Happy New Year from the Keweenaw! How do you feel about the world outlook for 2005? What concerns should our state and country focus on going forward?
KeweenawNow welcomes your posts on these and other topics that interest you. Fire away!
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all saw the new year in happily and safely with good friends and relatives.
I'm sure you all join me in hoping that 2005 marks a great improvement for the people of Iraq and for our soldiers, who are in constant danger there: Iraq Ushers in New Year with Deadly Attacks.
Signaling no let-up in attacks as the new year dawned, insurgents assassinated two local government officials for Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and an Iraqi police major outside his home in the southwest part of the capital. Iraqi police also found two beheaded bodies in western Baghdad along with a note that said they were truck drivers killed because they were working with the U.S. military. Three roadside bombs exploded in the capital early on Saturday, with one blast killing an Iraqi trucker hauling loads for foreign contractors. In the video from Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq, masked militants were shown lining up five captive National Guardsmen, their hands bound behind their backs, and then shooting them from behind. People were seen passing by during the shooting and some even stopped to watch.
Signaling no let-up in attacks as the new year dawned, insurgents assassinated two local government officials for Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and an Iraqi police major outside his home in the southwest part of the capital.
Iraqi police also found two beheaded bodies in western Baghdad along with a note that said they were truck drivers killed because they were working with the U.S. military.
Three roadside bombs exploded in the capital early on Saturday, with one blast killing an Iraqi trucker hauling loads for foreign contractors.
In the video from Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq, masked militants were shown lining up five captive National Guardsmen, their hands bound behind their backs, and then shooting them from behind.
People were seen passing by during the shooting and some even stopped to watch.
Many military families who've lost sons and daughters in Iraq find greatest comfort from those similarly bereaved: G.I. Families United in Grief, but Split by the War.
In this network linked by sorrow and empathy, however, one issue divides them: the wisdom of the war. Relatives who believe the war in Iraq was necessary tend to gravitate toward one another, talking little of politics and more of pride, sacrifice and loneliness. And those like Ms. Sheehan, who questioned the need to invade Iraq, find one another too, wrestling with their doubts about the war and the meaning of their losses.
In this network linked by sorrow and empathy, however, one issue divides them: the wisdom of the war.
Relatives who believe the war in Iraq was necessary tend to gravitate toward one another, talking little of politics and more of pride, sacrifice and loneliness. And those like Ms. Sheehan, who questioned the need to invade Iraq, find one another too, wrestling with their doubts about the war and the meaning of their losses.
1,197 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
611 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Been There
The new year is starting with a bang in Iraq: Suicide Car Bomber Kills 18 Iraqi Soldiers.
A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing 19 Iraqis -- all but one of them National Guards -- in another strike against Iraqis cooperating with American forces, the U.S. military said. Four Iraqi policemen were killed in a separate attack. Six Guards were also wounded in the car bomb blast near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Neal E. O'Brien said. An Iraqi civilian was among the 19 killed while the other casualties were members of Iraq's 203rd National Guard Battalion. The driver of the vehicle also died. The military said the four policemen were killed while on patrol in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. A fifth was wounded. Both Samarra and Balad are in the so-called Sunni Triangle, the scene of frequent assaults on U.S. and Iraqi security forces.
A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing 19 Iraqis -- all but one of them National Guards -- in another strike against Iraqis cooperating with American forces, the U.S. military said. Four Iraqi policemen were killed in a separate attack.
Six Guards were also wounded in the car bomb blast near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Neal E. O'Brien said. An Iraqi civilian was among the 19 killed while the other casualties were members of Iraq's 203rd National Guard Battalion. The driver of the vehicle also died.
The military said the four policemen were killed while on patrol in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. A fifth was wounded. Both Samarra and Balad are in the so-called Sunni Triangle, the scene of frequent assaults on U.S. and Iraqi security forces.
1,198 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
612 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
During his presidential campaign, George W. Bush told voters that he planned to cut back his stealing by 50%. Now the White House spinners have started to explain how they plan to do that--by cooking the books, Enron style: In Plan to Reduce Deficit, White House Turns to False Projections.
As in past years, the budget will exclude costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could reach $100 billion in 2005 and are likely to remain high for years to come. The budget is also expected to exclude Mr. Bush's goal to replace Social Security in part with a system of private savings accounts, even though administration officials concede that such a plan could require the government to borrow $2 trillion over the next decade or two. Among the costs that are expected in the five years after 2009 are nearly $1 trillion to make Mr. Bush's tax cuts permanent, nearly $500 billion for the new Medicare prescription drug program and at least $400 billion to address widely acknowledged problems with the so-called alternative minimum tax. Many analysts are dubious about the long-term plan. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that deficits will remain well above $300 billion if Mr. Bush's tax cuts are made permanent and if Iraq war costs taper off gradually. On Wall Street, analysts at Goldman Sachs predict that budget deficits will total about $5 trillion over the next 10 years. "I've been watching this more than 30 years, and I have never seen anything quite this egregious," said Stanley Collender, a longtime author on budget issues and a senior vice president at Financial Dynamics, a communications firm in Washington.
As in past years, the budget will exclude costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could reach $100 billion in 2005 and are likely to remain high for years to come. The budget is also expected to exclude Mr. Bush's goal to replace Social Security in part with a system of private savings accounts, even though administration officials concede that such a plan could require the government to borrow $2 trillion over the next decade or two.
Among the costs that are expected in the five years after 2009 are nearly $1 trillion to make Mr. Bush's tax cuts permanent, nearly $500 billion for the new Medicare prescription drug program and at least $400 billion to address widely acknowledged problems with the so-called alternative minimum tax.
Many analysts are dubious about the long-term plan. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that deficits will remain well above $300 billion if Mr. Bush's tax cuts are made permanent and if Iraq war costs taper off gradually. On Wall Street, analysts at Goldman Sachs predict that budget deficits will total about $5 trillion over the next 10 years.
"I've been watching this more than 30 years, and I have never seen anything quite this egregious," said Stanley Collender, a longtime author on budget issues and a senior vice president at Financial Dynamics, a communications firm in Washington.
In a background session on the federal budget, a senior administration official laid his cards on the table. "No one cares about that budget stuff. If voters wanted to keep us from stealing, they would have elected Kerry."
In recent years DNA evidence has shown that an alarming number of people have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes. If those people are executed, it becomes impossible to rectify the situation later. To some people, including a federal judge in New York, that seems to be a flaw in the death penalty itself: A Legal Quest Against the Death Penalty.
By summer 2001, even before the lawyers in his case filed legal papers challenging the death penalty, Judge Rakoff had begun his own basic research. He focused on a controversial 1993 decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that Leonel Herrera, a Texas death-row inmate who had exhausted his appeals in a murder case, was not entitled to a new federal hearing based on a belated claim that he was "actually innocent." ... In an angry dissent, Justice Harry A. Blackmun charged that the majority was virtually endorsing the death penalty for innocent people. "The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder," he wrote. But as Judge Rakoff perused the writings, he noted that two justices in the majority, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy, had said in a separate opinion that they agreed with "the fundamental legal principle that executing the innocent is inconsistent with the Constitution." Counting them and the three dissenters, Judge Rakoff said, he realized that there were five justices who were prepared to rule that executing the innocent was unconstitutional.
By summer 2001, even before the lawyers in his case filed legal papers challenging the death penalty, Judge Rakoff had begun his own basic research.
He focused on a controversial 1993 decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that Leonel Herrera, a Texas death-row inmate who had exhausted his appeals in a murder case, was not entitled to a new federal hearing based on a belated claim that he was "actually innocent."
...
In an angry dissent, Justice Harry A. Blackmun charged that the majority was virtually endorsing the death penalty for innocent people. "The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder," he wrote.
But as Judge Rakoff perused the writings, he noted that two justices in the majority, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy, had said in a separate opinion that they agreed with "the fundamental legal principle that executing the innocent is inconsistent with the Constitution."
Counting them and the three dissenters, Judge Rakoff said, he realized that there were five justices who were prepared to rule that executing the innocent was unconstitutional.
I guess that means that four judges (we know who they are) are perfectly prepared to rule that executing the innocent is constitutional. Asked about that by a reporter today, President Bush nodded vigorously, "We need more judges like those four on the Supreme Court, and I plan to put them there!"
As the January 30 election day in Iraq approaches, violence continued to rack the country today: Insurgents Slaughter Iraqi Soldiers and Police.
Insurgents pressed their unrelenting campaign to demolish the fledgling Iraqi security forces on Sunday, killing 18 members of the Iraqi National Guard and a civilian with a suicide car bomb north of Baghdad, the United States Army said, and killing several police officers and local officials in other attacks around the country.
And in Afghanistan, the second U.S. soldier was killed this year: Ambush claims 1 life, wounds 3 in Afghanistan.
An American soldier was killed and three others injured as suspected Taliban and the US-led troops came in contact in eastern Kunar province Monday, US army spokesman said. ... The latest casualty has brought the number of the US troops killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2005 to two as another American soldier was killed in western Herat province Sunday.
An American soldier was killed and three others injured as suspected Taliban and the US-led troops came in contact in eastern Kunar province Monday, US army spokesman said.
The latest casualty has brought the number of the US troops killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2005 to two as another American soldier was killed in western Herat province Sunday.
1,199 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
613 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
We all make mistakes, and most of us have no trouble admitting them when we do. So why is it so difficult for those in government to do the same?
Bob Herbert wrote a piece today about two men serving long prison sentences for a murder they clearly did not commit: When the Weight of the Evidence Shifts.
Steven Cohen is a former federal prosecutor who has become all but obsessed with a case in New York in which he believes two men are serving long prison sentences for a murder they didn't commit. A former New York City detective, Robert Addolorato, actually seems tormented by the case. He also believes the prisoners are innocent. Neither of these men are soft on crime. But they insist that in this particular case, the authorities fouled up. Mr. Cohen was adamant. "They've got the wrong guys locked up for this murder," he said. ... The forewoman of the jury that convicted Mr. Lemus and Mr. Hidalgo has also reviewed the latest evidence. She now believes the two men were innocent. But prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's office continue to fight all efforts to have the convictions overturned.
Steven Cohen is a former federal prosecutor who has become all but obsessed with a case in New York in which he believes two men are serving long prison sentences for a murder they didn't commit.
A former New York City detective, Robert Addolorato, actually seems tormented by the case. He also believes the prisoners are innocent.
Neither of these men are soft on crime. But they insist that in this particular case, the authorities fouled up. Mr. Cohen was adamant. "They've got the wrong guys locked up for this murder," he said.
The forewoman of the jury that convicted Mr. Lemus and Mr. Hidalgo has also reviewed the latest evidence. She now believes the two men were innocent. But prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's office continue to fight all efforts to have the convictions overturned.
Of course this is not a death penalty case. If the convicted men had been executed, no one would be investigating this now.
But what motivates the district attorney's office to perpetuate such an obvious injustice? We all know that honest mistakes occur. Why not take the initiative to correct them when they do? Would anyone think less of a government official for doing the right thing?
The war started by George W. Bush "at a time of our choosing" shows no sign of ending any time soon: Attacks Kill 8 Iraqi Soldiers and Governor of Baghdad.
A bomb-laden fuel truck killed eight Iraqi commandos and two other people when it crashed into a checkpoint in western Baghdad about 9 a.m. today, according to an Interior Ministry official. Sixty others were wounded in the attack, which happened near the scene of two deadly car bombings on Monday. Insurgents also assassinated the governor of Baghdad this morning, killing Ali al-Haidari after he left his home, the Interior Ministry said. The Associated Press reported that six of the governor's bodyguards were also killed. Mr. Haidari survived a previous assassination attempt in September. Later, an insurgent group led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and linked to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a message and video posted on an Islamist Internet site. The group has taken responsibility for many deadly attacks in Iraq. Insurgents have repeatedly attacked Iraqi officials as well as members of the country's security forces, accusing them of collaborating with foreign occupiers. In other violence, a soldier with the First Infantry Division was killed and another was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded this morning near Balad, site of an American air base 50 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
A bomb-laden fuel truck killed eight Iraqi commandos and two other people when it crashed into a checkpoint in western Baghdad about 9 a.m. today, according to an Interior Ministry official. Sixty others were wounded in the attack, which happened near the scene of two deadly car bombings on Monday.
Insurgents also assassinated the governor of Baghdad this morning, killing Ali al-Haidari after he left his home, the Interior Ministry said. The Associated Press reported that six of the governor's bodyguards were also killed.
Mr. Haidari survived a previous assassination attempt in September.
Later, an insurgent group led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and linked to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a message and video posted on an Islamist Internet site. The group has taken responsibility for many deadly attacks in Iraq.
Insurgents have repeatedly attacked Iraqi officials as well as members of the country's security forces, accusing them of collaborating with foreign occupiers.
In other violence, a soldier with the First Infantry Division was killed and another was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded this morning near Balad, site of an American air base 50 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
Maybe President Bush could ask his dad and Bill Clinton to help out with the Iraq situation once they've dealt with the tsunami disaster.
Exactly 1,200 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
614 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
A Post-Jasper 2005 Epiphany
(Part I)
Paraphrased from Lewis Mumford and the Myth of the Machine by Christopher Lasch:
“The rise of an allegedly value-free social science is part of an even more sinister development which has been in progress for a long time, namely the translation of politics into administration, the transformation of political questions into administrative ones, which always carries with it the corollary that only disinterested scientific experts are equipped to deal with quesitons which in fact should be the subject of common concern: an explicity political discourse. The real danger is a tendency toward a kind of scientific elitism.
Mumford’s Central Thesis, that modern technology has developed in the historical setting of capitalist accumulation and has been shaped at every point by the requirements of capitalist production, undercuts both the naïve determinism that sees technology as the driving force in history and more sophisticated theories of the ‘autonomy of technique’, as Jacques Ellul calls it.
Whatever it’s liberating possibilities, Mumford insists, modern technology has created new forms of enslavement because it has grown up as the servant of national self-aggrandizement, war, and the instatiable appetite for profits. Acquisitive individualism, the glorification of privacy, the spirit of free scientific inquiry, the development of accurate methods of measuring time and movement, and the conquest of nature all beong to the same historical development, which culminates in the industrial or ‘post-industrial’ order of our own time and its metropolitan round of life.
The bureaucratization of work and play in the modern city, that ‘human filing case’, completes the individual’s reduction to a vicarious consumer of experience, dependent on the market for the satisfaction of his needs, on advertising and mass culture for instruction in the art of living, and on manufactured images for the illusion of reality. Urban density carried too far obstructs association and atomizes social life, just as the machine, absorbed into a general system of consumption erodes older skills.
The atrophy of competence, the invasion of everyday life by expertise, and the growth of a universal market that assimilates everything—even art and love—into the apparatus of commodity production appear from Mumford’s perspective as the erosion of local and regional cultures by the advancing metropolis, which parasitically depends on the cultural organisms it devours and on a proliferating array of services that drive it toward bankruptcy.
Mumford’s indictment of the modern city reaches its climax, not in the ‘neotechnic’ visions of the future against which he plays it off, but in a critique of the ‘metropolitan mind’ with it’s educated contempt for roots.
In the course of his studies…Mumford seems to have come to a deeper understanding of the progressive tradition from which he had already begun to free himself. He now saw that ostensibly revolutionary movements often reinforced the central tendency of middle class society in their misguided attempt to emancipate the individual from his past, from family ties, from the sense of place, and from nature itself.”
To download a 2005 Multitrack Mix of Canada, click here:
http://hometown.aol.com/jbuckettt/canada.html
During the run-up to the U.S. attack on Iraq, the Bush administration repeatedly made these points:
All of these points were dubious, at best, when made, and no worthy leader would have gone to war on them. All of these points, not surprisingly, can now be seen to be false. Today our soldiers, our taxpayers, and the Iraqi people suffer the consequences of the unworthy actions of President Bush: Up to 20 Killed in Suicide Blast at Iraq Police Academy, 6 More U.S. Soldiers Perish.
A suicide car bomb exploded outside a police academy south of Baghdad during a graduation ceremony today, killing up to 20 people, police and hospital officials were quoted as saying. Hours earlier, another car bomb killed two Iraqis in the nation's capital. ... It was the bloodiest day for the United States since the Dec. 21 suicide bombing at a mess tent in Mosul, which killed 14 soldiers and 4 American contractors.
A suicide car bomb exploded outside a police academy south of Baghdad during a graduation ceremony today, killing up to 20 people, police and hospital officials were quoted as saying. Hours earlier, another car bomb killed two Iraqis in the nation's capital.
It was the bloodiest day for the United States since the Dec. 21 suicide bombing at a mess tent in Mosul, which killed 14 soldiers and 4 American contractors.
On the other hand, the politicians who launched the Iraq war and the corporations who profit from it are still doing quite well.
1,201 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
615 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
More death in Iraq today: U.S. Marine Killed in Action in Western Iraq.
A U.S. Marine was killed in action on Thursday in the restive al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, the American military said.
More bodies found in Iraq today: Bodies of 18 Iraqis Found Near Mosul - Iraqi Police.
The bodies of 18 Iraqi Shi'ite men killed last month on their way to work at a U.S. base in Mosul have been found in farmland near the northern city, police sources said on Thursday. Police said the bodies had been discovered on Wednesday. Each of the victims had been shot in the head.
The bodies of 18 Iraqi Shi'ite men killed last month on their way to work at a U.S. base in Mosul have been found in farmland near the northern city, police sources said on Thursday.
Police said the bodies had been discovered on Wednesday. Each of the victims had been shot in the head.
More military officers speaking up against the administration today: U.S. General Warns Army Reserve Is Being 'Broken'.
The U.S. Army Reserve, tapped heavily to provide soldiers for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is "degenerating into a 'broken' force" due to dysfunctional military policies, the Army Reserve's chief said in a memo made public on Wednesday. ... Helmly said Pentagon reluctance to issue orders calling reservists to active duty "in a timely manner" resulted in more than 10,000 reserve soldiers getting as little as three to five days notice before being compelled back into uniform.
The U.S. Army Reserve, tapped heavily to provide soldiers for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is "degenerating into a 'broken' force" due to dysfunctional military policies, the Army Reserve's chief said in a memo made public on Wednesday.
Helmly said Pentagon reluctance to issue orders calling reservists to active duty "in a timely manner" resulted in more than 10,000 reserve soldiers getting as little as three to five days notice before being compelled back into uniform.
1,202 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
616 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
The nomination hearings for Alberto Gonzales starting today will allow our Senate to put its stamp of approval on the torture practices instituted by the Bush administration: We Are All Torturers Now.
When Alberto Gonzales takes his seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee today for hearings to confirm whether he will become attorney general of the United States, Americans will bid farewell to that comforting story line. The senators are likely to give full legitimacy to a path that the Bush administration set the country on more than three years ago, a path that has transformed the United States from a country that condemned torture and forbade its use to one that practices torture routinely. Through a process of redefinition largely overseen by Mr. Gonzales himself, a practice that was once a clear and abhorrent violation of the law has become in effect the law of the land.
A huge problem with our use of torture against others is that we depend upon the international prohibitions on torture to protect our own soldiers.
But reality has a way of asserting itself. In the end, as Gen. Joseph P. Hoar pointed out this week, the administration's decision on the Geneva Conventions "puts all American servicemen and women at risk that are serving in combat regions." For General Hoar - a retired commander of American forces in the Middle East and one of a dozen prominent retired generals and admirals to oppose Mr. Gonzales - torture has a way of undermining the forces using it, as it did with the French Army in Algeria. The general's concerns are understandable. The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism are ultimately political in character. Victory depends in the end not on technology or on overwhelming force but on political persuasion. By using torture, the country relinquishes the very ideological advantage - the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights - that the president has so persistently claimed is America's most powerful weapon in defeating Islamic extremism. One does not reach democracy, or freedom, through torture.
But reality has a way of asserting itself. In the end, as Gen. Joseph P. Hoar pointed out this week, the administration's decision on the Geneva Conventions "puts all American servicemen and women at risk that are serving in combat regions." For General Hoar - a retired commander of American forces in the Middle East and one of a dozen prominent retired generals and admirals to oppose Mr. Gonzales - torture has a way of undermining the forces using it, as it did with the French Army in Algeria.
The general's concerns are understandable. The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism are ultimately political in character. Victory depends in the end not on technology or on overwhelming force but on political persuasion. By using torture, the country relinquishes the very ideological advantage - the promotion of democracy, freedom and human rights - that the president has so persistently claimed is America's most powerful weapon in defeating Islamic extremism. One does not reach democracy, or freedom, through torture.
As Alberto Gonzales attempts to put the best face on his torture advocacy over the coming days, more and more information is coming to light about the reality of those policies: Newly Released Reports Show Early Concern on Prison Abuse.
An article in today's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine says that military medical personnel violated the Geneva Conventions by helping design coercive interrogation techniques based on detainee medical information. Some doctors told the journal that the military had instructed them not to discuss the deaths that occurred in detention. ... "This technique and all of those used in the scenarios was approved by the dep sec def," or deputy secretary of defense, one agent wrote from Guantánamo in January 2004. ... After Abu Ghraib, when the F.B.I. asked agents to report any abuse they had seen, agents reported 26 incidents they believed to be mistreatment. But the bureau's general counsel said 17 of those were allowed under Pentagon policy.
An article in today's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine says that military medical personnel violated the Geneva Conventions by helping design coercive interrogation techniques based on detainee medical information. Some doctors told the journal that the military had instructed them not to discuss the deaths that occurred in detention.
"This technique and all of those used in the scenarios was approved by the dep sec def," or deputy secretary of defense, one agent wrote from Guantánamo in January 2004.
After Abu Ghraib, when the F.B.I. asked agents to report any abuse they had seen, agents reported 26 incidents they believed to be mistreatment. But the bureau's general counsel said 17 of those were allowed under Pentagon policy.
In the coming years, many legal cases involving torture will be coming before the courts. With the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales, our Attorney General should be the one prosecuting torturers. What's wrong with this picture?
Editor’s Note: I’ve been abruptly handed the workaday reins of Coppernickus’s Post-Jasper 2005 Epiphany (who apparently prefers the nocturnal pursuit of grand conceptual breakthroughs— phhfff, right!—to that actual typewriterly tedium required of an everyman scribe like myself). In the interest of thematic continuity, I’ve decided to rename the subject thread “Revitalizing Grass Roots Democracy” and will post Part II of Coppernickus’s intended entry here as my first post on this thread. There was a time, around when turning 30, when I reveled in politics, and I’m going to try and draw on that reserve of democratic optimism whilst evolving this thread as I supsect that this endeavor is in part, a reply to that generation current 20 to 30-somethings whose baroque and maddening mindset I’ve been exploring of late within a Xmas gift I unexpectedly received this year: America: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction — which, with its wry, painful and cruelly hilarious existential subtext of political despair bubbling an abyss of youthful faith severely challenged, could be expressed in the book’s icy epigraph: “To the huddled masses, Keep yearnin’!”
To wit! An example as taken from this sidebar near the end of “The Future of Democracy” chapter:
Electronic voting machines are a bold first step toward fulfilling Lincoln’s prophetic vision of government “by the machines, of the machines, for the machines.”
This folks, is not a healthy sign.That such a mind-set has now descended into today’s youthful affluent is in fact a crime scene investigational piece of psychological or spiritual evidence that America’s larger cultural, economic and political problems are deeply systemic. The real problem, in short, as Coppernickus noted in his prior unoriginal subject line, is that there now exists, inseparable from us, a well-engineered high-tech “Machine in the Garden” which has been co-evolving with humanity ince the dawn of history and is now beginning to serious compete with us for Earth’s finite resources.As any Bible Beating old timer could plainly tell you: the whole mess began with a “fall from the garden”. If America is going to evangelize for democracy around the world then we must come to a better understanding of how this sophisticated cybernetic machine’s virtues and flaws have helped create our Grand Old Experiment unsecularly christened America. Every week or two I will try to chime in with a post on this thread and I invite replying comments, criticisms, suggestions, arguments against etc as it progresses. So, without further pretentious ado, it’s nose to grindstone and shoulder to wheel while I slip in a favorite old Bothy Band CD and start typing up my first assignment.Up next, a “cliff note” condensation + commentary upon “Jacques Ellul: Between Babylon and New Jerusalem” by John Schaar from the Fall 1982 issue of Democracy (A Journal of Political Renewal and Radical Change).
Cheers, Cousin Jack
PS to Moots (if you’re still out there): My December 17, 2004 Reply (Part I) to your original November Post will have to suffice in toto as over the Christmas-New Year holiday sabbatical I reached the conclusion that adding more would be less. Methinks ye gotteth the picture, eh?As it says in the Uphanishads: THOU ART THAT!If you (or anyone else) wishes to further that thread in the future with another post I will try and make the time to reply. PS2:Since we wild western civilians seem to be once again running amok with our idiot generosity, here’s a current tally for America-in-Baghdad bashers everywhere.Tsumtran Tsunami contributions in Almighty Buck$ so far:America — Hundreds of Millions Al Qaeda Jihadists, Inc. —0
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And so, picking up where Coppernicus has irresponsibly left us, in condensed and paraphrased “Cliff Notes” form, here, from the Summer 1980 issue of Salmagundi, is Part II of Lewis Mumford and the Myth of the Machine by Cristopher Lasch.
But first, just to refresh:
In the opening of his 1980 essay, Lasch notes that the hope of cultural renewal, briefly shared by so many intellectuals at the time of World War I, derived much of its energy from a widespread revolt against positivism whose ‘objectivity’, its separation of fact and value, and its divorce of theory from practice, concealed a defense of the social and economic status quo. These modernists condemned positivism as the characteristic cultural expression of a social order founded on the subordination of impulse to routine, the rational calculation of profit and loss, and the impoverishment of the imagination. And it was, they believed, a mirror image of industrial capitalism.They came to the conclusion that a ‘renewal of culture,’ an ‘intellectual rebirth,’ a rehabilitation of the ‘devastated realm of spirit,’ had to inform and perhaps even to precede a political revolution.
Now, on to Part II:
‘A self-governing, self-acting, and self-respecting person is the very foundation of a democracy,’ but in advanced industrial society, the dominance of experts and ‘the ruthless destruction of the household arts and crafts based on the assumption that the equivalent can be purchased at a shop,’ along with the concentration of technical knowledge at social hierarchy’s economic zenith, undermines everyday self-reliance. Mumford argued in effect that progressive ideology legitimizes the state of affairs and thus participates in the attack on the individual’s moral autonomy: progressivism scorns the discipline gained through manual labor, the endurance of discomfort, and the nurture of the young. It seeks to free mankind from all manner of hardship and adversity, from the boredom of domestic drudgery, and from natural processes in general. Pragmatic liberalism, as Mumford called it, had lost the ‘tragic sense of life.’ It refused to confront the reality of death, hoping that ‘science’s steady advances in hygeine and medicine might postpone further and further that unpleasant occasion. These people have ceased to live in a meaningful world, for a meaningful world is on that holds a future that extends beyond the incomplete personal life of the indiviudal so that a life sacrificed at the right moment is a life well spent, while a life to carefully hoarded, to ignominiously preserved, is a life utterly wasted. Mumford also pointed out that pragmatism and the progressive tradition in general, serves as the ideology of modern science which is ‘the philosophy of power’. Every progressive’s attempt to overcome ‘personal bias’ and to disengage himself from imagination and emotion provided one more rationale for the scientific ‘abdication of responsibility’ and the scientific detachment from all other needs and values than those of knowledge and power: ‘The triumph of the scientific world view goes hand in hand with the modern celebration of violence and instinctual release.’ The idolatry of technological power, the support given to that modern scientific enterprise of emancipating makind from nature’s controlling forces — a project which meets fully the infantile wish of unrestrained power for the modern intellectual and Man of Knolwedge who, by turning his back on ‘emotion, imagination and dreams,’ has grasped the principle that knowledge confers power on those who master the secrets of nature. Mumford believed (perhaps naively) that Capitalism, the Labor Machine and Mass Production were originally introduced by those Divine King societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia wherein society itself was first collectivized as a vast ‘labor machine’. In the long interim, labor-saving machinery, often associated with small-scale enterprise and the progress of handicrafts, eliminated drudgery and freed human energies for more rewarding types of work. But today, with The Mega-Machine of modern economics and politics has created new forms of drudgery and enlisted human energy in collective enterprises on a gigantic scale that gratify the power-hunger of the mighty but do little to improve the material conditions of everyday life. Originally modeled on the Army, this Mega-Machine served as a model for all later forms of mechanical organization. Characterized by the interchange-ability of parts, external direction of work, centralization of scientific and technical knowledge, and a regimentation of the work force, this labor machine of ancient times already anticipated the central features of modern production long before the so-called industrial revolution. Only in the last two and a half centuries, according to Mumford, had the principles of the Mega-Machine, formerly ‘confined to great mass enterprises,’ invaded the workshop itself—which is the real meaning of the industrial revolution. This development coincided with a revival of the ‘old dream of unlimited power,’ the reintroduction of forced labor and genocide, the rise of states claiming and exercising absolute dominion, and finally, the emergence of a ‘new psychological type,’ the organization man or ‘bureaucratic personality’ who lives in a condition of ‘submissive conformity’ and ‘total dependence’.” The essence of industrialization, according to Mumford, lay not in the introduction of machinery on a large scale but in the separation of planning from production, the monopolization of technical knowledge by a new priesthood of scientists and engineers, and the regimentation of the work force. These social changes represent the precondition, not the consequence, of large scale mechanization — an extension to the manufacturing sector of that military-like discipline formerly confined to great enterprises of state. Modern industry had moved to a central position form of social organization and labor discipline which formerly once existed on the periphery of daily life. Hence the declining importance of the family, once the basic unit of production but now merely an obstacle to the complete regimentation of everyday activity.
‘A self-governing, self-acting, and self-respecting person is the very foundation of a democracy,’ but in advanced industrial society, the dominance of experts and ‘the ruthless destruction of the household arts and crafts based on the assumption that the equivalent can be purchased at a shop,’ along with the concentration of technical knowledge at social hierarchy’s economic zenith, undermines everyday self-reliance.
Mumford argued in effect that progressive ideology legitimizes the state of affairs and thus participates in the attack on the individual’s moral autonomy: progressivism scorns the discipline gained through manual labor, the endurance of discomfort, and the nurture of the young. It seeks to free mankind from all manner of hardship and adversity, from the boredom of domestic drudgery, and from natural processes in general.
Pragmatic liberalism, as Mumford called it, had lost the ‘tragic sense of life.’ It refused to confront the reality of death, hoping that ‘science’s steady advances in hygeine and medicine might postpone further and further that unpleasant occasion. These people have ceased to live in a meaningful world, for a meaningful world is on that holds a future that extends beyond the incomplete personal life of the indiviudal so that a life sacrificed at the right moment is a life well spent, while a life to carefully hoarded, to ignominiously preserved, is a life utterly wasted.
Mumford also pointed out that pragmatism and the progressive tradition in general, serves as the ideology of modern science which is ‘the philosophy of power’. Every progressive’s attempt to overcome ‘personal bias’ and to disengage himself from imagination and emotion provided one more rationale for the scientific ‘abdication of responsibility’ and the scientific detachment from all other needs and values than those of knowledge and power: ‘The triumph of the scientific world view goes hand in hand with the modern celebration of violence and instinctual release.’
The idolatry of technological power, the support given to that modern scientific enterprise of emancipating makind from nature’s controlling forces — a project which meets fully the infantile wish of unrestrained power for the modern intellectual and Man of Knolwedge who, by turning his back on ‘emotion, imagination and dreams,’ has grasped the principle that knowledge confers power on those who master the secrets of nature.
Mumford believed (perhaps naively) that Capitalism, the Labor Machine and Mass Production were originally introduced by those Divine King societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia wherein society itself was first collectivized as a vast ‘labor machine’. In the long interim, labor-saving machinery, often associated with small-scale enterprise and the progress of handicrafts, eliminated drudgery and freed human energies for more rewarding types of work. But today, with The Mega-Machine of modern economics and politics has created new forms of drudgery and enlisted human energy in collective enterprises on a gigantic scale that gratify the power-hunger of the mighty but do little to improve the material conditions of everyday life.
Originally modeled on the Army, this Mega-Machine served as a model for all later forms of mechanical organization. Characterized by the interchange-ability of parts, external direction of work, centralization of scientific and technical knowledge, and a regimentation of the work force, this labor machine of ancient times already anticipated the central features of modern production long before the so-called industrial revolution. Only in the last two and a half centuries, according to Mumford, had the principles of the Mega-Machine, formerly ‘confined to great mass enterprises,’ invaded the workshop itself—which is the real meaning of the industrial revolution. This development coincided with a revival of the ‘old dream of unlimited power,’ the reintroduction of forced labor and genocide, the rise of states claiming and exercising absolute dominion, and finally, the emergence of a ‘new psychological type,’ the organization man or ‘bureaucratic personality’ who lives in a condition of ‘submissive conformity’ and ‘total dependence’.”
The essence of industrialization, according to Mumford, lay not in the introduction of machinery on a large scale but in the separation of planning from production, the monopolization of technical knowledge by a new priesthood of scientists and engineers, and the regimentation of the work force. These social changes represent the precondition, not the consequence, of large scale mechanization — an extension to the manufacturing sector of that military-like discipline formerly confined to great enterprises of state. Modern industry had moved to a central position form of social organization and labor discipline which formerly once existed on the periphery of daily life. Hence the declining importance of the family, once the basic unit of production but now merely an obstacle to the complete regimentation of everyday activity.
----------------------
Finally, in conclusion, Lasch summed up:
Only in the 1960’s did Mumford reject utopian thinking once and for all, together with the ‘dogmatic faith on technological progress’ on which it rested…and in rejecting the progressive illusion of technological progress, Mumford acknowledged the radical imperfectibility of human nature; throwing off the optimistic faith that socialism (or some other program of state-sponsored social reform) will automatically liberate technology from its capitalistic constraints while simultaneously condemning the shallow modern cult of progress with all its moral irresponsiblity and ‘general attitude of permissiveness which has at its roots a general deflation of meaning and purpose’. Mumford’s work defies political categorization because the conventional terms of political debate have lost their meaning: it is the champions of leftist orthodoxy — those ‘avante-garde minds cast in this old-fashioned “progressive” mold, — who are now living in the past.
To listen to or download an mp3 of Havrylak Kern's Freedom Tears, click here:
http://hometown.aol.com/havrylak/freedomtears.html
Bada Bing,
Before Bush took office, our country had a government that pursued all the policies you deplore:
As odious as those policies were to you, you did not pack up and leave the country. Instead, you worked to replace the old government with one that pursues the policies you prefer:
Sure you like these Bush policies and I don't, but I'm not about to cut and run. The pendulum swings both ways.
Cousin Jack,
I've read with interest those pieces on The Machine in the Garden. It's certainly the case that increasingly powerful machines and weapons give governments and corporations the means for more control over us.
However, we're still the people and machines are still tools that we use as we see fit. If we let the government and corporations misuse those tools to oppress us and others, the blame falls squarely on us, in my opinion.
Don't you think that technology can also serve to free us from organizations that seek to control us? With personal computers and the Internet, individuals now have technological tools more powerful than did corporations and governments just three decades ago. We need to use those tools to resist potential oppressors.
Nine more of our soldiers have suffered the consequences of President Bush's premature and foolishly unprepared attack on Iraq: Seven U.S. Soldiers Killed in Attack Near Baghdad, Two More Killed in Other Combat.
Seven U.S. soldiers were killed Thursday when their Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit an explosive device on a road in northwestern Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. The group was on a routine security patrol when the attack occurred at 6 p.m. local time, said Captain Patricia Brewer, a U.S. military spokeswoman. "All of the occupants were killed," she said. In a separate incident, a U.S. Marine was killed in action Thursday in the restive al-Anbar province west of Baghdad. The U.S. military earlier reported the death in combat of another Marine in the province, which includes the cities of Falluja, where U.S. troops launched a major offensive in November to try to drive out insurgents, and Ramadi, another guerrilla stronghold.
Seven U.S. soldiers were killed Thursday when their Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit an explosive device on a road in northwestern Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement.
The group was on a routine security patrol when the attack occurred at 6 p.m. local time, said Captain Patricia Brewer, a U.S. military spokeswoman.
"All of the occupants were killed," she said.
In a separate incident, a U.S. Marine was killed in action Thursday in the restive al-Anbar province west of Baghdad.
The U.S. military earlier reported the death in combat of another Marine in the province, which includes the cities of Falluja, where U.S. troops launched a major offensive in November to try to drive out insurgents, and Ramadi, another guerrilla stronghold.
The military now faces the problem of dealing with the unnecessary strains placed upon it by the president's failed Iraq policies: Rumsfeld Seeks Broad Review of Iraq Policy.
The assessment of how rapidly Iraqis can begin shouldering the security burden is driving a separate set of painful, high-level discussions at the Pentagon, where senior officials are calculating how to sustain a large force in Iraq. The number of American military personnel in Iraq rose this month to 150,000, the largest deployment since Baghdad fell. In another move that could affect hundreds of thousands of members of the National Guard and Reserve, the senior Army official said the Pentagon leadership was also considering whether to change mobilization policy to allow reservists to be called up for more than 24 months of total active service, which is the current limit. The policy change under consideration would allow the Army to call up members of the National Guard and Reserve for duty as many times as required, but not for more than two years at a time.
The assessment of how rapidly Iraqis can begin shouldering the security burden is driving a separate set of painful, high-level discussions at the Pentagon, where senior officials are calculating how to sustain a large force in Iraq. The number of American military personnel in Iraq rose this month to 150,000, the largest deployment since Baghdad fell.
In another move that could affect hundreds of thousands of members of the National Guard and Reserve, the senior Army official said the Pentagon leadership was also considering whether to change mobilization policy to allow reservists to be called up for more than 24 months of total active service, which is the current limit.
The policy change under consideration would allow the Army to call up members of the National Guard and Reserve for duty as many times as required, but not for more than two years at a time.
Our forces were trained and equipped to defeat any military opponent using blazing speed, incredible firepower, high-tech battlefield intelligence and communications, and sophisticated tactics. They did not have the numbers, training, or equipment to sustain a long occupation of a country as large as Iraq. The generals who pointed out that fact were shoved aside by an administration of cowboys eager to play war. Now the administration casts ever-larger nets to find soldiers to play the price for President Bush's stupidity.
1,203 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
617 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Happy New Year everyone!
The way things are going, we'd better celebrate while we still can. BT, you told BB the honest to god truth. Hope he bakes on the beach. G'night.
Hi Been There:
Good points all of which I agree with having been a strong believer in the "appropriate technology" movement ever since reading the Whole Earth Catalog back in the early 1970's. Mumford of course was writing in the first half of the 20th century and had a better feel for the more decentralized rural self-reliant way of life that existed in abundance before the onset of WWI and felt firsthand the momentous change then underway which was made possible by the emerging new technology-driven apparatus the control over which in Europe and America were then in the hands of a few industrial capitalists whose giant firms had a huge influence on the way individuals were ultimately forced to live their economic lives.
I would like to think that appropriate technologies like the personal computer will help lead us back to a better balance between the rural and urban ways of life as the demographic trends in the last few decades have been driving more and more people away from family farms and Mom & Pop stores toward the ever-expanding metropolises within which, it seems, people lose more and more control over their own lives.
My next post in this thread (coming later this week I hope) will deal with the ideas of Jacques Ellul whose "The Technological Society" had quite an impact on theorists in the mid to late 1950's and perhaps it will help to focus some of Mumford's ideas on that technological apparatus and methodology which has driven our idea of "progress" in Western Society over the past couple of centuries.
Sorry...pressed for time today...
CJ
Yes, it's temptingly convenient in the onrush of life to cede control of our choices to those oh-so-willing control freaks in government (and just about every other organization) that it's often difficult to resist doing so. Once done, though, it's even more difficult to take back the control we once had.
The success or failure of attempts by governments to control the use of the Internet will have a big impact on lives in the future, in my opinion. I'm rooting against the governments, but am far from confident that they will fail.
We're coming close to two years since George Bush attacked Iraq on the pretense of saving us from weapons of mass destruction, and the carnage from his blunder continues: U.S. Troops Kill Iraq Civilians in Botched Strikes.
U.S. troops targeted by a roadside bomb mistakenly killed two Iraqi policemen and two bystanders hours after an American warplane bombed the wrong house, exacting a heavy civilian toll, Iraqi officials said.
Of course the Iraqis are not the only ones to suffer from Bush's folly: U.S. Soldier Killed in Iraq Explosion.
A U.S. soldier was killed Sunday in a roadside bomb explosion, the military said. The soldier, who had been assigned to the Task Force Baghdad, was killed at about 9 a.m after his patrol struck the device, the military said. The name of the soldier was withheld pending notification of next of kin.
A U.S. soldier was killed Sunday in a roadside bomb explosion, the military said.
The soldier, who had been assigned to the Task Force Baghdad, was killed at about 9 a.m after his patrol struck the device, the military said. The name of the soldier was withheld pending notification of next of kin.
1,205 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
619 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Today's headline from Iraq: Baghdad Deputy Police Chief Assassinated.
Gunmen assassinated Baghdad's deputy police chief and a suicide car bomber killed three people at a police station Monday as insurgents stepped up their campaign to sabotage Iraq's Jan. 30 election.
Meanwhile, the tiny non-American portion of the "coalition" occupying Iraq continued to unravel.
Political fallout from the Iraqi chaos reached Ukraine, where President-elect Viktor Yushchenko promised to make the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Iraq a priority after eight were killed trying to detonate a cache of seized explosives.
Recognizing the inevitable, politicians in Washington are busy laying the groundwork for a fast withdrawal from Iraq, despite President Bush's statements to the contrary: Hot Topic: How U.S. Might Disengage in Iraq.
Even if the new government wants the American forces to remain, some officials say there is a growing undercurrent of talk about whether to press the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own defense by giving them a rough timetable for gradual American withdrawal. "It's clear to everyone that this has to become an Iraqi show, and it has to happen this year," a senior administration official said.
Even if the new government wants the American forces to remain, some officials say there is a growing undercurrent of talk about whether to press the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own defense by giving them a rough timetable for gradual American withdrawal.
"It's clear to everyone that this has to become an Iraqi show, and it has to happen this year," a senior administration official said.
The three top options being considered in Washington are:
1,206 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
620 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Don't you think your "headlines" from the NY Times are getting a little old....Everybody watches the news, why do you think you need to tell everyone about it??? Cripes you are the only one that comes in here because people can't stand looking at your BS so they just move on. Do you really think you are changing lives and affecting other people's opinions?
Maybe we should count the days since Clinton let Bin laden go, or maybe count the days that nothing was done when we were attacked in the 90's. Or maybe we should count the days that you haven't posted your crap here, oh, that one is easy. Zero. The same number as the people who actually read your posts. BTW the NY Times is no longer a viable place for unbiased news.....didn't see any links from you on the stories their reporters "created" in their own minds and passed off as news. Did you miss those ones? Why don't you just get it over with and link to Moreon.org where you really get your information?
Just happened to come across this relevant "Liberal Federalism" op-ed at Slate today by Richard Thompson Ford.
A couple-three excerpts and link:
Federalism doesn't suit the typical liberal's self-image, but one of the most persuasive defenders of decentralizing political power was that ultimate object of liberal cosmopolitan admiration (and conservative scorn), a French intellectual: Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the strength and dynamism of American democracy were found in its local communities. He was right: Local and state governments can be more innovative, daring, and proactive—in short, more progressive—than even the liberal Congresses of distant memory. States and local governments can be laboratories for democracy, where innovative and controversial policies can be tried out on a small scale before being applied more comprehensively. Such small-scale experimentation is ideally suited for controversial issues in an ideologically polarized nation. A meaningful federalism could maintain fundamental rights and centralized control over activities whose effects cross state boundaries. But it would also let the red states experience more of the consequences of their political ideology and the blue states of theirs. I can't imagine a better way to advertise the virtues of progressive policy.
Federalism doesn't suit the typical liberal's self-image, but one of the most persuasive defenders of decentralizing political power was that ultimate object of liberal cosmopolitan admiration (and conservative scorn), a French intellectual: Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the strength and dynamism of American democracy were found in its local communities. He was right: Local and state governments can be more innovative, daring, and proactive—in short, more progressive—than even the liberal Congresses of distant memory.
States and local governments can be laboratories for democracy, where innovative and controversial policies can be tried out on a small scale before being applied more comprehensively.
Such small-scale experimentation is ideally suited for controversial issues in an ideologically polarized nation.
A meaningful federalism could maintain fundamental rights and centralized control over activities whose effects cross state boundaries. But it would also let the red states experience more of the consequences of their political ideology and the blue states of theirs. I can't imagine a better way to advertise the virtues of progressive policy.
For more:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2111942
Has Been,
It's very nice to hear from you because (I gather) you disagree with some of the things I post. Like most people, I treasure conversations with those who disagree with me because of the chance that I might learn that I've been wrong about something.
Lately it's been difficult to engage some of my friends and neighbors who've disagreed with me in the past about my big issues. My suspicion is that most of them are a bit sheepish that things have played out the way I predicted.
My posting here has nothing to do with "changing lives and affecting other people's opinions," and everything to do with my learning where I'm wrong from a wider group than my immediate circle. Most likely, many in the wider group too are a bit sheepish about the present reality.
The Media
I totally agree with you that the media cannot be trusted--not the New York Times, not CNN, not Fox, not CBS, not the DMG, and not talkshow hosts like drug-addled Rush Limbaugh.
If I ever find out that I've linked to information that was made up or false, I'll call attention to that fact right away. If you've noticed anything of that sort, I'd appreciate your calling attention to it too.
Like anyone else, I can make mistakes and like to correct them when I do. It's truly one of the pleasures of life to be shown to be wrong (and it happens all too seldom these days).
I don't actually get any information from Moreon.org (whoever they might be) or any other party or organization because I'm not really a group-think type of person. Over the years I've observed that parties and political organizations change their principles and positions to whatever they think enhances their chances of gaining power at the time.
Living by Values
People with strong values, like me, don't shift with the political winds. Instead, I support the candidate who stands on the correct side (in my opinion) of the major issues that concern me. If Al Gore had taken office and:
then I would have made exactly the same judgments about Al Gore as I've made about the man who actually made those blunders, George W. Bush.
If things had been different and I'd been criticising Gore, some democrats now would be accusing me of posting information obtained from the Rush Limbaugh show. (Drug-addled Rush, instead of making value-based judgments, makes huge sums promoting the talking points of the Republican Party; Rush would be lambasting Al Gore for doing exactly the things for which he now praises George W. Bush.)
When your opinions are value-based, as mine are, you don't need someone else's talking points to know what to say.
The Facts
Do you really think that the media is making up the fact that soldiers and Iraqis are dying?
Do you really think that the media is making up the fact that budget deficits are back and soaring?
Do you really think that the media faked the statements by Bush and his administration that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
Believe me, if these (or any other items I've posted) are false, I'd love to hear about it. And so would everyone else.
The Conclusions
Of course I don't (usually) post links to random news stories, but rather to those that support and buttress the opinions I state and the predictions I've made about how events would play out. On the rare occasions that news stories undercut my opinions, I link to those also.
Indeed, I try to make sure that all my opinions are based on facts and values. By posting the specific reasons for my opinions, I maximize the chance that someone will successfully refute them, thereby advancing my knowledge.
Rip Apart and Stomp On My Posts!
Okay, I think we've gotten off to a good start here. I hope you are the sort of person who has enough conviction to be specific about exactly where I am wrong.
If I have the facts wrong, tell me what the truth is and how you learned it! If I'm drawing the wrong conclusions from the facts, tell me where my logic has failed.
I'm not much of a "feelings" person, though, and I confess to a longstanding "lack of respect for authority." So if all of your arguments fall along those lines, we probably won't get anywhere.
1,207 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
621 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
I do feel that, in general, the federal government should enforce overarching ground rules to ensure fair treatment for all citizens. Local governments and citizens should be free to find solutions to their specific problems within those ground rules.
My friends and neighbors can be trusted, and I know where they're coming from. We've had some recent success stories here of people with very different perspectives on Keweenaw land issues working things out successfully. Those very efforts have brought the community closer together.
President Bush's war on Iraq "at a time of our choosing" brought more death and destruction today: U.S. Soldier Killed; Convoy of U.S. and Iraqi Troops Ambushed.
Insurgents ambushed a convoy of American and Iraqi forces in the northern city of Mosul, detonating a roadside bomb and firing from a mosque in an attack that killed three Iraqi National Guardsmen, the U.S. military said Wednesday. ... Also Tuesday, gunmen stopped three trucks carrying new Iraqi coins south of Baghdad and killed the drivers, stole the money and set the trucks on fire, a police official said. ... Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed in action in Iraq's volatile western Anbar province, a military statement said Wednesday. The statement said only that the soldier, assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed Tuesday. The unit is based at Camp Fallujah west of Baghdad.
Insurgents ambushed a convoy of American and Iraqi forces in the northern city of Mosul, detonating a roadside bomb and firing from a mosque in an attack that killed three Iraqi National Guardsmen, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
Also Tuesday, gunmen stopped three trucks carrying new Iraqi coins south of Baghdad and killed the drivers, stole the money and set the trucks on fire, a police official said.
Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed in action in Iraq's volatile western Anbar province, a military statement said Wednesday. The statement said only that the soldier, assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed Tuesday. The unit is based at Camp Fallujah west of Baghdad.
In President Bush's mind, a small number of insurgents are doing all the damage: Iraqi Elections Worry Some Conservatives.
A Republican congressman from North Carolina, Howard Coble, is troubled by mounting American casualties in Iraq and what he sees as the absence of a postwar plan to bring stability to the country. He said constituents who have contacted his office thus far this year have been evenly split on U.S. military involvement in Iraq. This contrasts with the strong support those contacts reflected previously. The administration, however, is not budging. Dismissing naysayers, Bush said last week that the elections will be "an incredibly hopeful experience." But he acknowledged that the insurgents are a problem. "I know it's hard," he said. "But it's hard for a reason. And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom."
A Republican congressman from North Carolina, Howard Coble, is troubled by mounting American casualties in Iraq and what he sees as the absence of a postwar plan to bring stability to the country. He said constituents who have contacted his office thus far this year have been evenly split on U.S. military involvement in Iraq. This contrasts with the strong support those contacts reflected previously.
The administration, however, is not budging.
Dismissing naysayers, Bush said last week that the elections will be "an incredibly hopeful experience." But he acknowledged that the insurgents are a problem. "I know it's hard," he said. "But it's hard for a reason. And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom."
A handful? Tell that to the soldiers putting their lives on the line every day because of the president's blunders. Unfortunately the war is being fought in real life, not in Bush's mind.
1,208 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
622 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Look2It,
Gosh, give the man a chance!
<We've had some recent success stories here of people with very different perspectives on Keweenaw land issues working things out successfully. Those very efforts have brought the community closer together.
Been There>
Indeed. I've been closely following the Keweenaw Land Use debate over the past several years through friends and relatives on dozens of visits. Michele Andersen's excellent reporting has been very helpful as well. It has been a great pleasure to witness the Keweenaw community rise up and engage this critical issue with rational foresight and balanced compromise to ensure the future environmental health of the peninsula's unique ecosystems. A healthy outdoors and intelligent friendly people are the richest resources the Keweenaw has.
Back later this week with next installment on this thread.
Yesterday the administration finally owned up to a truth that every honest person admitted long ago: Iraq Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction Since 1991.
The U.S. force that scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction -- cited by President Bush as justification for war -- has abandoned its long and fruitless hunt, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The 1,700-strong Iraq Survey Group, responsible for the hunt, last month wrapped up physical searches for weapons of mass destruction, and it will now gather information to help U.S. forces in Iraq win a bloody guerrilla war, officials said.
The U.S. force that scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction -- cited by President Bush as justification for war -- has abandoned its long and fruitless hunt, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The 1,700-strong Iraq Survey Group, responsible for the hunt, last month wrapped up physical searches for weapons of mass destruction, and it will now gather information to help U.S. forces in Iraq win a bloody guerrilla war, officials said.
In a taped interview with Barbara Walters for airing tomorrow, President Bush explained himself with these words:
"I felt like we would find weapons of mass destruction."
All the death and destruction in Iraq came about because of what George W. Bush felt like. He had a hunch that Iraq threatened us with weapons of mass destruction, so he attacked--leaving us in the mess we now find ourselves.
This is a perfect time to compare what the President says now with what he and the rest of his administration said previously (if you didn't hear some of these statements at the time, don't take my word--look them up yourself in any source you like):
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002 "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." - George W. Bush, September 12, 2002 "The entire world knows beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein holds weapons of mass destruction in large quantities."- Dick Cheney, September 23, 2002 "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."- George W. Bush, October 7, 2002 "If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."- Ari Fleischer, December 2, 2002 "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."- Ari Fleischer, January 9, 2003 "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more." - Colin Powell, February 5, 2003 "The Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." - George W. Bush, March 17, 2003 "Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly. All this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes." - Ari Fleischer, March 21, 2003 "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." - Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." - George W. Bush, September 12, 2002
"The entire world knows beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein holds weapons of mass destruction in large quantities."- Dick Cheney, September 23, 2002
"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."- George W. Bush, October 7, 2002
"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."- Ari Fleischer, December 2, 2002
"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."- Ari Fleischer, January 9, 2003
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more." - Colin Powell, February 5, 2003
"The Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." - George W. Bush, March 17, 2003
"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly. All this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes." - Ari Fleischer, March 21, 2003
"We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." - Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003
And now:
"I felt like we would find weapons of mass destruction."- George W. Bush, to Barbara Walters for her January 14, 2005 TV interview.
1,209 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
623 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Yes, I thought there was a possibility that Has Been had the strength of character to be specific after his mildly critical review of my posts, and I still don't rule that out completely. But if he doesn't, I don't mind admitting my mistake about him. (I've had plenty of practice at it.) Lots of folks feel uncomfortable facing facts that undercut their strong emotional attachment to an organization, cause, or leader, so they avoid at all costs a discussion of the facts surrounding that attachment.
On these boards, Moots, a person I respect as a well-meaning, principled man, nevertheless twisted and turned every way under the sun to avoid answering a direct question about his "bottom line" beliefs. Perhaps his absence from the boards now has to do with avoiding the information presented by Cousin Jack about the early history of Christianity. Who knows?
However, it is not only Bush supporters who let emotions cloud their view of the facts: many democrats are exactly the same way. To be frank about it, Look2It, you haven't been very forthcoming with specifics in your posts either, other than making abundantly clear your strong preference for brevity.
1,210 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
624 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
The European Space Agency is starting to post spectacular photos on its Web site: New images from Titan. What a great accomplishment, and our country contributed substantially by giving the probe a successful ride.
Now that the presidential election is over, Bush clarified his stance on a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage: No Constitutional Ban.
Bush said he would not lobby the Senate to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.
Asked if his campaign for election had not supported such a ban, the president said simply, "That was then; this is now."
Under pressure from fundamentalist Christian and Muslim voters, President Bush flip-flopped once more on the same-sex marriage amendment: White House Again Backs Amendment on Marriage.
The White House sought on Sunday to reassure conservatives that President Bush would work hard on behalf of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, backtracking from remarks Mr. Bush made in an interview suggesting that he would not press the Senate to vote on the amendment this year.
"All right then," the exasperated President conceded, "you can say I support the amendment, just don't expect any action on it. Everybody knows I can't afford to irritate Cheney."
The elections in Iraq are just two weeks away: Insurgents Attempt to Sow Chaos in Iraq Before Elections.
It was another violent day in Iraq today as insurgents gunned down policemen, shelled polling places and set off car bombs in an attempt to sow chaos across the country before the elections. ... American military officials announced today that two American soldiers died when their Humvee flipped over and fell into a canal in Baghdad on Sunday night. And late today the Vatican announced that the Catholic archbishop of Mosul had been kidnapped. A Vatican spokesman told Reuters that the archbishop, Basile Georges Casmoussa, had been abducted in "an act of terrorism." No other details were immediately available.
It was another violent day in Iraq today as insurgents gunned down policemen, shelled polling places and set off car bombs in an attempt to sow chaos across the country before the elections.
American military officials announced today that two American soldiers died when their Humvee flipped over and fell into a canal in Baghdad on Sunday night.
And late today the Vatican announced that the Catholic archbishop of Mosul had been kidnapped. A Vatican spokesman told Reuters that the archbishop, Basile Georges Casmoussa, had been abducted in "an act of terrorism." No other details were immediately available.
1,213 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
627 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
CJ,
I've been kind of out of the loop here for a couple of months.
Browsing back through the old posts, I see you wrote a rather extensive reply to my November post. Just wanted to let you know that I have read it. Thanks.
BT, did you address our "proper role" in the mideast in any of your posts?
moots
Moots,
Welcome back! No I didn't, for it seemed you were no longer into these discussions.
We need the Iraq elections on to be a big success. If the elections don't mark the turning point for the Iraq war, it's hard to see what will.
Despite the perilous conditions, the huge number of candidate slates, and the difficulty of learning what any slate actually intends to do, the Iraqis will have real choices. More Iraqi expatriots live in Michigan than any other state, so Detroit is one of five U.S. cities offering the opportunity to register and vote in the Iraqi elections: Iraq Expatriates Sign Up to Vote in 5 Cities in U.S.
The lengths some people had to go simply to register were remarkable. They drove hundreds of miles. They went through long security checkpoints and metal-detector screenings, where some were asked to return cellphones, pocketknives and diaper bags to their cars. And they will be asked to do it all again in less than two weeks, when they will be allowed to cast votes in the same five metropolitan areas. In addition to Nashville, those areas are Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Washington.
But even as Iraqis prepare to vote, the war continues: Two U.S. Soldiers Killed in Action in Iraq.
The military said in a statement the soldiers were assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force but gave no further details. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than 1,070 American military and Pentagon personnel have been killed in action.
The military said in a statement the soldiers were assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force but gave no further details.
Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than 1,070 American military and Pentagon personnel have been killed in action.
If the Iraq elections prove a resounding success, it will salvage some meaning for the sacrifices of our young soldiers killed and wounded there. Let's hope and pray that this comes to pass.
1,214 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
628 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
I found the notes I saved when you originally asked about our proper role in the Middle East. Rather than expanding them into a huge rant (thereby inducing the inevitable snide comment from Look2It), I'll paste them in as is, slightly edited:
I believe that the proper role of the U.S. in the Middle East is identical to our proper role in the world at large; I see no reason to be inconsistent. Among the principles we should maintain are these:
Any of these points can lead to literally hours of discussion (don't get me going), but they are all bottom-line principles with me. My reading of history tells me that we do well when we follow them, poorly when we don't.
Being the Best Example We Can Be
Good examples always impress people far more than fancy slogans or rhetoric. The best way to instill a desire for representative democracy in others is to make our country a shining example to the rest of the world.
When people see that our country treats everyone fairly and respectfully, provides equal and abundant opportunity for all citizens, and behaves with honor and responsibility in all its affairs, then our example naturally inspires others to form representative democracies of their own.
Spurning Authoritarianism
Whenever we support dictators like Saddam Hussein, as Reagan and Rumsfeld did in the 1980s, or like Augusto Pinochet, as Nixon and Kissinger did in the 1970s, we debase our own coin. We tell the world that we're willing to collude in the oppression of others to maintain our own comfort. Such actions by our government implement short-term thinking at its worst, and always damage our long-term interests.
I see direct parallels between government actions supporting dictators and corporate managers implementing short-term improvements to the bottom line at the expense of the long-term prospects of their companies.
Defending Our Nation
Any potential enemy must realize that an attack on us will turn out disastrously for our attackers. Our military is designed, organized, and trained to defend the United States, and properly so, not to occupy other countries or to impose governments of our choosing. If we need to take action against another country because we were attacked from there, we do not bear the responsibility for reconstruction (although we might choose to help from the goodness of our hearts).
Actions such as George Bush's letting up on Osama bin Laden after Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11/2001 undercut our strong warning to potential enemies.
Improving the World
In taking action to improve the world, such as by removing an oppressive regime and conducting "nation-building" to replace it, we should act within the legal structures of the world. Using our military power as a rogue force always breeds justified resentment and constitutes another example of short-term thinking damaging our long-term interests.
On the other hand, I believe that the world needs a mechanism for ridding itself of oppressive dictatorships and that our country should be an active, responsible participant in those engagements.
Well moots old fella, you're still alive, I thought a deer shot you in November.
BT, you call that notes? If you do, I hate to see your rant. G'night.
Welcome back, Moots!
An excellent statement of principles, BT.
One comment:
BT wrote:
Spurning Authoritarianism Whenever we support dictators like Saddam Hussein, as Reagan and Rumsfeld did in the 1980s, or like Augusto Pinochet, as Nixon and Kissinger did in the 1970s, we debase our own coin. We tell the world that we're willing to collude in the oppression of others to maintain our own comfort. Such actions by our government implement short-term thinking at its worst, and always damage our long-term interests. I see direct parallels between government actions supporting dictators and corporate managers implementing short-term improvements to the bottom line at the expense of the long-term prospects of their companies.
Agreed!
Unfortunately, it was the U.N. Sanctions Policy in the late 1990's which not only supported the Saddam Hussein regime through the Oil-for-Food program, it exponentially ENRICHED it's perverse continuity with billions of $$ and simultaneously impoverished the general Iraqi populace even further which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of mostly youthful Iraqis.
And if the sanctions policy had been lifted after some A-OK by U.N. WMD inspectors, the situation would have only grown worse (both for Iraqis and the rest of the Persian Gulf if not the world).
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, the least worst solution was enacted by the Bush Administration and we are now in the experimental midst of trying to transform a formerly tyrannical nation state into a democratic one.
If this transformation fails, the whole civilized world will be the loser and the nihilistic tactic of indiscriminate terrorism will be rewarded.
For Moots et al.
Before posting my next entry in this series let me reiterate with a corrected and condensed version of the original post:
Paraphrased and edited from Lewis Mumford and the Myth of the Machine by Christopher Lasch (from the Summer 1980 issue of Salmagundi):
In the opening of his 1980 essay, Lasch notes that the hope of cultural renewal, briefly shared by so many intellectuals at the time of World War I, derived much of its energy from a widespread revolt against positivism whose ‘objectivity’, its separation of fact and value, and its divorce of theory from practice, concealed a defense of the social and economic status quo. These modernists condemned positivism as the characteristic cultural expression of a social order founded on the subordination of impulse to routine, the rational calculation of profit and loss, and the impoverishment of the imagination. And it was, they believed, a mirror image of industrial capitalism.They came to the conclusion that a ‘renewal of culture,’ an ‘intellectual rebirth,’ a rehabilitation of the ‘devastated realm of spirit,’ had to inform and perhaps even to precede a political revolution. Mumford’s Central Thesis, that modern technology has developed in the historical setting of capitalist accumulation and has been shaped at every point by the requirements of capitalist production, undercuts both the naïve determinism that sees technology as the driving force in history and more sophisticated theories of the ‘autonomy of technique’, as Jacques Ellul calls it. Whatever it’s liberating possibilities, Mumford insists, modern technology has created new forms of enslavement because it has grown up as the servant of national self-aggrandizement, war, and the insatiable appetite for profits. Acquisitive individualism, the glorification of privacy, the spirit of free scientific inquiry, the development of accurate methods of measuring time and movement, and the conquest of nature all belong to the same historical development, which culminates in the industrial or ‘post-industrial’ order of our own time and its metropolitan round of life. The bureaucratization of work and play in the modern city completes the individual’s reduction to a vicarious consumer of experience, dependent on the market for the satisfaction of his needs, on advertising and mass culture for instruction in the art of living, and on manufactured images for the illusion of reality. Urban density carried too far obstructs association and atomizes social life, just as the machine, absorbed into a general system of consumption erodes older skills. The atrophy of competence, the invasion of everyday life by expertise, and the growth of a universal market that assimilates everything—even art and love—into the apparatus of commodity production appear from Mumford’s perspective as the erosion of local and regional cultures by the advancing metropolis, which parasitically depends on the cultural organisms it devours and on a proliferating array of services that drive it toward bankruptcy. Mumford’s indictment of the modern city reaches its climax, not in the ‘neotechnic’ visions of the future against which he plays it off, but in a critique of the ‘metropolitan mind’ with it’s educated contempt for roots. In the course of his studies…Mumford seems to have come to a deeper understanding of the progressive tradition from which he had already begun to free himself. He now saw that ostensibly revolutionary movements often reinforced the central tendency of middle class society in their misguided attempt to emancipate the individual from his past, from family ties, from the sense of place, and from nature itself.” ‘A self-governing, self-acting, and self-respecting person is the very foundation of a democracy,’ but in advanced industrial society, the dominance of experts and ‘the ruthless destruction of the household arts and crafts based on the assumption that the equivalent can be purchased at a shop,’ along with the concentration of technical knowledge at social hierarchy’s economic zenith, undermines everyday self-reliance. Mumford argued in effect that progressive ideology legitimizes the state of affairs and thus participates in the attack on the individual’s moral autonomy: progressivism scorns the discipline gained through manual labor, the endurance of discomfort, and the nurture of the young. It seeks to free mankind from all manner of hardship and adversity, from the boredom of domestic drudgery, and from natural processes in general. Pragmatic liberalism, as Mumford called it, had lost the ‘tragic sense of life.’ It refused to confront the reality of death, hoping that ‘science’s steady advances in hygeine and medicine might postpone further and further that unpleasant occasion. These people have ceased to live in a meaningful world, for a meaningful world is one that holds a future that extends beyond the incomplete personal life of the indiviudal so that a life sacrificed at the right moment is a life well spent, while a life to carefully hoarded, to ignominiously preserved, is a life utterly wasted. Mumford also pointed out that pragmatism and the progressive tradition in general, serves as the ideology of modern science which is ‘the philosophy of power’. Every progressive’s attempt to overcome ‘personal bias’ and to disengage himself from imagination and emotion provided one more rationale for the scientific ‘abdication of responsibility’ and the scientific detachment from all other needs and values than those of knowledge and power: ‘The triumph of the scientific world view goes hand in hand with the modern celebration of violence and instinctual release.’ The idolatry of technological power, the support given to that modern scientific enterprise of emancipating makind from nature’s controlling forces — a project which meets fully the infantile wish of unrestrained power for the modern intellectual and Man of Knowledge who, by turning his back on ‘emotion, imagination and dreams,’ has grasped the principle that knowledge confers power on those who master the secrets of nature. Mumford believed (perhaps naively) that Capitalism, the Labor Machine and Mass Production were originally introduced by those Divine King societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia wherein society itself was first collectivized as a vast ‘labor machine’. In the long interim, labor-saving machinery, often associated with small-scale enterprise and the progress of handicrafts, eliminated drudgery and freed human energies for more rewarding types of work. But today, the Mega-Machine of modern economics and politics has created new forms of drudgery and enlisted human energy in collective enterprises on a gigantic scale that gratify the power-hunger of the mighty but do little to improve the material conditions of everyday life. Originally modeled on the Army, this Mega-Machine served as a model for all later forms of mechanical organization. Characterized by the interchangeability of parts, external direction of work, centralization of scientific and technical knowledge, and a regimentation of the work force, this labor machine of ancient times already anticipated the central features of modern production long before the so-called industrial revolution. Only in the last two and a half centuries, according to Mumford, had the principles of the Mega-Machine, formerly ‘confined to great mass enterprises,’ invaded the workshop itself—which is the real meaning of the industrial revolution. This development coincided with a revival of the ‘old dream of unlimited power,’ the reintroduction of forced labor and genocide, the rise of states claiming and exercising absolute dominion, and finally, the emergence of a ‘new psychological type,’ the organization man or ‘bureaucratic personality’ who lives in a condition of ‘submissive conformity’ and ‘total dependence’.” The essence of industrialization, according to Mumford, lay not in the introduction of machinery on a large scale but in the separation of planning from production, the monopolization of technical knowledge by a new priesthood of scientists and engineers, and the regimentation of the work force. These social changes represent the precondition, not the consequence, of large scale mechanization — an extension to the manufacturing sector of that military-like discipline formerly confined to great enterprises of state. Modern industry had moved to a central position form of social organization and labor discipline which formerly once existed on the periphery of daily life. Hence the declining importance of the family, once the basic unit of production but now merely an obstacle to the complete regimentation of everyday activity. Only in the 1960’s did Mumford reject utopian thinking once and for all, together with the ‘dogmatic faith on technological progress’ on which it rested…and in rejecting the progressive illusion of technological progress, Mumford acknowledged the radical imperfectibility of human nature; throwing off the optimistic faith that socialism (or some other program of state-sponsored social reform) will automatically liberate technology from its capitalistic constraints while simultaneously condemning the shallow modern cult of progress with all its moral irresponsiblity and ‘general attitude of permissiveness which has at its roots a general deflation of meaning and purpose’.
In the opening of his 1980 essay, Lasch notes that the hope of cultural renewal, briefly shared by so many intellectuals at the time of World War I, derived much of its energy from a widespread revolt against positivism whose ‘objectivity’, its separation of fact and value, and its divorce of theory from practice, concealed a defense of the social and economic status quo. These modernists condemned positivism as the characteristic cultural expression of a social order founded on the subordination of impulse to routine, the rational calculation of profit and loss, and the impoverishment of the imagination.
And it was, they believed, a mirror image of industrial capitalism.They came to the conclusion that a ‘renewal of culture,’ an ‘intellectual rebirth,’ a rehabilitation of the ‘devastated realm of spirit,’ had to inform and perhaps even to precede a political revolution.
Mumford’s Central Thesis, that modern technology has developed in the historical setting of capitalist accumulation and has been shaped at every point by the requirements of capitalist production, undercuts both the naïve determinism that sees technology as the driving force in history and more sophisticated theories of the ‘autonomy of technique’, as Jacques Ellul calls it. Whatever it’s liberating possibilities, Mumford insists, modern technology has created new forms of enslavement because it has grown up as the servant of national self-aggrandizement, war, and the insatiable appetite for profits.
Acquisitive individualism, the glorification of privacy, the spirit of free scientific inquiry, the development of accurate methods of measuring time and movement, and the conquest of nature all belong to the same historical development, which culminates in the industrial or ‘post-industrial’ order of our own time and its metropolitan round of life.
The bureaucratization of work and play in the modern city completes the individual’s reduction to a vicarious consumer of experience, dependent on the market for the satisfaction of his needs, on advertising and mass culture for instruction in the art of living, and on manufactured images for the illusion of reality. Urban density carried too far obstructs association and atomizes social life, just as the machine, absorbed into a general system of consumption erodes older skills.
Mumford’s indictment of the modern city reaches its climax, not in the ‘neotechnic’ visions of the future against which he plays it off, but in a critique of the ‘metropolitan mind’ with it’s educated contempt for roots. In the course of his studies…Mumford seems to have come to a deeper understanding of the progressive tradition from which he had already begun to free himself. He now saw that ostensibly revolutionary movements often reinforced the central tendency of middle class society in their misguided attempt to emancipate the individual from his past, from family ties, from the sense of place, and from nature itself.”
Pragmatic liberalism, as Mumford called it, had lost the ‘tragic sense of life.’ It refused to confront the reality of death, hoping that ‘science’s steady advances in hygeine and medicine might postpone further and further that unpleasant occasion. These people have ceased to live in a meaningful world, for a meaningful world is one that holds a future that extends beyond the incomplete personal life of the indiviudal so that a life sacrificed at the right moment is a life well spent, while a life to carefully hoarded, to ignominiously preserved, is a life utterly wasted.
The idolatry of technological power, the support given to that modern scientific enterprise of emancipating makind from nature’s controlling forces — a project which meets fully the infantile wish of unrestrained power for the modern intellectual and Man of Knowledge who, by turning his back on ‘emotion, imagination and dreams,’ has grasped the principle that knowledge confers power on those who master the secrets of nature.
Mumford believed (perhaps naively) that Capitalism, the Labor Machine and Mass Production were originally introduced by those Divine King societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia wherein society itself was first collectivized as a vast ‘labor machine’. In the long interim, labor-saving machinery, often associated with small-scale enterprise and the progress of handicrafts, eliminated drudgery and freed human energies for more rewarding types of work. But today, the Mega-Machine of modern economics and politics has created new forms of drudgery and enlisted human energy in collective enterprises on a gigantic scale that gratify the power-hunger of the mighty but do little to improve the material conditions of everyday life.
Originally modeled on the Army, this Mega-Machine served as a model for all later forms of mechanical organization. Characterized by the interchangeability of parts, external direction of work, centralization of scientific and technical knowledge, and a regimentation of the work force, this labor machine of ancient times already anticipated the central features of modern production long before the so-called industrial revolution. Only in the last two and a half centuries, according to Mumford, had the principles of the Mega-Machine, formerly ‘confined to great mass enterprises,’ invaded the workshop itself—which is the real meaning of the industrial revolution. This development coincided with a revival of the ‘old dream of unlimited power,’ the reintroduction of forced labor and genocide, the rise of states claiming and exercising absolute dominion, and finally, the emergence of a ‘new psychological type,’ the organization man or ‘bureaucratic personality’ who lives in a condition of ‘submissive conformity’ and ‘total dependence’.”
Only in the 1960’s did Mumford reject utopian thinking once and for all, together with the ‘dogmatic faith on technological progress’ on which it rested…and in rejecting the progressive illusion of technological progress, Mumford acknowledged the radical imperfectibility of human nature; throwing off the optimistic faith that socialism (or some other program of state-sponsored social reform) will automatically liberate technology from its capitalistic constraints while simultaneously condemning the shallow modern cult of progress with all its moral irresponsiblity and ‘general attitude of permissiveness which has at its roots a general deflation of meaning and purpose’.
Now on to the next entry,
Paraphrased from the Fall 1982 issue of Democracy, “Jacques Ellul: Between Babylon and New Jerusalem” by John Schaar
From 1954, when La Technique ou l’enjou du Siecle appeared, Jacques Ellul tirelessly elaborated one big idea: ‘No social, human or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique’ (from The Technological Society) and ‘The technological phenomenon is tending more and more to encompass all our activities’ (from Perspectives On Our Age) For Ellul, ‘technique’ is ‘the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.’ Technique thus includes those activities that can be accomplished by purposive, rational, transmissible, repetitive menas. It also includes those social formations and processes that are deliberately designed as means to specified ends: bureaucracies, mass production systems, corporations, propaganda and mass communications, police, vocational education, and so forth. The technological societies are those in which the technical element predominates, determining or conditioning all other aspects of life. It is disembedded from the social fabric, set free from social contraints and allowed to proliferate by its own dynamic. In the pretechnological era, society and nature were milieu; in the technological era, technique is milieu. For most of us in the ‘developed’ societies the technical system sets the rhythms and provides the substance of our lives at work and home, as producers and consumers. As we move farther away from tradition and religion, from the bonds of locale and ethnic group, and from the treasury of humane values, our standards of judgement and moral appraisal themselves come to be drawn from within the technical system: nothing ranks higher on our actual scale of values than productivity, precision, power, method, prediction and control. Far from assessing the technological order from a standpoint outside it, we reproduce its own values in ourselves and thus genuine alternatives diminish. No one has shown more clearly than Ellul how mindlessly we bear the weight of the technological system and conform ourselves to its imperatives. We manage this order by increasingly sophisticated techniques drawn from within the logic of the technical system itself: propaganda, narcotics, behavioral therapies, consumer goods, scientific management and control of information. Consider what modernization has meant for millions upon millions of people in traditional societies – subsistence economics destroyed; customs and religions wrecked; and forced mass migration from the countryside into the city. Max Weber wrote in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that the technological and bureaucratic order ‘determines the lives of all individuals…with irresistable force,’ and it will continue to ‘determine man’s fate until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt out.’ The system is set; we can only hook on and be carried along. That is the voice of technological determinism. We may live in the iron cage, but we need not adopt the views of the keepers. The future is ours to make, even though the hour is late. For Ellul, the task is not to take over technique and shape it toward good ends – but to build genuine alternatives to the technical system and the technical mentality. Not control of technique, but reduction of technique must be the beginning and end of a politics of freedom. The first task is to dispel what he calls ‘the political illusion,’ which is the ideological veil of the technical reality. The state itself is largely ‘an enormous machinery of bureaus,’ and most of the work of those bureaus is simply ‘a concrete exercise in administration and management,’ guided by technical criteria, and ‘without spiritual, ideological or doctrinal content.’ (from The Ethics of Freedom). Despite the ideological differences among parties and states, everywhere the same tendencies appear: increase of centralized power; expansion and elaboration of the bureaucracy; growth of the apparatus of control; manipulation of opinion; commitment to the goals of productivity and power; suppression of local initiative and autonomy. Ellul thinks that the technological system itself will always be an order of domination, regardless of who owns and controls it. There is no gain for personhood and liberty in the conquest of state power by any social group, for the state is “an organization of increasing complexity which puts to work the sum of the techniques of the modern world.” Not to understand that technique is in command in the state as elsewhere is the first aspect of political illusion. The second is the belief that the ‘democratic’ and ‘representative’ state belongs to the people, who control it through the electoral machinery. The people can of course periodically vote one party in and another out, thus giving the illusion of control, but Ellul argues that the main tendencies are set and that those tendencies are always toward the augmentation of the technological regime. States and parties derive much benefit from the illusion of citizen control and they nourish it with every possible propganda resource. Overwhelmed by the scale and complexity, dazzled by the superior knowledge of experts and technicians, convinced anew each day of our own inability to take care of ourselves and to join with each other to take care of the common life, we turn our affairs over to the officials. We have now reached the point where almost all aspects of life, from the intimate to the global, from mental health to the exploration of space, must be accomplished and guaranteed by government. The price is high: diminished personal competence and responsibility; loss of communal autonomy and homogenization of cultures and individuals; huge expansion of the control apparatus; diversity, flexibility, and initiative increasingly stifled by networks of bureaucratic regulation. Ellul was a radical Christian critic of the State. He saw politics as inherently illusory, inherently a realm of corruption and the lust for power. The illusion is a form of idolatry, a wish to set up a form of power independent of God. He claimed that the biblical texts consistently teach that politics, the state, and the city have at best only relative value, and that efforts to build the Kingdom of God on Earth through such instrumentalities will always produce violence and enslavement. Every state ‘is founded on violence and cannot maintain itself save by and through violence.’ Ellul is also scornful of those who think their religion gives them political wisdom and virtue superior to that of others. The task is to desacralize politics, to place obstacles in the path of the technical state, and to develop alternative modes of action that will augment personhood and develop the capacity for freedom. He recommends that Christians work for anarchy because it constitutes the most thoroughgoing rejection of the totalizing state. Christians shouldn’t seek special status or privileges within the state whether for themselves as persons or for churches as institutions. They should stand with the poor against the proud and mighty. The Christian vocation is not to conform to the world but to act as a leavening within it, a living alternative to it. ‘To be controlled by utility and the pursuit of efficacy is to be subject to the strictest determination of the actual world.’ Ellul saw hopeful stirrings in certain aspects of the sixties rebellions: the ecology movement, the woman’s movement and numerous local attempts to resist incursions of distant power and its technical mentality by restoring local and personal control over the small (and all-important) affairs of daily life. If the end is fuller freedom, personhood and a reduction of the inhuman determinisms that increasingly rule our fate then the end must be present in every means employed and every action taken. We must proceed exceedingly carefully, being sure that what we are doing does not show disprespect for people and does not reflect and employ the same mentality and practices as the technical system itself. Also needed is a keen awareness of the capacity of the technical system to assimilate and shape in its own image those measures and policies designed as reforms of or alternatives to the system which has already happened with ‘appropriate technology’ and ‘worker participation’ proposals and with affirmative action procedures. The preparation of ‘Environmental Impact Reports’ has become a professional specialty providing much nourishment for lawyers, technicians and bureaucrats but has brought little protection for the environment. We, not some external force, are the problem as the technical mentality is our mentality and we naturally express it in conduct, so the task is to reconstitute ourselves by reconstructing the meaning of personhood. If understood as a theory-guided action designed to change the basic organizing principles and institutions of a social order which must effect that change quickly and comprehensively, then ‘Revolution’ is out. Given the scope and complexity of the advanced technological societies, the means necessary to gain power and effect radical change easily reproduces in itself the very evils they are meant to abolish: propaganda, coercion, hierarchy and centralization. The problem lies in the very ways we have organized work (huge workplaces, technical tempo, micro-specialization of labor), the matter of the goods we produce (paperwork, weapons, shoddy and superfluous consumer goods), and of the goals for which we work (money and power). Millions of anonymous technicians, managers and bureaucrats stifle life in webs of regulation leading to a sweeping and systemic alienation which is rooted in our very values and embodied in our characteristic ways of doing things. Process is in command. State, economy and society are huge, remote, and thoroughly technicized which means that the sources and mechanisms of our of alienation are ultimately abstract. Family, place, religion, tradition, and vocation are losing substance and vitality. Accompanying this is a dispersal of goals, a narrowing of human capacities, and the drying up of sources of autonomous decision. The technicist-consumerist mentality has no strong rival. The populations of the industrial countries have accepted the State as the legitimate Grand Inquisitor. It’s duty is to feed them and assure their security and comfort. What is called politics today is largely the administration of the feeding system, a system now so swollen and expensive that no general program for changing it decisively on a broad front and by direct political means has much chance of producing good results. Those who propose rapid and thoroughgoing dismantling of the techno-logical order must first decide which millions of people should be condemned to death for it is a fact that we are dependent on that order as an infant is on adults. We do indeed need, as Tocqueville said, a new political science for this new age. Ellul’s starts with the person and recommends equal parts of patience, restraint, anarchy and play. Cheerful humor and gentle irony will do more to deflate the pretensions of parties and officials than any amount of angry opposition. Don’t call on the state to solve your problems and serve your needs for the cure will always be worse than the disease. If political communication is to serve good ends it must be direct and personal. It is when we move out of the world of personal experience that we ourselves fall victim to the shadow-world of the mass media and mistake its images for reality. Only direct and personal talk about things immediately known among the speakers will provide the basis of a genuinely democratic politics. Consistent with this emphasis on the personal and the local, Ellul asks that ‘we become neighbor to someone’ and “recover him socially”. It is much easier, much less risky, to characterize and make recommendations for an abstract collective entity than it is to deal with that unique individual next door. Restoring the bonds of association at this grassroots level will eventually change the cellular structure of the body politic, bringing isolated atoms into connection, and thus rendering individuals less vulnerable to external powers and pressures. What has brought us to this edge of ruin are the idols of progress, efficiency, comfort and power, and the institutions and policies built in their service. So Ellul calls for a revitalized pluralism, for the formation of groups independent of the state and capable of setting obstacles in its path. Only such associations can curb the monolithic tendencies of the technological mentality and its institutions. To conclude, straight from Jacques Ellul’s The Political Illusion: ‘We must try to create positions in which we reject and struggle with the state, not in order to modify some element of the regime or force it to make some particular decision, but, much more fundamentally, in order to permit the emergence of social, political, intellectual, or artistic bodies, associations, interest groups, or economic or Christian groups totally independent of the state, yet capable of opposing it, able to reject its pressures as well as its controls, and even its gifts. These organizations must be completely independent, not only materially but also intellectually and morally, i.e. able to deny that the nation is the supreme value and that the state is the incarnation of the nation. What is needed are groups capable of extreme diversification of an entire society’s fundamental tendencies, capable of escaping our unitary structure and capable of presenting themselves not as negations of the state…but as something else, not under the state’s tutelage but as solid and valuable as the state.’
From 1954, when La Technique ou l’enjou du Siecle appeared, Jacques Ellul tirelessly elaborated one big idea:
‘No social, human or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique’ (from The Technological Society) and ‘The technological phenomenon is tending more and more to encompass all our activities’ (from Perspectives On Our Age)
For Ellul, ‘technique’ is ‘the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.’ Technique thus includes those activities that can be accomplished by purposive, rational, transmissible, repetitive menas. It also includes those social formations and processes that are deliberately designed as means to specified ends: bureaucracies, mass production systems, corporations, propaganda and mass communications, police, vocational education, and so forth.
The technological societies are those in which the technical element predominates, determining or conditioning all other aspects of life. It is disembedded from the social fabric, set free from social contraints and allowed to proliferate by its own dynamic. In the pretechnological era, society and nature were milieu; in the technological era, technique is milieu.
For most of us in the ‘developed’ societies the technical system sets the rhythms and provides the substance of our lives at work and home, as producers and consumers.
As we move farther away from tradition and religion, from the bonds of locale and ethnic group, and from the treasury of humane values, our standards of judgement and moral appraisal themselves come to be drawn from within the technical system: nothing ranks higher on our actual scale of values than productivity, precision, power, method, prediction and control. Far from assessing the technological order from a standpoint outside it, we reproduce its own values in ourselves and thus genuine alternatives diminish.
No one has shown more clearly than Ellul how mindlessly we bear the weight of the technological system and conform ourselves to its imperatives. We manage this order by increasingly sophisticated techniques drawn from within the logic of the technical system itself: propaganda, narcotics, behavioral therapies, consumer goods, scientific management and control of information.
Consider what modernization has meant for millions upon millions of people in traditional societies – subsistence economics destroyed; customs and religions wrecked; and forced mass migration from the countryside into the city.
Max Weber wrote in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that the technological and bureaucratic order ‘determines the lives of all individuals…with irresistable force,’ and it will continue to ‘determine man’s fate until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt out.’ The system is set; we can only hook on and be carried along. That is the voice of technological determinism.
We may live in the iron cage, but we need not adopt the views of the keepers. The future is ours to make, even though the hour is late. For Ellul, the task is not to take over technique and shape it toward good ends – but to build genuine alternatives to the technical system and the technical mentality. Not control of technique, but reduction of technique must be the beginning and end of a politics of freedom.
The first task is to dispel what he calls ‘the political illusion,’ which is the ideological veil of the technical reality. The state itself is largely ‘an enormous machinery of bureaus,’ and most of the work of those bureaus is simply ‘a concrete exercise in administration and management,’ guided by technical criteria, and ‘without spiritual, ideological or doctrinal content.’ (from The Ethics of Freedom). Despite the ideological differences among parties and states, everywhere the same tendencies appear: increase of centralized power; expansion and elaboration of the bureaucracy; growth of the apparatus of control; manipulation of opinion; commitment to the goals of productivity and power; suppression of local initiative and autonomy.
Ellul thinks that the technological system itself will always be an order of domination, regardless of who owns and controls it. There is no gain for personhood and liberty in the conquest of state power by any social group, for the state is “an organization of increasing complexity which puts to work the sum of the techniques of the modern world.” Not to understand that technique is in command in the state as elsewhere is the first aspect of political illusion.
The second is the belief that the ‘democratic’ and ‘representative’ state belongs to the people, who control it through the electoral machinery. The people can of course periodically vote one party in and another out, thus giving the illusion of control, but Ellul argues that the main tendencies are set and that those tendencies are always toward the augmentation of the technological regime. States and parties derive much benefit from the illusion of citizen control and they nourish it with every possible propganda resource.
Overwhelmed by the scale and complexity, dazzled by the superior knowledge of experts and technicians, convinced anew each day of our own inability to take care of ourselves and to join with each other to take care of the common life, we turn our affairs over to the officials. We have now reached the point where almost all aspects of life, from the intimate to the global, from mental health to the exploration of space, must be accomplished and guaranteed by government. The price is high: diminished personal competence and responsibility; loss of communal autonomy and homogenization of cultures and individuals; huge expansion of the control apparatus; diversity, flexibility, and initiative increasingly stifled by networks of bureaucratic regulation.
Ellul was a radical Christian critic of the State. He saw politics as inherently illusory, inherently a realm of corruption and the lust for power. The illusion is a form of idolatry, a wish to set up a form of power independent of God. He claimed that the biblical texts consistently teach that politics, the state, and the city have at best only relative value, and that efforts to build the Kingdom of God on Earth through such instrumentalities will always produce violence and enslavement. Every state ‘is founded on violence and cannot maintain itself save by and through violence.’
Ellul is also scornful of those who think their religion gives them political wisdom and virtue superior to that of others. The task is to desacralize politics, to place obstacles in the path of the technical state, and to develop alternative modes of action that will augment personhood and develop the capacity for freedom. He recommends that Christians work for anarchy because it constitutes the most thoroughgoing rejection of the totalizing state. Christians shouldn’t seek special status or privileges within the state whether for themselves as persons or for churches as institutions. They should stand with the poor against the proud and mighty. The Christian vocation is not to conform to the world but to act as a leavening within it, a living alternative to it. ‘To be controlled by utility and the pursuit of efficacy is to be subject to the strictest determination of the actual world.’
Ellul saw hopeful stirrings in certain aspects of the sixties rebellions: the ecology movement, the woman’s movement and numerous local attempts to resist incursions of distant power and its technical mentality by restoring local and personal control over the small (and all-important) affairs of daily life.
If the end is fuller freedom, personhood and a reduction of the inhuman determinisms that increasingly rule our fate then the end must be present in every means employed and every action taken. We must proceed exceedingly carefully, being sure that what we are doing does not show disprespect for people and does not reflect and employ the same mentality and practices as the technical system itself.
Also needed is a keen awareness of the capacity of the technical system to assimilate and shape in its own image those measures and policies designed as reforms of or alternatives to the system which has already happened with ‘appropriate technology’ and ‘worker participation’ proposals and with affirmative action procedures. The preparation of ‘Environmental Impact Reports’ has become a professional specialty providing much nourishment for lawyers, technicians and bureaucrats but has brought little protection for the environment. We, not some external force, are the problem as the technical mentality is our mentality and we naturally express it in conduct, so the task is to reconstitute ourselves by reconstructing the meaning of personhood.
If understood as a theory-guided action designed to change the basic organizing principles and institutions of a social order which must effect that change quickly and comprehensively, then ‘Revolution’ is out. Given the scope and complexity of the advanced technological societies, the means necessary to gain power and effect radical change easily reproduces in itself the very evils they are meant to abolish: propaganda, coercion, hierarchy and centralization. The problem lies in the very ways we have organized work (huge workplaces, technical tempo, micro-specialization of labor), the matter of the goods we produce (paperwork, weapons, shoddy and superfluous consumer goods), and of the goals for which we work (money and power). Millions of anonymous technicians, managers and bureaucrats stifle life in webs of regulation leading to a sweeping and systemic alienation which is rooted in our very values and embodied in our characteristic ways of doing things. Process is in command. State, economy and society are huge, remote, and thoroughly technicized which means that the sources and mechanisms of our of alienation are ultimately abstract.
Family, place, religion, tradition, and vocation are losing substance and vitality. Accompanying this is a dispersal of goals, a narrowing of human capacities, and the drying up of sources of autonomous decision. The technicist-consumerist mentality has no strong rival. The populations of the industrial countries have accepted the State as the legitimate Grand Inquisitor. It’s duty is to feed them and assure their security and comfort. What is called politics today is largely the administration of the feeding system, a system now so swollen and expensive that no general program for changing it decisively on a broad front and by direct political means has much chance of producing good results. Those who propose rapid and thoroughgoing dismantling of the techno-logical order must first decide which millions of people should be condemned to death for it is a fact that we are dependent on that order as an infant is on adults.
We do indeed need, as Tocqueville said, a new political science for this new age. Ellul’s starts with the person and recommends equal parts of patience, restraint, anarchy and play. Cheerful humor and gentle irony will do more to deflate the pretensions of parties and officials than any amount of angry opposition. Don’t call on the state to solve your problems and serve your needs for the cure will always be worse than the disease. If political communication is to serve good ends it must be direct and personal. It is when we move out of the world of personal experience that we ourselves fall victim to the shadow-world of the mass media and mistake its images for reality. Only direct and personal talk about things immediately known among the speakers will provide the basis of a genuinely democratic politics.
Consistent with this emphasis on the personal and the local, Ellul asks that ‘we become neighbor to someone’ and “recover him socially”. It is much easier, much less risky, to characterize and make recommendations for an abstract collective entity than it is to deal with that unique individual next door. Restoring the bonds of association at this grassroots level will eventually change the cellular structure of the body politic, bringing isolated atoms into connection, and thus rendering individuals less vulnerable to external powers and pressures.
What has brought us to this edge of ruin are the idols of progress, efficiency, comfort and power, and the institutions and policies built in their service. So Ellul calls for a revitalized pluralism, for the formation of groups independent of the state and capable of setting obstacles in its path. Only such associations can curb the monolithic tendencies of the technological mentality and its institutions.
To conclude, straight from Jacques Ellul’s The Political Illusion:
‘We must try to create positions in which we reject and struggle with the state, not in order to modify some element of the regime or force it to make some particular decision, but, much more fundamentally, in order to permit the emergence of social, political, intellectual, or artistic bodies, associations, interest groups, or economic or Christian groups totally independent of the state, yet capable of opposing it, able to reject its pressures as well as its controls, and even its gifts. These organizations must be completely independent, not only materially but also intellectually and morally, i.e. able to deny that the nation is the supreme value and that the state is the incarnation of the nation. What is needed are groups capable of extreme diversification of an entire society’s fundamental tendencies, capable of escaping our unitary structure and capable of presenting themselves not as negations of the state…but as something else, not under the state’s tutelage but as solid and valuable as the state.’
Comments and questions invited,
About the Iraq war, you wrote:
Although the Iraqi people were indeed suffering under Saddam Hussein and the U.N. sanctions, I do not see why it follows that our soldiers must die to correct mistakes made by the Iraqi people themselves and by corrupt officials in the U.N. and various governments and corporations. How do you make that leap?
If Iraq had actually threatened us with weapons of mass destruction, that fact would have provided the justification for our attack. Had the WMD existed, we would not now have the moral obligation to leave our soldiers in harm's way while Iraq is being rebuilt.
As things stood in 2003, there was plenty of time to plan and prepare a viable nation-building effort, with sufficient troops and equipment. We did not have to rush into war prematurely, and a worthy president would have determined that.
If our country is to conduct nation-building exercises in addition to maintaining a strong military defense, we will need to build up our forces and military budget accordingly. That's going to take money, and lots of it--a reality totally inconsistent with deeper and deeper tax cuts.
My own idea of a proper nation-building force would include large numbers of troops from countries with large populations such as India and, perhaps, China to perform actual occupation duties once the offending government has been removed. I don't see that we will ever have sufficient troops available for extended occupations, as we don't have a large enough population to draw from. Misusing our troops in that way saps the strength of the forces we need to protect our country.
I agree that there are bad things in the world, and it would be great to fix them. But I don't agree that our troops must die to rectify the mistakes of others. And most especially not when sending our soldiers off to die in Iraq lets bin Laden and the terrorists who really attacked us on 9/11/2001 off the hook.
Violence struck Iraq again today: 5 Car Bombs Rock Baghdad in Effort to Disrupt Elections.
Five car bomb blasts rocked Baghdad today as suicide bombers hit targets that included the Australian Embassy, the latest attacks in an intensified campaign of violence apparently meant to disrupt nationwide elections planned for Jan. 30. The American military reported that 26 people had been killed and at least 21 wounded.
Five car bomb blasts rocked Baghdad today as suicide bombers hit targets that included the Australian Embassy, the latest attacks in an intensified campaign of violence apparently meant to disrupt nationwide elections planned for Jan. 30.
The American military reported that 26 people had been killed and at least 21 wounded.
1,215 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
629 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Technological society has both strengths and weaknesses. I certainly don't see it as an "irresistable force." There's no reason we can't do as Ellul suggests:
Ellul is also scornful of those who think their religion gives them political wisdom and virtue superior to that of others. The task is to desacralize politics, to place obstacles in the path of the technical state, and to develop alternative modes of action that will augment personhood and develop the capacity for freedom.
But why should it take anarchy to do this? I don't see the necessity for that.
As mentioned earlier in this discussion, we can all focus on our homes, families and communities while working our butts off to keep the larger organizations at bay. In my opinion, these observations are right on the mark:
Don’t call on the state to solve your problems and serve your needs for the cure will always be worse than the disease. If political communication is to serve good ends it must be direct and personal. It is when we move out of the world of personal experience that we ourselves fall victim to the shadow-world of the mass media and mistake its images for reality. Only direct and personal talk about things immediately known among the speakers will provide the basis of a genuinely democratic politics.
Amen. Wonderful post!
L2,
Does that mean you're happy or disappointed that the deer missed?
Too many words to read for now.
BT,
Can you conceive any way we could withdraw from the mideast and the whole dang world and mind our own biz?
No.
Ok, I read the whole thing. Now boil it down to a few salient points - how then should we live?
I submit thats our own desires that have created the technological globalized monster we fear - and it the undoing of it can only begin as a result of a change of those desires. You can put a tuxedo on a hog, but he's still a hog.
how bout lessening our dependence, so we only intervene because we choose, not because someone's stepping on our gas hose? any way to back off from Walmart and the global economy?
L2, beneath yore crusty cranky exterior lies a heart of gold. Yeah, got BT down to one word, musta been stunned by the concept and renderd speechless. btw, deer have antlers and occasionally gore hunters during the rut. more hunters die from heart attacks tho. are you a veggie or a run of the mill hypocritical beef eater?
Yes, we make our own choices (after reaching adulthood anyway) and have no one to blame but ourselves when things go wrong as a result. And we can learn from mistakes and then make better choices the next time around. At present, we can still fight back against the technological monster and we can still choose not to be its victims.
Nevertheless, it's important to pay attention to what's happening, what's being lost, and what the stakes are for the future. I'm glad Cousin Jack has the monster squarely in his sights.
Sure "lessening our dependence" is a worthy goal--it has been for decades--but our collective choices have put convenience, comfort, and luxury ahead of independence. As oil reserves are finite, this particular dependence will take care of itself in time, and our children or grandchildren will have to deal with the crisis that arises then because of our boundless selfishness now.
The emergence of Walmart ("your source for cheap plastic crap") is a result of our collective choices also. A few communities stand up and fight, but most don't.
Although today many things are happening that I believe to be foolishly wrong, I'm living in a world that I helped to shape. I still have choices and can live as I see fit.
I attribute the fact that things are not to my liking to my inability, and the inability of those who see things as I do, to convince enough folks to change their ways. I can live with that, as indeed I must. I speak my mind and have my say, and must live with the results of my own failures.
What bothers me most is the impact we're having on the lives of those who have absolutely no say in the matter. It's hard to rationalize the fact that they'll have to bear the consequences of poor decisions that they had no part in making. To my mind, the Bush administration epitomizes the "me generation." It's "grab whatever you can now and forget about the future when we'll all be dead." I see that attitude in many areas:
Representative democracy is a great thing when the decisions made affect those who actually did the deciding. Problems arise when we make terrible decisions that affect those who have no voice in them. That includes not only our minor and unborn future citizens, but also people in the world today who are greatly affected by the decisions we make, yet have no voice in them. I seem to remember a revolution that started once over that very issue...
It ticks me off when whiners like you spout off about selfishness. If you knew a thing about real life you'd know selfishness is the real motivator that makes our country the greatest place on earth. Selfish people contribute the most so they can get the money to satisfy their wants. I worked my butt off for years to get to where I am and that's why I'm enjoying myself now and you are freezing.
You whine about stealing, but most taxes are stealing from the people who really produce in this country. For my money, the only big expense the feds should ever have is the military, period. Everything else is just pumping money to freeloading whiners like you who don't get off their butts to satisfy their own selfishness, but have to steal it from someone else. If Bush drives the feds into bankruptcy the freeloaders will have to get off their butts too and this country will be better off. Have a nice day.
A revealing comment..the incorrigible reformer..
I attribute the fact that things are not to my liking to my inability, and the inability of those who see things as I do, to convince enough folks to change their ways.
Been There:
Only time for a quick reply tonight (more later for you and Moots when I can get around to it)
You write:
First, the "our soldiers must die" line is your provocative statement, not mine. I never made any such leap. (Italian, British, Australian, Polish and Ukrainian troops among others have also died there in this cause btw). For better or worse, America along with what allies it has mustered, has the only military that could have undertaken such a noble overthrow.
From USA Today (12/27/04):
Poll shows troops in support of war By Robert Hodierne, Army Times Despite a year of ferocious combat, mounting casualties and frequent deployments, support for the war in Iraq remains very high among the active-duty military, according to a Military Times Poll.Sixty-three percent of respondents approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, and 60% remain convinced it is a war worth fighting. Support for the war is even greater among those who have served longest in the combat zone: Two-thirds of combat vets say the war is worth fighting. But the men and women in uniform are under no illusions about how long they will be fighting in Iraq; nearly half say they expect to be there more than five years. In addition, 87%% say they're satisfied with their jobs and, if given the choice today, only 25% say they'd leave the service. Compared with last year, the percentages for support for the war and job satisfaction remain essentially unchanged. A year ago, 77% said they thought the military was stretched too thin to be effective. This year, that number shrank to 66%. The findings are part of the annual Military Times Poll, which this year included 1,423 active-duty subscribers to Air Force Times, Army Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times. The subscribers were randomly surveyed by mail in late November and early December. The poll has a margin of error of +/—2.6%. Among the poll's other findings: • 75% oppose a military draft. • 60% blame Congress for the shortage of body armor in the combat zone. • 12% say civilian Pentagon policymakers should be held accountable for abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-12-26-poll_x.htm
Poll shows troops in support of war By Robert Hodierne, Army Times
Despite a year of ferocious combat, mounting casualties and frequent deployments, support for the war in Iraq remains very high among the active-duty military, according to a Military Times Poll.Sixty-three percent of respondents approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, and 60% remain convinced it is a war worth fighting. Support for the war is even greater among those who have served longest in the combat zone: Two-thirds of combat vets say the war is worth fighting.
But the men and women in uniform are under no illusions about how long they will be fighting in Iraq; nearly half say they expect to be there more than five years.
In addition, 87%% say they're satisfied with their jobs and, if given the choice today, only 25% say they'd leave the service.
Compared with last year, the percentages for support for the war and job satisfaction remain essentially unchanged.
A year ago, 77% said they thought the military was stretched too thin to be effective. This year, that number shrank to 66%.
The findings are part of the annual Military Times Poll, which this year included 1,423 active-duty subscribers to Air Force Times, Army Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times.
The subscribers were randomly surveyed by mail in late November and early December. The poll has a margin of error of +/—2.6%.
Among the poll's other findings:
• 75% oppose a military draft.
• 60% blame Congress for the shortage of body armor in the combat zone.
• 12% say civilian Pentagon policymakers should be held accountable for abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-12-26-poll_x.htm
These are the opinion sources that really matter to me on the Iraq War.
Back again when I have the time.
ps: in terms of sheer content (for my liking anyway), yesterday's inaugural address was the best since 1/20/1961.
As the Iraq elections near, the news remains the same: 14 Iraqis Killed, 40 Wounded in Blast at Baghdad Mosque; 1 U.S. Soldier Dies.
At least 14 Iraqis were killed and 40 were wounded today when a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque just after morning prayers on the second day of a Muslim holiday, witnesses and hospital officials said. Earlier, a First Infantry Division soldier was killed and one was wounded in an operation north of Baghdad to kill or capture known insurgents, a statement from the division said.
At least 14 Iraqis were killed and 40 were wounded today when a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque just after morning prayers on the second day of a Muslim holiday, witnesses and hospital officials said.
Earlier, a First Infantry Division soldier was killed and one was wounded in an operation north of Baghdad to kill or capture known insurgents, a statement from the division said.
Cousin Jack wrote:
America along with what allies it has mustered, has the only military that could have undertaken such a noble overthrow.
But few soldiers died during the "overthrow." The vast majority have died during the subsequent "nation-building." Why should our soldiers die for the mistake made by the Iraqi people in letting Saddam Hussein gain power over them? Will our young people suffer the cost whenever another country foolishly allows a despot to take power? Maybe so, in Bush's brave new world: No Country Left Behind.
Ironically, the dangers of self-righteous hubris in foreign policy were a theme of Bush's first presidential campaign, in 2000, when he called for humility in our global ambitions and pounded the Clinton-Gore administration for what was then called "nation-building." Bush and other Republicans specifically objected to the use of American troops to promote democratic values, as opposed to national security. Not only does Bush now think otherwise — in the most sweeping terms — but he does not even acknowledge that there is a cost involved or another side to the argument. He makes it sound simple. Terrorism is bad, freedom is good. Coherence comes easier when you don't sweat the details. For example: It's a lovely thought that freedom invariably saps the will to plant a car bomb. But is it true? When freedom and democracy came to the Balkans, people were liberated to do atrocious things to other people in the name of nationalist enthusiasms. In the Middle East, there is always danger that a "regime change" — by election, rebellion or invasion — will produce a theocracy rather than a democracy. Bush, or his speechwriter, is not unaware of this, but the president does not brake for anomalies. Bush's rhetoric Thursday chased itself around in circles, declaring that America's goal — freedom and democracy, so that people can choose their own way — is not forcing people to adopt our way, which happens to be freedom and democracy.
Ironically, the dangers of self-righteous hubris in foreign policy were a theme of Bush's first presidential campaign, in 2000, when he called for humility in our global ambitions and pounded the Clinton-Gore administration for what was then called "nation-building." Bush and other Republicans specifically objected to the use of American troops to promote democratic values, as opposed to national security.
Not only does Bush now think otherwise — in the most sweeping terms — but he does not even acknowledge that there is a cost involved or another side to the argument. He makes it sound simple. Terrorism is bad, freedom is good. Coherence comes easier when you don't sweat the details.
For example: It's a lovely thought that freedom invariably saps the will to plant a car bomb. But is it true? When freedom and democracy came to the Balkans, people were liberated to do atrocious things to other people in the name of nationalist enthusiasms. In the Middle East, there is always danger that a "regime change" — by election, rebellion or invasion — will produce a theocracy rather than a democracy.
Bush, or his speechwriter, is not unaware of this, but the president does not brake for anomalies. Bush's rhetoric Thursday chased itself around in circles, declaring that America's goal — freedom and democracy, so that people can choose their own way — is not forcing people to adopt our way, which happens to be freedom and democracy.
In 2000 my prime objection to Bush was his campaign pledge to resume stealing from our children and grandchildren. He was correct then about the nation-building foolishness, and I expected him to do a decent job with our national security. Back then, I thought perhaps Bush meant what he said. Instead, he flip-flopped on that crucial issue and dropped the ball in the fight against those who attacked us on 9/11/2001.
1,217 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
631 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
BT's incorrigible. Don't incorrige him at all, or he'll never stop. L2, can't you fine him for loitering?
With the Iraq elections a week away, violence continues to rack the country: Group Reports Killing 15 Iraqi Guardsmen.
Insurgents said they had executed 15 kidnapped Iraqi National Guardsmen for cooperating with U.S. forces, while the Iraqi government on Saturday insisted its security measures would be sufficient to protect crucial elections amid an escalation of violence. The interior minister announced new security measures, saying Baghdad's international airport would be closed Jan. 29 and 30, the day of the election, and that many parts of the country would be under a nighttime curfew for three days around the time of the balloting. "There are dangers and there are threats to throw the elections process into chaos, but we hope that our security plan will be up to the standards. We don't rule out an escalation from the terrorist forces," the minister, Falah al-Naqib, told reporters. Organizers extended the registration for overseas absentee voting in Iraq's national election by two days -- to Tuesday -- because the turnout so far in the weeklong campaign to allow Iraqis abroad to vote has been far below expectations, the International Organization for Migration said Saturday.
Insurgents said they had executed 15 kidnapped Iraqi National Guardsmen for cooperating with U.S. forces, while the Iraqi government on Saturday insisted its security measures would be sufficient to protect crucial elections amid an escalation of violence.
The interior minister announced new security measures, saying Baghdad's international airport would be closed Jan. 29 and 30, the day of the election, and that many parts of the country would be under a nighttime curfew for three days around the time of the balloting.
"There are dangers and there are threats to throw the elections process into chaos, but we hope that our security plan will be up to the standards. We don't rule out an escalation from the terrorist forces," the minister, Falah al-Naqib, told reporters.
Organizers extended the registration for overseas absentee voting in Iraq's national election by two days -- to Tuesday -- because the turnout so far in the weeklong campaign to allow Iraqis abroad to vote has been far below expectations, the International Organization for Migration said Saturday.
Now on its last legs, the interim government set up by the Bush administration found a way to set aside a little nest egg to guard against the uncertainties of the future: Mystery in Iraq as $300 Million is Taken Abroad.
Earlier this month, according to Iraqi officials, $300 million in American bills was taken out of Iraq's Central Bank, put into boxes and quietly put on a charter jet bound for Lebanon. The money was to be used to buy tanks and other weapons from international arms dealers, the officials say, as part of an accelerated effort to assemble an armored division for the fledgling Iraqi Army. But exactly where the money went, and to whom, and for precisely what, remains a mystery, at least to Iraqis who say they have been trying to find out.
Earlier this month, according to Iraqi officials, $300 million in American bills was taken out of Iraq's Central Bank, put into boxes and quietly put on a charter jet bound for Lebanon.
The money was to be used to buy tanks and other weapons from international arms dealers, the officials say, as part of an accelerated effort to assemble an armored division for the fledgling Iraqi Army. But exactly where the money went, and to whom, and for precisely what, remains a mystery, at least to Iraqis who say they have been trying to find out.
Buttonholed by a reporter after a Republican fundraiser yesterday, Dick Cheney had this to say about the matter, "If 10% of that cash didn't go to Halliburton, things will get nasty."
A heads up to posters here who use or collect bumper stickers: Iraq: I Told You So.
1,218 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
632 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Hey Moots,
You wrote:
Ok, I read the whole thing. Now boil it down to a few salient points - how then should we live? I submit thats our own desires that have created the technological globalized monster we fear - and it the undoing of it can only begin as a result of a change of those desires. You can put a tuxedo on a hog, but he's still a hog.
It's a democracy, Moots. How you live is up to you. I'm currently sifting through a pile of political literature I've gathered over the years and posting some of the more intriguing systemic analyses I've seen concerning the ultimate source of (and solutions to) modernity's structural problems. I'm not wholesale advocating every diagnosis or strategy of Ellul (a radical Catholic conservative whose 1950's bete noir was the French government bureaucracy btw) or Mumford (who drew for inspiration on liberal Unitarian transcendentalists like Emerson who "fathomed the possiblities of a modern basis for culture"), but I do think both their analyses, coming at it as they did from opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, are on the right track and that a general decentralization of both state and corporate capitalist power is the right direction to head if we are ever going to achieve the best possible world for the most possible people and empower that personal hometown pursuit of life, liberty and happiness which Jefferson defined as among the inalienable rights endowed by our Creator in the Declaration of Independence.
If human nature + scientific technology has, over the centuries, slowly built this Frankenstein Monster which, back in the 1960's and 70's we youthfully called "The System", then human nature + scientific technology can also eventually take it apart and bury it (if necessary) to revitalize or rebirth the future of freedom for humankind.
I'll be back in a week or so with the next installment.
Cheers,
Your advice on resisting Been There’s last-say siren song is probably wise, Moots, but be that as it may, here’s my final post on the Iraq War thread (barring major developments).
We're just going to have to agree to disagree over the larger geopolitical strategy of removing the Saddam Hussein Regime, BT, as what’s done is done and we can all only work and wait in hope now—as Iraqis step forward this week to elect those courageous candidates who are going to draw up their new constitution—and ask that the Muse of History render us a kind long-run verdict on the ultimate wisdom (flaws and all) of this military decision.
The dispiriting pessimistic editorial of Friday’s LA Times is already wrapped around Saturday's coffee grounds and headed for that garbage dump where all such transient waste has gone before it. No one will remember it’s pointless analysis a week from now.
Thursday's Inaugural Address was however, as was JFK's 4 decades earlier, a Philosophical Song of Democratic Ideals sung to all those people around the world who bear that youthful capacity to hear its timeless melody and can feel the enlightening promise of its harmonic principles turning round and round within the darkest depths of their minds and souls. Planted today for tomorrow’s harvest, these fertile seeds of fruitful song will yield an abundant symphony of good ideas which will renew the ever-turning human mind in other times and in other places in varieties and hybrids that will undoubtedly surprise us for to every thing here on earth there is a season.
Sweet dreams all,
Moots wants to reform our nation by giving his personal religious views the force of law. Cousin Jack wants to reform the world by using the force of the U.S. military. Moots, therefore, always driven to labeling, settles on the label "incorrigible reformer" for this humble poster. Go figure.
Human Life
In an earlier discussion on these boards I asked Moots the basis for his belief that a new human life begins at conception. I was intensely interested in how he came to that conclusion because I'd investigated and thought deeply (as deeply as possible for someone with my limitations, anyway) about that very point quite a few years ago, and came to a different conclusion. It seemed to me that a man with enough confidence in his position to advocate that it be forced on others through law would have a carefully considered explanation for his position.
After evading my question repeatedly, Moots finally made it clear that he had no basis for his "bottom line" position other than his own deep, personal (and utterly sincere, I know), conviction. I respect his faith completely, but object to using the civil law to impose it on others. There we've left the matter, agreeing to disagree.
Responsibility
In discussing the war on Iraq with Cousin Jack, I've mentioned my practical objections to "nation-building" by the U.S. military, which was not suited to that task, and also my predictions about the probable consequences of our actions there. Predictions are just that, of course, and I can no more say with certainty how events in Iraq will play out (although I've been correct so far) than Cousin Jack can say how President Bush's 2nd Inaugural Address will be assessed by history.
Regardless of the eventual outcome, though, we can surely discuss the moral question of the propriety of sending our troops to fight and die to overturn a government--an oppressive government--that people from another land have allowed to gain power over them. Why is it our troops' responsibility to rectify the bad choices made by others that led to oppression? I do not see why our young people need be the ones to risk their lives to correct the political mistakes of those in other lands.
I fully understand that Cousin Jack sees this "noble experiment" as potentially improving the lives of all mankind; his position is principled and humanitarian. Because Cousin Jack sees the matter so differently from me, I asked him directly how he has resolved the responsibility issue for himself. Following Moots' example, he declined to answer. Instead, I suppose, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Doubts
Along my journeys I've had the good fortune to strike up friendships with people in many walks of life. After a closeness develops, I always want to understand more deeply the moral foundations of a person I've come to like and respect.
Twice in my life, I've developed real friendships with priests. In both cases, a suitable moment arose for me to ask the key question, "How did you resolve your doubts sufficiently to dedicate your life to the priesthood?"
Both times I got exactly the same answer, "I never had any doubts."
Alas, that's never been true for me. That's why I ask questions: the answers might cast some light where now there is only darkness and doubt.
Been There (and where that "There" might have been we can only guess)writes:
Cousin Jack wants to reform the world by using the force of the U.S. military. You have now crossed the line, BT.
Cousin Jack wants to reform the world by using the force of the U.S. military.
You have now crossed the line, BT.
I've made it clear time and time again that Iraq is a UNIQUE case because of Saddam Hussein's long running historical pathologies and because he sat upon the world's 2nd largest oil reserves.
I DO NOT support any other military incursions and I don't think we'll we'll be seeing any.
Moots is right.
You are incorrigible.
A day in day out propagandist who wants to pound into every head your infallibility.
Thank God you are not in a position of political power.
BT (once more):
Predictions are just that, of course, and I can no more say with certainty how events in Iraq will play out (although I've been correct so far) than Cousin Jack can say how President Bush's 2nd Inaugural Address will be assessed by history.
My own 'prediction', long before the Iraq war ever began, was that establishing a some kind of democracy there would be would be a long messy and drawn out affair and President Bush himself said time and time again before and during the war that it would "take as long as it would take".
Save us all your ongoing egomaniacal sanctimony and give our troops (a significant majority of whom believe in this Iraqi democratization project) some worthy respect and kind regards.
Until at least then, you are persona non grata and not worth paying any more attention to.
My sincere apologies for misrepresenting your position so egregiously. I repent in dust and ashes, begging you to temper justice with mercy. Nevertheless I fully understand your decision to shun me on these boards. If Birch Bark allows me to keep on posting, I'll do my best to earn a small measure of your confidence in time, but I recognize that it will be a long, hard slog with no guarantee of success. As you said:
To me, it's an important measure of character to admit one's mistakes, and I do so now even though it's painful to me, as it would be to anyone, to acknowledge such a public and inexcusable lapse. My apologies extend to the other posters on this board who, no doubt, were also appalled and offended by my blatant misrepresentation of your views.
Far from considering myself infallible, this is just another in a long series of blunders I've made. All I can do now is pick myself up, dust myself off, and try to learn enough from this mistake to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. For me, this is an opportunity to learn to do better, and for giving me that opportunity I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
The Nature of My Blunder
I can see why you characterized my statement as that of a "day in day out propagandist." Given the fact that:
I've made it clear time and time again that Iraq is a UNIQUE case...
what other explanation could there be?
Sadly, the real explanation is my stupidity. Although I thought I had read all of your posts carefully (I've found them all interesting and informative), I actually missed those clear explanations that you gave time and time again. That was the nature my blunder--I did not intentionally misrepresent your position.
What I had mistakenly concluded from your posts was that your position on Iraq was based on larger humanitarian principles. Somehow I had completely missed your many clear statements "that Iraq is a UNIQUE case" and that you "DO NOT support any other military incursions."
Doing Better in the Future
Having resolved to use this incident as a tool to reduce my obvious stupidity just a bit, I embarked on a program of rereading all of your posts here to determine just how I could have missed all those instances where
Alas for me (and this just goes to show how stupid I really am), I was unable to locate a single such instance in any of your posts. How mortifying! Obviously I'm not smart enough to see the clearest point unless someone beats me over the head with it.
Please Help
In the interest of lifting another soul from complete idiocy, I'd much appreciate it, Cousin Jack, if you could steer me to those clear statements in your posts that I either can't find or can't comprehend.
Given the probability that Cousin Jack is so disgusted with me that he now sees me as a lost cause, I'm also asking the other posters on this board to help me out with this. If you would reread his posts (he started posting in October) and point me to those clear statements that he made "time and time again," I'd truly appreciate it.
Now that I've finished my apology for my blunder yesterday, I see that the news from Iraq has not improved: 6 U.S. Soldiers Killed; U.S. Hostage Pleads for Life.
Five American soldiers with the First Infantry Division were killed and two were wounded when their Bradley fighting vehicle was involved in a road accident northeast of Baghdad on Monday night, the United States military said today. A sixth soldier died Monday night after being wounded in a roadside bomb attack, the military said. In another development, insurgents distributed an undated videotape showing an American hostage, Roy Hallums, pleading for his life, news agencies reported. Mr. Hallums, who was in Iraq working for a Saudi food contracting firm, had not been heard from since he was seized last Nov. 1.
Five American soldiers with the First Infantry Division were killed and two were wounded when their Bradley fighting vehicle was involved in a road accident northeast of Baghdad on Monday night, the United States military said today. A sixth soldier died Monday night after being wounded in a roadside bomb attack, the military said.
In another development, insurgents distributed an undated videotape showing an American hostage, Roy Hallums, pleading for his life, news agencies reported. Mr. Hallums, who was in Iraq working for a Saudi food contracting firm, had not been heard from since he was seized last Nov. 1.
1,221 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
635 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
One of President Bush's campaign promises was to reduce his stealing from our children and grandchildren by 50% over a 5-year period. The question now is, "Will he flip-flop on this as he has on so many other issues?" Here comes his first budget since the campaign: Budget Office Predicts $368 Billion Deficit This Year. Unfortunately his budget estimates exclude many expenditures the president plans to make.
The estimates also exclude the cost of measures the president plans to introduce when he submits his budget to Congress next month. Those include the partial privatizing of Social Security, which would require up to $2 trillion over the next decade to make up for money being diverted into personal accounts; the extension of tax cuts passed in Mr. Bush's first term, which would cut revenues by an estimated $1.8 trillion over 10 years; ; and the $350 million pledged by President Bush for tsunami relief efforts. Many members of Congress also favor easing the impact of the alternative minimum tax on middle-class families, a change that the budget office estimates would cut revenues by almost $500 billion over the decade.
Not a very good start on keeping Bush's promise. Bush's "me generation" administration isn't likely to stop its stealing, despite his solemn promise to hold down the piggishhess just a bit.
Been There, you did the right thing apologizing. I know I don't hold up my end here because you guys are way out of my league but I think of you all as part of my family and hate to see you on the outs. I don't care for Bada Bing though,he is black sheep. Posts mean a lot to me even when I don't agree because it keeps me feeling connected to the outside. Cousin Jack was out of sorts with you because of what you wrote about him but I don't think he holds a grudge for long. I hope not anyway.
Cousin Jack, you usually make a lot of sense but I think you went overboard some. I don't think Been There meant to be mean, he just took off after what moots had said and got off the track. Accept his apology and give him the help he wants, is what I think you should do.
Now I will say what I think about the Iraq war now. Don't shoot me down too bad you guys, I am still getting my feet wet!
I believe God used our President to give the people in a Iraq a chance for a better life. That does not mean that they will take the chance God is giving them. Lots of times in scripture God gives people a chance and they turn their back on it. It might turn out the same way in Iraq.
The news about Iraq Been There posts shows that so far lots of the people there don't want to take advantage of the opportunity before them but lots do. Soon we should know what the country will decide. If they turn their backs on this opportunity, it doesn't mean that we were wrong to give it. Maybe God is giving them one last chance before something awful happens to them.
Rock,
It's great to hear from you again! Does the winter keep you especially closed in?
Thanks for encouraging Cousin Jack to give me another chance. I sure could use it!
And I wouldn't dream of trying to shoot down your ideas about Iraq. Even though I don't share them completely, they make perfect sense in the context of your beliefs.
Yes, the Iraqis do have an opportunity now, and they'd be well-advised to make the best use of it. They are, after all, human beings with the ability to make choices, even though times are hard there. Let's hope they make better choices now than they made the last time they let someone gain power over them.
If they reject the opportunities available to them now, that is also a choice. If the Iraqis take that path, we too will have some hard choices to make.
Take care of yourself, Rock. I'm pulling for you here, and so is my family.
Yes, I messed up. I misunderstood Cousin Jack's position on Iraq even though (to use his words)
What I'm wondering now is how I could have been so dumb as to miss all those clear statements in his posts. And after rereading them too! It's humbling to have one's imperfections on display for all to see, but so be it.
I'm confident Cousin Jack would not have made such an assertion without having several specific examples of those clear statements in mind, as would anyone with a modicum of integrity. Once I see what those statements were, I'll have a clearer picture of how I went wrong.
The ghastly price being paid for President Bush's blunders in Iraq keeps increasing: 36 U.S. Troops Die in Iraq in Their Bloodiest Day.
Thirty-one U.S. troops were reported killed in a helicopter crash and five more died in insurgent attacks Wednesday in the deadliest day for American forces since they invaded Iraq 22 months ago. The heavy U.S. toll came amid a series of guerrilla bombings and raids that killed 10 Iraqis in a campaign to sabotage Sunday's landmark election -- a cornerstone of U.S. plans in Iraq. ... Four U.S. Marines were killed in action in Anbar province, and an American soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack north of Baghdad, U.S. officials said.
Thirty-one U.S. troops were reported killed in a helicopter crash and five more died in insurgent attacks Wednesday in the deadliest day for American forces since they invaded Iraq 22 months ago.
The heavy U.S. toll came amid a series of guerrilla bombings and raids that killed 10 Iraqis in a campaign to sabotage Sunday's landmark election -- a cornerstone of U.S. plans in Iraq.
Four U.S. Marines were killed in action in Anbar province, and an American soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack north of Baghdad, U.S. officials said.
Even the right-wing Fox News organization is starting to take notice of the Iraq debacle: Bush Wants $80B More for Iraq, Afghanistan.
The forthcoming request highlights how much war spending has soared past initial White House estimates. Early on, then-presidential economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey placed Iraq costs at $100 billion to $200 billion, only to see his comments derided by administration colleagues. By pushing war spending so far beyond $280 billion, the latest proposal would approach nearly half the $613 billion the United States spent for World War I or the $623 billion it expended for the Vietnam War, when the costs of those conflicts are translated into 2005 dollars.
The forthcoming request highlights how much war spending has soared past initial White House estimates. Early on, then-presidential economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey placed Iraq costs at $100 billion to $200 billion, only to see his comments derided by administration colleagues.
By pushing war spending so far beyond $280 billion, the latest proposal would approach nearly half the $613 billion the United States spent for World War I or the $623 billion it expended for the Vietnam War, when the costs of those conflicts are translated into 2005 dollars.
Cousin Jack, if President Bush knew from the beginning that the war would turn out this way and spoke out to prepare the nation for it, why was it necessary for Lawrence Lindsey to be "derided by administration colleagues"?
1,222 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
636 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
The Bush administration's fiscal irresponsibility has gotten so bad that even some republicans are getting nervous. This article from the Tucson Citizen contains a nice chart of federal spending for the last 30 years: Bush budget alarms GOP, angers Dems.
The Bush administration's new request for funds to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would make this year's federal budget deficit the largest in history.
The worst deficits in our nation's history have all been recorded by the two Bush administrations. The biggest surplus was attained at the end of eight years of the fiscally responsible Cinton administration. Why the difference? The Bushes do not mind stealing from our children and grandchildren to advance their political ambitions, no matter how anyone tries to gloss this over.
"If we do nothing, our kids and grandkids will be overwhelmed by the costs of our inaction," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
Gosh, it's good to see that someone else, a republican in fact, has noticed that! Perhaps he has children and grandchildren too.
"The nation's financial woes can be directly attributed to the irresponsible fiscal policies of this administration," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., top Democrat on the panel. "It seems that the president's solution to every problem he faces is to borrow more money and add to the nation's debt."
Yes, so it seems.
No, Cousin Jack is probably ready to pounce with a bunch of statements I overlooked as soon as I say that I doubt they exist.
If not, he'll be man enough to admit his mistake and we can move on from there. I don't take him for a coward.
On the home front, the big news is our new Secretary of State: Rice Is Sworn In as Secretary After Senate Vote of 85 to 13.
In 2000, in Foreign Affairs magazine, she outlined what a potential Bush administration foreign policy might look like. While the article spotlighted confronting nations that defy international norms and dealing with powerful countries like Russia and China, it did not focus on promoting democracy - a central theme of the current Bush foreign policy since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
What Ms. Rice said in Foreign Affairs during the campaign is still available online: Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest.
What does it mean to deter, fight, and win wars and defend the national interest? First, the American military must be able to meet decisively the emergence of any hostile military power in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Europe -- areas in which not only our interests but also those of our key allies are at stake. America's military is the only one capable of this deterrence function, and it must not be stretched or diverted into areas that weaken these broader responsibilities. ... The president must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society. Military force is best used to support clear political goals, whether limited, such as expelling Saddam from Kuwait, or comprehensive, such as demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany during World War II. ... As history marches toward markets and democracy, some states have been left by the side of the road. Iraq is the prototype. Saddam Hussein's regime is isolated, his conventional military power has been severely weakened, his people live in poverty and terror, and he has no useful place in international politics. ... These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. Rather, the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence -- if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration. ... America can exercise power without arrogance and pursue its interests without hectoring and bluster.
What does it mean to deter, fight, and win wars and defend the national interest? First, the American military must be able to meet decisively the emergence of any hostile military power in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, and Europe -- areas in which not only our interests but also those of our key allies are at stake. America's military is the only one capable of this deterrence function, and it must not be stretched or diverted into areas that weaken these broader responsibilities.
The president must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society. Military force is best used to support clear political goals, whether limited, such as expelling Saddam from Kuwait, or comprehensive, such as demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany during World War II.
As history marches toward markets and democracy, some states have been left by the side of the road. Iraq is the prototype. Saddam Hussein's regime is isolated, his conventional military power has been severely weakened, his people live in poverty and terror, and he has no useful place in international politics.
These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. Rather, the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence -- if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration.
America can exercise power without arrogance and pursue its interests without hectoring and bluster.
Little did I imagine in 2000 that Rice and Bush would flip-flop on these vital principles upon taking office. But flip-flop they did.
Three days until the elections in Iraq: Insurgent Attacks Kill 11 Iraqis and One Marine.
Eleven Iraqis and one U.S. Marine were killed Thursday as insurgents clashed with U.S. troops and blew up a school slated to serve as a polling center, pre-election violence that followed the deadliest day for U.S. troops since the war's start. Another U.S. soldier died in an accident. The Marine was killed and five others injured when insurgents launched mortars at their base near Iskandariyah, about 30 miles south of Baghdad.
Eleven Iraqis and one U.S. Marine were killed Thursday as insurgents clashed with U.S. troops and blew up a school slated to serve as a polling center, pre-election violence that followed the deadliest day for U.S. troops since the war's start. Another U.S. soldier died in an accident.
The Marine was killed and five others injured when insurgents launched mortars at their base near Iskandariyah, about 30 miles south of Baghdad.
Although the Iraqis have the opportunity (as Rock said) to do something very positive on Sunday--and I hope they do--we should not blind ourselves to reality. Yes, it's time for Been There to make a few more predictions:
The Shia clerics strongly believe (as Moots does in this country) that their religion should be imposed on others by force of law. Christians and Sunni Muslims will be oppressed minorities in Iraq. I hope I'm wrong, but I sadly predict that outcome for President Bush's noble experiment with human lives.
Stay tuned.
1,223 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
637 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Iraqi exiles living in Australia began voting today, marking the beginning of the election that we all hope will be a turning point in the debacle: Iraqi Candidate Killed on Videotape; Other Attacks Leave a Marine and Several Iraqis Dead.
Insurgents unleashed a string of fierce attacks across central and northern Iraq on Thursday that left nearly a dozen Iraqis and an American marine dead, while the militant group led by the country's most wanted guerrilla posted a video on the Internet showing the fatal shooting of a candidate from the prime minister's slate in Sunday's elections.
1,224 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
638 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
I don't think I'm a sexist pig, but that assessment won't surprise you. I'm sure you make your own judgments about such matters without any outside help.
Sexist Play
Reflecting on my childhood, I remember some periods where boys and girls played together quite a bit, and other periods where we, seemingly automatically, segregated ourselves by sex. I'm sure child psychologists know a lot about such patterns, but I don't.
As for the "be a man" thing, many took it seriously back then, even though we can chuckle about it now. Suffice it to say that today no thinking man, not even one with my limitations, considers women to be less capable of honesty than men.
In fact, I think you are honest (except when you're joking). My beef with you is that I get no sense of how you came to your ideas.
Boys Becoming Men
During the childhood periods in which we segregated our play by sex, lots of formative things happened. For those periods in my life, I only have the male point of view to draw from. That's the long and short of it.
One of the archetypes for boys of my generation is the weakling who strikes out at the plate, then runs home to mother, taking his bat and ball (the ones mother bought so he could fit in with the other boys) with him. Most of us (boys I mean) witnessed such incidents--with shock and more than a little fascination--before we burst out laughing. Invariably, the laughter arose spontaneously at the incongruous stream of invective and tears pouring from the boy running home to his mother.
As we get older, civilization gets a better grip on us and, thankfully, such stark, dramatic events disappear. The runners and the laughers find ways to live together in a civil manner.
Men Being Boys
The truth of the matter is (and I'm only speaking from the male point of view) we still know who is who. It's remarkable how permanent some of the traits boys show early on turn out to be. It's even evident on this board.
Look2It, you took notice of a prime example yourself: Has Been. He struck out right away and ran back home to mother, leaving behind only a trail of invective. He was a boy again. We all laughed.
Other posters have a bit more courage, standing in and fouling off a few pitches before they too strike out and run back home to mother, leaving behind the inevitable invective. Although we can't totally suppress our laughter in such cases, we feel a twinge of sadness too, having hoped that these posters, having once shown a modicum of courage, would be able to rise to the occasion and prove themselves worthy.
Men Being Dogs
Whenever a man evades discussing substance, whether by using invective, by labeling the other side, or by tap-dancing around issues looking for debating points, he is tacitly signaling his inability to continue the discussion in an honest man-to-man way. All men know that to be true, including the evader.
The evader's signaling behavior comes directly from the animal kingdom, and is akin to the way a dog flops belly up to signal submission before it flees. It's important to the dog that its signal be recognized, and it's just as important to the evader that his signal be recognized. Of course it always is. The next step, in the natural course of things, is for the evader to flee.
Men of Character
No man is perfect, least of all me. Sometimes I fail to be the man of character I want to be, but I try very hard to live my life as a man of character. I don't cut and run.
Some of life's truth's are basic: A man of character consistently shows the courage of his convictions, stating his opinions forthrightly and, if asked, the basis for those opinions. He does not slink away from discussions like a whipped cur, nor run home to mother in the face of every challenge to his ideas.
A man of character knows and lives his principles and understands why he holds them to be true. He is not ashamed of them: Without forcing his principles on others, he will, if asked, explain them, along with the reasons he holds them.
Of course there is much more to being a man of character, but I know this post is already too long for your taste.
Sexist Pig?
So now, Look2It, I've given you an inside look at some of the universal truths of manhood. I hope I've explained to your satisfaction my use of the word "man" in the post you questioned.
Does that make me a sexist pig? I hope not.
Glad you enjoyed it. Before I submitted that post, I started to worry that some readers (not you) might miss its tongue-in-cheek intent, so I added the dog part to make it unmistakable.
I've chuckled at the banter between you and Bada Bing and at the good-natured joshing by Moots and Cousin Jack about me being "incorrigible" and a "propagandist." Realizing that most of my comments tend to be on serious topics, I wanted posters here to know that I too have a lighthearted side.
A few years ago I was taken aback by an exchange with an employee. I reacted to something funny that happened (I have no recollection of what it was), and the employee blurted out, "That's the first time I've seen you smile." The incident got me thinking how easy it is for people to get a mistaken impression of someone, and I now try to strike a good balance between the serious and the humorous.
As we all suspected, the payola from the Bush administration to right-wing commentators willing to sell out their country for money was much larger than originally reported. The whole taxpayer financed propaganda scam is now starting to unravel: Third Journalist Was Paid to Promote Bush Policies.
The Bush administration acknowledged on Friday that it had paid a third conservative commentator, and at least two departments said they were conducting internal inquiries to see if other journalists were under government contract. The investigative arm of Congress also formally began an inquiry of its own.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. When you are stealing money hand over fist, you need to pay people to put a good face on it. Some commentators will acquiesce, provided they get a share of the loot.
On the very serious side of current events, we have the situation in Iraq. All Americans hope for a great election turnout with few incidents and good choices by the Iraqi people. A good result will finally give the war's supporters something positive to point to, and might also heal some of the rifts back home.
Better yet, it will hasten the day when our young folks stop dying over there: U.S. Helicopter Crashes in Baghdad; 5 Die in Combat.
A U.S. Army helicopter crashed in southwest Baghdad this evening, while five U.S. soldiers were killed in separate combat operations in the city today, the U.S. military said in a e-mailed statements from the Iraqi capital. Three Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed by a homemade bomb about 4:30 p.m. local time in western Baghdad, while earlier today two U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in the city.
A U.S. Army helicopter crashed in southwest Baghdad this evening, while five U.S. soldiers were killed in separate combat operations in the city today, the U.S. military said in a e-mailed statements from the Iraqi capital.
Three Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed by a homemade bomb about 4:30 p.m. local time in western Baghdad, while earlier today two U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in the city.
We now know the fate of those aboard the U.S. Army helicopter: Two US soldiers killed in Baghdad helicopter crash.
Two American soldiers were killed when their Kiowa observation helicopter crashed on Friday evening in southwest Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Saturday.
1,225 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
639 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Unless humor is topical, it's pointless. People whose feelings get hurt over little or nothing don't really concern me much. As the old saying goes, "If the shoe fits, wear it."
I'm satisfied that I conduct myself with honor and integrity here, and that's all I can do. How another poster reacts depends upon his or her character, not on mine. That's elemental to grass roots democracy.
A milestone in the history of Iraq: Iraqi Voters Turn Out in High Numbers Despite Rebel Attacks Killing 39.
After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets as Iraqis here and nationwide turned out to cast ballots in the country's first free elections in more than 50 years. American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, despite attacks in Baghdad and other parts of the country that took 39 lives, according to the Interior Ministry.
After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets as Iraqis here and nationwide turned out to cast ballots in the country's first free elections in more than 50 years.
American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, despite attacks in Baghdad and other parts of the country that took 39 lives, according to the Interior Ministry.
The turnout looks good in Baghdad:
But if the insurgents wanted to stop people in Baghdad from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner. No one was claiming that the insurgency was over or that the deadly attacks would end. But the atmosphere in this usually grim capital, a city at war and an ethnic microcosm of the country, had changed, with people dressed in their finest clothes to go to the polls in what was generally a convivial mood.
But if the insurgents wanted to stop people in Baghdad from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner.
No one was claiming that the insurgency was over or that the deadly attacks would end. But the atmosphere in this usually grim capital, a city at war and an ethnic microcosm of the country, had changed, with people dressed in their finest clothes to go to the polls in what was generally a convivial mood.
In other areas, the turnout is varied:
Even in the so-called Sunni Triangle people voted, too. In Baquba, 60 miles north of Baghdad, all the polling stations that reported indicated a huge turnout. In Mosul, the restive city to the north, large turnouts were reported, even in the Sunni Muslim areas. There was discontent among Kurds, however, because of a failure to deliver election boxes. They asked for a 24-hour extension of the election, but officials said that was not possible. In Ramadi, only six people had voted after seven hours at a polling station on the south side of the Euphrates River across from the town. Many people were apparently intimidated at crossing the bridge over the river, because potential voters would make themselves highly visible.
Even in the so-called Sunni Triangle people voted, too. In Baquba, 60 miles north of Baghdad, all the polling stations that reported indicated a huge turnout.
In Mosul, the restive city to the north, large turnouts were reported, even in the Sunni Muslim areas. There was discontent among Kurds, however, because of a failure to deliver election boxes. They asked for a 24-hour extension of the election, but officials said that was not possible.
In Ramadi, only six people had voted after seven hours at a polling station on the south side of the Euphrates River across from the town. Many people were apparently intimidated at crossing the bridge over the river, because potential voters would make themselves highly visible.
As the week progresses we will have a better picture of how successful the elections have been and how the new government will look, but so far things look good, except for the scattered violence:
Iraqi officials predicted that 8 million of the country's 14 million eligible voters would cast ballots, which would be a turnout of roughly 57 percent. The election will create the basis here for the rise to power of a Shiite-dominated government for the first time in the country's 85-year history. But the chaotic situation on the ground seemed to render most predictions about the future composition of the government tenuous at best.
Iraqi officials predicted that 8 million of the country's 14 million eligible voters would cast ballots, which would be a turnout of roughly 57 percent.
The election will create the basis here for the rise to power of a Shiite-dominated government for the first time in the country's 85-year history. But the chaotic situation on the ground seemed to render most predictions about the future composition of the government tenuous at best.
The long-term prospects for democracy in Iraq are still up in the air: The Vote, and Democracy Itself, Leave Anxious Iraqis Divided.
Many Iraqis, interviews in recent months have shown, do not accept that fundamental choices about the shape of their future political system should be made by a foreign power, particularly one they regard as a harbinger of secular, materialistic values far removed from the Muslim world's. But questions over the election go far beyond the American stewardship, to issues that touch on whether it was ever wise or realistic to think that Jeffersonian-style democracy, with its elaborate checks on power and guarantees for minority rights, could be implanted, at least so rapidly, in a country and a region that has little experience with anything but winner-take-all politics. Compounding those objections, the elections are being held in the grip of a paralyzing fear that many Iraqis see as inconsistent with a free vote. A savage insurgency, and the harsh measures America's 150,000 troops have taken in response, have angered and terrified Iraqis, who now face election conditions that have made an obstacle course of the process, at every stage.
Many Iraqis, interviews in recent months have shown, do not accept that fundamental choices about the shape of their future political system should be made by a foreign power, particularly one they regard as a harbinger of secular, materialistic values far removed from the Muslim world's.
But questions over the election go far beyond the American stewardship, to issues that touch on whether it was ever wise or realistic to think that Jeffersonian-style democracy, with its elaborate checks on power and guarantees for minority rights, could be implanted, at least so rapidly, in a country and a region that has little experience with anything but winner-take-all politics.
Compounding those objections, the elections are being held in the grip of a paralyzing fear that many Iraqis see as inconsistent with a free vote. A savage insurgency, and the harsh measures America's 150,000 troops have taken in response, have angered and terrified Iraqis, who now face election conditions that have made an obstacle course of the process, at every stage.
Pragmatic Americans in Iraq view the future with a healthy dose of skepticism:
Still, even among senior American officials here, there is an edge of doubt. One, who arrived here as sovereignty was being transferred in June, referred to the Americans who oversaw the 15 months of formal occupation as "the illusionists," and cites as an example the $750 million of American money that the occupation chief, L. Paul Bremer III, set aside to finance a democracy training program, as well as elections. In one case, the money has financed a Muslim cleric who runs a "democracy center" in Hilla, a city south of Baghdad where Americans cannot move without heavy armor. The cleric, Sayed Farqad al-Qiswini, has remained a fixture on American Embassy helicopter trips for reporters covering the elections, discoursing with enthusiasm about the importance of separation of powers, the rule of law and an independent judiciary, concepts that have been alien, or at least malleable, under the rulers Iraqis have known for centuries. But when a reporter asked him during the Bremer period about his commitment to democratic values, he laughed and replied: "You know, we Iraqis are all chameleons. We learned to be like that from Saddam Hussein."
Still, even among senior American officials here, there is an edge of doubt. One, who arrived here as sovereignty was being transferred in June, referred to the Americans who oversaw the 15 months of formal occupation as "the illusionists," and cites as an example the $750 million of American money that the occupation chief, L. Paul Bremer III, set aside to finance a democracy training program, as well as elections. In one case, the money has financed a Muslim cleric who runs a "democracy center" in Hilla, a city south of Baghdad where Americans cannot move without heavy armor.
The cleric, Sayed Farqad al-Qiswini, has remained a fixture on American Embassy helicopter trips for reporters covering the elections, discoursing with enthusiasm about the importance of separation of powers, the rule of law and an independent judiciary, concepts that have been alien, or at least malleable, under the rulers Iraqis have known for centuries. But when a reporter asked him during the Bremer period about his commitment to democratic values, he laughed and replied: "You know, we Iraqis are all chameleons. We learned to be like that from Saddam Hussein."
Most likely, today's elections are the first step toward the creation of a Shiite government in Iraq aligned with Iran and against America:
The problems will be exacerbated if the Shiite alliance of religious and secular groups, the United Iraqi Alliance, wins a runaway victory. Although many of the alliance's candidates are moderate secularists, real power rests with the religious groups, which have close ties to Iran. Fears that Iran will manipulate the government that emerges from the elections appears certain to inflame the Sunni insurgents. The religious groups, sensitive to the risk of further alienating Sunnis, have let it be known in the past week that they have no plan to place clerics in government, and that they will reach out to Sunnis to make sure they are fairly represented on the constitutional commission to be established by the new assembly, which will have the task of writing a permanent constitution in time for a referendum by Oct. 15 this year. If that deadline is met, and the constitution approved, a further nationwide election will be held by Dec. 15 for a permanent government with a five-year term. But Mr. Atiyyah says the Americans should not be fooled. "The Iranians are much more clever than the Americans in this game," he said. "They will make life very difficult for the Americans, and the result will be history repeating itself. Just as they did in Afghanistan after they drove the Russians out, and then let matters drift, the Americans will preside over the rise of a new Taliban, except that here in Iraq there will be two Talibans, the Sunni Taliban who are already fighting the Americans, and a Shiite Taliban that the Americans themselves have placed in power."
The problems will be exacerbated if the Shiite alliance of religious and secular groups, the United Iraqi Alliance, wins a runaway victory. Although many of the alliance's candidates are moderate secularists, real power rests with the religious groups, which have close ties to Iran. Fears that Iran will manipulate the government that emerges from the elections appears certain to inflame the Sunni insurgents.
The religious groups, sensitive to the risk of further alienating Sunnis, have let it be known in the past week that they have no plan to place clerics in government, and that they will reach out to Sunnis to make sure they are fairly represented on the constitutional commission to be established by the new assembly, which will have the task of writing a permanent constitution in time for a referendum by Oct. 15 this year. If that deadline is met, and the constitution approved, a further nationwide election will be held by Dec. 15 for a permanent government with a five-year term.
But Mr. Atiyyah says the Americans should not be fooled. "The Iranians are much more clever than the Americans in this game," he said. "They will make life very difficult for the Americans, and the result will be history repeating itself. Just as they did in Afghanistan after they drove the Russians out, and then let matters drift, the Americans will preside over the rise of a new Taliban, except that here in Iraq there will be two Talibans, the Sunni Taliban who are already fighting the Americans, and a Shiite Taliban that the Americans themselves have placed in power."
Will the Bush administration be able to prevent his "noble experiment" from turning to ashes? We can only watch and see. To do so, Bush will need a lot more focus and competence than he's shown to date. No doubt the best way to spur him on to success is to intensify public criticism of the mistakes he makes along the way.
1,226 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
640 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
After being away for a week, my hat doffs way off with a deep bow of thanks to the Iraqi people for turning out in such numbers and spirit the way they did today. It has been a joy to watch some of the TV coverage of their polling places. I also hope it awakens those partisan snipers who have been front-loading the Iraqi freedom wagon's progress toward democratization down into the dirt from the beginning with predictions of abject failure and an excessively dispiriting pessimism (perhaps mistaking the biased attitudes which exist within their own minds with the hearts and minds of the majority of Iraqis who've been waiting 50 years for this).
Been There: Sorry, I just assumed you recognized I'd been posting here under an earlier moniker (initials MH) since before the Iraq War began. Here are few MH posts (in red) addressing your particular claim (see Bold passages) and a few others just to fill in some context on the overall content and continuity of my thought on this matter. From December 9, 2002: I'm not nearly as pessimistic as you are on the potential for a Vietnam-type quagmire, but there is no doubt that creating some kind of post-war democracy in Iraq would likely be a long, drawn-out and messy process. From May 4, 2003: We'll all have to wait and see of course, but due to the peculiar pathological psychology and aggressive history of the Saddam Hussein regime along with the 12 years of U.N mandated disarmament violations, I really think Iraq is a special case, Been There, not the radical harbinger of some run amok American preemptive strike policy. After decades under a brutal tyranny modeled on the police state design perfected by Lenin and Stalin, the Iraqi people were unable to muster anything close to an overthrow. Let’s not blame the victims here. From May 6, 2003: Whatever the ultimate truth on Iraqi WMD turns out to be, however, it will not alter my personal opinion that overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime was a generous and noble act whose long term ramifications will prove to be a significant step in winning the war against international terrorism and paving the road toward lasting peace in the Mideast. From September 21, 2003: As I’ve noted before, Iraq was ruled by a singularly ruthless pathological regime (which is the larger point of the John Burns piece) whose oil profits made it a potentially major mischief maker. It had a long history of aggression against its neighbors(Iran & Kuwait). It was a financial supporter of terrorism(rewarding the Palestinian families of suicide bombers with $25,000 payments), it had well documented WMD programs and it had a long repeated history of U.N. violations. The U.N. spent 12 years trying to figure out whether they had found and destroyed all the weapons and uncertainty still reigned as to whether that job was finished (especially after Hussein kicked out the inspectors in the late 1990’s). If U.N. sanctions had been removed, gambling that all the weapons had been destroyed, this would do nothing to prevent Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs from continuing and there would then be a lot more money for him to spend on them. The case that Colin Powell made to the U.N. was multi-leveled with the human rights issue being but one of them. Like most people, I gave the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt on the WMD intelligence they were drawing upon. Congress drew upon the same intelligence and voted to support the use of force against Iraq. At this point it’s still not clear to me how much the intelligence community may have been misled by Iraqi refugees who were lobbying for an overthrow of the Saddman Hussein regime. Whenever uncertainty reigns, however, paranoia and a sense of political responsibility for erring on the side of safety always plays a role. Here's one from October 25, 2003 with a quoted prediciton of yours included: Been There said: "Here's my prediction: At some point in the future, reality will force the government to face its failure in Iraq. Then we will declare victory (or "peace with honor") and withdraw." MH replied:Your prediction of abject failure is just a personal projection on how you feel about the whole undertaking. Domestic political efforts to undermine the rationale and faith of progress in Iraq without offering any “alternative solutions” to better attain some kind of emerging proto-democracy there at this very early date is just both subjective hunch and a mindless expression of disgust. From October 31, 2003: I've long supported the goal of overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime and trying to establish a democratic republic there because of the SPECIFIC NATURE of Hussein's regime. I felt it should have been the goal of the Gulf War back in 1991 and the disastrous effects of the U.N. Containment policy throughout the 1990's only confirmed my belief. From December 17, 2003: There is absolutely nothing miniscule about being personally responsible for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of deaths in his own small country plus well over a million deaths in the expansionist Iran-Iraq and Kuwaiti Wars which he fought in aggressive emulation of Hitler and Stalin (since the upcoming Iraqi-held trial will thoroughly document this 30 year binge of human rights atrocities, I suggest you pay attention). Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for this huge carnage and it puts him in the same catastrophic mega-category as Hitler and Stalin. No other single 20th century "strongmen" (other than Mao and Lenin) come close to bearing personal responsiblity for so many coercive death-sentences. America, it seems to me, as a country who once helped elevate him, has been burdened with a special historical responsibility to finally set things right. I would be embarrassed to live in a world that did not take this profound task seriously. From February 29, 2004: More damning evidence that the real problem in Iraq was the nature of the ruling regime itself and further proof of the utter absurdity and immorality of the U.N. Sanctions Policy. This is a cruel historical teaching lesson in how NOT to punish a corrupt tyrannical regime. One can only hope now that the U.N. can find some way of punishing those corporations who benefitted from this monumental skim scam. Quoted from NY Times: In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions. Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government's hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised the skimming operation. From March 29, 2004: If Saddam had been left in power and the sanctions were removed, there would always remain the likelihood that his WMD programs would be revived and his funding for terrorism increased. As I posted before the war began, the Bush administration may likely suffer the political consequences for emphasizing WMD in selling this war if there turn out not to be any, but that does not undercut the noble proactive achievement of American might in making it possible for the Iraqi people to be freed from Saddam's tyranny and allowing them an attempt at creating their own democracy. Global terrorism has lost it's longest running and most powerful state-sponsored ally. From April 11, 2004: Am I surprised at the post-war difficulties that have been encountered so far? No, I sadly expected them. And though I supported this particular policy because I think in the long run, if executed properly, it will make for a better world, I have always made a point of not being an apologist for President Bush or his administration. From April 13, 2004: We've been through all this before, Been There, but to reiterate. First, I, like most everyone else, gave the Bush administration (and Congress) the benefit of the doubt on the WMD intelligence. Second, because of the French, German and Russian economic ties to the Saddam Hussein regime the Bush administration attempts to work with the U.N. were thwarted. Third, it wasn't unilateral. It was a coalition that included Britain, Spain and others. Fourth, we were the only country with a military capable of overthrowing the Iraqi Regime (whose despotic nature, a history of aggression against it's neighbors, longtime support for terrorism including $25,000 rewards for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, prior use of WMD's and 12 years of U.N. violations concurrent with a sanctions policy that, according to UNICEF, led to the unnecessary deaths of 50,000 children under the age of 5 each year).As I've said before, it will likely take a generation to know how successful this pro-active foreign policy approach will be to a region whose corrupt feudal-like political systems have become the breeding grounds for international terrorism. But one thing we do know for sure, the approach that America and the U.N. has been taking for the prior 50 years has been a disastrous failure(both for that region and for the rest of the world).Your characterization of this noble and challenging effort to transform Iraq (and the whole Middle Eastern equation) as a "disaster" is myopic and premature. There have been good weeks and bad weeks in this endeavor so far, but no single week doth a larger history make. From April 22, 2004: As I've said several times before, the Saddam Hussein regime was a "particular" foreign policy problem because of its unique pathological history and military force was the last best solution to dealing with it.
Well...I think that confirms for you the point I said I had made concerning the "uniqueness" of the Saddam Hussein. No hard feelings. I was actually upset about something else when I read your post and you just happened to be in the way.
I hope to be back with more on the "Revitalizing Grass Roots Democracy" thread in a week or so. CJ
No argument on this point:
a general decentralization of both state and corporate capitalist power is the right direction to head if we are ever going to achieve the best possible world for the most possible people and empower that personal hometown pursuit of life, liberty and happiness which Jefferson defined as among the inalienable rights
But here you're skating on thin ice:
How can you justify your persistent faith in human nature?
Now the light dawns! You posted those items months ago under a different name. Perhaps I should have made the connection but didn't. At least I don't feel quite so stupid now.
Thanks for clarifying your position on U.S. military intervention for me under your new name. Even though we disagree on the handling of Iraq, I do feel the world needs a strong, reliable mechanism for dealing with regimes like Saddam Hussein's.
My apologies to any readers who went on a wild goose chase in response to my request.
Election security provided by our troops yesterday, working with the Iraqis, was very well planned and executed. The turnout of the Iraqi public at the polls in the face of danger casts shame on people here who can't be bothered to vote.
We don't yet know the Iraqi vote totals, but some sketchy reports are coming in: Allawi Vows to Unite Iraq's Ethnic and Religious Groups.
One group of candidates that appeared to do well was the United Iraqi Alliance, a large coalition of Shiite parties brought together by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's powerful religious leader. One senior aide in that alliance said the party had been told by American and British officials that it appeared to have captured more than 50 percent of the vote. The slate of candidates led by Ayad Allawi, the prime minister, also appeared to have done well.
One group of candidates that appeared to do well was the United Iraqi Alliance, a large coalition of Shiite parties brought together by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's powerful religious leader. One senior aide in that alliance said the party had been told by American and British officials that it appeared to have captured more than 50 percent of the vote.
The slate of candidates led by Ayad Allawi, the prime minister, also appeared to have done well.
Inevitably some Iraqi voters were killed by terrorists, but the number was much lower than the terrorists wanted, thanks to the security measures taken. Our troops, too, took casualties yesterday: Two Marines Killed West of Baghdad.
A U.S. Marine was killed in action in the volatile Anbar province west of Baghdad Sunday, the second Marine to be killed in the area that day, the U.S. military said Monday.
1,227 days have now passed since since September 17, 2001, when President Bush pledged to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
641 days have now passed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush made his Iraq "mission accomplished" speech.
Regarding Cousin Jack's quote that you call "skating on thin Ice," I think it's definitely up in the air as to whether or not we will succeed in revitalizing freedom for humankind.
However, surely we can do so if enough of us decide it must be done. What could stop us?
Hey Moots:
But here you're skating on thin ice: If human nature + scientific technology has, over the centuries, slowly built this Frankenstein Monster which, back in the 1960's and 70's we youthfully called "The System", then human nature + scientific technology can also eventually take it apart and bury it (if necessary) to revitalize or rebirth the future of freedom for humankind. How can you justify your persistent faith in human nature?
Having drawn on a Jeffersonian ideal in the earlier paragraph, perhaps it would have been appropos to draw on Lincoln in the second (from his 1st Inaugural Address):
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
History (as well as the present) shows us that human nature can be both compassionate and apalling. We are all capable of acting in the name of good or evil depending on the various situations we may find ourselves in. We can rage in anger at our neighbor one moment and then embrace them in friendship the next after momentary passions ebb. It's the way we've been wired by evolution, I'm afraid, and there's no changing that. Both physical aggression and friendly cooperation have proven to have survival value in protecting our self-interests over the millennia and we're stuck with this genetic inheritance. The only public solution to this problem to my mind is to fine tune the designs of our social, governmental and economic structures so that they reward the "better angels of our nature" and inhibit or punish (when necessary) the "worse angels of our nature" which of course has probably been the basic process by which civilization has been slowly built over the centuries.
I just think that smaller structures are easier for humans to manage. When they get too big, they seem to develop an almost cybernetic control tendency to try and manage us (i.e. the "entrenched bureacracy" syndrome) for the purpose of their own survival (type "meme theory" into Google for a better idea of what I'm getting at here).
What you attribute to evolution, the Bible attributes to sin. Other than that what you write here is similar to what the apostle Paul writes concerning the proper role of government in Romans.
The only public solution to this problem to my mind is to fine tune the designs of our social, governmental and economic structures so that they reward the "better angels of our nature" and inhibit or punish (when necessary) the "worse angels of our nature" which of course has probably been the basic process by which civilization has been slowly built over the centuries.
I highlighted "public" because I think you would agree with me that the only true solution to our problems would be a change in our basic natures, on the level of the individual. I suspect you would also agree with me that there is a great difference between wanting to change people, and wanting to see people change.
I just think that smaller structures are easier for humans to manage. When they get too big, they seem to develop an almost cybernetic control tendency to try and manage us
The problem I see here is evidenced by the very medium we are using, computers and telecommunications. Everyone is now part of the same food chain. The computer enables everyone to compete with everyone else virtually everywhere, and enables us to design, schedule, track and manage production and commerce all around the globe. Physical and natural boundaries dissolve in this global economy. In this ecosystem Alpha predators tend to become very large, e.g. Walmart. Walmart, in its various guises, becomes the logical outcome of our technology. The European Union is simply another form of Walmart.
So BT, you seem to have a vested interest in computers - are you able to swear off the evil box, take the oath, and live computer-free the rest of yore days and not weary us any more with your political harangues?