New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | July 7, 2005

The London bombings are just one more confirmation that we're at war here, right? Actually, no, according to national security expert John Mueller, who Tim Cavanaugh interviewed earlier today.

Comments

Adam|7.7.05 @ 8:29PM|#

I'm just disinclined to call it a war. But I can see how you might.

That's not exactly a "no." It's more of a "not exactly."

|7.7.05 @ 8:33PM|#

Very interesting interview.

|7.7.05 @ 8:36PM|#

WHOM Tim Cavanaugh interviewed

|7.7.05 @ 8:54PM|#

Continuing to be a real asshole pedant, this quote was from the interview:
"the real effort was to figure out how did it."

But, lightening up, I just sent this off to one of the fishwraps here in Sinincincinnati:
"The success rate of wars is so low, they should never be tried. I know it's like saying the vitamin and mineral content of crack cocaine is so low, it should never be tried. Yet wars and certain drugs are addictive, so they are being tried.

There are no "good" wars. Many would say WWII was a jim-dandy. Vietnam not so hot. The war on poverty has made more folks poorer. The jury is still deliberating about the goodness of the war on drugs and the war on terror. I've reached my verdict on the last two: likewise not good.

Recently the percent of US citizens willing to note similarities between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq has increased. Vietnam was my war, and there was a time when I was addicted to it. Now I'm beyond Vietnam and noticing the similarities between the war on certain drugs and the war on terrorism.

I feel like a designated driver, even as I enjoy a cocktail here at my computer."

|7.7.05 @ 8:59PM|#

I had no idea your moniker referred to copyediting.

:-)

James B.|7.7.05 @ 9:00PM|#

Boy, you'd think someone who was the Woody Hayes Chair of national security policy would be a little more gung ho. You know, start wailing on an enemy who had just made an interception or something.

|7.7.05 @ 9:05PM|#

James B.,

Oh, I thought it was the Woody Harrelson Chair of National Security Policy? :)

|7.7.05 @ 9:08PM|#

What we need is a Woody Woodpecker Chair in National Security Policy.

Tell me you wouldn't want to see bin Laden's turban pulled over his eyes, and his head rapped on like a drum.

|7.7.05 @ 9:25PM|#

"The same thing applies with today's attack. You simply can't police every single metro train or bus."

The accessibility of trains and train tracks does seem to present a fundamental problem.

"Boy, you'd think someone who was the Woody Hayes Chair of national security policy would be a little more gung ho."

I think that's what people are talking about when they talk about grace.

...Not many people have grace. I like to think that I have a little grace.

|7.7.05 @ 9:31PM|#

"What we need is a Woody Woodpecker Chair in National Security Policy."

joe,
You are such a lover of violence!

In a prior post, I posited that Woody Woodpecker was modelled after the recently rediscovered Ivory-billed Piliated.

Whatever. His creator, Walter Lantz, was the precursor of the creator of Marmaduke. Puke.

All these people should be euthanized.

Peace, love, and happiness, and the pursuit of.

|7.7.05 @ 9:31PM|#

Ken Shultz,

Well, any soft-target, public-access facility is going to present a similar problem. Think of the damage that could be done in a supermarket on a crowded Friday afternoon following work. Four or five well placed bombs could murder a whole lot of people.

|7.7.05 @ 9:33PM|#

Jesus, the Woody Woodpecker guy has been reading joe's comments. He cites the Cole bombing as a case where treating terrorism like any other crime paid off. Because our prosecution of the Cole bombing stopped Al Qaeda dead in its tracks, right? Right?

|7.7.05 @ 9:43PM|#

Steve,

Woody states quite bluntly that one is never going to be rid of terrorism.

|7.7.05 @ 9:46PM|#

Right, but our response to the Cole bombing didn't just fail to get rid of terrorism. It failed to stop the most devastating terrorist attack in our history.

|7.7.05 @ 9:55PM|#

"Well, any soft-target, public-access facility is going to present a similar problem."

I understand that. That the London bombers used the same tactics as the Madrid bombers would seem to emphasize that. So it becomes apparent, to me anyway, that the government can't protect every train, bus, etc. The unreasonable expectation that the government could do such a thing may have done serious long term damage to our liberties.

...So how long will it take Soccer/Security Moms to lower their expectations of government?

|7.7.05 @ 10:05PM|#

"...So how long will it take Soccer/Security Moms to lower their expectations of government?"

When you're driving alone, you're not driving with Osama; you're driving with "FAITH." Faith in government? Begosh and begorra!

FAITH is what Dubya should be declaring wur agin!

|7.7.05 @ 10:13PM|#

Steve,

I'd say Pearl Harbor was more devastating. Especially when one considers that it knocked out most of a Pacific Fleet for the first six months of the war and hampered our efforts to return fire. 9/11 didn't come close to that.

As to the response to the Cole, well, there really wasn't one (at least I am not aware of one); the country was distracted by a Presidential election.

|7.7.05 @ 10:29PM|#

If we want to help, we should be working with peacekeeping efforts, and promoting stability in these countries, and of course, simply buying the materials that these countries are producing. All that would be more productive than kicking around after terrorism.

Professor Woodpecker suggests something different from the current course of action. It seems he suggests the past pattern of the Balkans, Africa, and the biggie, Iraq. The strategy doesn't seem to have gone too well in any of those places. His trio of ideas is interventionist, possibly colonialist, and says little about about the quality of life it might achieve for the "troublesome" areas. Stability, the implied "peace" and trade can be well accomplished by feeding the egos of dictators. Dictators seem to be at the root of many wars, either through nationalist fervor or through cruelty sufficient to cause revolution.

For a person with a such a prestigious title, he showed little knowledge of what the military guys call 4GW (but it was a brief interview). That "not exactly" war and "not exactly" crime is Fourth Generation Warfare. 4GW theorists tend toward the same trio of activities Mueller advocates, but they add a judicious use of overwhelming military force to keep the bad actors from getting big and coordinated enough to pull off a London, Madrid, and New York all at once.

Military force is reserved for situations that warrant it. Likely then Bali, etc., didn't get a military response because one was not appropriate. Yet, just because one doesn't send the Marines is not an indicator that we're not at war.

The more I research the ideas of the people in charge of fighting, the smater they seem to get. The armchair generals and politicians seem to have their priorities in a different, and less useful, order. I want to see the "good guys" win while adhering to their Constitutions. It seems to me I can further that aim by understanding the nature of the conflict, keeping watch on the activities of the state, and giving the soldiers as much as I can to do their part of the job.

In the same way the public has taken airliners out of the terrorist arsenal, we can take away more of their ability to hurt us just by being aware on the train or in the mall. We could help the government most, to my tastes, by showing that we don't need PATRIOT or constant remote surveillance. Only by helping them (by self-ordering, not snitching) in this defense- and security-related sphere can we hope to get them out of our lives.

|7.7.05 @ 10:42PM|#

Does Indiana have a Bobby Knight Chair? And how much does it get thrown around?

(Sorry...)

|7.7.05 @ 10:48PM|#

I'd say Pearl Harbor was more devastating. Especially when one considers that it knocked out most of a Pacific Fleet for the first six months of the war and hampered our efforts to return fire. 9/11 didn't come close to that.

Hakluyt:
You make the mistake of looking at warfare from purely military point of view. A 4GW enemy seeks to enforce his political will on an adversary through any means possible. 9/11 saw much more harmful than pearl habor from a total perspective. The effect it is had on our economy, civil liberties, and politics was much more harmful than the Japanese drawing us into a war we probably would have ended up in anyway.

|7.7.05 @ 10:50PM|#

So it becomes apparent, to me anyway, that the government can't protect every train, bus, etc.

Ken:
I think that if the government was not envolved with any of these to begin with they would be a lot safer.

|7.7.05 @ 10:57PM|#

"Only by helping them (by self-ordering, not snitching) in this defense- and security-related sphere can we hope to get them out of our lives."

Can you help me out with the difference between "self-ordering" and "snitching"?

|7.7.05 @ 11:02PM|#

So I guess John Mueller is the guy Reason can get an interview with the day of a big event such as this. This is not a knock on Reason (I love the magazine), but on Mueller. After reading the article I believe that he is more of a policy guy than someone who understands warfare. He can call what we involved in what he wants but the fact is it is a war, although not a conventional one (A 4GW conflict as dynamist said). Some posters,ie Ruthless, may not like wars at all but it is a war that requires military action.

Our attack of Iraq was strategically incorrect. This was due to our misguided leadership both civilian and military. Of couse when you only have a hammer (Our currently military structure) your going to want to go after nails even though you need a screwdriver to do the job correctly. Unfortunately with our the way our military is structured the most of the people who make it into position to make such decisions are more interested in being good company boys, buying the right toys, and making rank than they are in doing the right thing for our nation's security.

Regardless on why we are in Iraq to pull out now would be much worse than seeing things through...

|7.7.05 @ 11:18PM|#

The effect it is had on our economy, civil liberties, and politics was much more harmful than the Japanese drawing us into a war we probably would have ended up in anyway.

So you think the effect of 9/11 on our civil liberties was worse than the effect of Pearl Harbor?

|7.7.05 @ 11:24PM|#

Unless you were Japanese yes. Before Pearl Habor we most likely would have ended up fighting in WWII anyway. Before 9/11 there was no war on the horizon at all. I am open to your argument Josh I was not alive during WWII show me some facts I may concede.

|7.7.05 @ 11:33PM|#

Yeah, gee, except for the internment camps for entire ethnic groups, I guess the civil liberties situation in WWII wasn't that bad.

|7.7.05 @ 11:44PM|#

Ken: The dramatic example is Flight 93. Beamer didn't make anonymous calls to the McGruff tipline; he took responsibility himself and set the example that took airliners out of the terrorists' arsenal.

More mundane might be chatting up a sketchy guy on the bus, or perhaps any of the community crime-fighting tips McGruff suggests. The idea is to make personal connections and create civilian networks that make it difficult for bad actors to operate. I recall stories of Israeli people talking suicide bombers out of blowing up. I don't have a complete answer, and there no absolute cure for terrorism (or any violent crime). I hope that others might contribute, and together we can live more safely while keeping vigilantism at a minimum.

Tim Cavanaugh|7.8.05 @ 12:25AM|#

Thanks for the edit, Ruthless. Or maybe that's thanks for the ruthless edit. Either way, it's fixed.

|7.8.05 @ 12:42AM|#

MyNameIsAsh,

WWII had a far more drastic effect on our economy. 9/11 hasn't saw government mandate wage and price controls for example, whereas WWII did. Nor has there been government mandated rationing; women can still buy all the pantyhouse they want to for example.

As to civil liberties, note that its not just the issue of Japanese-American internment; press freedom during WWII was severely curtailed (through a "voluntary" acceptance of , with the U.S. government passing judgment on which stories the press could print on issues related to the war. We have more press freedom today in the U.S. than we ever have.

|7.8.05 @ 12:51AM|#

MyNameAsh,

And government curtailment of civil liberties, etc. was even worse in WWI; just look at what they did to The Masses for opposing the war.

drf|7.8.05 @ 9:03AM|#

Interesting interview. Thanks, Tim!

cheers,
drf

|7.8.05 @ 9:07AM|#

I'd say Pearl Harbor was more devastating. Especially when one considers that it knocked out most of a Pacific Fleet for the first six months of the war and hampered our efforts to return fire. 9/11 didn't come close to that.

WWII had a far more drastic effect on our economy.

Hakluyt:
I was objecting your point comparing Pearl Habor and 9/11. We most likely would have entered WWII without Pearl Habor. I was pointing out that 9/11 was a more powerful attack with worse results. Pearl Habor only pulled us into a war we would have entered anyway.

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 9:40AM|#

this confusion between war and a criminal act is utterly typical. not only does it seem some large segment of our society is dying for a war to come along to assuage their feelings of aimlessness and insecurity, thereby forcing them to recharacterize civil disobedience as warfare. there is also this complete lack of any perspective or context that might be offered by history. what is going on is not even yet comparable to the anarchism of the late 19th c in either effect, frequency or duration -- and yet the hyperbole comes flooding in.

how sad. just when we could most use sensibility.

|7.8.05 @ 10:33AM|#

pearl harbor ... 9/11 ... come on people! The Lobster backs torched the white house during the War of 1812. Until the japs or al-queda manage to put an army on our soil that burns washington, 9/11 and pearl harbor can't compare.

|7.8.05 @ 11:12AM|#

I think one casualty of this is the notion that relatively free societies can spend enough on internal security measures to protect themselves from terrorists. Spending more on port security or inspecting every container that comes into the US as Kerry would have had us doing is a waste of money. It seems to me we have a couple of options.

1) We can mount a static defense at home that can be arbitrarily expensive and given time guaranteed to be ineffective. The upside is that we don't have troops abroad, but the downside is that, well, it doesn't work.

2) We can read the AQ manifesto and do everything they want us to do. Oddly, many of the same folks who indicate that there is no difference between the Unibomber and Bin Laden don't suggest that the correct approach to handling the unibomber is to acquiesce to his anti techonological demands. This, to me, is not a serious position, even if you remove the (admitted) hyperbole of my phrasing. Firstly, the planks of the AQ platform have as much to do with regional power brokering as they have to do with ideology. Also, there is that little bit of the platform about wanting to create a mid east wide Taliban arrangement.

3) We can use force abroad in the hopes that it prevents us from having to use force at home. This is clearly messy and expensive, since you are targeting an organization that spans national borders. There is a tactical application of force designed to kill or capture known terrorists. I suspect that a large majority of US citizens are on board with this measure. A subset of this approach is to arrest them in some sort of police action, which is another argument I don't take seriously. The problem is information. Entire nations dedicate resources to hiding terrorists and making sure they are protected behind a wall of sovereignity. This brings us to the strategic application of force that seeks to create an environment hostile to terrorism over the long run. Note, I said "over the long run." This exercise is an experiment in progress. It certainly has high costs.

4) We can use no force abroad and mount little domestic defence, instead preferring to trade and help develop countries in such a way as to achieve the same goal we were seeking through strategic force in #3 but with less cost. Call me a skeptic. Fundamental islamists are not going to sign up for the Club for Growth. They thrive on poverty to drive their desperate bomber coalition and further their aims. They will bomb their own infrastructure to prevent development from taking hold. You can see it in Iraq. I disagree with Mueller's somewhat blase attitude about having major population centers bombed every so often in the meantime as well.

That seems to be the solutions I can come up with. Those who know me out here can guess at my preferences, but I don't see any sure winners. I guess the lesson is that terrorism sucks?

|7.8.05 @ 11:14AM|#

"That's not exactly a "no." It's more of a "not exactly."

But when he said that, he wasn't talking about the larger war on terror, but instead, whether the attacks on 9/11 were acts of war or not.

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 11:54AM|#

I guess the lesson is that terrorism sucks?

indeed that, but there is a 5). acknowledge that

Fundamental islamists are not going to sign up for the Club for Growth.

isn't just "fundamental islamists" -- its large majorities of the proletariats in much of the non-western world. these insurgencies have a home because their antiwestern stance is widely popular -- the man in the street in iraq fears abject westernization (rightfully) as a threat to his culture and traditions. it's a form of cultural conquest that we are trying to force on peoples by coopting their leadership apparatus (in fact, organizing their states for them, a la iraq).

the west must find an approach to globalization that isn't manifestly westernization. no armies of commercial exploitation. no political intervention at the slightest invitation. trust that trade and example will persevere -- and where it doesn't, wait, hope for the best but do nothing. if these cultures aren't attracted to the western model by charisma, they cannot be forced to adopt it without disastrous consequences -- that is the common lesson of 9/11 and madrid and london and all that comes after.

learning that lesson isn't a defeat -- as

We can read the AQ manifesto and do everything they want us to do.

would suggest. it is a demonstration of western flexibility and dynamism.

how long will it take to learn it and adapt our approach? a truly decadent civilization never will -- it will simply attempt to force and administrate in an absence of creativity, displaying its weakness for all to see, becoming less and less attractive all the time for it. this is a test for a decaying west. i doubt we'll pass it.

|7.8.05 @ 12:00PM|#

Jason does a nice job of fleshing out my "least bad alternative hypothesis."

Coexistence is not an option, because the Islamists don't want to coexist with us.

Doing nothing is not an option, because technology gives the Islamists the means to cause us great harm, and will only increase their capacity to inflict damage over time.

We cannot tolerate the confluence of globally mobile Islamist fanatics, sovereign states giving them safe havens and support, and the high-tech weaponry.

We can't individually target the Islamists in a law enforcement-style operation, for reasons which should be obvious to anyone who stops and thinks for even two seconds.

We can't create a purely static defense, as these are guaranteed to fail, as London has just demonstrated.

The least bad option is to drain the swamp, attack the root causes.

|7.8.05 @ 12:14PM|#

.. it seems to me that one way to deal with these terrorist assholes is to not cave in to their demands ..

.. for example, two of al Queda's big beefs are the US presence in their holy lands and the US support of Israel .. suppose everytime one of the murderers blew up a bomb we gave Israel 50 Million dollars .. blow up the Cole, new airbase in Saudi Arabia .. crash an airliner into a building and we'll install a McPork's rib hut in downtown Mecca ..

.. Hobbit

|7.8.05 @ 12:17PM|#

"We can't individually target the Islamists in a law enforcement-style operation" Sure we can. We do it all the time. How many terror operations were broken up during Clinton's term using exactly this strategy? And I can't possibly be the only one who recalls the destruction of the car in Yemen by the Hellfire missile launched from a CIA Predator.

Ditto with defending ourselves.

It's an absolutely necessary part of our anti-terror operations. It's just not, by itself, sufficient.

Everyone supports "draining the swamp" and "addressing root causes." They just differ on what they are, and how to address them.

|7.8.05 @ 12:27PM|#

gaius:

I agree that a big part of the problem is a perception that liberalization = westernization when in fact liberalization is the right to choose.

I disagree with your analyses beyond that. Kim Jong Il is domestically popular by all accounts. Once a certain level of control is asserted, the government run presses can tell any story they want. You can't fight that from the outside. I'm inclined to think that you have to break up regimes to let some sunshine in. I am suggesting here that the alternatives can't ever be clearly laid out to an oppressed people.

A second, darker thought is that we may be facing people fundamentally opposed to human liberty. That is to say that even once all ideas get a fair shake, the appeal of theocratic tyranny is greater than the appeal of a messy freedom. I can't envision cohabitation on the planet of those two views if they are broadly enough held.

|7.8.05 @ 12:32PM|#

Can all the 4GW people stop defining it almost every time they use the term? I feel like I'm lurking at Winds of Change again, where it was a banner of strategic theory hipness.

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 12:36PM|#

The least bad option is to drain the swamp, attack the root causes.

i agree wholly with this, mr dean, but of course more pointless war is only filling the swamp. the challenge to us is to reorganize globalization on lines which are not culturally western or parochial. we have to create institutions which supercede nationalist parochialism, refuting the west's ability to make war and intrigue in the service of commerce as counterproductive, and put real teeth into an authority whihc can restrain multinational corporates as well.

if we refuse, and continue along these lines of unlimited westernization -- wars of freedom, et al -- we will suffer immensely. the third world will not lay still.

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 12:44PM|#

right to choose.

mr ligon, i would say what's really lacking on our part right now is the recognition of the fact that right to choose = westernization. our obsession with freedom is just that -- ours, and an obsession of enormous proportion.

forcing it onto others constitutes an aggressive program of westernization -- like an alcoholic wants to see everyone around him with a drink to noramlize his behavior.

until we see that about ourselves and accept it, we have no hope of really addressing these issues, imo. instead, we'll sit around and wonder (as you seem to) at how all those people can happily tolerate what looks to us, in our distorted vision, like obvious horrible oppression -- all while blithely denying the totalitarianism we are birthing at home in the service of freedom, of course.

Mark Bahner|7.8.05 @ 12:51PM|#

Joe asks, "How many terror operations were broken up during Clinton's term using exactly this strategy?"

Like the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, Joe?

"And I can't possibly be the only one who recalls the destruction of the car in Yemen by the Hellfire missile launched from a CIA Predator."

Yes, I recall it. I recall it as another U.S. President violating his constitutional oath of office, just as surely as Bill Clinton did when he destroyed the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant (a blatant act of international terrorism, by the way).

ChrisO|7.8.05 @ 1:05PM|#

Unfortunately, so much discussion of "what to do" seems to assume the presence of rational actors on all sides. From the administration's assumption that Muslim religious wackos will respond to a show of overwhelming force by giving up and adopting western ways, to the assumption of the appeasniks that if we only "try to understand their grievances" that Muslim religious wackos will stop trying to kill us.

That may be the most challenging aspect of this whole thing--we are dealing with highly organized religious wackos who don't seem susceptible to conventional forms of pressure, and whose ends seem no more concrete than some fantasyland notion of creating a worldwide Ummah.

My thought--use the primitive tribalism and corruptability of most of the Muslim world to our advantage. Everyone has a price. I tend to think that we could have Osama's head on a stick tomorrow if we were willing to pay the right price to the right people, rather than by trying to work through widely hated national governments.

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 1:18PM|#

if we only "try to understand their grievances" that Muslim religious wackos will stop trying to kill us.

i do agree, mr chriso, that wackos are wackos and some will never stop. every society deals with freaks.

the difference between that and an effective insurgency is that an insurgency has a massive sympathetic crowd to hide in and be assisted by. therefore, defeating insurgencies centers on driving a wedge between crowd and leader. that's best done by removing the source of sympathies -- in this case, the threat of wholesale western assimilation.

some fantasyland notion of creating a worldwide Ummah

no more fantasyland than bringing the christ's kingdom of jerusalem to earth, which drove the creative flowering of western christendom for centuries.

|7.8.05 @ 1:38PM|#

gaius: I can't interpret any useful suggestions from your posts.

the west must find an approach to globalization that isn't manifestly westernization
seems like asking a jew to evangelize for buddhism. The west is paying the piper; the west gets to call the tune.

what's really lacking on our part right now is the recognition of the fact that right to choose = westernization. our obsession with freedom is just that -- ours, and an obsession of enormous proportion
seems to imply that the non-west has little interest in making both the large and small choices which produce self-actualization and fulfillment. Do you suggest that those who have not won liberty are not interested in it?

I suspect you're arguing an artful tautology. Or paradox. For peace, the world must become more liberal, like the west, without becoming like the west. You also seem to assume a fundamental difference in human nature between free and non-free people.

Have you advice in real, practical, and most of all modern terms?

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 2:28PM|#

The west is paying the piper; the west gets to call the tune.

is this the tune we want, mr dynamist? destroyed downtowns? and it will get worse, mark my words.

let's put our penises away for a moment and stow the hormonal reaction to terrorism. we need to solve this problem, not attack its symptoms. so what is the problem?

we have pushed upon people who largely don't want it a system of western values and institutions -- interlocking secular democratic commercialized nation-states -- which is entirely our own and anathema to their (and, to some extent, our) culture. the important reaction is not that of terrorists per se but of the widespread support they receive among large masses of the external proletariat; osama is a hero to hundreds of millions. solving the problem will entail changing that perception of heroism.

how do we do that? i think we must

1) institute commericial and sovereign controls which supercede national authority in order to force multinationals and nation-states to severely limit their activities in fields which their activity proves counterproductive for our civilization;

2) remove ourselves militarily from the mideast to a very large extent, under the aegis of the authority cited in 1);

3) halt all forms of aid and intervention -- including humanitarian -- to any organization in the region, including israel and egypt, as enforced under the aegis of the authority cited in 1);

4) go out of our way as western nations to publicly and materially bow to the will of peoples that we have in the past forced ourselves upon under the rubric of "national interest", as a means of establishing a basis of fraternity.

in other words, call off the cultural invasion and start a very limited partnership.

alternatively, we can try to find a way to reform globalization along non-national lines which are entirely supracultural and allow parties to elect their level of participation -- from none to total. this would be a complex and long process, which i certainly can't detail meaningfully, but would certainly revolve around internationally autonomous authorities with taxing power, perhaps built along the unanimous-consent lines of the wto.

both methods would serve to address in some manner the core problem of forcible westernization in unreceptive cultures. ultimately, both entail abandoning nationalism as a damaging anachronism that is at odds with a global economic network.

Do you suggest that those who have not won liberty are not interested in it?

i'm suggesting that liberty is a construct of law, not unlimited choice -- and that only postmodern westerners believe otherwise, in freiheit. that which we myopically call oppression is very often exactly that sustainable liberty which a healthy society ensures.

For peace, the world must become more liberal, like the west, without becoming like the west.

no. we have to become tolerant -- or better, comprehending -- of that which sees freiheit as a danger, not a goal. becoming more emancipated is not the mark of progress; past a certain point, it is fundamentally destructive. short of that realization, there is no hope for the west or for peace.

You also seem to assume a fundamental difference in human nature between free and non-free people.

no. but there is a difference in the manifestation of human nature between civilizations and cultures, and we have to understand that. all people love liberty; how to make liberty tangible and sustainable is the difference. lawlessness is not the way to do that. i hope we come to that understanding before freiheit forces us to suicide.

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 2:32PM|#

and i might ask you, mr dynamist -- why are old solutions to old problems bad and "modern" ones good?

|7.8.05 @ 3:00PM|#

we have pushed upon people who largely don't want it a system of western values and institutions

in other words, call off the cultural invasion and start a very limited partnership.
There are at least two sides to every transaction. The "cultural invasion" is just individuals trading for stuff they want. This "invasion" seems to develop a localized identity made out of imported ideas. People are not becoming "just like Americans", but "too much like Americans" for those who seek to enforce stasis.

Your case seems to assume that the "invadees" are all of like views. Sure, some see the west as a threat. Others see the west as an opportunity. This split occurs as product of change. It's the same thing in USA generally (cloning, for example), or in households as parents never seem to approve of their children's tastes.

Beyond that you devolved into vagueness and jargon. I don't know what you're trying to say. I would like to get your point, but your vocabulary is a barrier. Imagine you're explaining your ideas to a 10-year-old.

|7.8.05 @ 3:11PM|#

And for fuck's sake start using CAPITALIZATION where appropriate. It helps make things readable.

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 3:36PM|#

The "cultural invasion" is just individuals trading for stuff they want. This "invasion" seems to develop a localized identity made out of imported ideas.

i don't think so, mr dynamist. societies are made up of distinguishable parts -- a dominant minority class and a much larger crowd of proletarian followers, yes?

our method in the third world has been to coopt the dominant minority -- or, alternatively, select one of our choosing, by hook or by crook -- and attempt to force mimesis from the masses.

what we are seeing now is a mass rejection of such "leadership" among a disillusioned proletariat. al-qaeda's main goal and its source of mass appeal is what? not america, not israel -- to put indigenous government institutions back in charge of the third world. this they will try to do first by forcing out the west, which has so corrupted the process by their involvement, by demonstrating to it the cost of its past policies. this is an immensely popular idea in the third world because these people love self-determination as much as you and i do. and the insurgency -- al-qaeda, iraq, chavez, anti-globalization, anti-americanism are all aspects of this -- is fuelled by this fundamental conflict.

this is the core problem we must address. our message and our method need to change to become attractive. not being able to address this problem -- instead banging away by attempting to manage and force it away, just as the romans did in conquering and administrating most of their world -- is a recipe for durable and escalating chaos, within and without, and always has been. no universal state has ever laid peacefully -- the pax romana is quite misnamed, brimming over with internal turmoil as it was.

Sure, some see the west as a threat. Others see the west as an opportunity.

i think that the debate in the third world is over which aspects of westernization are suitable for internalizing and which are dangerous and antithetical to a healthy society -- it is virtually common knowledge that adopting the whole of the west is unthinkable and undesirable, in every interview or conversation i've ever seen or read or had.

and yet this is what we consistently command, as though to a child, "eat your peas!" -- followed by ramming the peas down their throat. bad idea.

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 3:46PM|#

This split occurs as product of change. It's the same thing in USA generally (cloning, for example), or in households as parents never seem to approve of their children's tastes.

different, i think, because in the west the dominant minority is self-selecting. in much of the mideast, it is externally selected/coopted -- the current apparent exceptions really being only iran and syria. every other dominant minority in the mideast is the recipient of western largesse (a la egypt, jordan or saudi arabia) or western selection (a la iraq or afghanistan). is it coincidental that these two are on our Hit List? certainly no one in the third world thinks so.

|7.8.05 @ 4:09PM|#

gaius:

You can't know what people want until and unless they have the ability to express their choices. Counter to your general thesis of modern society, I perceive a very great difference between forcing some program of westernization on a people and granting them the ability to choose between alternatives. Such distinctions are in the constitution of every libertarian, I suppose. Human liberty is the greatest good.

I recognize that not everyone agrees, but that doesn't mean that my respect for differences in values indicates that I will permit war on choice to be waged from secure areas. If your value systems are fundamentally in opposition to human liberty in such a way that you maintain power by issuing threats and committing violence against me the infidel, well, we are at war.

|7.8.05 @ 4:42PM|#

gaius: The ten-year-olds you know must all be savants. I do recognize some Marxist terms in the jumble, and you make Marx's mistake of substituting a model for living people. One can classify people academically, and free people can classify themselves. However, those classes are only convenient groupings upon which to build theory, not reflective of the fine grain and contradictory impulses of the individuals who almost certainly do not conform to your abstractions.

How are we ramming peas down throats? In Iraq we're insisting that they eat some vegetables so they grow up healthy, but we're not making them choose peas over carrots.

(The idea of "parenting" foreigners is an abstraction, too. My anarchist heart doesn't think anyone has such right, but my practical heart doesn't want to get blown up.)

gaius marius|7.8.05 @ 5:25PM|#

Marx's mistake of substituting a model for living people.

if we're going to talk about the people, we have to do something, mr dynamist. :) fwiw, this is how societies function -- the human animal fits a set of anthropological patterns, regardless of what you believe about freewill. all societies exhibit caste/class structures, and always have. the upper class leads, the lower classes follow. when that structure breaks down or inverts (as it could be said to in the west now) a society is dying. that is a well-evidenced historical phenomena. and it's a good reason to fear the proletarianizaion of the upper classes -- as is so evident in america, where a kennebunkport bush plays as a texas bumpkin.

the terms i use aren't marxist -- they're sociological and historical, and marx happened to use them as many sociologists and historians do.

In Iraq we're insisting that they eat some vegetables so they grow up healthy,

you can see, i'm sure, how our benevolent instruction to those poor wayward souls constitutes a condescension akin to the white man's burden. these people can figure out for themselves what they want; they don't need our help, contrary to dubya's philosophy of unrestricted ideological warfare.

i would not disagree that saddam was a tough nut for the iraqi people to crack. but now that he's gone, what have they? an american puppet government -- and that is a very severe problem. for all the purple-finger propaganda, we approved the lists and the candidates, and we have a huge army there which can't control the insurgency but sure as hell can depose the government at any time. that is not self-determination, and we should not insult iraqis by pretending it is and that we are "teaching" them something noble. we are ramming our will down their maw. that's why the hot insurgency is so very problematic there.

|7.8.05 @ 5:52PM|#

So, gaius, you bring me back to: What do we do instead?

It is in a way a "white man's burden" when "outsiders" choose to slaughter them. The "white man" doesn't have the luxuy of waiting for peaceful order to develop in the "non-white" world when he's blown up on the train. The "whitey" doesn't have to squeeze the "darkie" into white clothes, but he might be wise to keep an eye on where the darkies keep their spears, and to impose a rudimentary dress code.

I can't agree with your view, fundamentally because we make patterns out of our observations, not as you seem to argue, that people fit into patterns we conceive. Predictions similar to "society is dying" are stasist in nature, and sour in tone. I substitute societies are changing and developing heretofore unimagined patterns of order and reorder as the individuals in them follow a seemingly innate desire to survive and create a legacy.

|7.9.05 @ 1:56AM|#

What a smug asshole. Wait until the terrorists get ahold of a nuclear device.

|7.9.05 @ 9:25PM|#

"What a smug asshole. Wait until the terrorists get ahold of a nuclear device."

Jeremy,
What's your point?

|7.9.05 @ 9:37PM|#

Dynamist said:
"I can't agree with your view, fundamentally because we make patterns out of our observations, not as you seem to argue, that people fit into patterns we conceive. Predictions similar to "society is dying" are stasist in nature, and sour in tone. I substitute societies are changing and developing heretofore unimagined patterns of order and reorder as the individuals in them follow a seemingly innate desire to survive and create a legacy.

Statist, not "stasist." Watch it!

Tune to the Santa Fe Institute.

Then your faith will be in "order for free," and anarchy leading to complexity leading to order.

Not TOO much order.

|7.11.05 @ 9:08AM|#

I think Dynamist meant "stasist." As in "dynamist" vs. "stasist" in Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies.