A New Contest

Hi everyone, sorry I've been out of touch for a while... the tour is just all consuming. 174 bookstores and I'm not even two weeks in! There's so much good stuff in the news, it kills me not to write about it... but I barely have time to read it, let alone to blog. Another two weeks or so to go, and then I'll get to indulge my addiction to politics, language, and miscellaneous again...

Requiem just received a terrific review on a terrific website -- Cinematic Happenings Under Development. In conjunction with the review, the reviewer, Cameron Hughes, is running a contest, with a personally inscribed copy of Requiem as the prize. Check it out here on CHUD, and good luck!

Off to Denver tomorrow -- hope to see you on the road.

:-)
Barry

John Rain a New York Times Bestseller!

Hi everyone, just had to let you know that John Rain is officially a New York Times bestseller! Requiem for an Assassin debuted at #19; not bad for a first-timer to the illustrious list. Thanks for helping me make it happen! It'll be interesting to see whether the book moves up next week... speaking of which, if you haven't picked up a copy yet, now would be a propitious moment to do so...

The tour is going well, but isn't leaving me much time for email or blogging. The place to find me these days is on my new discussion board. It's only been up for a month or so, but is already full of interesting people from around the world talking politics, whisky, and of course John Rain. If you have a chance, stop by and say hello. And thanks again for all your support!

Cheers,
Barry

Get Ready for Requiem!

Hi everyone, well, tomorrow's the big day: Requiem for an Assassin will officially be available in bookstores. My first appearance is at Kepler's in Menlo Park, California, and I'll be on the road for a month after that. If you're around one of the cities on the tour calendar, come on by! It would be good to meet you in person.

And if you'd like a peek at the, uh, naughty bits of the new book, Lustbites has just posted an excerpt and an amusing interview. Enjoy.

With the tour about to start, I'm probably going to miss a few weeks of blogging. But you can find me on my website discussion board. It's a fun forum with a lot of interesting people talking about these blog posts, the Rain books, politics, single malt whisky, and anything else that strikes people's fancy, so if you have a chance, why don't you stop by and say hello? It would be good to see you there.

Thanks for all your support and I hope you enjoy the new book!

Cheers,
Barry

Thoughts on Guns, Part 2

The response to my previous blog post, Thoughts on Guns, was the largest I've ever received. It was also so interesting and thought-provoking that it led to this follow-up.

The responses I received tend to confirm my suspicion that a lot of the acrimony of the debate over guns derives from the fact that the two sides are driven by different, and possibly antagonistic, values: gun ownership proponents (GOPs) are driven primarily by the imperative of individual rights; gun control proponents (GCPs) are driven primarily by the imperative of collective security. Of course, each side claims that its means will lead to the other side's end: GOPs argue that with more individuals carrying, criminals will be deterred, lessening crime overall; GCPs argue that gun control will lessen violence, thereby reducing the need for individuals to carry. The fact that each side can draw on its own statistics, case studies, and anecdotes to back up its claim only strengthens my suspicion that the debate derives more from some emotional bedrock than it does from logical topsoil. Because the two sides in effect speak different languages, they don't understand each other. Because they don't understand each other, they project and demonize: GOPs are fanatics, maniacs, and lovers of violence; GCPs are grass eaters, sheep, and surrender monkeys. And of course each side suspects the other of a maximalist agenda: GCPs seek the abolition of all guns; GOPs want any kind of weaponry to be available to anybody, anytime, anywhere.

Here's a question that might help you figure out where you're biases are. Would you rather live in a society where no one carried outside of law enforcement, or in a society where anyone could carry anything anywhere? Leave aside for a moment the Second Amendment and the practicalities; we'll get to all that. This is just a thought experiment to reveal bias.

While you're thinking, here's a parenthetical to chew on: This thought experiment was what the example of Japan was intended to illustrate in my previous post. I got a lot of mail about that example, most of it arguing for a single cause of Japan's remarkably low crime rates: Draconian gun control; the fact that Japanese think of themselves as subjects rather than citizens (whatever that means); the fact that Japan is a "police state" (if that's so, I don't know what to call North Korea and Syria... but never mind); the fact that Japanese society is inherently less violent than America's. Most of the people advancing these single cause arguments have never lived in Japan; some, I suspect, have never met a Japanese. And coincidentally, each of these single attributed causes had the effect of bolstering whatever argument the person wanted to make...

As my friend The Slugg, who has honored HOTM with the occasional insightful guest column, was taught in military intelligence: first, tell me what you know. Then, tell me what you don't know. And only then, tell me what you think. Good advice for all of us, especially with a debate as contentious as this one. And regardless of what conclusion you consciously or unconsciously hope to reach, ask yourself this: is a phenomenon as complex as crime and violence likely to be attributable to a single cause?

Okay, back to the thought experiment. My bias: I'd rather live in that gun-free world. Personal carry is a huge responsibility and a significant pain-in-the ass. If I could modify the cost/benefit equation enough to feel comfortable avoiding the responsibility and the pain-in-the-assedness, I'd be delighted. I would still use situational awareness as my first, and most cost-effective, line of defense, and I'd still want to carry a knife in case the first and other lines of defense failed me. But if I knew no one else -- that is, no psychotic or criminal -- could be carrying, I wouldn't want to carry, either.

Does that make sense? I doubt everyone will agree with it. Some people would still want to carry to protect against threats other than those that included firearms. Some people would think it's crazy to want to carry even a knife. Some people, not understanding the difference, will confuse the awareness I mentioned with paranoia.

Some of the email I received expressed anger and disgust that I would give up my right and ability to defend myself if the threat were lower. To which I respond, aren't you doing the same thing? Is your house perimeter secured with claymores, razor wire and tank traps? If so, why not? Is it perhaps because you are implicitly balancing the threat with your countermeasures?

As I put myself through this thought experiment, I realized that the exercise was a lot like what I do when trying to calculate the proper level of life insurance to carry. What are the chances that I might die? How much will my family need to live on if I do? How much is it worth paying every year to provide for these possibilities and ensure my peace of mind? I went through a similar process with regard to homeowner's insurance, and came up with policies that made sense for me and my family. Doubtless, different people will decide on different policies, depending on their circumstances and their fears. But this is exactly the kind of calculus that goes on in the mind of anyone who's trying to decide whether to carry a gun: how much do I need it (what is the threat, how likely am I to encounter it)? How much will it cost (the weapon itself, training with it, securing it, carrying it, being responsible for it)? You don't have to be a maniac to ask these questions. You only have to be prudent. And, as with insurance policies, different people will come to different conclusions about their own needs.

I hope that if you're a GCP, my insurance analogy helps you understand the thinking processes of GOPs. Again, you might disagree with their conclusions, but once you know where they're coming from, they might seem a little less threatening. And if you're a GOP, I hope the analogy will help you understand the outlook of GCPs. Based on their environment and other factors involved in a cost/benefit calculus, they might rationally conclude that they're better off not carrying or even owning a gun.

And remember, my thought experiment is intended only to illuminate biases and to get people comfortable with the notion that there's an implicit balancing act in such matters. Remember, actually creating a gun-free zone in a country as big and open as America seems like a hell of a challenge to me. If you're a GCP longing for a gun-free world, ask yourself why our efforts at gun prohibition are likely to be more successful than were our efforts at alcohol prohibition, or our current efforts at drug prohibition, or our efforts to keep out illegal aliens. For all the reasons I argued in my previous post, I don't think guns should be easy to get. But if you make them too hard to get, is it possible you'll be keeping them out of the hands of people who could capably use them to defend themselves and others, as an armed citizen might have done at Virginia Tech, which was, after all, a theoretically gun-free zone?

Now let's talk for a moment about the Second Amendment, much cited in the responses to my previous post. The Second Amendment reads:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

I have to say, I don't understand why so many GOPs cite the Constitution as the basis of their right to carry handguns. The second amendment is unique in the Bill of Rights in including an explanatory clause: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state...". You have to ask, why did the founders include that clause here? What does it mean? If the clause were absent -- if the Second Amendment read instead in total, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," the GOP argument for concealed carry for self protection would be stronger. But the Second Amendment doesn't read that way in total. And it doesn't say, "A citizen's right to protect herself and her family being essential, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." It frames -- in fact, it limits -- the right in question by reference to a militia and the security of a free state. If you don't think the militia reference acts as a limitation on the right, ask yourself: would the scope of the right provided for in the Second Amendment be broader in the absence of the militia reference? Or narrower? (Just don't argue that it would be the same, unless you want to argue also that the clause means nothing, and that the men who drafted it were stupid, weren't experienced lawyers, and didn't appreciate the power of words in a legal document).

I'm also curious about how adherents to an "original intent" approach to jurisprudence approach the Second Amendment. Is the right to bear arms limited to muskets? Or if the intent in question has more to do with the well-regulated militia and free state limitation, shouldn't all citizens be able to purchase, at a minimum, their own RPGs and claymores? What about armored personnel carriers and howitzers? All of which would be more effective against a would-be tyrant than a concealed pistol...

Also: background checks, waiting periods, etc. can't reasonably be said to be a constitutional issue. You might not like them because you think they'll be subject to abuse, but it's hard to argue that background checks etc. in themselves infringe the right in question. No right set forth in the Bill or Rights -- or elsewhere, to my knowledge -- is absolute. The First Amendment guarantees free speech, for example, but commercial speech is subject to less protection than political. And regardless of your right to speak freely, governments can legitimately regulate where and when you speak, by, for example, insisting on a parade permit. You get the idea: the exercise of every individual right must and should be balanced against its impact on society as a whole. I don't see why the right to bear arms should be an exception to this essential rule.

Where would the right balance be? Reasonable people will differ, but novelist Jonathan Kellerman had some interesting thoughts in an excellent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, where he argued that too much individual freedom makes it too difficult to involuntarily commit a psychopath like the Virginia Tech shooter. In other words, in a mental health context, one possible cost of our adherence to individual rights is greater collective danger. And NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg's initiative to provide for greater information sharing among disparate law enforcement agencies also strikes me as a sensible way to protect society without unduly infringing anyone's individual rights.

Ah, but if it's too easy to commit someone, or we share too much information, there will be abuses, you say? Possibly, and these are potential costs that must be factored in. But we're still doing a balancing act, as we should be.

Actually, I think anyone who pauses to think about it will acknowledge that the Second Amendment doesn't, and shouldn't, create an absolute right. How many people really believe that children, criminals, or the mentally ill should have access to firearms? How many believe that firearms should be permitted anywhere (planes, government facilities)? Once you accept these limitations on the right, you've acknowledged that the right isn't, and shouldn't be, absolute.

When we're being honest and applying common sense, we all know that giving up a little individual freedom can create greater freedom as a whole. You might wish you had the freedom to run red lights or drive on whatever side of the road suited your fancy, but if everyone did so, the roads would be unusable. By each individual giving up some small measure of freedom, freedom is increased in the aggregate.

(Yes, I know, the comparison between guns and driving is inapplicable, because driving is a privilege while guns are a right. Okay, let's assume that driving *is* a right. Would you then argue that the government couldn't tell you which side of the road to drive on?)

Now, I understand the reason otherwise reasonable people sometimes advance absolutist arguments. They're afraid (with some justification) that once they admit the right to bear arms, like all rights, is subject to a balancing act, with the individual on one side of the scale and society on the other, the balance will start to be drawn against them. It seems better -- tactically, at least -- to argue that the balancing itself is a Constitutional infringement.

The absolutist tendency extends beyond the Second Amendment. A lot of the email I received in response to my previous post included the following arguments: "Anyone who wants a gun can get one illegally, so there's no point in making guns illegal." "Anyone who wants to kill is going to kill" (the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" chestnut). "Locks only stop honest people."

These kinds of assertions are as self-serving as they are simplistic. There are degrees of motivation in all things, including crime and violence. Some people are so motivated to get a gun that they'll find a way no matter what. Some people are so motivated to kill that they'll find a way under any circumstances. Some people want to break into your house so badly that they wouldn't be stopped even if you secured the place like Fort Knox. But it doesn't logically follow that *all* people are that motivated.

This is why I get so disgusted with the "Guns don't kill people" nonsense. Yes, it's technically true, but so what? I got one email that said, "I've never seen a gun get up and go kill someone by itself." Well, I haven't, either. But nor have I seen a suitcase nuke deliver itself to its target. If you argue that the tool is irrelevant to the act, you'd be comfortable with the same level of restriction on the availability of baseball bats, pistols, RPGs, and suitcase nukes.

In fact, common sense and everyday experience demonstrate that for pretty much every behavior, there is a range of motivation. At one end of the extreme is the person who will engage in the behavior no matter what. At the other end is the person who won't engage no matter what. And in between are all the people who are more likely to engage in the behavior if it's easy enough, and less likely to engage if it's hard enough. There are countless examples of this obvious truth. To use just one: fast food. Sure, a few people are so motivated to eat a Big Mac that they'd drive for hours to find one. For everyone else on the highway, MacDonald's pioneered the drive-through, and the "easy-on, easy-off" location. By making it a little easier for the majority of people interested in a Big Mac to get one, MacDonald's dramatically increased sales. The "easier to do = more of it" rule is is true for all human behavior. I see no logical or empirical reason to believe violence is a unique exception.

In other words, it might be true that the Virginia Tech killer would have gotten his guns no matter what. It might be true that he would have gone on his rampage no matter what. It doesn't follow that this is true for all people who want to acquire guns for murder. All laws are violated some of the time. That in itself is no argument for scrapping laws entirely. Houses will always be broken into. This is not an argument for leaving the doors unlocked.

In other words, the purpose of gun regulation isn't to "stop" attacks, so "we can never stop attacks like this" is a bogus argument. The purpose of such regulation, like that of all regulation, is to make such attacks more difficult, and therefore less common and less destructive. No law in history has ever outright "stopped" anything.

The sensible -- and, for me, compelling -- argument about Virginia Tech is that while not all people will have the motivation to evade gun regulations and other laws to do what the Virginia Tech killer did, some always will. When that happens, the police will almost never be able to respond in time to prevent a slaughter. Only armed citizens on the spot can do that.

At this point, if we're all being reasonable, we can acknowledge that we're engaging in a classic balancing act. How likely are such rampages and other violent crimes? How effective are armed citizens in preventing or mitigating them? What would be the effects on violence if guns were freely available? What would be the effects on violence if they were tightly restricted (remember, tightly restricted doesn't translate into "unavailable to criminals..." see also, Controlled Substances Like Cocaine and Heroin).

Strange, in a sense, that both sides are driven by fear: GOPs, that gun control will prevent them from defending themselves against armed criminals; GCPs, that lack of gun control will force them into defending themselves against armed criminals.

The most interesting thing about this debate, and other contentious ones like it, is that people seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that there is, and should be, a balancing act at work. Part of the reluctance, as I argue above, is tactical, in that each side is afraid to concede anything to the other. Part of it is just laziness, because balancing acts require more mental energy than slogans. But I think there's a third factor too -- an emotional one. Maybe the reluctance to balance in part derives from how good it feels to believe your position is absolutely right, and the other is absolutely wrong. How superior I must therefore be to the other sign, not just intellectually, but morally, too! I'm telling you, if a conclusion feels that good, we ought to pause to reexamine it. There's probably more going on than we want to admit.

Thoughts on Guns

If the shootings at Virginia Tech catalyzed a more rationale, respectful debate about access to firearms, perhaps some good might emerge from all the horror and loss. Sadly, from what I've seen, the debate remains as sterile as ever, and even more vociferous. Let's see if we can do better here.

I think the reason gun ownership proponents and gun control proponents vilify each other so much is that each side is blind to the emotional bedrock on which the other side's position is built. If we can identify that bedrock, maybe some mutual respect will emerge. Out of that respect might even grow... sensible compromise?

Gun control proponents (let's call them GCPs) are most comfortable in environments where there are no guns. Whether such environments can in fact be created is a separate issue; GCPs sense that a society without guns would be safer for everyone. In other words, the core value for GCPs is a safer society, and GCPs are willing to give up their individual right and ability to protect themselves and their family if doing so buys greater safety for society as a whole.

Gun ownership proponents (let's call them GOPs, no Grand Old Party pun intended) are most comfortable in environments where they feel they can protect themselves. In other words, the core value to which GCPs adhere is the individual's right and ability to protect herself and her loved ones. I don't know for certain, but my sense is that even if you could convince a GOP that free access to guns would lead to more gun violence overall, the GOP would say the overall increase in violence is an acceptable price to pay for preserving the individual's right and ability to protect himself and his loved ones.

I can understand both worldviews. I've lived in Japan, where guns are extremely rare and there are typically fewer than 100 annual handgun deaths, most of them accidents (there are rare exceptions, of course). I enjoyed living in a country so safe that even in Tokyo -- a city of 13 million -- women walk home from the train station alone late at night. But at home in America, with a dramatically higher crime rate and something like 200 million handguns in circulation, I own firearms. I guess I subscribe to both values -- I want to live in as safe as a society as possible, and I want to be able to defend myself and my loved ones, too.

Maybe there's a way to reconcile these potentially competing values: societal safety, and personal defense?

Start with this: I have no patience with the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. I understand why GOPs trot it out -- both sides are afraid that if they give an inch, the other side will take a mile. But let's be honest for a moment: guns are superb tools for killing people. The Virginia Tech killer couldn't have done nearly the damage he did with any other handheld weapon -- knife, sword, spear, baseball bat, bow and arrow. If someone is inclined to kill, a gun will make him better able to do it.

The more interesting question is, does the gun itself encourage killing -- that is, does some degree of the motivation itself derive from the tool? I think the answer is yes. Look at the way cell phones affect public behavior. Otherwise discreet, polite people forget they're in public and start shouting into this little device -- behavior in which they never would have engaged in the device's absence. Take away the phone, and the shouting stops, too. The question is, are guns and killing as to cell phones and public shouting?

If you think that all killing is equally likely regardless of the tool at hand, you'll answer no. But if you understand the way a finger roll and distance make killing easier, and the way the much more strenuous and intimate requirements of a knife or bludgeon make it hard, you'll accept that yes, a gun is a tool that converts a higher percentage of homicidal urges into homicidal acts.

Thought experiment: in which society would there be lower rates of murder and other violence -- one in which no one but law enforcement carried, or one in which anyone who was so inclined carried? My guess is, the law enforcement-only society would be safer, and this is indeed the core GCP argument. But we're not done yet.

Another thought experiment: if you're a GOP, are you more uncomfortable not carrying in Japan, or in America? What about airplanes, where there's very little chance anyone other than a Federal Air Marshall or a pilot is carrying? What about government facilities where you can be confident no one else is carrying? Conversely, would your ordinary concealed carry be enough in, say, Baghdad?

My point is, there is (or should be) an implicit calculus between the perception of danger and the urge to carry. Neither value -- societal safety, personal defense -- sensibly exists independent of the other.

If it were possible to make America as gun-free as, say, Japan, I'd be for it. I'd be willing to give up some of my own right and ability to protect myself and loved ones if there were a sufficiently low need for that right and ability. But an America as gun-free as Japan is an unrealistic goal; guns are too widely in circulation here, the country is too diverse, and guns and crime are too much a part of the culture.

So maybe there's some basis for compromise in there. If GOPs can understand the value of certain gun-free zones, maybe they can understand the GCP wish to live in such a zone full time. If GCPs can understand how difficult it is to create an actual gun-free zone (the only ones I could come up are airplanes and government facilities), maybe they can understand why GOPs want to carry.

I think what we should be attempting is a balance that would maximize to the extent possible the imperatives of a safe society and of personal protection -- probably by being realistic about the relationship between the two in America. If there's a compelling reason to create a gun-free zone, and it can actually be done (airplanes, for example), I'm for it. If there's no compelling reason, or a gun-free zone isn't possible (even if you think the Virginia Tech campus passed the "compelling need" test, you'd be hard put to argue that it passed the "possible to do" one), I'm in favor of an individual's right to carry.

I don't think guns should be available without restriction. I think it's perfectly natural, and desirable, that people have to take a driving test before being licensed -- and licensed is the operative word -- to drive a car. I don't think it's unreasonable to require people who want to own guns to take a stringent course and pass a test on gun use and safety. I don't think a background check and cooling down period (in California, it's ten days between purchase and pickup) are an undue burden to a GOP's rights and abilities. I think background checks should be extended to private sales (mostly that means gun shows), which account for something like 40% of gun purchases.

In exchange for the temporary hassles of proving competence in gun use and safety, a clean record, and a cool head, GOPs could maintain the core of their self defense rights and abilities. In exchange for living in an armed society, GCPs would gain greater assurance that GOPs are neither criminal nor incompetent.

From what I've read so far, neither existing, nor my proposed, restrictions on gun ownership would have prevented the Virginia Tech killer from acquiring his guns (it does seem that the killer had some documented history of mental illness, though, something that ought to be a disqualification for firearms ownership, if such a thing is logistically possible). But if responsible students had been carrying, I doubt he could have done the damage he did. In fact, it's possible he wouldn't have attacked as he did to begin with. After all, if you accept that the presence of a gun makes murder more likely, I think you have to logically reach the same conclusion with regard to places, like the Virginia Tech campus, that are advertised as gun-free. If you had a gun and wanted to kill as many people as you could, would you choose, say, a school where students can carry only at the risk of expulsion? Or, say, at a bar popular with off-duty cops? If you're a GCP, before you answer "A killer like the Virginia Tech one would just find another way to kill," ask yourself why that wouldn't also be true if you denied him his gun. I don't think you can argue the one without also arguing the other.

Think of it as a layered defense for society. Appropriate restrictions would lessen the chances that deranged, pathetic individuals like the Virginia Tech specimen could acquire a gun. More citizens carrying would lessen the damage he could do if the first layer of defense failed. That's the kind of balance I think we should be going for -- and that we'll probably never achieve in the midst of so much political distrust, shouting, and vilification.

The Difference Between a Detainee and a Hostage

I've argued before that Iranian president Ahmadinejad believes an American or Israeli strike on Iran would be in his interest because his domestic support is flagging and a strike would rally the country around him.

Now Iran has seized 15 British sailors and Marines. The UK claims its people were two miles inside Iraqi waters when they were taken; Iran claims they were 500 yards inside Iranian waters at the time. Even if you believe Iran (I don't), you have to ask: why are they holding these people? It's been nearly a week. What is Iran getting out of it?

England is ratcheting up its rhetoric and today froze all bilateral business with Iran. So far, I haven't seen references from the British government to hostages, and the omission of the word is of course deliberate. The government is trying to avoid inflaming public opinion. I don't know what language the British press is using, but the Wall Street Journal referred to "Tehran's Hostages" in an editorial on Monday.

If Iran holds these British captives much longer, or explicitly attempts to exchange their freedom for British concessions, the world will (correctly) begin to refer to them as "hostages." British public opinion will be inflamed. Public opinion in America, which had its own unpleasant, and emotionally unfinished, experience with hostages in Iran, will follow suit.

I've argued that the Bush administration has its own political motives for wanting to attack Iran. Now the mullahs are offering an opportunity. Either the mullahs are exceedingly stupid, or they know full well that motive + opportunity = action.

That question again: If both the mullahs and the Bush administration believe they'll gain politically from an American attack on Iran, how likely is it that the attack will happen?

Clues in the News

So much going on in the world, it's hard to keep up.

Adm. William J. Fallon, the new chief of the U.S. military's Central Command, claims there's no civil war in Iraq. A Pentagon report sort of agrees, because the term "civil war" "does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict." For me, the report makes it sound like what's going on in Iraq is worse than a civil war, but I'm not sure the Pentagon meant it that way.

As for the firing of those eight US Attorneys, as always, the cover-up is worse than the crime. In fact, in this case, there was no crime: as the White House has repeatedly pointed out, "US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president." (By the way, am I the only one wishing I had people who served at my pleasure? Not just working for me, but actually serving at my pleasure? I thought only sheiks and sultans and satraps had people serving at their pleasure, and never thought to aspire to such stations... but now I wonder if I set my sights too low...).

So yes, certainly the White House has the power to fire any US Attorney it wants, or even all of them, as President Clinton did, and presumably for any reason. But then... why all the obvious lies coming out of the White House and the Justice Department about why, how, when, and by whom these people were fired? Why not just proudly proclaim: "Karl Rove directed Alberto Gonzales to weed out US Attorneys who he deemed were pro-Democrat or anti-Republican. It was a political move, and within the White House's rights." There would have been a brouhaha, and then the story would have faded away because there would be no lies and other inconsistencies for the media to glom onto and use to keep the story front center.

Instead, as with so many cover-ups, the White House wanted it both ways. It knew it could fire the US Attorneys, but also knew it shouldn't. It had the power, but didn't want to pay a political price for exercising that power. If these guys just had the courage of their convictions, they could have achieved their desired result and paid a much lower price for it. As it is, they're exposed, not for the first time, as liars and hypocrites, and at a minimum will have to throw Gonzales over the side to keep the White House afloat. It'll be interesting to see whether the ballast clearing stops there, or goes further.

Back to Iraq: here's a useful barometer for how long we'll be there: Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama have both felt compelled to retract their statements that US lives are being "wasted" in Iraq, insisting they meant to say "sacrificed," instead.

Of course, the candidates' first choice of words is likely the more accurate reflection of their true thinking, but more importantly, the retraction demonstrates their political thinking. Both candidates have concluded that America isn't ready to admit to itself that the war is unwinnable. If the war is winnable and we ultimately win it, we can tell ourselves our soldiers' lives weren't wasted. If the war is unwinnable, substituting words like "sacrificed" for "wasted" becomes a significantly more difficult exercise. I've said it before, and McCain's and Obama's retracted diction is simply further evidence: we're going to be in Iraq for a long time to come.

Here's a terrific op-ed by Zbigniew Brzezinski from yesterday's Washington Post: "Terrorized by 'War on Terror': How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America."

Homosexual Acts Are Immoral?

First it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, opining earlier this week that homosexual acts are immoral.

Now Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback says he agrees: "I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts." (The irrepressible former lawyer in me seized on that "between individuals" qualifier, wondering whether Brownback was intentionally creating a safe harbor for group sex. But I digress...)

What's going on?

First, note the language. Both Pace and Brownback were almost lawyerly in their focus on homosexual acts, rather than homosexuality itself. In fact, Brownback explicitly claimed that homosexuality isn't immoral, while homosexual acts are: "I do not believe being a homosexual is immoral, but I do believe homosexual acts are."

Generally, I like a legal and moral focus on behavior rather than conditions, thoughts, feelings, or or other internal matters. Who cares what people are, or what they think or feel, when it comes to the organizing principles of a society? For all sorts of reasons, we should focus on what people do. So let's examine Pace's and Brownback's position as they stated it.

General Pace compared homosexual acts to adultery. Both are external behaviors, not internal states, so fair enough. But adultery necessarily has all sorts of negative consequences. Consensual sex doesn't. So I don't understand the stated basis for Pace's position. He does offer a clue, though: "My upbringing is such that I believe that there are certain things, certain types of conduct that are immoral." Let's come back to that in a moment.

The apparent basis for Senator Brownback's position is a bit more straightforward: "I'm a Catholic and the church has clear teachings on this."

This is interesting. Neither man claims to predicate his beliefs on reason: Pace cites his "upbringing," and Brownback his religion. It occurs to me that there is a huge cultural gulf at work here, a fundamental difference in worldviews. The way the cultural difference expresses itself with regard to views on sexuality is only a manifestation, a symptom of something much larger.

Perhaps this is the heart of the matter: there's a kind of person who accepts uncritically what's taught by parents, by religious leaders, or by other authority figures. And there's a kind of person who isn't satisfied with a "that's what I was taught" basis for morality, or anything else -- the teachings must also stand up to reasoned inquiry or they will be modified or rejected. Actually, the distinction is more subtle than that. Both groups do employ reason (Pace offered up the gay sex = adultery argument, which is at least an attempt at reason, however obviously flawed). But the first group uses reason to try to buttress a belief in which it's already invested, while the second group uses reason to examine the belief itself.

Put it another way: there are people who believe their subjective tastes are a sound basis for law and morality. And there are people who can use reason to distinguish between their subjective tastes and objective morality. One group believes certain views are ordained by God, and that those views must therefore be correct. The other group believes a wrong view couldn't come from God, no matter what's claimed in a religious text or by a religious leader or anywhere else.

Brownback also said, "We should not expect someone as qualified, accomplished and articulate as General Pace to lack personal views on important moral issues. In fact, we should expect that anyone entrusted with such great responsibility will have strong moral views."

I wonder why Brownback suddenly shifted his precise focus from external behavior to internal states? No one (no one reasonable, anyway) cares particularly about General Pace's private opinions. The question is, was it appropriate for Pace to air that opinion, particularly while in uniform, particularly while many gay Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan? Does Senator Brownback have any thoughts on that?

Sidenote: Senator Clinton's initial reaction to General Pace's comments was to courageously note, "Well, I'm going to leave that to others to conclude." My God, at least Senator Brownback wasn't so afraid or scripted or whatever that he professed not to have an opinion. Later, Clinton changed her stance: "I disagree with what he said and do not share his view, plain and simple."

Related news: today's Wall Street Journal reports that "Poland's schools chief said teachers who promote 'homosexual culture' to students will be fired, insisting he's not on an antigay crusade."

I'm always curious about these terms... "homosexual culture" and "gay agenda." What are these things? What would it mean to promote them?

I had some gay teachers in high school. I'm not sure if they were promoting anything beyond what they taught in the classroom. I didn't receive any brochures about the awesomeness of the gay lifestyle or anything like that, but one guy did wear pink shirts... was he trying to tell me something? Regardless, I seem to have turned out heterosexual.

Judging from my own experience, I believe most of one's sexuality is inborn, and that environment matters at most at the margins. So I can't help wondering if people who are afraid of some "gay agenda" or gay teachers or hidden messages in SpongeBob Squarepants cartoons or whatever sense that they themselves are perched precariously on some sexual fence, and that it would take only a slight environmental nudge to topple them over to the other side. Why else would they be so exercised about the susceptibility of others, if they didn't feel it in themselves?

A Generals' Revolt?

Interesting article from the Sunday Times: US Generals Will Quit if Bush Orders Iran Attack.

Money quote:

The threat of a wave of resignations coincided with a warning by Vice-President Dick Cheney that all options, including military action, remained on the table. He was responding to a comment by Tony Blair that it would not “be right to take military action against Iran”.

Earlier this month, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace publicly distanced himself from administration claims that Iran's leadership was responsible for supplying our enemies in Iraq with especially deadly bombs called EFPs -- Explosively Formed Penetrators. Now there's talk of resignations. It seems clear that various people in the know, all the way up General Pace, suspect the administration is planning to attack Iran and are maneuvering to ensure they're not part of the propaganda leading up to it.

I see two possibilities: first, the administration really is trying to lay the political groundwork for an attack on Iran, and the leaks and other public counters are intended as impediments. Second, the administration isn't planning to attack Iran, but is trying to strike fear into the mullahs to gain diplomatic concessions, both nuclear and with regard to stabilizing Iraq.

My guess is, the administration is planning for both. The thinking is: "We'll play chicken with Iran. If the mullahs swerve out of the way, we win. If they don't, we collide, and that's fine, too. We win either way."

Here's another interesting quote from the article:

"Army chiefs fear an attack on Iran would backfire on American troops in Iraq..."

It's long been my sense that the country we most wanted to shock and awe by going to war with Iraq was Iran. Ironic, then, that our troops there have become hostages to a potential Iranian response. Neocons, take note: it seems that one of the opportunity costs of war in Iraq is our ability to wage another war in Iran.

Repercussions from Iraq

Did you know the name of the current US-assisted Baghdad security sweep is Operation Imposing Law? Don't our Pentagon people vet the acronyms formed by these operations? That, or some irony-loving staffer managed to sneak this one by his irony-blind superiors...

Lots of fascinating news this week. Time magazine analyzes the deepening, and spreading, sectarian hatred in Iraq. Mother Jones argues that our presence in Iraq has increased worldwide terrorism. The London Times finds that anti-American feeling is soaring among Muslims.

(BTW, I smiled at this line in the Time article, regarding the Shiite ceremony called Ashura: "The faithful march in the streets, beating their chests and crying in sorrow. The extremely devout flagellate themselves with swords and whips." In other contexts, flagellating oneself with swords and whips would be called "insanity." When the behavior is apparently religiously motivated, it is known as "devotion." Journalists in training, take note.)

Deepening sectarian hatred, an increase in worldwide terrorism, and soaring anti-Americanism. I see three ways to deal with these findings:

1. They are inaccurate.
2. Regardless of their accuracy or inaccuracy, they are irrelevant.
3. They are accurate and relevant.

As I've argued in many previous posts, I believe the findings are both accurate and relevant. If we think of the war in Iraq as part of a larger counterinsurgency campaign, we have to accept that we are losing hearts and minds. If you lose the hearts and minds of the subject population, you lose the counterinsurgency campaign.

It seems to me that we've started a fire in Iraq. Now we're trying to put it out. But what if we can't? Like all fires, it will spread. Our best hope, then, will be to direct it away from ourselves. How?

Attacking a Shiite nation (Iran, that is) right after we've attacked a Sunni one probably wouldn't do the trick. On the contrary, in fighting against the Arab Sunni Taliban, Arab Sunni Iraqi insurgents, and Persian Shiite Iran, we might just accomplish the difficult trick of uniting Islam's feuding sects and nationalities against us.

Perhaps there are ways that Sunnis and Shiites could be left to fight each other, instead? For the cold-bloodedly realpolitically inclined among us, perhaps such fighting could even be... encouraged? If the fire turns on itself, is there a better chance it could burn itself out without consuming the west, too?

You have to be careful with metaphors like these, I know. What's going on in Islam isn't exactly a fire. But are our leaders intelligently, open-mindedly, grappling with these questions?

The always estimable Christopher Hitchens, in a recent Slate article, said almost as an aside, "We cannot flirt, either morally or politically, with divide and rule."

But he never explained why, or what the alternative might be.

The Real Issue on Hillary and Iraq

I'm intrigued by calls from various Democratic quarters for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her 2002 vote authorizing military action in Iraq.

Clinton has said that knowing what she knows now, she wouldn't have voted the way she did. Saturday Night Live hilariously interpreted her remarks to mean, "Knowing what we know now, that you could vote against the war and still be elected president, I would never have pretended to support it."

As a matter of logic, Clinton's position has merit. Some mistakes you never should have made (unjustifiable); others, you made reasonably, based on what you knew at the time (justifiable). And even though she refuses to utter the "M" word (taking her cue in this regard from President Bush), Clinton is simply arguing that her mistake was justified based on the faulty intel she received from the White House.

But I think there's something more important going on here than whether someone made a mistake in voting to authorize the war, whether the mistake was justified at the time, and whether the mistake warrants an apology. The real issue here is judgment.

It's easy to forget that before the war, the Bush administration was hardly alone in believing Saddam Hussein had or soon would have WMD. So Senator Clinton is entitled to her position that she authorized the war based on what turned out to be faulty intelligence. But she's avoiding the harder, and more relevant question, of whether war made sense even if the intelligence had been accurate.

Kim Jung Il has long had a universally acknowledged active WMD program (which has subsequently led to an actual North Korean nuke) and is a demonstrated missile and nuclear know-how proliferator. The al-Saud fund hate-inculcating madrasses worldwide and supplied three quarters of the 9/11 hijackers. Iranian sponsorship of global terrorism is well documented. We know the Pakistani government was complicit in AQ Khan's nuclear proliferation efforts, with North Korea, Iran, and Libya as Khan's customers. Yet of all these demonstrated WMD and terrorist threats, we made war only on Saddam Hussein.

I wish Senator Clinton and others (including myself) had thought to ask: if we can live with Kim Jung Il and the al-Saud and the Iranian mullahs and Masharraf's complicity with AQ Khan, why can't we live with Saddam? And if we *can* live with him but are going to attack him anyway, what is the real motive for the attack? There might have been good, persuasive answers to these questions, but Senator Clinton didn't ask, and President Bush didn't volunteer them.

My own take: The Bush administration honestly believed Iraq had WMDs or dangerous WMD programs. But they never adequately considered alternatives short of war because the exigencies that inhibit us from going to war with North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and (so far) Iran were all absent in Iraq. Bush didn't intentionally invent Saddam's WMD, as many on the left have accused him of doing, but nor did he deal with the WMD possibility honestly. Instead, he thought, "Hussein's WMD are a threat. Yes, we could manage the threat another way, as we have with threats posed by Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia... but if we deal with the threat by invasion, we can simultaneously intimidate Iran and Syria, and possibly the al-Saud; we can rebuild Iraq's sanctions-crippled oil industry and lower the price of a barrel in the process; and we can even unleash a wave of democracy in the middle east."

I can understand the appeal of such a plan before the fact, but its implementation has been a catastrophe. Perhaps the catastrophe could have been mitigated, or even avoided altogether, if the Senate and House (and the media) had probed Bush's real objectives -- which, as the counterexamples above demonstrate, could not logically have been solely about WMD, no matter how honestly Bush or anyone else believed those WMDs to exist.

The real question, then, isn't whether Senator Clinton's mistake in voting to authorize the war was justified by what turned out to be faulty intelligence. The real question is, why didn't she ask why war was necessary even if the intelligence was accurate? Why if we could deal with so many other dangerous regimes short of war, we had to go to war in Iraq?

Hard questions like the ones above would have shown real depth of consideration and judgment -- the kind showed by, say, Barrack Obama, who spoke out against war, though as a State senator he could have kept his mouth shut and had it both ways later.

I'm afraid Saturday Night Live got it about right about Senator Clinton.

Iran: What, Where, Why

I'm curious about the timing of the publicity the Bush administration is currently giving Iran's involvement in Iraq.

For the past few days, CNN, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal have all led with stories about Iranian-supplied "EFPs" -- Explosive Formed Projectiles, aka Explosively Formed Penetrators. EFPs are bombs that can punch through the toughest armor, and which apparently have killed 170 American and allied troops in Iraq.

Is Iran supplying our enemies in Iraq with EFPs, and otherwise "meddling" there? I don't doubt it. Iran has many motives to try to worsen our predicament in Iraq, not least their fear that, if we ever got Iraq right, we might turn our attention to Iran next. And Iran's geographical proximity and cultural ties to Iraq's Shiites certainly give Iran the opportunity. Motive plus opportunity... if I had to guess, I'd guess that hell yes, Iran is doing everything the Bush administration has accused it of, and probably a lot more.

The question, then, isn't whether Iran is working against us in Iraq. The question is, why is the administration pushing this story now? After all, according to the Defense Department's own briefers, Iranian supply to Iraqi Shiites dates back to at least 2004. Why wasn't the administration publicizing Iran's role three years ago? Six months ago? Why now?

The only plausible explanations I can come up with are:

1. The new accusations are intended to divert attention from the administration's failures in Iraq by blaming Iran.

2. The administration hopes that by "calling" Iran on its behavior, it can frighten Iran into desisting (although still, why not try this six months, a year ago, three years ago...).

3. The new accusations are part of the administration's case for an attack on Iran. Paul Krugman suggests this in today's New York Times.

If anyone can think of something else, I'd like to hear it.

Maybe the most important thing to note with regard to the timing of the administration's Iran accusations is this: the White House has enormous power to create news. We heard little about Iran in Iraq until the White House decided to make it a front page story. The White House said little about North Korea, keeping that country largely off the front page, right up until the day Kim Jung Il went nuclear. Most of all, of course, there was the PR push the White House engaged in during the run-up to the war in Iraq, including nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

When you read a story -- or especially stories -- in the media, ask yourself not just about what the story says, but also where it's coming from. And why.

Just Pigs?

Fascinating article in today's Wall Street Journal: "Pigs Get the Ax In China TV Ads, In Nod to Muslims." The gist: next month, China rings in its once-every-twelve-years Year of the Pig. And the state-run national television network has banned all references to pigs, spoken and visual, from commercials, so as to avoid offending Muslims.

The ban strikes me as strange -- reminiscent of, yet exceeding, the self censorship practiced by the Western media over last year's Mohammed cartoons imbroglio. China's 20 million Muslims represent less than two percent of China's population, and, I gather, are offended by pigs. For China's non-Muslims, though, the pig has positive associations, including prosperity, good fortune, and fertility -- so positive, in fact, that the average Chinese eats 80 pounds of pork per year. Ninety-eight percent versus two percent... on strictly quantitative grounds, a ban on pig depictions in advertising in China seems a significant imposition by a minority on a majority.

But there's a qualitative element, too. Do Muslims really find pig imagery so offensive that they want it banned? In the press, I always read that Muslims consider pigs "unclean," but why would that lead to animus? I consider dogs unclean, but if you want to live with one, go for it. Getting upset about a picture of an animal seems strange to me, but then I'm not Muslim nor even religious. Are there any Muslims reading this blog? If so, I'd welcome your thoughts.

I guess you could argue there's an implicit balance going on here. Sure, it's only two percent... but if the two percent feel *very* strongly, and accession isn't that big a deal for the majority, why not accede? A question, then: if Chinese Muslims, or Muslims generally, wanted to do away with the very notion of a Year of the Pig, should the Chinese government accede to that, too?

Culture is a hard thing to quantify, but you tend to know it when you see it. In China, the pig is big. In Japan, you take your shoes off before entering someone's house. In America, English is the lingua franca. Demanding that the majority culture change to accommodate a small minority's tastes or even beliefs seems boorish at best... the same kind of boorish behavior for which "ugly Americans" are lambasted when they engage in it overseas.

I wonder what's next, and where?

Slippery Verbal Redundancy

I'm always intrigued by redundant modifiers. Why does the media insist on using phrases like "brutally raped" and "brutally murdered?" Is it possible someone could be gently raped, or tenderly murdered? And what does it mean to be "cautiously optimistic?" What would you make of someone whose optimism was heedless or wild-eyed?

Sometimes the second clause of a sentence means everything. In the summer of '05 I saw a huge poster in a record store: "Sin City DVD, Available Now!" Excited, I approached more closely, and saw the next line, in significantly smaller print: "for pre-order."

Leave aside for the moment the redundancy in the notion of pre-ordering something... probably it's just what you do once you've finished pre-planning. What really got me was the 180 degree turn the second clause caused. Available now for pre-order? If you can only order it, that's the precise definition of *not* available! Sheesh.

Anyway, I paused today when I saw this first sentence in a New York Times article:

"General George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, said today that the additional troops being sent to Iraq could begin to be withdrawn by late summer if security conditions improve in Baghdad."

That "if" clause interests me, much in the way of the unnecessary "brutal" qualifier. It made me wonder, was there some possibility the troops *wouldn't* be withdrawn if Baghdad's security conditions improve? Doesn't it go without saying that if security conditions improve, we'll start bringing home our troops?

So... why the redundant clause?

Because most people won't notice it. They'll focus instead on the first part of the sentence, and indeed the headline of the article is, "U.S. May Cut Troops in Iraq by Summer, General Says." That sounds like good news, the kind of good news that will maintain domestic support for the war. Then, later, when the good news fails to materialize, the general can point to that exculpatory "if" clause, and note that the necessary condition, sadly, hasn't been fulfilled. Benefits of the first clause today; benefits of the escape clause tomorrow.

I couldn't help thinking of the following pristine example of having one's verbal cake and eating it, too, from then Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss's February '05 Congressional testimony:

"It may be only a matter of time before al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons."

"Only a matter of time" means it's inevitable: not whether, but when. For example, for each of us, death is only a matter of time. Death is inevitable. With regard to AQ and WMD, this is scary rhetoric! And therefore not a bad way to increase your budget while simultaneously sounding prescient should disaster strike. But wait... it only "may" be a matter of time. Which means, it might not be inevitable... but wait, if something might not be inevitable, isn't that the same as saying it's *not* inevitable?

If a WMD attempt (that's smooth, too... it doesn't have to be an actual attack, just an "attempt," however that might be defined) happens, Goss gets to say, "Told you it was inevitable." If it doesn't happen, he gets to say, "I only said it may be inevitable, not that it was inevitably inevitable." As Borat would say, Nice!

George Orwell put it best: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”

Ask yourself, why does the government feel compelled to play these verbal games with regard to Iraq?

War with Iran

Back in April, I asked:

"If both the Iranian mullahs and the Bush administration both believe they'll gain politically from an American attack on Iran, how likely is it that the attack will happen?"

Keep that question in mind when examining the following recent domestic developments:

The US is now pursuing and arresting Iranians in Iraq. As national security adviser Hadley put it, “We intend to deal with [Iran] by interdicting and disrupting activities in Iraq, sponsored by Iran, that are putting our troops and Iraqis at risk."

BTW, I like Cheney's take on the roles of the executive and the legislature: "[Bush is] the guy who's got to decide how to use the force and where to deploy the force. And Congress obviously has to support the effort through the power of the purse. So they've got a role to play, and we certainly recognize that. But you also cannot run a war by committee."

Congress "has to" support the president. Interesting. They taught me different in law school, but that was Cornell, a notoriously liberal institution. Probably I was being subverted.

Question: What happens if the Iranians we pursue inside Iraq fight back?
Answer: We kill some of them. They kill some of us.

Question: What if, after engaging our troops in Iraq, Iranians flee back into Iran?
Answer: We pursue them and kill them there, perhaps with others. They kill or capture some of us.

Question: What happens at that point?
Answer: The administration has the casus belli it needs to attack Iran. We launch air strikes at Iranian nuclear and command and control facilities. Think adding 20,000 troops to the war is "doubling down?" Try war with Iran, instead.

But wait... doesn't congress need to authorize that sort of thing?

Not according to the administration. See the links above. And leaving the Constitutional niceties aside, the advantage of an attack on American troops is that it leaves Americans at home feeling pugnacious enough to go to war without those awkward Congressional hearings. And Congress, sniffing the political wind, can be counted on to play along.

See: Remember the Maine. See also: The Tonkin Gulf incident.

Here's the heart of the matter: If you believe Bush, Cheney, et al are decent, responsible, competent leaders, you'll trust their judgment and their motives on how far to push things with Iran. If you are cynical, you'll suspect that they're maneuvering us into war with Iran -- partly to retard Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, partly to distract from and dilute their failure in Iraq. If you're really cynical, you might think many of our recent military maneuvers in the region -- the extra troops, the deployment of a second aircraft carrier and escort ships -- are preparation for a fait accompli attack on Iran.

Imagine this conversation:

Cheney: We really have to do something about those Iranian nukes, Mr. President. It's bad enough Kim Jung Il went nuclear on our watch.

Bush: I agree, I agree... but the country is so disillusioned with war, and, though it's unfair, with our ability to wage it competently. They'll never go for an attack on Iran. Even the recent escalation... I was told I couldn't call it that. We had to package it as just a "surge."

Cheney: I'm not saying it'll be easy. But Ahmadinejad, with the Holocaust denial conference and the rest, plays into our hands. He's the perfect pin-up boy for evil. And we know there are Iranians in Iraq, training the insurgents to make IEDs that can penetrate the armor of an M-1 tank.

Bush: Wow. Are explosive devices that can penetrate an M-1 really still improvised?

Cheney: Never mind that. The point is, the Iranians are meddling in Iraq. If someone complains about our hunting them down, we say the complainers don't support our troops. Eventually, the Iranians shoot back, or we chase them in to Iran in "hot pursuit." Our forces engage Iranian forces on Iranian soil and we take some casualties. The American people will demand that our fallen be avenged and that Iran be punished. With a second carrier in the region, we can immediately launch air strikes against the Bushehr reactor and other nuclear sites. We'll simultaneously stop the Iranian nuclear threat, redeem the whole enterprise in Iraq, and restore our reputations. You'll be remembered not as the man who lost in Iraq, but as the man who prevented the mad mullahs from going nuclear.

Bush: I like it.

"Meddling," by the way, is the administration buzzword on Iranians in Iraq. It's an interesting word. We don't meddle, only other countries do... plus, it invites such wonderful verbal accouterments. For example, if you're a meddler, I feel you deserve to have lackeys. And who doesn't want his own lackey? And meddlers have goatees, which they stroke nefariously... they also occasionally let out a sinister "mwhahahahahah" laugh while contemplating the fruits of their meddling.

On a more serious note: the "meddling" verbiage concerns me. It's one of those indications that we don't understand how others perceive us. If we don't understand how others perceive us, how can we be effective in the world?

Prediction: We will attack Iran as soon as we have sufficient forces in the region. At this point, as the fictional Cheney above points out, the administration motive is compelling. Creating the casus belli is easy. The rest is just logistics.

The Long Goodbye

Hi everyone, sorry I've been away so long. It was crunch time on the new manuscript and I barely had time to keep up with the news, let alone think and blog about it. But the book is done. I'm thrilled with it... and thrilled to be back to trying to get to the heart of the matter of things.

The big news today is President Bush's announcement that we will send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq. In trying to figure out what this means, I've started with the following question:

If we had committed an additional 20,000 troops four years ago when we first went in -- when conditions were infinitely more favorable -- would the outcome have been substantially different?

I'm no military expert, but the answer to this one seems to be no. It's hard for me to imagine that the current debacle could have been avoided if only we'd sent in about ten percent more troops four years ago. It's even harder for me to imagine that the increase will turn things around today, when Iraq is in a civil war.

Yes, I know the troops are only being sent to Baghdad. But even if the small increase were sufficient to pacify Baghdad, I can't help but wonder: if control of Baghdad could lead to control over the whole country, why didn't we just focus on Baghdad to begin with? What am I missing?

So if the 20,000 increase is -- at least logically -- bound to be useless, why are we doing it?

Here I see three possibilities.

First, as I've discussed before, the architects of the war are intent on doing all they can to continue the war long enough to hand it off to the next administration, thereby saddling someone else with the responsibility of ending it -- and of being blamed for its outcome.

Second, the architects are trying to force the Democrats to cut funding, cap troop levels, or otherwise refuse to give the administration what it's asking for. If the Democrats don't accede to all the administration's requests, the administration's narrative will become, "We had a plan, and we were about to win by implementing it, but the Democrats prevented us, therefore the Democrats lost the war."

Third, by explicitly holding Iraqi Prime Minister accountable in the speech and articulating various benchmarks for measuring Iraqi progress, the administration can shift the onus of failure onto the Iraqi government when things continue to deteriorate. In other words, we simultaneously demonstrate that we are going the extra mile with the additional troops, while articulating the criteria by which we can blame Maliki when the extra mile proves too short.

Note that what these three possibilities have in common is the notion of blame-shifting. Note also that they're not mutually contradictory.

For a while, I thought the Republican establishment and the new Democratic legislature would come together to end our involvement before the 2008 presidential race begins in earnest. Now I wonder if I wasn't being naive.

Democrats will be reluctant to to anything decisive that Republicans could use to blame them for the war's outcome. Rather than taking a stand now that could cost them the White House, I think Democrats will instead do little, thereby keeping the blame for the war pinned squarely on the Republicans; capture the presidency; and deal with the mess at that point. Various Republicans will figure out what the Democrats are up to, and will react by further distancing themselves from the administration's decisions. This Republican dance might save some individual Republican seats in '08, but it won't do anything to end the war before then. So, in the vacuum created by Democratic cynicism and Republican fecklessness, the administration will continue to do pretty much what it wants until a new president takes office.

Maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe the president really believes the 20,000 troops and other already-tried half-measures he outlined in his speech will make a difference. Maybe the Democrats will feel the call of conscience more strongly than the lure of expediency, and act accordingly. But if I had to bet, I know where I'd put my money.

You can't blame the politicians, at least not entirely. My sense is that American society isn't yet ready to face the magnitude of the Iraqi fiasco, or of our irredeemable losses there. What happens Iraq after we leave, particularly to anyone who might be viewed as having collaborated with us, will be appalling. Apparently, the only way we'll be able to face those horrors is if we suffer more beforehand. Then, when we pull out and the sectarian bloodletting begins in earnest, we'll be able to tell ourselves we did all we could to prevent it, we had no choice, it wasn't our fault, the outcome was beyond our control.

In other words: the function of our men and women who will continue to die and be maimed in Iraq is to create American losses severe enough to enable us to at last abandon our hopeless enterprise there. That's what the war is about now. And it's likely to run on for at least two more years.

Serge in Iraq

I know, I know, it's not Serge in Iraq, it's Surge in Iraq. I spelled it that way to illustrate the power of words. Serge in Iraq sounds absurd, useless, suspiciously fay; Surge in Iraq sounds strong, manly, irresistible.

And that's part of the reason I don't like the idea. The word, which in the last week has cropped up everywhere in the media, is too easy to love. My sense is that, like the Vietnam era domino theory and the more recent examples of "ink spots" and "clear, hold, and build," the nomenclature does more to distract than it does to illuminate. Examined closely and thoughtfully, "surge" doesn't... well, it doesn't hold water.

A surge is a "sudden large increase, typically a brief one." Large? Where will the troops come from? The numbers most commonly discussed are in the 15 to 30,000 range. I'm not a military man, and have only common sense to apply here, but... if General Shinseki was right, and we needed at least 350,000 troops to secure Iraq almost four years ago when conditions were so much more favorable, I don't understand what an extra 15 to 30,000 that takes us up to about 150,000 is going to do now, when the situation is so much worse. As it stands, we can't even prevent saboteurs from cutting off Baghdad's electricity.

As for brevity, the talk is of six to eight months. Hard to see what can be accomplished in that timeframe, when in nearly four years conditions have become so dire. In any event, six to eight months doesn't sound like a long time for insurgents to wait for the surge to recede, after which we'll surely see surging insurgents.

Here's another concern: a surge is a zero sum game. A surge comes from somewhere, and wherever it comes from, there's an equivalent amount less there while the surge lasts. So where will the extra troops come from? We'll either extend deployments and shorten leave, which would put even more strain on the military, or we'll pull the troops from somewhere else, handing over more territory to insurgents in the process. Probably we'll do both.

Because surging in Baghdad means a vacuum in, say, the rest of Anbar province, the "surge" option would be more accurately labeled "pulling the goalie." AKA, a desperation move you try when time is almost out, you have no other options, and the game is otherwise certainly lost. Of course, "pulling the goalie" isn't as appealing a product name as "The Surge," and would therefore present a tougher sell to the public.

As I've argued before, Bush's goal now is to forestall further setbacks long enough to leave office without definitively losing Iraq. Whether the situation there will continue to deteriorate slowly enough, and whether the Republican establishment and the Democratic legislature will permit Bush to play it this way, is hard to say. At this point, all the possible outcomes are ghastly. My sense is that, like a defunct auto plant that is more expensive to close than to keep open, we won't make any real decisions on Iraq for quite some time, and not until things are dramatically worse there.

Only the Children?

It's holiday card time again, and again I've been struck by what seems to me a strange phenomenon. Most of the cards I receive from families include pictures only of the children, not of the parents.

I don't want to read too much into this practice, but... what does it mean? The parents don't matter? Only the children are important? Maybe the idea is that the children change rapidly from year to year, and so require a yearly photo to update the card's recipient, while the parents change relatively little. Or maybe it's the opposite -- the parents think they've changed too much, changes of which they'd rather not apprise their holiday card acquaintances.

A basic psychological test involves asking a child to draw a picture of herself, with no further instructions. The child's decision -- just the face? the whole body? is a family included? is there anything in the background? etc. -- reveals a lot about the way the child perceives herself. If the "children only" holiday cards test something similar, what do they reveal?

I don't think any of this is bad, by the way; I'm just trying to understand it.

Is the "only the children" approach purely an American phenomenon, or do other cultures do it this way, too? The holiday cards I receive from Japan tend to include photos of complete families, but the sample size is too small for me to be sure it means anything. I'm curious how holiday cards are done elsewhere.

Any other thoughts on the cultural origins and implications of the "only the children" approach? Am I alone in wondering?

Happy holidays,
Barry

Iraq Study Group: Success Through Failure

The first thing I noticed about the Iraq Study Group's report was the title of its policy prescriptions: The Way Forward. I couldn't help but smile when I saw it. "The way forward?" I thought. "Come on, what we're looking for is a way out!"

I know, I know, that makes me a "surrender monkey," too. Look, probably the heart of the matter here is that there are people who continue to believe Iraq is still salvageable, and that it is within US power to salvage it, on the one hand; and people -- like me -- who believe Iraq is past saving and that we therefore need to change our objectives to damage control. A shame the debate can't be conducted in a way that's respectful of the other side's motives -- except here on HOTM, of course... ;-)

Okay, substance. The meat of the report is in its diplomacy prescriptions: engage Iran and Syria and create something called the Iraq International Support Group, which would "include all countries that border
Iraq as well as other key countries in the region and the world."

My first reaction to all this was, are you kidding? Ain't gonna happen. Too many competing interests, too many countervailing motives. And even if you could put something like this together, what good would it do? Iran probably has some influence over various Iraqi Shiite factions, but the insurgency itself is still primarily Sunni. And even if Iran was restraining Iraqi Shiites from retaliating for Sunni provocations, it seems to have lost that capacity after the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra last February. And even if Iran had the continued capacity to tamp down Shiite violence in a material way, what could we offer the mullahs that would give them incentive to do so?

Now Syria. Suppose we really could "flip" Assad from the Iranian embrace and get him to back our goals in Iraq. How much impact would Syrian cooperation have? You'd have to believe that a significant amount of financial and material support for Iraqi violence is coming from Syria. That is, but for Syrian misbehavior, things in Iraq would be markedly better. I might be wrong, but that's not my read.

But wait, there's still more: The ISG also wants a reenergized Israeli/Palestinian peace process. At this point I was thinking, what do Israel and Palestine have to do with Sunnis and Shiites killing each other in Iraq? And if we can't get out of Iraq until the Israelis and Palestinians are at peace, we're going to be there for a very long time. I was tempted to dismiss the Report as a fantasy.

But then I looked at it on another level. And I think I see what the ISG is really up to.

My guess is, they're "enlarging the problem," as it's known in some policy circles. By engaging other countries on the solution for Iraq, we make them part of the problem of Iraq. Then, when the problem turns out to be unsolvable, we are no longer solely to blame. The narrative then becomes, "The whole middle east -- in the form of the Iraq International Support Group -- tried to fix Iraq, to no avail. It's not working, and we don't want to participate in this larger process anymore. So we're leaving -- not so much leaving Iraq, as leaving this useless regional forum. The failure was everyone's, and it's your problem now."

Remember, the Report also calls for substantial US troop reductions by 2008. Why 2008? Well, there's this presidential election then... and two years is about enough for all that aggressive regional diplomacy to prove itself useless so we can use it as cover to leave.

The ISG has also built in some solid CYA provisions. The Report's recommendations have to be enacted in toto, Baker and Hamilton have argued, otherwise none of it will work. They know no commission report in the history of the Republic has been accepted in toto, and that this one won't be, either. When Iraq disintegrates, therefore, they can say, "Not our fault. We told the president the only chance he had was if he adopted the whole report -- and he didn't."

Bottom line: Taken at face value, the Report's policy recommendations are useless -- practically irrelevant -- for quelling Iraqi violence. But quelling Iraqi violence was never what the ISG set out to do. Despite the silly "way forward" rhetoric, the real purpose of the ISG was to find us a way out -- and a year or two of the failed diplomacy it recommends has as good a chance of that as anything.

Iraq's Disintegration: What it Means

Well, tomorrow's the big day: the Baker Group issues its report on what we should do about Iraq. That the report has been so eagerly anticipated is a measure of the public's understanding of how bad the situation has become. The Bush administration has shown itself capable of managing almost nothing in Iraq; the hope now is that this bit of foreign policy outsourcing will help mitigate the disaster.

Ironies abound. The war was intended to put the fear of God into Iran and Syria; now, it seems, the Commission report will recommend that we seek their help in extricating ourselves. Want to take a guess at the Mullahs' price for cooperation? Stop interfering with Iran's quest for nukes. Translation: if we want the Mullahs' help in getting out of Iraq, we have to accept the nightmare scenario that was part of what brought us in.

I've been arguing since August 2005 that Iraq's disintegration is inevitable and that US policy should be to make the inevitable as least bad as possible. I get a decent amount of angry mail about this position, mostly of the "it's defeatists like you who will cause our defeat" type (the syntax is interesting; these letters won't acknowledge that the defeat is already an accomplished fact). I also get accused of being delighted at our defeat. That's absurd (although apparently comforting to people who like to level such accusations). In fact, I wish we could have relatively bloodlessly toppled Hussein and installed a democracy that would spread throughout the dysfunctional middle east. But it's not going to happen. I sound off about Iraq because I abhor denial, which has no survival value, and admire realism. And I believe the sooner the Bush administration accepts reality in Iraq, the fewer American families will lose sons and daughters there.

I don't understand why some people can't accept a foreign policy situation that has become unsalvageable. At an individual level, we don't have trouble with the notion of events that have moved beyond our control. We can understand the concept of inoperable cancer in an individual; what prevents us from recognizing the phenomenon in a country? Iraq is simply beyond saving now. The body is breaking down; further surgery won't save it, and might even hasten its demise. We need to shift our focus to pain management.

Last week, I asked if Iraq's further disintegration really is the disaster for the west that the conventional wisdom claims. The usual scenarios suggest that when Iraq disintegrates:

1) al Qaeda will establish bases there as it did in Taliban Afghanistan.
2) The Shiite south will become a vassal of Iran.
3) Egypt and Saudi Arabia will be drawn in on the side of the Sunnis, Iran on the side of the Shiites, and internal bloodshed will become a wider regional war. AKA, "instability in the middle east."
4) The price of oil would skyrocket.

Let's look at these one by one.

1) AQ will establish bases in Iraq as it did in Taliban Afghanistan.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't think anyone knows what things will be like on the ground as Iraq continues to break apart. But certainly the Sunnis -- and AQ is a Sunni organization -- will be under a lot of pressure from the Shiites. And certainly the US will maintain "over the horizon" quick reaction forces in Kurdistan and Kuwait capable of attacking AQ and anyone else as we deem appropriate.

2) The Shiite south will become a vassal of Iran.

I don't buy it. Once upon a time, this was the conventional wisdom about China and Vietnam, too: they're both communist, so Vietnam will do China's bidding. In fact, within four years of America's departure, Vietnam and China were at war again, as they had been intermittently for a thousand years. My bet is that, in ignoring the differences in Persian and Arab culture, history, language, and geopolitics, we are making the same mistake in Iraq. In other words, what unites Arab Shiites and Persian Shiites is America's presence. Deprived of a common enemy, they'll be inclined to fight each other. More on this in a moment.

3) Egypt and Saudi Arabia will be drawn in on the side of the Sunnis, Iran on the side of the Shiites, and internal bloodshed will become a wider regional war. AKA, "instability in the middle east."

Possibly. But is this so bad? Why do we insist on taking responsibility for all the middle east's problems? Why not let the neighbors have a go at sorting things out for a change?

There's a natural schism between the Sunnis and Shiites throughout the region and indeed the world. In many ways, America's presence in Iraq has helped both sides paper over their differences (witness popular Sunni Egyption support for Shiite Hezbollah, and Hezbollah's training of Sunni Hamas militants). If, after the US departs Iraq, the Sunni/Shiite feud there spreads to reignite regional sectarian animosity, I think we can live with that. I'd rather Sunnis and Shiites fighting each other than united against us.

That hoary foreign policy phrase "middle east instability" needs to be reexamined. It's been said too often, and now has all the clarifying freshness and insight of a mantra. The middle east is unstable and always has been. Outside powers haven't managed to stabilize it yet, and our latest efforts have coincided with a resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; the election of Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza; the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon; a Syria/Iran alliance; the Israeli/Hezbollah war; and a resurgent Iran on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power. I wonder if a laissez-faire would do worse. It would certainly cost less.

4) The price of oil would skyrocket.

Yes, with the remnants of Iraq's oil production taken off line, and possible disruptions elsewhere in the region, the price of oil would rise. Our economy might take a short term hit. I think that as a society we ought to be willing to endure this rather than continuing to send young Americans to be killed for no real gain.

But here's the beautiful part: the economy would adapt. Economies are like organisms, and grow stronger in response to graduated stress. Japan's multinationals, for example, had a tough time of it during the 90's when the yen was at an all time high against the dollar, but they adapted their tactics and actually became more competitive in the face of exchange rate stress.

I once owned a salt water aquarium, and learned that marine fish are among the most fragile organisms because they've never had to adapt to change. They've evolved in an environment of constant temperature, pH, and salinity. Alter any one of those variables even a little, and marine fish die because they've never had to adapt to change before.

The tragedy of US petropolicy is that its sole aim has been to maintain the constancy of the external environment, rather than focusing on how to increase the underlying organism's adaptability. As a result, our economy is as vulnerable to an oil shock as a marine fish is to sudden change in salinity. If we had any sense, we would manage a process of gradual change -- that is, a gradual increase in the price of oil through a carbon tax -- so the economy would learn to adapt, and grow stronger. A managed process would have been less painful than the inevitable course of events imposed from outside. But still, our economy will survive those events, and, after the initial pain of adjustment, will emerge stronger than it was before. Despite us, in other words, rather than because of.

What do we do? Accept the inevitable. Draw down to garrisons. Ride it out. The fall of Saigon was going to be the end of the world, too. But thirty years later, Vietnam is a capitalistic, albeit authoritarian, nation, on the brink of WTO entry and a bulwark against a resurgent China. We'll survive the current misadventure, too. The only question is, how much worse will we make things first. We'll have a better idea tomorrow, when we find out what the Baker commission recommends, and how the Bush administration reacts to it.

P.S. I guess I'm on a Monty Python kick... but the way Bush keeps talking about "finishing the job" in Iraq made me think of this scene from The Holy Grail...