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Generational Dynamics |
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On the first anniversary of the successful "surge" strategy, we explore a generational theory that provides a completely different explanation of the 2003 ground invasion of Iraq, tying it to the use of nuclear weapons that ended World War II.
Brookings Institution does a full reversal on Iraq war:
As Americans withdraw from cities, Brookings admits there's no civil war....
(1-Jul-2009)
Stock markets in Iraq and Iran are surging.:
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says "it is the end of capitalism."...
(17-Oct-2008)
On "60 Minutes," Bob Woodward makes ridiculous claims about Iraq.:
He says the surge succeeded because of some magic new military technique....
(7-Sep-2008)
Iraq's Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr turns from arms to "culture":
This follows several Sunni "Tribal Awakenings" to expel al-Qaeda....
(10-Aug-2008)
Obama continues to damage his candidacy with his Iraq policy.:
Obama is hurting himself by bobbing and weaving on the success of the "surge."...
(27-Jul-2008)
The new Iraqi "civil war" fizzles out, as expected:
Radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a cease-fire on Sunday,...
(1-Apr-08)
The Iraq war may be related to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.:
On the first anniversary of the successful "surge" strategy,...
(17-Feb-08)
Casualties are down sharply in Iraq.:
This issue has been a spectacular validation of Generational Dynamics theory....
(31-Oct-07)
As Turkey prepares to invade northern Iraq, it's isolating itself internationally:
A new "Young Turks revolution" is reestablishing strong Turkish nationalism....
(29-Oct-07)
Washington Post says that al-Qaeda in Iraq is "crippled":
Meanwhile, Iraqi citizens' political opposition to America is growing....
(16-Oct-07)
Antiwar Democrats are freaking out over Bush's Vietnam - Iraq war comparison.:
The same people who have been comparing Iraq to Vietnam for years...
(24-Aug-07)
Iraq: Suicide bombers interrupt celebrations in Baghdad over soccer win:
Iraq's stunning 4-3 soccer victory over South Korea in the Asia Cup semi-final...
(26-Jul-07)
The al-Askariya Shrine in Samarra, Iraq, is bombed again:
Last year's bombing triggered months of vicious sectarian violence in Baghdad,...
(14-Jun-07)
Congress votes to fund Iraq war without deadlines:
The result shows conflicting anxieties during America's Crisis era....
(24-May-07)
Senator Joe Biden wants to move troops from Iraq to Darfur civil war:
Saying on Meet the Press that we should remove troops from Iraqi "civil war,"...
(29-Apr-07)
NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman shows ignorance and evasiveness about al-Qaeda in Iraq:
In an interview that appeared on CNN on Sunday,...
(24-Apr-07)
BBC kills an Iraqi war story because it's "too positive":
But a drama showing British troops brutalizing civilians is perfectly fine....
(11-Apr-07)
Tens of thousands of Shi'ites protest against American "occupiers":
In what appeared to be a grand, party-like atmosphere,...
(10-Apr-07)
Iraq's Moqtada al-Sadr tells followers to attack Americans, not each other:
This could be good news....
(9-Apr-07)
Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq :
This is exactly the kind of thing that generational theory predicts.
(1-Apr-2007)
New optimistic poll of Iraqi people barely mentioned on Sunday TV news shows:
And Bob Shieffer on CBS's "Face the Nation" asked really dumb questions of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates....
(19-Mar-07)
Robert Gates on "civil war" in Iraq.:
Following the release of the Iraq National Intelligence Estimate on Friday,...
(2-Feb-07)
News as theatre: NBC announces it will call Iraq war a "civil war":
On Monday morning on the "Today Show,"...
(29-Nov-06)
President Bush's reference to Vietnam War "Tet Offensive" has journalists in a tizzy:
Airhead journalists have completely missed the point, and the real danger....
(20-Oct-06)
Learning-disabled journalists and politicians continue to predict Iraq civil war:
Occasionally journalists take a break from their heavy-breathing over Congressional pages,...
(8-Oct-06)
General John Abizaid says there'll be no troop cutbacks in Iraq:
This is hardly a surprise to me, though not for the reasons most people give....
(19-Sep-06)
Debate over civil war in Iraq rages over semantics:
An actual crisis civil war in Iraq is impossible, but it's now embroiled in the November elections,...
(23-Aug-06)
Washington becomes hysterical again over an Iraqi 'civil war' :
A civil war in Iraq is impossible, as I've said many times, because only one generation has passed since the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s. Here's some additional historical information.
(7-Aug-2006)
Israel's war against Hizbollah and Lebanon forces Muslims to choose sides : The war is part of a larger Shi'ite-Sunni struggle, and a stopgap ceasefire will create a worsening environment leading to a much more chaotic situation within a few months (25-Jul-2006) Speculations about a stock market panic and crash : Will there be a stock market panic next week, next month, or next year, and will it lead to a crash? We speculate on some possibilities. (31-May-2006) Journalists have a 'civil war in Iraq' orgy over the weekend:
It's hard to remember when news shows had so much sheer non-stop nonsense...
(21-Mar-06)
I just heard on CNN International: "The threat of civil war in Iraq is over.":
Surprise! Surprise! The press corps was 100% wrong, and I was right....
(28-Feb-06)
Fear of Iraqi civil war nears hysteria:
But there is NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of a civil war....
(24-Feb-06)
Bombing of 1200 year old Shi'ite mosque inflames Iraq to the verge of massive civil war rhetoric:
Shi'ites conducted over 90 revenge attacks on Sunni shrines on Wednesday,...
(23-Feb-06)
Vitriolic Iraq war politics erupts in Washington:
But the basics of the Iraq war haven't changed a bit....
(21-Nov-05)
After President Bush's speech: What next for Iraq?:
With growing insurgency violence and flagging public support, what's America's "end strategy" in Iraq?...
(1-Jul-05)
Iraqi Sunni and Shi'ite clerics call for restraint:
Analysts, pundits and journalists are still predicting civil war, and they're still getting it wrong....
(23-May-05)
The chaotic Iraq election is only two days away:
The election is on Sunday, January 30, and no one has a clue what's going to happen....
(28-Jan-05)
Brent Scowcroft predicts an "incipient civil war" for Iraq:
Pundits are returning to wishful thinking as the January 30 election approaches...
(09-Jan-05)
Can we withdraw from Iraq in 2005?:
Suddenly the Washington buzz is that whoever wins - Bush or Kerry - will begin to withdraw American troops from Iraq. We look at two historical examples to predict scenarios.
(16-Oct-2004)
Fallujans are getting angry with insurgents:
Just a few hours after my posting that al-Zarqawi's most formidable enemy may be the 40-50 year old mothers of Fallujah,...
(13-Oct-04)
Al-Sadr's Shi'ite militia fighters turn in their weapons:
The war in Iraq took a significant turn this week when the Shi'ite militias agreed to disarm,...
(13-Oct-04)
The press is talking about another "uprising" in Iraq. Yawn.:
Nothing shows more how clueless the press is about what's going on in Iraq than this constant talk about civil war and uprisings....
(7-Aug-04)
Iraq Today vs 1960s America (Revised):
They have much in common: Bombings, assassinations, student demonstrations, violent riots, calls for insurrection and civil war and harsh rhetoric. That's much more than a coincidence.
(8-May-2004)
What Iraqi Civil War?: Early in 2003, I predicted that there would be no popular uprising against the Americans, and that there would be no civil war. After the overthrow of Saddam, I said that an Iraqi civil war was impossible. Despite the constant near-hysteria of the politicians, journalists and high-priced analysts, I've been right so far. Here's why. (09-Apr-04) Anti-Shi'ite Terror Attacks in Iraq, Pakistan: So far, Sunni and Shi'ite leaders in Iraq aren't taking the bait. (2-Mar-04) Terrorist suicide bombings in Iraq may backfire against terrorists: During an awakening period, terrorist acts cause masses of people to shrink from more violence. (19-Aug-03) | ||
The "surge" began on February 14, 2007. At that time, Baghdad and the region surrounding it was a virtual war zone, littered with bodies every day from suicide bombers, roadside bombs, and death squads.
Journalists, analysts, politicians, and pundits were all predicting the worst. Many Democrats, and pro-Democratic Party media, including the NY Times and NBC News, were openly declaring the situation a civil war, essentially aligning themselves in support of the terrorists and against America. NBC News was the most grossly disgusting, led by vitriolic headliners like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, committing all its resources to advocating American failure and supporting the terrorists, even making a big theatrical announcement the previous November that it would then and forever call the Iraq war a "civil war."
Even those who supported the "surge" and were hoping it would be successful, felt an enormous anxiety that the whole thing could collapse into civil war at any moment.
Except it wasn't a civil war, as is now apparent to almost everyone except the real nutcases. Violence has not been eliminated, but it's down sharply to the level that might occur in an American city. And Iraq itself has become increasingly stable.
You can take almost every article and every analysis written in Washington about Iraq in the past five years, and stack them up into a big pile, and you wouldn't have anything but a big pile of garbage. There's barely a bit of common sense in any of them, whether coming from the left or the right. The "think tanks" were no better than tankheads.
So I'm not going to be shy about pointing out (again!) that I may be the only person in the world who got Iraq right. I've been writing articles about Iraq since 2003, containing analyses and predictions that were counterintuitive and not shared by other people, and these analyses and predictions all turned out to be right. You can see for yourself by clicking on any of the articles in the sidebar to the right. The Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology has never failed me. Every Generational Dynamics prediction that I've posted on this subject and others has either turned our right or is trending right; not a single one has been shown to be wrong.
I'm not a psychic, and I have no special powers. The way that I was able to predict in 2003 what would happen in Iraq and be right is because of one simple fact that nobody seems to grasp, no matter how many times I write about it: Iraq is in a generational Awakening era, just one generation past the end of the 1980s genocidal Iran/Iraq war, and so it's like America in the 1960s, just one generation past World War II.
The way I could be certain all these years that Iraq was not having a civil war is because it was acting like America in the 1960s, where there wasn't a civil war.
There are still "anti-war" politicians who are claiming that the surge has failed because Iraq hasn't achieved the same political stability as the United States. That's laughable when you consider that Congress is unable to get anything done, but even more so when you realize how unstable the United State was in the 1960s, with three failed presidencies:
The 1968 Broadway play Hair captures the contempt students felt by lowering their pants on stage and "mooning" their GI Generation hero parents. The lyrics of the song "Let the Sunshine in" express contempt for their mothers' clothing and perfume and their fathers' paper-pushing and lies:
Take a moment and watch that song as presented in the 1979 movie Hair, about Claude, who comes to New York to join the hippies, but gets drafted and sent to Vietnam instead. This is a really great video, well worth a few minutes of your time:
Now, expand your mind a little, and transplant those thoughts and sounds and smells from New York City in 1967 to Baghdad in 2007, making the necessary adjustments for language and scenery. Where Claude's parents were worried about a Communist invasion, Iraqi Shia were worried that the Sunnis would use chemical weapons on them again, as they'd done to the Kurds in 1998, and Iraqi Sunnis translated American support for the Shia into a defeat at the hands of Iran.
Just try to make that transformation in your mind -- try it as mental exercise. If you succeed, then you'll begin to understand how I knew all these years that there was no civil war in Iraq.
That mental exercise actually is easy compared to the mental exercise that you're going to have to try now, but this one is about why we invaded Iraq in 2003 in the first place.
This is only a hypothesis. But there is an increasing amount of evidence to support it, in the form of other similar things that have happened throughout history, but have never been linked together.
First, let's look at some facts about Iraq that are mostly forgotten in today political maelstrom:
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's not surprising that the American people would overwhelmingly favor a non-crisis war when they think it can be won easily, and then turn against the war when it becomes difficult. That's just human nature.
For Generational Dynamics, the interesting question is: Why did Americans suddenly so overwhelmingly support the Iraq war in 2003?
Generational Dynamics concerns itself with the attitudes and behaviors of large masses of people, entire generations of people. The actions and behaviors of politicians are of little interest, except insofar as they reflect the attitudes of the people.
There's little doubt in my mind that this was not driven by President Bush; it was driven by the American people, who were panicked over the possibility of Saddam Hussein using his WMDs to attack American interests, or even American soil.
What I'm saying is that the American people panicked over the possibility of WMDs. And in this article I'm exploring the reasons WHY they panicked.
South Korea's government in crisis over beef imports from U.S.:
Hundreds of thousands of Koreans held candlelight demonstrations in Seoul...
(12-Jun-2008)
The Iraq war may be related to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.:
On the first anniversary of the successful "surge" strategy,...
(17-Feb-08)
Kenya settles into low-level violence on the way to Rwanda:
So far, it's "ethnic cleansing," but not genocide,...
(1-Feb-08)
Investors commemorate the False Panic of Monday, October 19, 1987:
The Dow Industrials fell 22% in a single day, the largest one-day drop in history....
(19-Oct-07)
System Dynamics and the Failure of Macroeconomics Theory :
Mainstream macroeconomic theory, invented by Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, has failed to predict or explain anything that's happened since the bubble started, including the bubble itself. We need a new "Dynamic Macroeconomics" theory.
(25-Oct-2006)
Speculations about a stock market panic and crash : Will there be a stock market panic next week, next month, or next year, and will it lead to a crash? We speculate on some possibilities. (31-May-2006) As stock markets melt down, the question is: Where's all the money going?:
For the first time, analysts are debating whether the stock market is crashing....
(21-May-06)
| ||
The first time you hear this hypothesis it almost seems fantastical.
So instead of simply stating it, I'm going to try to present it in a way that (I hope) will be credible to most readers. This is the thought experiment, the mental challenge that I mentioned earlier.
First, suppose that you're a child, between 5 and 10 years old. You're living a happy life, playing with your trucks and dolls and your playmates, learning to read, write and compute percentages.
You have a happy, idyllic life, with nice parents, living in a nice house. Everyone is happy. You're happy, your little friends are happy. Your parents are happy. This is the way life is supposed to be -- because you've never seen it any other way. Remember, you're only 5 to 10 years old.
Then something horrible happens -- a national event that's so terrible and so unexpected that it changes your life completely. It causes deaths around you or starvation around you. Your parents talk about it all the time. Your teachers talk about it all the time. It's an event that's SO TRAUMATIC to you that you will remember it vividly for the rest of your life. You'll even have nightmares about it for decades. It affects everything and all your relationships for all time.
And not just you. This is an important point: it's not just you. EVERY person around your age goes through the same trauma. It's a national event, and so EVERY child was affected by it in the same way, and EVERYBODY in that age group suffers the same trauma throughout their lives.
What are examples of these horrible events? We'll consider four of them:
So now let's go back. You're a young child, 5 to 10 years old, when something so horrible happens that it traumatizes you for life. You never forget it, and you never want it to happen again.
And so, you go through life, from one adventure to another, getting older and older. And so do all the other people who were kids at the same time that you were.
Now let's move ahead to the time 58 years after the traumatic event. When the original event occurred, you were 5 to 10 years old. Now, 58 years later, you're 63-68 years old.
Something strange happens. You have conversations with other people around the same age. That might include your wife, or your pals on the golf range or board room. But you really begin to wonder: Can it happen again?
There's the realization that all the people younger than you and your friends don't even care. They don't think about it at all. They're oblivious to the danger. They were born after it happened, or were too young to know what was going on. It's your group of 63-68 year olds that even realize that there's a danger; younger people don't.
Neil Howe and William A. Strauss, the founding fathers of generational theory, described the characteristics of an event that can alter generational attitudes and behaviors: They say that such an event must be "foreseeable but poorly foreseen."
Well, that's what you see. Something happens to make you fear that the event is going to happen again. The same anxiety grips all the other 63-68 year olds across the country.
Maybe the anxiety is well-founded, maybe it isn't, but the people in your age group panic, and the panic spreads to younger people who are influenced by your concerns.
That's the 58-year hypothesis: That 58 years after a traumatic national event such as we've described, the 63-68 year olds, fearing a recurrence, cause a panic to occur. If the danger isn't real, then we refer to it as a "false panic." Whether or not a panic is "false" may not be known for several years, until the danger can be fully analyzed.
Now let's return to each of the four examples above, and look at what happened in each case, 58 years later:
Today, in 2008, the younger generations have no fear at all of a bird flu pandemic, something that's a real possibility.
Today, the younger generations have no fear of a new stock market panic and crash, which is a real possibility because the market is overpriced by a factor of almost 250%.
Today, the younger generations have no fear of weapons of mass destruction, and have turned against the war.
Most people, including myself, have assumed that the 2003 ground invasion of Iraq was triggered by 9/11. The 58-year hypothesis provides an alternate explanation, indicating that it would have occurred anyway, even if the 9/11 attacks hadn't occurred.
The 58 year hypothesis really is pretty mind-blowing, because you can't grasp it unless you can go into the minds of a specific set of people -- the 63-68 year olds who experienced a national disaster in their youth. Anyone younger would have no emotional connection to the event, other than dry historical facts and a contagious sense of panic urged by their elders.
It's still a hypothesis, although the body of evidence supporting it in the form of additional examples is growing. I'll list more examples in some other article.
For college students who are interested in historical research, there's plenty to be done here -- determining additional examples.
However, I have to indicate a HUGE METHODOLOGICAL WARNING: Beware of cherry-picking.
Take the first example above -- the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic causing the false swine flu panic in 1976. That's 58 years later, so it appears to support the hypothesis -- but more has to be proven.
Suppose that false flu panics happened in other years, say 1960, 1965, 1971, 1976, 1981 and 1985. They you can't just pick the 1976 date because it appears 58 years later, and claim that it supports the hypothesis, because it doesn't in that case. You can't ignore similar cases in other years. You can't "cherry pick" the years and events that make the hypothesis work.
In this case, there were no such other false flu panics. The only major flu fiasco of this kind that occurred in the last century, as far as I know, was the swine flu panic of 1976. Since there are no other similar dates around, it's fair to claim that you're not cherry-picking, and the 1976 date provides genuine support for the 58-year hypothesis.
Similarly, there was no other false panic like the false panic of 1987, and there was no other panicked war like Israel's attack on Hizbollah in 2006, and so that isn't cherry picking either. (In the latter case, you'd have to do more research to verify that other Israeli wars were much better planned than the 2006 war, something that few people would doubt anyway.)
With regard to the 2003 ground invasion of Iraq, were there similar events in other years? The Afghan invasion had nothing to do with WMDs. Neither did the original Iraq war in 1991.
The only previous war that appears to be similar was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. That crisis was based on a panic that was remarkably similar to the panic that led to the 2003 Iraq invasion. The previous Bay of Pigs disaster had been based on faulty intelligence from the CIA, and the Cuban missiles probably could not even have reached American soil at that time.
However, the Cuban missile crisis occurred 41 years prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and those events were far enough apart so that there's really no danger of cherry-picking.
The Generational Dynamics forecasting methodology has worked far better than I ever imagined when I started.
The 58-year hypothesis, if it can be verified, adds a very powerful
tool to the forecasting toolbox. It's particularly interesting that
it can be applied to explain the ground invasion of Iraq.
(17-Feb-08)
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