can’t hold out longer than you because you intend to keep fighting longer than they will. I’ll agree with that, but it isn’t quite what you first said.
I’m not the only one here making mistatements of my opponents words and claims, either. I hope I’m generally either doing it because the claims are not clear, or sometimes for comic effect. 🙂
I’d like to thank you for going into your reasons for your pessimism in more detail. I still don’t understand, but I understand more than I did, and I’ve clearly misunderstood some of your points. I’m glad that in your last line you say some hope can still be held out, and that you intend to fight on. I’m still not sure what your alternative idea is, other than arming grandmas in the style of the first Afghan campaign, but it is a much happier position than the claim that we’re currently losing. Here’s to victory. 🙂
Pa, your lastest comment is so full of wrong assumptions, most of which you apparently don’t even realize you are making, that I’ll see if I have the patience to work through some of them tomorrow.
Among other things, it’s downright amusing getting lectured by you of all people on how law abiding gun owners effect a society. You really don’t have a clue.
For one thing, if “half a dozen mehdi army idiots with AK47s and RPGs” set up shop anywhere near where I live, they would have an amazingly finite life expectancy. Even body armor is not much good in a neighborhood full of deer hunters wearing turkey camo using camouflaged communication to send text messages and pictures back and forth, shooting what in the army would be considered sniper rifles. People around here have everything from Winchester carbines to Weatherby magnums scoped for hunting bighorn sheep. Of course night vision equipment is owned by quite a few people, and being generally third and forth generation residents, we know the area better than any infiltrating terrorists ever would. We would certainly pin them down long enough for police or guard troops to arrive.
Something very similar would happen when terrorists attempt to set up operations in neighborhoods in Iraq. Only Iraqi civilians might be better equipped than we are. People know who belongs and who to watch. The bad guys are armed and will remain armed. Any fantasy you have of an Iraq bad guy without a gun is a pure fantasy. Giving weapons out can only help the good guys.
You just really are so numbed to the truth of communities that take responsibility for themselves and each other that it twists your entire meta-context (bonus point word). I’ll have another look tomorrow and see if it’s even worth answering. But you are going to have to give up this belief that any bad guys in Iraq are unarmed.
I don’t have a belief that any bad guys in Iraq are unarmed, and I haven’t said that I have. But that aside…
Your description of a community pulling together to keep out intruders, safeguard its residents, and shorten the lifespan of its enemies is a good one. Excellent, in fact. That’s exactly what the Mehdi Army is!!!
The bad guys are local. They know the terrain and the residents. And the intruders they are keeping out are the hated members of other sects, rivals from other gangs – sorry, ‘communities’, – anyone living in the area who doesn’t act like they’re “on side” if you know what I mean. And stupid Americans who think that ethnic cleansing and turf wars are a bad thing and try to get in the way. For residents the rule is that you join the gang, or they assume you’re a traitor. And they run the city.
Let’s consider your example in America. Imagine for a moment that you’ve set up your Republican (say) neighbourhood watch scheme, and there’s a little old lady from the nearby Democrat district come to do her shopping. Aaaah! Ain’t she sweet! OK, so she’s a Democrat, but she’s a little old lady and therefore by definition totally harmless, so you’re going to let her through your anti-Democrat roadblock. But what’s this? She appears to be packing heat! What does a little old lady need with such a big gun? Could she be up to no good? Everybody knows the rumour goes those unscrupulous bad guys over there are using women and children to conduct their attacks; are you really going to let her walk around where your families live with a loaded gun tucked into her knickers? And so it goes…
Much of the trouble in Baghdad is precisely because of local militias such as you describe who have a somewhat broader view of who poses a risk to their community, conducting raids and reprisals againsts each other, and driving out anyone who doesn’t fit in. The other communities to which those persecuted people belong respond in kind.
I think your critical error was when you said “how law abiding gun owners effect a society.” My argument is that many of the communities are not law abiding, if they see the law as not aligned with or effective at defending their own ethnic, tribal or religious group’s interests.
Now, it’s quite likely that much the same sort of attitude would prevail even if they didn’t have guns. The guns are not the cause of the mutual hostility and suspicion. The insurgents fighting the Americans by attacking Iraqis are. But I’d humbly suggest to you that even with everybody armed to the teeth, the guns have not provided a solution.
Your move. 🙂
Well, it doesn’t sound totally unreasonable to me, either. Just highly suspicious. I am more than a little suspicious of a regulating authority’s stated reasons for what they do.
You are ignoring a lot of research by reputable statisticians that meets all of your Bayesian probabilities. And how can you say anything increases the stakes when armed bad guys are killing unarmed good guys?
Regarding your whole analysis of ‘fruitcakes’. Law abiding citizens are the first to lose guns and ‘fruitcakes’ if by that you mean people with violent tendencies, are about the last to give them up. These people are not rare in America. They simply don’t introduce guns into their interpersonal interactions.
More strawman, Pa. I clearly said “man and woman”.
Well then, heaven forbid we let peaceful citizens defend themselves.
You also demonstrate a basic misunderstanding of how we fund terrorism. The world oil market is one big pool. It doesn’t matter who we buy oil from, unless we can prevent a nation from selling their oil to anyone, our purchases drive up the price world wide and cause the terrorist sponsoring nation to profit from our purchases.
Well, you are partly right. But when the mob comes to us, armed defenders are far more likely to make some Darwinian adjustments to the DNA pool.
I have a hard time believing you are a mathematician sometimes. That constitution doesn’t address everyone’s demands. It addresses nobody’s. It is internally contradictory. If not fixed, that is a terminal flaw.
Actually, yes. But if they understood them instinctively I doubt we would have any need to be there. Of course I believe there are “timeless principles” and a certainly more ideal constitution. If we don’t have anything to offer, WTF are we doing there? We could just get out and bomb them into the dark ages everytime they do something naughty. If we are going to stay in there and try to build a nation, then we had better have an idea of what we are building.
This mess the way we are handling it now suggests of parents offering children sharp knives to play with. The sharp knives being the possibility that they can rule each other. First you want us to stay and guide them, and then you come up with this pure relativism that we mustn’t judge how they want to build the government.
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Pa, I took a break, then came back and looked at your comment again in it’s entirety and realized something that should have been no surprise to me. You have no principles. You have stated this often enough but I never quite believed it. Everything is relative for you. Everything is up for negotiation if a better pay-off comes along.
As someone who does have principles and does look at long term consequences of short sighted plans, I have no common ground to discuss this with you. I can carry on a discussion with someone who has the same principles but different ideas than mine. I can carry on a discussion with someone who has different principles but the same goals as mine. I cannot search out how to implement good principles with someone who doesn’t believe in them.
You have repeatedly in our various discussions derided the idea that there is anything that is absolutely right or wrong and defended the idea that the best systems are the results of compromises between different goals.
___________
I read your last post, got as far as “The bad guys are local” and decided not to answer bother over it either. The Sunnis terrorists are not members of the Shia communities they are terrorizing. If they were, are the population would solve the problem instantly. The Shia terrorists likewise are not members of the Sunni communities they are terrorizing. etc.
Sources I’ve read say your Mehdi army has and is infiltrating those police you place so much confidence in, and this is precisely what I predict will continue to happen and escalate. Your granny-who-is-going-to-attack-a-roadblock-all-by-herself ‘example’ doesn’t even reach as high as sophistry. It is either an admission that your police can’t find it and do anything about roadblocks, or more likely deliberate bad faith on your part.
And mostly it is an example that you are a raving Green when it comes to ‘more government/less rights is the solution to personal safety’. By that I mean you have your answer and you will distort, deny, falsify and do whatever it takes to defend it.
You need to find where a particular Euan went and go keep him company. I think he is your soul mate.
You have no principles. You do not believe in them.
Without irony, I can say that’s a lot better. You seem to be back to your usual form. However, I still don’t agree. 🙂
You say things like: “And how can you say anything increases the stakes when armed bad guys are killing unarmed good guys?” and “Well then, heaven forbid we let peaceful citizens defend themselves.” Those are strawmen. I’m saying armed bad guys are killing armed good guys – the situation in Iraq is exactly what you are asking for: anyone who wants a gun can get one. I have no objection to peaceful citizens defending themselves. I am simply pointing out that the other consequence of general gun availability is that has also allowed the bad guys to defend themselves from the good guys, assuming one can even label them as good and bad like that.
Looking back on the argument, I am beginning to suspect the reason you are having such difficulty reading what I say is that you simply cannot accept that the freedom to bear arms you are so keen on has led to the Mehdi Army’s intimidation, torture and murder. That these people have used exactly the methods you espouse for defending freedom to destroy it.
It is a bitter pill to swallow, and I don’t blame you for arguing. But I will say again: I don’t have any objection to good people defending themselves, but that isn’t how it works out when everyone can get guns and a significant number of people are not committed to peaceful restraint. I say again, the cause of the problem is not guns, but the guns are not making things any better. Baghdad is a perfect illustration of one possible outcome of gun freedom. It isn’t the only one, and America has different circumstances, but letting people have guns to defend themselves cannot possibly be a solution here because they can already have guns to defend themselves.
On the Iraqi Constitution – I would have said it was ambiguous rather than contradictory, and I’d also say such flexibility is a good thing. They’ve only just written it, and it will take a few years of amendments and interpretation to iron the bugs out. In the meantime, it is more important that it be universally accepted than that it be perfect, and for that purpose it seems fine. You evidently have a different opinion, and that’s fine with me, but don’t accuse me of being inconsistent in my beliefs.
And now for the most interesting bit of the discussion: on principles.
I do in fact have strong principles, as everybody else does, but you are right in identifying a fairly fundamental difference between our beliefs about those principles. You are quite correct in saying that I do not believe there is any such thing as objective absolute morality. I am quite surprised that you still thought I secretly did.
The distinctions I make are quite subtle, and it appears you persist in misunderstanding them. I’m not sure if this is because I am not being clear, or because it conflicts so fundamentally with your beliefs that you cannot allow yourself to consider the possibility. If the latter, we have no hope of understanding, but I’ll try to explain again anyway.
I consider morals to be analogous to language. Within any one language, there are absolute rules that are jointly agreed; there is clearly such a thing as an ungrammatical sentence, and I cannot make it otherwise by simply believing it to be so. At the same time, there are clearly other languages, and even within a language there have been changes over time, so it is clear that there is no such thing as a universal, absolute timeless language. There is no objective absolute way of determing what the “true” word for anything is. When God said “Let there be light”, he probably wasn’t speaking in English. (If anything, he was speaking in mathematics, but that’s another story.)
This is not the same as saying language is negotiable, or that you can unilaterally redefine it on a whim, or that you can mix words and grammar from different languages freely and claim it makes sense. The same applies to morals. Good and evil are not negotiable. But at the same time, other people can genuinely see them differently.
I am an English speaker and I hold to a moral system that values liberty, but I also understand that other people speak different languages, and can value different things. I personally think English is better, and it would make communication much easier if everyone in the world spoke it, and the same goes for my moral beliefs, but I also understand that this is at least partly the result of where I stand. Morally, I grant no right for other people to believe differently, but I accept that they do.
You, I feel, are more like someone who has only ever known English speakers, and holds to Victorian manuals on proper grammar and style as a bulwark against the corruption of clear understanding. Why, if you let people get away with sloppy grammar, before long we will descend into mutual incomprehensibility; eventually reduced to grunts! You cannot understand how anyone would not want to speak English, and on visiting a foreign country you feel it your duty to teach them how to speak it.
It is a fine goal, which I applaud. I merely question whether an insistence on instantaneous and complete and fluent adoption is the best approach. And indeed whether it is even possible.
Now in your last bit you seem to be acusing me of pushing the police and the state as the solution to the problem. Since I’ve explicitly said that I didn’t think they were, this would appear to be another strawman.
The solution, as I have said, is for the people (at every level in society) to negotiate agreed ways of working together – compromises, voluntary restraint, honouring agreements; in short, politics. Those agreements take a long time to forge, and in the meantime there is going to be friction. The police and army may take out many of those who will never agree, on behalf of the people, when the people collectively agree that further negotiation with them is futile, but that is just one aspect of the means that will be used, and not an essential.
It would be counterproductive for us to try to impose solutions, agreements, or even morals upon them – partly because we do not have the power, but mostly because it would be wrong to do so. I hope they choose wisely, and pick morals like my own. I would consider the project a failure if they do not. But I cannot advocate that they be made to believe as I do because that would violate my own principles.
The morals of a society are built from the bottom up in the way everyone interacts with their neighbours, and they only change ponderously. But the Iraqis are learning from us fast – there is hope for them yet.
Our differences our beyond understanding, much less resolution. We truly live in different worlds. An example I’ve used in the past is a hummingbird and a hummingbird most. They are almost indistinguishable to the casual observer, yet the don’t even belong to the same phylum.
As there is hardly a paragraph in your comment that I could let go unchallanged, I see no point. We will meet again on many threads and the differences in our perspectives and meta-context will continue to help me clarify my thought. Perhaps you may find a similar benefit, I don’t know.
‘most’ should be ‘moth‘