Racist? Really?

This is the absurb depth to which we've sunk during this campaign. A little girl wears a Sarah Palin t-shirt to school and is branded a "racist" by some of her classmates.

I could launch into a polemic about how this came to be, what it says about the current state of American politics, and bemoan the implications for the future of our country. Instead of all that, tho, I'll just say . . . sad. Very, very sad. And utterly ridiculous.

Conventional Wisdom

The major political conventions have been and gone. Time to reflect on what we've learned.

Conventions, as the soundbite has it, are these days highly scripted events. There were no real surprises at either one. But they're still instructive, as they give us a chance to see the candidates make major speeches in front of huge audiences. You can get a glimpse of the real personalities in those moments.

Michelle Obama was very impressive. Many politicos are very obviously reading when they give speeches. Not Ms Obama. She sounded like she was talking, not speechifyin'. Her voice fairly trembled with passion in spots and she came across as very earnest. Too bad she's not actually running for anything . . .

Barack Obama demonstrated again that he gives good speech. Not quite at the Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan level, but very natural and warm. Alas, watching him in other venues suggests that he can do this only when working from prepared material. Speaking off the cuff, he tends to "umm" and "aahh" a lot and hesitate a whole lot more. He's stiff, in other words. Nevertheless, he remains well able to stir a crowd and it's not hard to see how he inspires people. Content-wise, well, it was a convention speech and as such full of boilerplate. Nothing particularly memorable, but solid and touching on just about all of the points that needed touching upon. And, as is usual these days, short on actual substance. He's going to do thus-and-such when elected, but we're not told how he'll do it, or what magic he will use to bring opposing (partisan) interests together, or where the money to fund his programs will come from.

Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, brings badly needed experience to the ticket but somewhat undercuts the "hope and change" mantra due to being such a classic Washington insider. Biden's speech was the speech of a party hack, to be blunt. Gives the impression that he'll be used as the attack dog for the balance of the campaign, allowing Obama to stay at least partially above the fray. But Biden is also a known quantity in Washington, and the choice of him as running mate brings a degree of balance to the ticket . . . neophyte change agent Obama teamed with experienced knows-where-all-the-bits-go Biden makes an attractive package to many potential voters. It's something old and something new, the promise of shaking things up leavened with the reassurance of not shaking things up so much that they fall apart.

On the Republican side, the major story is of course McCain's out-of-left-field selection of Governor Sarah Palin as VP. Timed perfectly to steal Obama's momentum coming out of the Democratic convention, the Palin announcement has reportedly electrified the conservative base, something McCain on his own had almost completely failed to do.

As an aside, the impact of the announcement and the start of the Republican convention was nearly torpedoed by Hurricane Gustav in a "you can't make this stuff up" bit of nearly flawless timing. Amusing that what the McCain team did to Obama by design was almost done to them in turn by act of God.

Anyway, Palin would seem a very odd choice for VP. She takes away McCain's best weapon against Obama, which is the younger man's lack of experience. Any such charge now levelled against Obama immediately boomerangs back on Team McCain thru the obvious lack of experience of a less-than-one-term governor of a relatively small (population-wise, at least) state. The counterpoint to that, tho, is that every time Obama says "I have all the tools I need to be President", Palin can say the same thing, since she's got a good deal more executive experience than has Obama.

The McCain-Palin team is almost a mirror image of the Obama-Biden team. McCain is the Washington insider, despite his oft-repeated claim to being a maverick. Governor Palin is the brash young reformer from Outside, balancing McCain's age and political hack-ness with her youth and uncorrupted outside-the-beltway credentials. Palin is also, very likely, the future of the Republican party. She and a few other up-and-coming new faces (like Governor Bobby Jindal from Louisiana) are the emerging leaders of the next generation.

The two teams mirror in another way as well. Palin gave an outstanding speech when she accepted the Republican nomination, showing poise and sincerity. McCain gave a McCain speech, which is to say, nothing special. Except at the very end when he seemed to really reach inside for some passion. And pardon me for saying, but can the man give one speech without reminding us that he was a POW in VietNam? He mentions it every time he's in front of the cameras, it seems like. While his experiences in VietNam are undoubtedly an important part of his background, and in fact a much more telling glimpse of his character than anything any of the other major players has shown us, he's sort of beating it into the ground and robbing the story of its impact.

The selection of Palin makes the overall Presidential race much more interesting, which may be the governor's major contribution to the whole deal. Well, that and making the Vice-Presidential debate pretty much a no-win situation for Joe Biden . . . he can't attack her too harshly without seeming like he's "beating up a woman" and if he shows the least bit of defensiveness he risks looking like he's being beaten up by a woman. And so far, Palin gives an impression of confidence which suggests that Biden is going to be in for a tough time at the debate.

The real story, obviously, is still the contest between McCain and Obama, as interesting as the VP face-off might be. I personally don't think McCain has enough of a base to win, even with Palin. I think the Obama juggernaut is going to steamroller right in to the White House come November. There are just too many people out there who are sick to death of business-as-usual in Washington and hold the opinon that Obama is the guy to shake things up. So I still project Obama to be our next President.

It's Been Such a Long Time . . . It's Been Such a Very Long Time

Quite a while since the last post. Well over a month. Much has happened.

Barack Obama is of course the presumptive Democratic nominee for President. I believe he will win. McCain has a good record of service but he feels old and tired. His moment was 2000, not 2008. Obama is putting out a message of "change" which, even tho it's not actually defined very well, is bringing people into his camp. And since he is relatively young and not fully assimilated by the Washington political culture, he may be able to deliver. We'll see in November.

Oil prices have skyrocketed. The economy, already battered by the housing industry implosion, is looking like it's headed towards a recession. President Bush announced the opening of formerly-restricted areas to oil drilling and that's having a somewhat calming effect on prices, at least for the moment. Realistically, the only long-term fix to this problem is to move off of the oil standard entirely. There are measures that can be taken, and we're seeing some stuff already happening as the market adjusts itself. The big American car manufacturers are scaling back or ceasing production of oversized, inefficient vehicles like SUVs and there are plans for more hybrids. Small cars are coming into demand again as short-sighted American consumers finally have reason to think about fuel efficiency. At least one manufacturer has announced a hydrogen-powered car for near-future production.

Of course, the more government interferes with the market, the worse things will get. One has only to look at the ethanol subisdy business to see how easily good intentions can fall victim to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The situation in Iraq continues to improve. Only the most foaming-at-the-mouth of the reality-impaired can now deny the success of the "surge" strategy. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is not going so well. Too many resources being directed to the Iraqi theater means not enough is being done in Afghanistan. Still, the situation remains controllable. One hopes that the next President doesn't suffer an attack of extreme foolishness leading to a precipitous action like a sudden withdrawal from Iraq before things are sufficiently stable.

The recent Heller decision by the Supreme Court, altho flawed, nevertheless established the Second Amendment as an individual right. Of course, this was patently obvious to anyone with more than a sixth-grade command of the english language all along, but it's nice to have it made official. The DC government, as is the habit of entrenched liberals, is trying its best to ignore or circumvent the court's decision. I forsee several more legal challenges to DC's grossly unconstitutional gun laws in the near future. Meanwhile, it seems likely that several other cities with such rubbish on their books will also see their attempts to trample the rights of their citizens challenged on the basis of Heller.

The FISA legislation was passed by Congress. This of course is damaging to our freedoms, being yet another short-sighted attempt to provide security at the cost of essential liberties, and we all know the famous quote regarding such things. I believe it's time to show Congress that We The People aren't going to tolerate their nonsense any longer and vote the lot of them out of office. However, I have no realistic expectation that this will happen. There are too many knee-jerk voters out there who would vote for Satan so long as old Scratch had the right letter in front of his name. And everyone always seems to think that, altho Congress is doing a poor job, their own guy is just fine and they keep sending him back.

No profound insights this time, I'm afraid. Just some random thoughts and observations.

Stuck in an Old Groove

Some things never change. Case in point: the missile defense program the US has been pursuing since the 1980's has matured into a robust, successful effort which is now almost ready for operational deployment. But some folks apparently haven't gotten the message. This, for example, is just sad.

That Congressman Tierney and Mr. Flynn can even draft such a paen to ignorance is astonishing. The Congressman I can almost understand . . . he's simply spouting the same tired nonsense that's been coming from the Left on the topic of missile defense since Reagan first announced the program. Mr. Flynn, tho, is described as a "senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The Edge of Disaster." " Surely someone in that sort of position should be better informed.

Somehow these two have managed to overlook the multitude of successful tests conducted by the Navy over the past few years, not to mention the recent successful shoot-down of that errant satellite over the Pacific. To trot out the threadbare old line "a system that still has yet to be realistically tested and may never be operationally effective" in 2008 is to be either abysmally ignorant or willfully blind.

At least they manage to point out some things that are true - terrorists most likely wouldn't use a missile to deliver a nuke, for example - but they also ignore the very real threat from rogue states like North Korea and Iran. The claim is made that "Only Great Britain, France, Russia, and China join the United States in having intercontinental missiles." Apparently these gentlemen are unaware of the burgeoning spread of ballistic missile technology around the globe. Remember when North Korea launched one over Japan a couple years ago? Maybe not intercontinental just yet, but certainly well on the way to getting there.

I will never understand, gentle reader, why so many of our own citizens seem horrified at the idea that we might find it necessary to defend ourselves. I can but shake my head ruefully.

Smokescreen

The Sunday talk shows today were all abuzz with the apparent dead heat between the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. At the moment, I'm still thinking Obama is going to take the nomination and the general election in November, but let's put that aside for now.

Interspersed throughout the commentary from various analysts and talking heads regarding what the Democrats are going to do to sort out their primary season before the convention, or indeed if they even can sort it out and avoid a convention battle, the name of John McCain was mentioned once or twice. The Republicans have of course already settled pretty conclusively on their nominee, and so the close match on the Democrat side is drawing all the press, since that's where the story is. One commentator even mentioned as a passing joke something along the lines of "Remember McCain? You know, the Republican candidate?"

And that's the point. Since there is such a close race between Clinton and Obama, and since there is so much fascinating stuff happening in that contest with the outcome not decided (and looking like it won't be decided until the convention), the Democrats are by default getting a huge share of media attention this year. Now, this could be a problem, but to be fair the story on the Democrat side is much more intriguing than on the Republican side. We've got the first serious woman candidate for President, and the first serious black candidate for the same office. Turnout in the primaries and caucuses so far has reportedly been extremely heavy. The Republicans are running their ten trillionth variant of "old white guy" for office, so even if McCain is a solid choice, he's - let's face it - boring. He's not really news, at least not at this point.

The question in my mind is whether this situation is serving the greater public interest. Is the intense interest in the contest on the Democratic side generating extra "push" among voters to go that direction come November? In other words, is the simple fact that the battle between Clinton and Obama is both amazingly historical and intensely interesting tilting the national playing field towards the Democrats in general?

Or is this simply an artifact of the mainstream press and its well-known bias towards the Left? The chattering class and its various offshoots are, in general, much more likely to vote Democratic than Republican, and so naturally lean towards talking about the Democratic race more than the Republican one. Eight years of George Bush following eight years of Bill Clinton seems to have drastically polarized the country, due not in small measure to the emergence of twenty-four-hour cable news, talk radio, and the blogosphere during that same sixteen-year period. True? The possibility that this is not actually the case, and is a smokescreen unconsciously thrown up by the patterns of the media elites, seems real to me. The media no longer just report the news, in many cases they make the news, and if they bend to the left, the reporting will follow. Things that are barely visible in "flyover country" assume an aspect of huge importance in the media because the media is driven by a small group of interrelated interests who mostly share some common political biases.

American news coverage seems to have fallen into a subtle trap. The elites are concentrated on the coasts and in a couple of other (mostly urban) areas. In this self-created echo chamber, they constantly hear their own beliefs and opinions reinforced by those around them, leading to the conclusion that that's how everyone must feel. The "silent majority" in that dismissed-with-a-wave "flyover country" are viewed as misinformed at best and dangerously naive at worst, and also thought to be a much smaller percentage of the population than they actually are.

I don't know where the truth falls in all this. Media coverage of the Democratic race is heavy because the Democratic race is heavily interesting this time. But the biases of the press are known, documented, and actually rather obvious. Will this impact the general election in the fall? Is "media momentum" going to translate into votes? I don't even know if this can be teased out of the tremendous mass of statistical data generated by all the polling associated with an election. Especially if no-one is looking for it.

I do know that voting is still the single most important responsibility we bear as citizens. So whatever your beliefs, whoever your candidate, make sure to exercise that responsibility, gentle reader. Find the fulcrum on which your personal choice tilts and make your decision.

End of an Interval

Yep, another long interval between posts. Y'know, I really intended to do more writing on this blog when I started it. That doggone "real life" stuff always gets in the way.


Item: William F. Buckley Jr. has died. Buckley was a towering presence on the Conservative side of American politics. Altho I did not always agree with his positions, I found his writing to be of a superb calibre and he was often very amusing. His passing leaves a huge void among the voices of the Right.


Item: in keeping with my previously announced new feature, I'm now predicting that Barak Obama will be the next President. I think the Democratic convention is going to be an ugly battle between the Clinton and Obama camps, but in the end Obama's momentum from the primaries will carry him. Since John McCain seems to be a dead lock for the Republicans now (barring some revelation with more substance than the muckraking New York TImes was able to muster), I think Obama's youth, ability to inspire, promises of "change" (best not analyzed too closely, since he's really just a run-of-the-mill Democrat) and the historical weight of being the first serious black candidate for President will give him the edge come November.


Item: My online buddy Generik has somehow injured himself. Best wishes and hopes for a speedy recovery.


Item: Ralph Nader is jumping in again. There is much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth going on over Nader's announcement, altho I personally find it hard to believe that anyone but the most hard core of the reality-impaired will throw any votes his way this time. Memories of the 2000 campaign and Nader's spoiler role are too fresh. I doubt that those on the Left want to take the chance of throwing the election to the Republicans just to make a point this time.


As always, I've been wanting to comment on a lot of the stuff going on in the world, and as always, finding the time to do it is difficult. Ah well.

New Feature

Happy New Year!

Inaugurating a new feature here at Fulcrum Ruminations just in time for the 2008 elections, I'm going to toss out my prediction for President. I'll update this as events warrant. Bear in mind that this is very much a "gut feeling" and I'm not going to enumerate a long list of reasons for my pick. It's simply my take on the likely outcome based on a general reading of current media reporting.

Realizing that voting day is still 11 months away and many things can still change, right now I project that Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States.

What I'm Talking About

This blog post illustrates my general position on the nature of political debate in the blogosphere very neatly. A book review leads to drama. Oh, the humanity!

They're all mad, gentle reader. They bark and whine and fling poo at one another day and night. Egad.

Iraq In Review

The National Review Online, that is. I saw this link on Little Green Footballs today and found it interesting. It's often useful to consider something like the course of public reaction over the timespan of a given event, and this piece by Victor Davis Hanson sums up the public reaction to the vagaries of the Iraq war quite nicely.

Time Passages

Yes, now it's December and I still haven't posted anything.

When I started this blog, it was because I was dismayed at the hate and anger seen in blogs on the fringes of the political spectrum and wanted to provide some kind of counterbalance. A cool voice of moderation from the middle. And yet, since I began my modest little effort, it's become clear that what I considered the fringes are actually the dominant voices in the political blogosphere. Access to a pulpit has enabled the lunatics to take over the asylum, as it were. You can watch both sides spin up over each story that comes along, one blog feeding back into another, into another, into another in a self-reinforcing cycle of apoplexy. Lost in the madness is any semblance of reality. Everything is pushed to its absurd extreme.

What's a lone voice of restraint in the midst of all that cacaphony?

The silly season is hard upon us, gentle reader. Both major political parties are trying to sort out their presidential candidates. It's almost like watching American Idol . . . you've got the ones who have a decent shot at the office, the ones who aren't quite ready, and then the hopeless dreamers. We're missing only a political Simon, Paula and Randy to sort the wheat from the chaff. I guess that's the role of the voters, but we'll see. We're watching a crop of mediocrity bloom in a field where we desperately need a harvest of greatness. I mean, really, are Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney the best we can do?

Iraq continues to make slow progress. Things are improving with the change in strategy and the surge. You have to watch this one extremely carefully to see what's actually going on, what with the spin on every event being completely off the dial, but if you pay attention you can see it happening. As I've said before, patience is the key to success.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, remains a battlefield no-one not directly involved with seems to be looking at. Progress there is slower than it should be, with Iraq distracting us from making a better effort.

Our President convinces me more every day that he's hopeless. Run out of steam. Lacking in "the vision thing." Fortunately, he's about done. It seems like he was trying to blow Iran up into some kind of crisis, but no-one is having it. Despite what you'll read in the left-leaning blogs, there's no attack on Iran coming any time soon, and that was true even before that inexplicable National Intelligence Estimate magically found Iran to be lacking in credible nuclear menace. I worry about that one . . . it's almost as if the intelligence community is overbalancing too far in the opposite direction after the Iraqi WMD debacle. I fear the price for seeing Iran in such a nonthreatening light is going to be a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.

I've wanted to write about all this stuff, to post my thoughts. But the motivation to actually sit here and do it, that's been hard to come by. So much stuff going on in my real life, what with renovating a house and a trip to Europe and work and everything. Blogging comes low on the priority list. This is because I, unlike some, do not view everything thru the lens of politics and I don't interpret each setback to my particular set of beliefs as The End Of The World As We Know It. I know that it's all on a pendulum. A swing one way is eventually balanced by a swing back the other, as the great levers of society pivot on their fulcrum.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack have an interesting piece titled "A War We Just Might Win" in the New York Times today. They're reporting on the situation in Iraq, and as suggested by my title, they've found a mix of conditions.

The good is that things in Iraq are going much better than is generally being reported here in the States (surprise, surprise). Here's a couple snippets to give you the gist of their position:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

And a bit later in the article:

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

This of course as congressional Democrats are salivating at the prospect of forcing a cut-n-run.

The bad is that progress on the Iraqi political front remains maddeningly slow and elusive. A quote:

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

Or in other words, the political situation remains fluid and fragile. Again, this illustrates that a precipitous withdrawal would be about the very worst course of action we could take. We pull out before the Iraqi leadership has properly sorted itself out, everything crumbles. Not good.

The ugly in all this is here in America, where the majority of our media still persist in seeing nothing but chaos and ruin in Iraq and our own none-too-reliable political leadership continues to demonstrate that they're much more concerned with getting themselves re-elected or scoring political points than they are with prosecuting this effort to a successful conclusion.

The reality-impaired community will of course spin any positive developments as ephemeral at best and part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy at worst. But the bottom line is that the situation is improving and the only thing required for victory is patience on our part.

Update: Interesting. Pollack was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer yesterday afternoon. I didn't get to see the entire segment, but Pollack said that the title of the piece I reference above was not his or O'Hanlon's, but rather came from the Times' editorial staff. I wonder if the Times was trying to use the somewhat-positive tone of the piece to refute some of their cheerleader-of-defeat reputation in the conservative press.

Reality Impaired

Ted Rall once again demonstrates the enlightened, tolerant, and progressive sensibilities of the Left.

I have no words adequate to describe the "what planet are you from?" mentality that puts forth such a clueless worldview.

Too Soon?

Yet another explosion of inexplicable violence. The campus of Virginia Tech thrown into panic and chaos by a deranged gunman. Over thirty people killed in cold blood. Said to be the worst such massacre in American history.

Take a moment, gentle reader, to pause and reflect on the lives so unfairly snuffed out. When the story first broke, did you think to yourself, if only for a moment, what if it's a terrorist attack? I did, tho it quickly became apparent that this was not Al Qaeda or some other shadowy terror group launching another assault.

Students and faculty, young and old. A survivor of the Holocaust. Innocents denied their future because one individual was wracked with a pain he could not assuage. It's sad. It requires some time to absorb. To come to grips with the awful truth of it. Our minds will spin and struggle to assign some meaning to it all, to understand why, even as we know deep inside that there is no "why", because we know that sometimes evil erupts onto our world without warning.

Sadly, tho, it seems that there was warning in this case. The killer left behind at least a year's worth of suspicious behaviour. Measures were contemplated but apparently never acted upon. And now it's too late.

Strangely, sadly, maddeningly, however, it would appear that it's not too soon for the incident to be turned into grist for the activist mills. The anti-gun crowd is already beginning to clamor about this being a reason to enact strict new gun control legislation. The pro-gun lobby is already launching countermeasures. You can read the papers, watch TV, surf the blogs, and already you can see the heat of the arguments ratcheting up.

Lost already are the human faces of those killed. Already seen not as people, not as lives cut short, but as political bargaining chips. Talking points. Banners under which to rally.

Stop it. Stop it, for the love of God. Your fellow citizens are dead. Murdered as they went about their daily affairs. Put aside your canned rhetoric and spin machines long enough to recognize what's happened and allow some dignity to attend the aftermath of this horror. Let the families and friends do their mourning, let the rest of us bow our heads in prayer or contemplation or just plain shock before you make this your latest grand crusade to change the world.

Decency compells us to allow nothing less. There will be a time for the debate, but that time is not now. For now, just remember and reflect.

Speaking Truth to Power

If only I had a dime for every time I’ve run across that phrase. So many public commentators make the claim that they’re “speaking truth to power” when in fact all that they’re doing is venting their spleens. It’s a thinly-disguised claim to informational / intellectual superiority . . . “if only you were as smart as me, you’d realize that I’m right and you’re wrong.”

Rubbish, of course. People have different opinions on various matters, but holding an opinion doesn’t mean that you’re “right” or that those who disagree with you are “wrong.” You might be right, or you might be wrong, but the automatic assumption that your view is the correct view is rooted not in logic and reason, but emotion and ego. The wise man knows that he must question his own assumptions at all times. Or, as I like to put it, cynicism keeps you alive in a hostile universe. You may hold tightly to a cherished view on a given topic, but you must always be ready to jettison that view should the weight of evidence prove it wrong. This is the difference between a realist and an ideologue, and there are entirely too many people out there who don’t appreciate that difference. The blogosphere is littered with them.

The Washington Post had an interesting little article about this the other day. The author is Shankar Vedantam and the piece is titled “Disagree About Iraq? You're Not Just Wrong--You're Evil.” You’ll need a (free) registration to read the whole article, but here’s a snippet to pique your interest:

"Partisans within ideological groups tended to view themselves as atypical vis-a-vis their group: atypical in their moderation, in their freedom from bias, and in their capacity to 'see things as they are in reality' even when that reality proves to be ideologically inconvenient or 'politically incorrect,' " Harvard Business School researcher Robert J. Robinson and his colleagues concluded.

Is that not the very essence of most political bloggers, right and left? In a way, it’s similar to what soldiers do during combat. They dehumanize their enemies in order to overcome the inhibition against killing their fellow man. The venomous bloggers out there do the same thing (tho of course without the killing part . . . I hope!), castigating all those who disagree with them with such charming names as “moonbat” and “wingnut”. Hurling invective rather than reasoned arguments. Dehumanizing, belittling, excoriating by insult and foul language. It’s not debate and it’s not even about being “right”. It’s about scoring the most points off of the other guy and self-aggrandizement. Make yourself feel better by making someone else feel bad.

This is elementary school behaviour. The pseudo-anonymity of the web empowers this sort of thing, much the same way that wrapping oneself in a couple tons of rolling steel empowers so many drivers, otherwise nice people, to act like complete jerks behind the wheel.

Some, of course, take it further than mere blogging. Witness the deranged ranting of Ann Coulter, for example, or Michael Moore. These persons are handy for keeping track of the extreme fringes or as entertainment, but should certainly not have any place in informed debate.

I’ve not been cruising the blogosphere all that long, but I have found simple civility to be sadly lacking in many of its corners.

Let’s try to do better, shall we?

Can America Still Win Wars?

Not a rhetorical question. Do we, as a nation, have the will to win wars any more?

Since the VietNam War ended, we have recast our military into a supremely lethal and effective force. The US Military is superbly designed and equipped for the task of shredding opposing militaries with frightening speed and efficiency. It's no exaggeration to say that our current armed forces probably constitute the most effective military in human history.

But what that describes is a force that wins battles, not one that wins wars. It's not enough to destroy opposing military formations. To win, one must seize and hold the enemy's territory, destroy the will to resist, and build some form of government in the defeated nation which can then maintain order. The classic example is what was done at the end of World War II, when massive armies of occupation garrisoned the defeated Axis powers as civil authority was restored and the nations were turned from enemies into allies.

Iraq is not working out that way. We kicked apart Saddam's armies easily enough (relatively speaking, of course . . . the victory was "easy" only by comparison to previous conflicts). But the force we sent was too small to effectively garrison the country once we'd destroyed the existing authority. As the conventional wisdom has it, mistakes were made. Assumptions were overly optimistic.

Now, the press would have you believe that the situation in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster, with chaos around every corner and failure the only sure outcome. But the commanders on the ground there report that efforts are succeeding, by and large, to contain the insurgency and restore the ability of self-governance. It's going slowly, there are setbacks, but the trend is towards success.

And yet the American public is turning against the effort. We're deciding that the cost in blood and treasure is too great, and the momentum for the cut-and-run continues to grow. What's needed is a larger number of troops to control the situation, continued infusions of aid in rebuilding civilian infrastructure, and training for Iraqi police and military units so that they can assume the normal duties of such organizations. All of this is in short supply.

At the end of the Cold War in the early 90s, we made the classic post-war mistake of democracies: we drew down our military too far and too fast. The result is a force that is relatively small given the size of our country and the missions we ask it to perform. As I noted above, it's an astonishingly capable force, but for the job of capturing whole countries, it's simply too small. We can destroy enemy militaries, but we can't impose order on the nations we have defeated. We have a force that wins battles and loses wars.

This is a perfectly fine arrangement so long as the missions undertaken are things like the Gulf War, or defeating a North Korean invasion of South Korea. However, when you engage in what amounts to wholesale conquest (and let's not be coy, that's what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan) you need a very large number of foot soldiers so that you can effectively police the country you've conquered. Previous empires have done this by co-opting the conquered into becoming members of the empire and policing themselves. The US, which despite the claims of the reality-impaired is in no way an empire, prefers to simply destroy or otherwise mitigate threats and then engage other nations with primarily economic means. Basically, we want to sell them our stuff and we want to buy their stuff. We tie our "empire" together with trade and mutual profit, not with armies of occupation.

Then there's our media. In the last fifty years, the world has gone from a model in which a newspaper account a day or more after the fact was the primary source of news to a model of the instantaneous communication of multimedia presentations that's omnipresent and always on. If General Patton slapped a soldier today, it would be on CNN and Fox News by lunchtime at the latest, with a variety of talking heads second-guessing every aspect of the incident and telling the rest of us what to think about it.

There's a telling statistic out there - something over eighty percent of the American press supposedly votes Democrat every election. It's therefore difficult to believe that they can be "fair and balanced" when reporting on a Republican-dominated government. However, the main game for the press is "Gotcha!" This supercedes even the most virulent partisan impulses. Witness, for example, the unprecedented feeding frenzy surrounding the Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinski story. This seems to stem from the Watergate era, when the Washington Post led the way in bringing down President Nixon. The reporters directly involved (most famously Woodward and Bernstein) viewed this not only as an extraordinary bit of journalism but as a demonstration of the power of the press. If the press collectively decides it doesn't like a politician, the press feels not just allowed, but obliged to destroy that politician. Journalists have assumed a position of tremendous arrogance, deciding that they know what's best.

The twenty-four-hour news cycle is also destructive in that it presents instant, or nearly instant, feedback on all government actions, both civilian and military. Witness the cries during the invasion of Iraq that the whole thing was a failure when a sandstorm held up the coalition advance for a few hours. Quality of reporting is sublimated to speed of reporting - it's more important to report it right now than to report it right. Fox doesn't want CNN to beat them to a report, after all, so accuracy is sacrificed to immediacy. Corrections may appear after more information comes in, or more experts are able to provide analysis, but often the first impression is the lasting one.

Military personnel in Iraq are reportedly developing an extreme dislike of the press. This is due to the perception that the press is only reporting the bad news, exaggerating it at that, and not reporting positive developments. Indeed, in some cases (the "six Sunnis burned to death" story leaps to mind) the press is actually manufacturing stories from whole cloth. There was, and is, a huge controversy around the Associated Press publishing falsified photographs of incidents that either happened differently than alleged or didn't happen at all.

This is poison to the informed debate needed to sustain a democratic government.

Then there's the blogosphere. While on one hand offering an entirely new means of reporting and commentary, blogs also allow anyone, no matter how biased or deranged, to put forth their version of an event. One has only to consider the insane conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks to see the horrific potential of this. A non-trivial segment of the American populace supposedly believes that our own government is responsible for 9/11. This is madness.

Blogs on the left have been beating the anti-war drums loudly and continuously since it became apparent that President Bush was going to take military action in Iraq. Although it now seems clear enough that the war was launched on false pretenses, the left is not satisfied with this and campaigns tirelessly for a cut-and-run strategy that would have disastrous long-term consequences. In opposition, you have blogs on the right that seem willing to support or excuse any action on the part of the administration in the name of "patriotism." The long-term consequences of blind obedience, although different from those of the cut-and-run, are no less disastrous to western liberal democracy.

But the upshot of all these matters is the fostering of a climate which is corrosive to the sort of sustained national unity necessary to win a major war. There must naturally be debate about the course of the effort and what constitutes victory. This is so obvious that it shouldn't need to be said. But the ultimate long-term goal, that of the survival of liberal democracy, must not be lost in the short-term struggle for political position. The essential civil liberties that make America what it is must not be sacrificed on the altar of expediency. This is what makes things like the so-called Patriot Act so unpalatable to so many people. We suffer certain tactical disadvantages from having a society as open as ours is, but closing things up takes away our national soul one little piece at a time.

Fulcrum Ruminations does not pretend to be a news blog. This blog is not about reporting specific events. This blog is nothing more than the opinions of one person, reflecting on the issues of the day. And what I see emerging from the chaos of Iraq, gentle reader, is a future in which America can destroy an enemy with devastating speed but is unable to address the longer, much more difficult issue of preventing new enemies from gaining a toe-hold. We can bulldoze entire nations but we cannot stop the next generation from going right back to the same behaviours that led to the bulldozing. We know how to win battles. We do not have the patience to win wars. Not when half of our population is more interested in portraying the other half as evil or stupid than they are in assuring the long-term survival of the social order which makes the debate possible at all.

And the Results

Hmmm. My predictions seem to have been of the "close but no cigar" variety.

Voter turnout seems to have been very heavy, for one thing. Many of the tight races remained tight right up until the last votes were counted. The Democrats did indeed take the House, but by a somewhat wider margin than I thought. The Senate is still in contention as I write this, with only the Virginia race still undecided, but it looks from here as tho the Dems will take a two-seat majority in the Senate.

This of course means disaster for the Bush administration, as the subpoenas will no doubt begin flowing shortly after the reins are handed over in January. Don Rumsfeld has already resigned/been fired, probably in an attempt to head off some of the venom.

Meanwhile, Joe Leiberman handily won reelection as an independent, nicely embarassing the reality-impaired lefties who forced him out of the Democratic party. The lesson there is, once again, that the mainstream of the country is nowhere near as liberal as some like to believe.

What lies ahead? Well, if I were the boss of the Republicans, I'd say that for the next two years they should let the Dems do whatever they want. Let them raise taxes, pile on the spending, pull us out of Iraq, enact whatever goofy legislation they want. Just smile and say "You got it!" Then, in 2008, the choice between the two parties should be nice and clear. Plus, there would be no charges of obstructionism or gridlock to be leveled. The Repubs could just say "Okay America, you've had two years of unrepressed Democratic leadership. How's that workin' out for ya?"

I have every confidence that the rush back to conservative principles would be seismic in its proportions. But meanwhile, I'm just going to say congratulations to the Dems. They somewhat clumsily seized the moment and are ascendent once again. Probably just the shock the Republicans needed at this point, since some twelve years after the "Republican Revolution" they have quite clearly lost their way. Time to refocus, reexamine, do some belly-button contemplation, all that good stuff.

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In other news, Bill Whittle has a nice piece up on his blog that everyone should take a look at. Some good analysis there.

Day of Decision

Very quickly, as we all know, tomorrow is Election Day. Many heated races, much sturm und drang, talking heads on television about to melt down from the sheer excitement. So I want to go on record with my official predictions.

The Democrats will take a slim majority in the House - maybe ten seats, maybe fifteen, but probably not more than that. They will also take a razor-thin majority in the Senate - one or two seats.

Many races will end very closely, and the lawyers will be working overtime to sue their favorite candidate into office.

Allegations of voter fraud will be rampant. No matter who wins, the other side will scream about cheating.

Dems win, taxes go up, economy slows down, investigations into/possible impeachment of the President.

Now along about Wednesday or so, we'll see how I did.

I'm also interested in seeing if any of the super-tight races (according to current polling) wind up being blow-outs for one side or the other. See, as much as we talk about the big national issues and party implications, Congressional elections tend to be very local affairs. Everyone agrees that Congress is doing a bad job . . . except for my guy, of course. So we'll see if the power of incumbency makes any sort of difference this time around.

Still, I sense a mood of profound disgust out there among the public. They don't like what's been going on, they're tired of the partisan nonsense, they want things to change. Which leads me to my final prediction: fairly low voter turn-out, even by mid-term election standards.

We'll see.

A Little Economic News

Just briefly, it seems that Bush's economic policies are paying off (so to speak). One of the few things going right for this hapless administration.

Since it looks like the Republicans have adopted the Democrats' "watch us self destruct!" election playbook this year, it's likely that the Dems will take back at least the House this election. I personally expect both House and Senate to switch hands, given the Foley/Hastert meltdown, the successful media effort to portray the Iraq war as a lost cause, and the general malaise affecting the Republicans. This of course means that the Bush tax cuts will be undone, taxes will go up (because that's one of the unchanging ground truths of the Democratic Party - they like higher taxes. Only on "the rich" of course, but strangely it's always the middle class and small business that takes it in the shorts when the Dems get to pass their tax bills. But I digress), revenues will go down, spending will continue to spiral out of control and the deficit will balloon again. All of which will be blamed on Bush's "failed economic policies" once Bush is out of office.

History shows that lower taxes stimulate the economy, bringing increased revenue and sustained growth. But, as always, the reality-impaired are not interested in the lessons history has to teach, but in enacting their flawed theories. Really, how many more times does "higher taxes=poor economy" have to be proven before the lesson finally sinks in?