Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

You say, "The relevant comparison isn't to other civil wars, its to the the Iraq-Iran war...," which is a brand-new concept that you've apparently just made up for convenience, without providing any justification.

What do you mean? When determining which wars are crisis wars don't you look at all the wars for a particular region and then apply you algorithm? So for the current Iraq war you would compare it to the Iraq-Iran war.

For one thing, there are many non-crisis foreign wars -- I believe that we've had dozens of them since 1945 -- but it's almost impossible to have a non-crisis civil war (Caesar's crossing the Rubicon being one of the very few well-known examples).

The Iraq-Iran war was a foreign war that had little significance for Iraq. What makes it a crisis war for Iraq? In the present war you have Iraqis killing each other, and the country has changed dramatically. There is an entirely new government and a new country (Kurdistan) is emerging.

each time there's some new event, and some politician or journalist
starts claiming "Iraq is on the verge of civil war," which has
happened dozens of times since 2003, I do a new evaluation, and it's
always been pretty clear that this claim is simply wishful thinking.

How is this relevant? You didn't use this approach--look at newspaper reports written at the time--to make the determination of which historical wars were crisis wars and which were not. You should use the same criteria as much as possible. One of these is casualities. Although larger wars are not always crisis wars, they usually are. For example the War of the Spanish Succession was also the biggest war between the Thirty Years War and the Napoleonic wars and this figures in your assessment. At least it did when you and I discussed it several years back.

Why isn't Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr leading his militia against Sunni militias?

You don't understand al-Sadr's position. In some ways, such as vis a vis SCIRI he is on the same side as the Sunnis. The reason is geographical. SCIRI's power base is in the South, they support a semi-independent Shia state in the South who would get to keep all the oil revenues from the Southern fields. Sadr's power bases is Sadr City in Bagdad which would be in the "Sunni" State in west-central Iraq and which would have no oil money (assuming the Kurds grab Kirkuk as they are very likely to do). So Sadr and the Sunnis both support a strong central government against the SCIRI.

Why isn't he leading a Shiite uprising?

He did in 2004 and got his head handed to him by the Americans. So he now wants to wait for them to go.

Why do we never read a story about how the people of one Iraqi
village or neighborhood go out and massacre the people of a
neighboring village or neighborhood? I can't recall ever seeing
anything like this, and if Iraq were having a civil war, this kind of
thing would be happening all the time.

I don't recall this happening frequently in the US Civil War. It wasn't one of the points in your algorithm for determining whether or not a war is a crisis war.

The behavior of the ideologues like yourself to desperately come up
with any justification, no matter how far-fetched, to justify the
claim of a civil war in Iraq is truly disgusting.

I'm not saying there is civil war. I am saying that the war may well be a crisis war because it is having far reaching impact on Iraq--much more than the Iran-Iran war--which accomplished nothing. One of the crisis war properties you originally listed was historical significance.

The Iraq-Iran war had no significance like that, the two nations emerged from the war unchanged. If you combine the Iranian revolution into the war, then we can say that the period had a dramatic impact on Iran, but in no case was there a signficant impact on Iraq.

This war has already changed the form of government and it could end up with two or three separate states. This makes the conflict have far more historical significance for Iraq than the 1980's war.

John, you started this thread to address this issue:

The third element, the notion of a crisis war, is new, and as a
result, you have an obligation to demonstrate its validity.
Ordinarily, this would be done by setting forth a set of standards and
then systematically going through a data base of known wars,
classifying each according to pre-established criteria, and then
looking for a pattern. It would be best to include every war in the
data base, but that would indeed be a lot of work, so you might think
about picking a few regions you know relatively little about and then
classifying every war in those regions before stringing them together
into a narrative. (It would be best to work on regions where the
details of each war could be separated from its date so your
classifications could be truly independent of their place in the
region's chronology. Knowing the chronology can bias your
classifications.)

You will also have to be less selective about the periods you cover:
if the concept works, it should be identifiable across many cycles,
not just the two or three you usually present. It would be very
valuable if you could present data showing that the cycle holds across
a thousand years for sampled regions, especially where you allow for
substantial variation in the length of the cycle.

To some minor extent, you have done this, but your notion of a crisis
war has far too much wiggle room, its character changes depending on
what you have been able to find in history. An example of this is
that you present the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock as a
kind of crisis war. While this event was certainly historic, it
hardly matches the notion of a high-energy war involving genocide,
etc. Unless "crisis war" means something specific, it ceases to mean
anything at all.

We discussed a great deal on this issue of how do you determine which historical wars are crisis wars and which are not. To make the claim that the Iran-Iraq war was a crisis war for Iraq, and other wars are around the same time (like the current one) are not, you proposed an algorithm that one can apply to make this assessment. If one applied the objective aspects of this algorithm to these two wars it is not clear-cut that the current war is less "crisis-like" than the 1980's war.
******************************************
As far as the graphs are concerned, I wasn't using them to make the argument about crisis vs noncrisis war. I was using them to address whether the insurgency was in decline or not. But to answer your question, the graphs for the bombings are the same as those in the article. The death graph is a combination of two graphs showing deaths with the more recent ones cut in half (as suggested in the text) to make them comparable to the earlier death data that comes from Iraq Body Count.

The more dramatic nature of my graphs is because they are scatter plots while the report shows column graphs. Both graphs show the same rising numbers. On a column graph the eye is drawn to the area of the columns. The few outliers have areas that dwarf all the other columns and the eye tends to ignore these (which constitute the bulk of the data). In a scatter plot all the data are represented by symbols of the same size. Is is the position of the symbols that conveys the information. The regression lines show the trends in position shown by the data. Regressions treat all the data as equally valid and so the outliers, because they are few in number, do not dominate the regression results as they do visually in the column chart. Since I was trying to look for curvature what I wanted to show were the regression results--the lines, not the values of individual points--so a scatter plot is the appropriate form of presentation.

The question I was addressing was whether there was any indication in the data that a turning point has arrived--which seems to be announced every 6-12 months by the adminstration. Such a turning point would be manifest by a change in trend, that is curvature in the regression-fitted trend lines.

There was no evidence that the trend in insurgent activity has or had become negative in the past. At best, insurgent activity might have leveled off. For total violence it appears that after slowing its rise, violence has accelerated in recent months. We know why this would happen. As a result of the bombing of the Golden Dome, Shiite-on-Sunni killings have become a major category of violence, which they were not a year ago. This new category of killings placed on top of pre-existing insurgent killings will necessary result in an increase in total killings--which explains the recent upcurve in deaths, but not attacks or bombings.

A crisis war is when you get killed, a non-crisis war is when the other guy kets killed.

Originally Posted by Pink Splice

A crisis war is when you get killed, a non-crisis war is when the other guy kets killed.

Certainly a major differentiator.

In my opinion the most important point about the ABC miniseries is
being ignored.

Since the 1970s, I've seen one movie after another which could be
considered "on the left." The first one I can think of offhand is
"All the President's Men," but there were many more after that one,
often involving criticism of the Vietnam War.

So I was VERY STARTLED last week to see a parade of Clinton
administration politicians, including Clinton himself, complaining
about a movie. It now turns out that "The Path to 9/11" evokes the
same kinds of protestations from the left that I've heard from the
right many, many, many times in the last few decades.

Now, readers of my web site will know that I make the following point
over and over: The only thing that's important to Generational
Dynamics is the behaviors and attitudes of large masses of people.
The behaviors of politicians are irrelevant, except insofar as they
reflect the behaviors and attitudes of large masses of people.

The same can be said of network executives: their actions and
behaviors are irrelevant except insofar as they reflect the attitudes
and behaviors of large masses of people, in this case, the viewing
public.

Now, I assume that ABC did some sort of focus group or similar
testing prior to even filming this miniseries, and they determined
that the public, or a significant segment of the public, wanted to
see this movie.

The question is: What does this mean?

I haven't seen the miniseries, so all I know is its "reflected image"
in the view of several dozen commentators I've seen on TV, as well as
some reviews.

The reviews indicate that it's lousy as a movie (which is why I
didn't bother to see it). Several of them also indicate that it's as
critical of Bush as it is of Clinton. The commentators were almost
all Boomers, except for a few Xer acolytes.

So that indicates to me that it's critical of government, and blames
the entire government for the 9/11 failure, rather than the Clinton
administration.

This is, I believe, pretty much a Millie point of view.

Thus, I would interpret the ABC miniseries not as a public shift from
left to right, but as a public shift from "believing in government"
(a Boomer-left view) to "not believing in government" (a Millie-right
view).

When relating this to the upcoming midterm elections, this shift in
public opinion appears to confirm what the polls have been showing:
That the public "wants change," but also trusts the Republicans
slightly more than the Democrats on national security issues. So for
many voters, especially younger voters, the choice often be between
voting for the Democrat (for change) or for the Republican (for
security).

I interpret this as being a typical fourth turning kind of thing.

I interpret this as follows: The Millie generation is dissatisfied
with pretty much every adult, and is looking for alternate solutions.

The answer will be provided by a "Prophet," most likely a Boomer, who
promises to solve the problem. The Millies will select this Prophet
in the same way that they select a rock star or fashiion item.

I listen to Democratic and Republican politicians on the tv news all
the time, and everything they say is pretty much all gibberish. Both
parties have become completely defensive; the Republicans defend
their policies in Iraq, and the Democrats defend their criticisms of
the Republicans. Neither party ever proposes anything new. There is
no effective difference today between the two political parties.

The ABC Miniseries, for all the controversy it's raised, is part of
the general political shift that's taking place, and signals the
death knell of any further Boomer influence on society.

By the time the political shift is over, new Republican and Democratic
parties will be born. Those Boomers and Xers who survive the war
won't even recognize these two parties, but the new parties and the
differences between them will make perfect sense to the Millies.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

The ABC Miniseries, for all the controversy it's raised, is part of
the general political shift that's taking place, and signals the
death knell of any further Boomer influence on society.

By the time the political shift is over, new Republican and Democratic
parties will be born. Those Boomers and Xers who survive the war
won't even recognize these two parties, but the new parties and the
differences between them will make perfect sense to the Millies.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

I think Mr. X has got something there.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

So that indicates to me that it's critical of government, and blames
the entire government for the 9/11 failure, rather than the Clinton
administration.

This is, I believe, pretty much a Millie point of view.

Thus, I would interpret the ABC miniseries not as a public shift from
left to right, but as a public shift from "believing in government"
(a Boomer-left view) to "not believing in government" (a Millie-right
view).
I interpret this as being a typical fourth turning kind of thing.
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

A small government 4t, don't count on it.

Also, "left" does not equate to big government. And any illusions anyone ever had that the right wing government leads to small government should be well disabused of that notion after six years of Bush II.

I haven't heard one person in real life comment on the ABC mini-series. Haven't run in to anyone who watched it, and the 5-year anniversary of 911 was mainly noted by the media. I wonder if people really are paying attention or really care. I'll say it again, from where I sit, most folks are busy practicing Denial.

Are there viewer numbers (for the ABC series) available yet?

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

The same can be said of network executives: their actions and behaviors are irrelevant except insofar as they reflect the attitudes and behaviors of large masses of people, in this case, the viewing public.

Now, I assume that ABC did some sort of focus group or similar testing prior to even filming this miniseries, and they determined that the public, or a significant segment of the public, wanted to see this movie.

The reviews indicate that it's lousy as a movie (which is why I didn't bother to see it). Several of them also indicate that it's as critical of Bush as it is of Clinton. The commentators were almost all Boomers, except for a few Xer acolytes.

So that indicates to me that it's critical of government, and blames the entire government for the 9/11 failure, rather than the Clinton administration.

John, unfortunately your assumption is incorrect, which calls your conclusions somewhat into question. Rather being a product of an ABC "focus group", the film known during shooting as "Untitled History Project" was actually funded almost entirely by The Film Institute (TFI), an offshoot of the theocratist organization Youth With A Mission (YWAM). YWAM in turn received their funding from one Richard Mellon Scaife, he of the unhealthy obsession with Clinton's penis and core financier of the VRWC.

Given this background, and multiple on-the-record statements from the film's producer and writer, it is clear that the film was intended as a hit piece on Clinton from the very beginning. The fact that in the end the film was critical of Bush only goes to show how much blame he really deserves.

So your assumption that the film reflected the "interest of the viewing public" was incorrect, and the conclusion that this reflects a shift in attitudes regarding "trust in government" is off-base. Rather, the film and accompanying hype reflect a shift regarding trust in MASS MEDIA, and it's about time.

The matter of central corporate control of mass media, and its implications for democracy, is probably one of the most pressing issues to resolve in this 4T, and represents probably the biggest piece of "unfinished business" from the last 4T.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

The ABC Miniseries, for all the controversy it's raised, is part of the general political shift that's taking place, and signals the death knell of any further Boomer influence on society.

Now, with that I tend to agree. As the New Media Order begins to take shape, we hear many calls from Boomers for a return to the Fairness Doctrine of the last 2T; but Millies and Xers have long since moved on. For them (us), 2T calls for "balance" are as foreign as the world of the Donna Reed show.

Perhaps we'll see a return to the 19th-century norm of avowedly partisan broadsheets; but more likely we'll see something far more multipolar and interconnected, with constantly shifting alliances of convenience incomprehensible to the staid Boomer mind. (This is already happening, of course; try drawing a map of the Blogosphere sometime.)

Originally Posted by cbailey

I haven't heard one person in real life comment on the ABC mini-series. Haven't run in to anyone who watched it, and the 5-year anniversary of 911 was mainly noted by the media. I wonder if people really are paying attention or really care. I'll say it again, from where I sit, most folks are busy practicing Denial.

Denial of what? ABC?

Originally Posted by Finch

... As the New Media Order begins to take shape, we hear many calls from Boomers for a return to the Fairness Doctrine of the last 2T; but Millies and Xers have long since moved on. For them (us), 2T calls for "balance" are as foreign as the world of the Donna Reed show.

Perhaps we'll see a return to the 19th-century norm of avowedly partisan broadsheets; but more likely we'll see something far more multipolar and interconnected, with constantly shifting alliances of convenience incomprehensible to the staid Boomer mind. (This is already happening, of course; try drawing a map of the Blogosphere sometime.)

The only problem with the blogosphere, it is nearly impossible to organize anything through it. Others, who have no need for mass organization, will merely ignore any petty resistance and do as they please. Richard Mellon Scaife and George W Bush are two nearly perfect examples of this. How does this diffuse, unfocussed pseudo-medium affect them?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The only problem with the blogosphere, it is nearly impossible to organize anything through it. Others, who have no need for mass organization, will merely ignore any petty resistance and do as they please. Richard Mellon Scaife and George W Bush are two nearly perfect examples of this. How does this diffuse, unfocussed pseudo-medium affect them?

On the one hand, the blogosphere reacted fairly quickly and effectively regarding TP9/11: I think it will cost Disney dearly, and they are quite unlikely to attempt a similar stunt any time soon.

On the other hand, worrying about lack of organization shows a backward-focused, limited pattern of thinking. Why should the blogosphere need organization? The wind and the waves aren't "organized", but they're pretty powerful. In fact, I rather prefer them disorganized; highly organized wind + water = hurricane.

As for Dubya, every word he speaks is deconstructed and refuted practically in real time -- not just by political pundits, but by lawyers, doctors, architects and farmers. He's not fooling anybody. Neither is Scaife -- he just spent $40 million and probably changed very few minds. The days of top-down power are numbered, at least for a season.

Dear Rick,

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

> I would also point out that even few ideologues today are calling
> this a civil war. I constantly hear Democrats using phrases like,
> "It's ALMOST a civil war," or, "If it isn't a civil war yet, then
> it's very close." As far as I can tell, only the staunchest
> ideologues are saying that it's an actual civil war today.

Originally Posted by Finch

> True, but that's not circumspection, that's cowardice. Nobody
> wants to be the one to stand up and proclaim Bush's little
> adventure to be a colossal failure.

I guess I'm confused. Why would you ever favor the Democrats if you
believe that they're cowards? Why would you favor such a group of
lily-livered, yellow-belly jellyfish who can't even say "it's a civil
war," if they believe that? Do you always favor this kind of gutless
punk?

[Hmmmm. I wonder if I can find some clip art of a jellyfish with a
liver in the shape of a lily and a belly colored yellow, but with no
gut. Might be useful for other purposes as well.]

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

> So I don't agree that my definition of civil war is idiosyncratic.

Originally Posted by Finch

> OK, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and reserve "civil
> war" to refer to Crisis wars. What then exactly do we call a
> long-running intra-state sectarian conflict that claims large
> numbers of civilian casualties? "Monday Night Football?"

You can pick almost any day in the last century, and on that day
you'll find that there are 20-40 wars going on. Sometimes they're
referred to informally as civil wars, but keep in mind that America
also had a lot of violence during the "long hot summers" of the late
1960s, and those could be called "civil wars" as well. The term
that's usually used is something like "low-level violence." And yes,
low-level violence does kill people.

Originally Posted by Finch

> Hmmm, on further reflection, it seems quite possible that the
> Kurdish campaign was Turkey's 4T, and the capture and trial of
> Ocalan marked the definitive end of the "Kurdish question."
> Certainly Turkey's recent government reforms and overtures to
> Europe resemble a 1T. If that's the case, then Turkish involvement
> in Iraqi Kurdistan seems much less likely. Add some proferred EU
> and US aid, and it goes a long way toward explaining why (against
> all expectations) Turkey has largely remained unmoved by the
> separatist Kurdish state in Iraq.

Originally Posted by Finch

> Hmm. Based on your own analysis (and mine above), Turkey and
> Russia are 1T; Iran is 2T. Israel/Palestine and Pakistan/India are
> clearly late 3T, but they're probably a good 5-10 years behind our
> own any-day-now 4T... at least it feels that way to me. At any
> rate, none of them will be the flashpoint for our next Crisis War,
> which will be with China.

I agree with the thrust of what you're saying, but with some minor
changes in details. Unfortunately, each of these "details" would
take several paragraphs to cover in detail, so I'll have to
summarize, and leave it to you whether you want to argue it further.

Russia is still in 4T, with ethnic wars growing throughout the
country, and an external war growing in the Caucasus. Kashmir was
partitioned in 1947, so they're only a couple of years behind us,
despite the remarkable remarkable détente that Pakistan's President
Musharaff and India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have engineered
over the last few years. China's civil war ended in 1949, so they're
actually four years behind us, but that doesn't change the fact that,
as you say, war could break out any day now.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> The Iraq-Iran war was a foreign war that had little significance
> for Iraq. What makes it a crisis war for Iraq? In the present war
> you have Iraqis killing each other, and the country has changed
> dramatically. There is an entirely new government and a new
> country (Kurdistan) is emerging.

You really need to re-evaluate this. The Iran-Iraq war was a major
war in Arab-Persian relations in a series of wars between Arab and
Persian Muslims that began in the late 600s.

Here's a reference on the war itself:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita.../iran-iraq.htm

You should also read about the explosive 1988 massacre at Halabja.
http://libcom.org/library/massacre-halabja-icg
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO029275.htm

(This massacre, incidentally, is part of the current war crimes trial
against Saddam.)

My algorithm for evaluating crisis wars applies in spades.

(For anyone reading this posting, you can read the crisis war
evaluation algorithm in my new book, Generational Dynamics for
Historians, which you can read for free on my web site. Go to
http://www.generationaldynamics.com/...d=ww2010.book2 and
read the chapter titled "The Crisis War Evaluation Algorithm.")

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> How is this relevant? You didn't use this approach--look at
> newspaper reports written at the time--to make the determination
> of which historical wars were crisis wars and which were not. You
> should use the same criteria as much as possible. One of these is
> casualities. Although larger wars are not always crisis wars,
> they usually are. For example the War of the Spanish Succession
> was also the biggest war between the Thirty Years War and the
> Napoleonic wars and this figures in your assessment. At least it
> did when you and I discussed it several years back.

The number of war deaths does bear SOME relationship to the crisis
war evaluation, but not directly.

Here's a paragraph from my new book, Generational Dynamics for
Historians:

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis in Generational Dynamics for Historians

> The War of the Spanish Succession climaxed with the 1709
> battle of Malplaquet between England and France. This was the
> bloodiest war in Europe for the entire eighteenth century. The
> violence was so bad that statesmen of the time ended the war by
> signing The Treaty at Utrecht (1714), because they wanted to avoid
> for as long as possible another violent conflict such as the one
> that had just ended. In fact, there was no major war on the
> continent until the French Revolution, beginning in 1789.

So I'm referring to war deaths through the use of the word
"bloodiest," but it's only to emphasize that the war was memorable
(one of the crisis war criteria). You were comparing fractional
death rates, and no one thinks that way.

You know, I've thought about this war death issue a lot. It seems
like common sense that crisis war evaluation should take war deaths
into account, but I've looked at dozens of these things now, and
somehow the number of war deaths just doesn't seem to enter into
it, always remembering, of course, that a million war deaths is more
memorable than a dozen war deaths.

I really saw this quite dramatically in my daily coverage of the
Lebanon war for my web site. I was reading as much of the Lebanese
and Arab press as I could find, and one thing that came through all
the time was how much the Lebanese population is affected today by the
1982 massacre at camps in Sabra and Shatila, where Christian Arabs
butchered Palestinian refugees.

There's some debate whether there were hundreds of people massacred
or thousands, but the number doesn't seem to make much difference.
What really affects the Lebanese people today is the mere fact that
it happened, that one group of Lebanese people of any religion could
possibly perpetrate an unthinkable atrocity like that against another
group of Lebanese people. The Lebanese people feel enormous guilt
and shame that this could ever have happened, and this affected the
Lebanese view of the war, as well as the way that Hizbollah conducted
the war, as I described on my web site.

Mike, you're always looking for numbers -- numbers of war deaths,
numbers of alcoholics, etc. But crisis wars aren't determined by
numbers. You really have to look at what people say. You really
have to get a personal, human feel for a war.

For example, here's what Lebanese President Émile Geamil Lahoud said
in an interview:

Originally Posted by Lebanese President Émile Geamil Lahoud

> "Believe me, what we get from [Israeli bombers] is nothing
> compared to [what would happen] if there is an internal conflict
> [a new civil war] in Lebanon. So our thanks comes when we are
> united, and we are really united, and the national army is doing
> its work according to the government, and the resistance
> [Hizbollah] is respected in the whole Arab world from the
> population point of view. And very highly respected in Lebanon as
> well."

Imagine the president of a country who says that he's more afraid of
what his people will do to each other than what enemy bombers will
do, and you'll begin to understand why this was an awakening war for
Lebanon, and why the number of war deaths in the last crisis war just
isn't the point.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> What do you mean? When determining which wars are crisis wars
> don't you look at all the wars for a particular region and then
> apply you algorithm? So for the current Iraq war you would compare
> it to the Iraq-Iran war.

No, the algorithm is specifically designed so that a war can be
evaluated on its own, without reference to other wars. I was also
reacting to your claim that other civil wars are irrelevant.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

> Why isn't Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr leading his militia
> against Sunni militias? ... Why isn't he leading a Shiite
> uprising?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> You don't understand al-Sadr's position. In some ways, such as
> vis a vis SCIRI he is on the same side as the Sunnis. The reason
> is geographical. SCIRI's power base is in the South, they support
> a semi-independent Shia state in the South who would get to keep
> all the oil revenues from the Southern fields. Sadr's power bases
> is Sadr City in Bagdad which would be in the "Sunni" State in
> west-central Iraq and which would have no oil money (assuming the
> Kurds grab Kirkuk as they are very likely to do). So Sadr and the
> Sunnis both support a strong central government against the
> SCIRI. ...

> He did in 2004 and got his head handed to him by the Americans. So
> he now wants to wait for them to go.

All you're doing is supporting the point that it isn't a crisis war.
If it were a crisis war, then all of these problems would be
overcome, and Shiites would overrun Baghdad and the Americans.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

> Why do we never read a story about how the people of one Iraqi
> village or neighborhood go out and massacre the people of a
> neighboring village or neighborhood? I can't recall ever seeing
> anything like this, and if Iraq were having a civil war, this kind
> of thing would be happening all the time.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> I don't recall this happening frequently in the US Civil War. It
> wasn't one of the points in your algorithm for determining whether
> or not a war is a crisis war.

In a crisis civil war, ordinary people would be massacring each
other. I can't imagine how a crisis civil war could proceed
otherwise.

(Continued in next posting)

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

(Continued from previous posting)

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> We discussed a great deal on this issue of how do you determine
> which historical wars are crisis wars and which are not. To make
> the claim that the Iran-Iraq war was a crisis war for Iraq, and
> other wars are around the same time (like the current one) are
> not, you proposed an algorithm that one can apply to make this
> assessment. If one applied the objective aspects of this algorithm
> to these two wars it is not clear-cut that the current war is less
> "crisis-like" than the 1980's war.

Your whole claim here raises serious methodological problems.

The crisis war evaluation algorithm only applies to past wars. The
current war can't be assessed using the algorithm because it's not
over.

Now, if something like the 1988 massacre at Halabja should happen
tomorrow, then I'd have to admit I was wrong. But what I'm saying is
that since this is an awakening era for Iraq, nothing like the
massacre at Halabja is even remotely possible today.

From a methodological point of view, you're now crossing over into
something different -- the Generational Dynamics forecasting
methodology. Here's a summary that appears on my web site:

"As usual, when doing a Generational Dynamics analysis, we're trying
to find shifts in attitudes by large masses of people; shifts by
politicians are important only when there's reason to believe that
the political shift reflects a popular shift. These shifts in
opinion provide "short-range forecasting" input that has to be
matched up with the "long-range forecasting" input provided by
Generational Dynamics itself, to come up with a probabilistic
forecast with an extremely high level of accuracy. I've been doing
this for several years now, and I defy anyone to find any other web
site, anywhere in the world, with anything near the predictive
accuracy of this web site. I've looked, and I know that no such web
site exists."

In the case of the current war in Iraq, I'm looking for shifts in
attitudes by large masses of people that would indicate that a civil
war is coming, and I'm not finding any such shifts.

When you posted your trend data a couple of weeks ago it aroused my
attention because at first I wondered if this might be trend data
that indicates shifts in attitudes in large masses of Iraqi people,
but further examination revealed that it wasn't at all.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> There was no evidence that the trend in insurgent activity has or
> had become negative in the past. At best, insurgent activity might
> have leveled off. For total violence it appears that after slowing
> its rise, violence has accelerated in recent months. We know why
> this would happen. As a result of the bombing of the Golden Dome,
> Shiite-on-Sunni killings have become a major category of violence,
> which they were not a year ago. This new category of killings
> placed on top of pre-existing insurgent killings will necessary
> result in an increase in total killings--which explains the recent
> upcurve in deaths, but not attacks or bombings.

You say, "We know why this would happen," but that's the problem --
we don't know why. You claim that it's evidence of a burgeoning
civil war, and I claim that there's no evidence to support that.
(That's the point about massacres above.)

Let me try this a completely different way. The following is a much
more plausible explanation of what's going on in Iraq, and it's
actually the explanation that I believe.

Let's start with the following graphic of Osama bin Laden:



Notice the logo in the lower right hand corner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As-Sahab
http://www.siteinstitute.org/bin/art...&Subcategory=0

That's the logo for the As-Sahab Production Committee, one of the
most sophisticated media organizations in the world. It's
responsible for all those tapes that make their way to al-Jazeera --
tapes of Osama bin Laden, or Ayman al-Zawahiri. If you see those
tapes on tv, you'll see as-sahab's logo in the corner.

Al-Qaeda is at war with the United States. (Actually, they're more
at war with other Muslims, but that's another story.)

In Iraq, the program is obvious: Make sure that there's at least one
suiciding bombing every day.

And sure enough, every morning you wake up and turn on the tv news,
and the lead item is always the latest suicide bombing. It's
absolutely incredible to me how much control bin Laden has over
American media.

So the trend data that you displayed does not indicate to me a
growing civil war; what it shows to me is that al-Qaeda is spending
more money on suicide bombers in Iraq. It's the best investment that
bin Laden can make, because they know that the worldwide media will
lap it up like lapdogs.

That, in my opinion, is what your data shows. There is NO EVIDENCE
WHATSOEVER of a growing civil war.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by cbailey

> I haven't heard one person in real life comment on the ABC
> mini-series. Haven't run in to anyone who watched it, and the
> 5-year anniversary of 911 was mainly noted by the media. I wonder
> if people really are paying attention or really care. I'll say it
> again, from where I sit, most folks are busy practicing Denial.

I agree with this. This whole ABC controversy was drummed up by
dinosaurs. I mean boomers.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Dear Rick,

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

> John, unfortunately your assumption is incorrect, which calls your
> conclusions somewhat into question. Rather being a product of an
> ABC "focus group", the film known during shooting as "Untitled
> History Project" was actually funded almost entirely by The Film
> Institute (TFI), an offshoot of the theocratist organization Youth
> With A Mission (YWAM). YWAM in turn received their funding from
> one Richard Mellon Scaife, he of the unhealthy obsession with
> Clinton's penis and core financier of the VRWC.

Of course it wasn't a "product" of a focus group. Of course it was
funded by ideologues -- it's an ideological movie.

The point is that there's no way that this would have made it onto
network television unless someone in the ABC organization did some
sort of market study and determined that the public wanted to see it.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

I guess I'm confused. Why would you ever favor the Democrats if you believe that they're cowards? Do you always favor this kind of gutless punk?

That's such a Boomer thing to say, I just had to laugh.

First, I rarely support the Democratic Party in general. The only candidates I've donated time or money to are local candidates.

Second, I have no problem supporting cowards over sociopaths. Cowardice is something that can be overcome with a little training, encouragement and tough love. (I've done it myself.) Some of my best friends are gutless punks.

Third, I don't hesitate to call out cowards wherever I seem them. (That tough love I mentioned.) Biden, Kerry, Clinton or even Dean won't get my support or my money until they stop vacillating. So, for the most part, I still say "a pox on both their houses."

You Boomers see the world in black and white. We Xers see the world in black and black.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

You should also read about the explosive 1988 massacre at Halabja.
http://libcom.org/library/massacre-halabja-icg
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO029275.htm

(This massacre, incidentally, is part of the current war crimes trial
against Saddam.)....

In a crisis civil war, ordinary people would be massacring each
other. I can't imagine how a crisis civil war could proceed
otherwise.

Now here is where you lose me. In Iraq right now Sunni and Shiite Iraqis ARE massacring each other--6000 (about one Hallabja) in the last two months. You responded to this observation by saying that only a minority are responsible fore these killing--its not like Somalia. Well Hallabja was ordered by one man, Saddam Hussein. It was not a society-wide Somali-like arising of Arabs versus Kurds. It was the central government using genocidal tatics against groups hostile to it. Its a nasty horrible way to fight--just as it was in WW I when poison gas was first used.

And don't say Saddam used the gas against his own people. Saddam's people are Arabs not Kurds. Iraq is an Arab state. Saddam felt about the Kurds that same way as the Minutemen feel about the Mexicans. Minutemen believe Mexicans in the Southwest don't want to assimilate--they want to speak Spanish instead of English. Some believe that Mexicans in America would like to establish a "Mexiamerica" in those regions that were part of Mexico before the 1848 war.

Like certain Mexican-Americans (according to nativist critics), the Kurds don't want to assimilate and learn Arabic. They do want to make Northern Iraq into "Kurdistan". And they have.

You point out that they haven't been any Hallabjas. Don't you think the Iraqi government would like to "Hallabjize" the insurgency? The Americans won't let them. But you must suspect that Hallabjas are the only way the government is going to beat the insurgents. Already folks on the American right are calling for "Saddam-like" tactics to break the back of the insurgency.

If you were right that civil war if fundmentally immpossible in Iraq, then the violence would have subsided a long time ago like it did in the the Phillipine insurgency The Fillipinos at that time simply didn't have suffcient "genocidal fury" to stick it out long enough for them to win their independence. It wasn't a 4T for them. In Vietnam the US lost because the insurgents didn't give up. It was a 4T for them.

The Sunni Iraqi's have been fighting us for 3.5 years. They haven't slacked off like the Fillipinos did. Instead they widened their targets to include Shiites. If the Iraq-Iran war was a crisis war then the Shia simply would not be provoked into responding. That's what you were saying a couple of years ago when the Shia were showing restraint, but the restraint is gone--Sistani (the guy calling for restraint) has withdrawn.

Originally Posted by Finch

On the one hand, the blogosphere reacted fairly quickly and effectively regarding TP9/11: I think it will cost Disney dearly, and they are quite unlikely to attempt a similar stunt any time soon.

On the other hand, worrying about lack of organization shows a backward-focused, limited pattern of thinking. Why should the blogosphere need organization? The wind and the waves aren't "organized", but they're pretty powerful. In fact, I rather prefer them disorganized; highly organized wind + water = hurricane.

As for Dubya, every word he speaks is deconstructed and refuted practically in real time -- not just by political pundits, but by lawyers, doctors, architects and farmers. He's not fooling anybody. Neither is Scaife -- he just spent $40 million and probably changed very few minds. The days of top-down power are numbered, at least for a season.

I think the bloggers are best at refutation, but not much on promotion. They can probably stop at least some bad things from happening, but its nearly impossible for them to make good things happen instead. In a way, it's the same effect as the insurgents in Iraq and Palestine. They make life miserable for us and the Israelis, but can't change things to something they prefer. Both are counting on ennui. The real change agents are organized - Hamas and the Kurds.

I'm not so sure that's a viable option for the US.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

That, in my opinion, is what your data shows.

Yes its just an opinion, with no facts to back it up.

There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER of a growing civil war.

Yes there is. There IS evidence of what can be called a growing civil war in Iraq.

There is an insurgency. By definition, "insurgents" are those who attack American or government forces, either directly or by indirectly (bombings). When direct attacks occur, some of the attackers are often captured or killed. From these we can learn whether the attackers are Sunni Iraqi, Shiite Iraqis or foreigners (jihadist). The vast majority of insurgents are either Sunni Iraqis or jihadists. Most insurgents captured or killed are Iraqis, not foreigners. From this we know that the insurgency is mostly Sunni and that jihadists make up a small fraction of the total insurgents. This is not opinion, it is fact.

We know that the suicide bombers are all or nearly all jihadists. On the other hand, the IED planters are not jihadists--they are mostly Sunni Iraqis. How do we know? Because he catch them sometimes planting IEDs and we can identify them as one or the other by their nationality, name and, often, their address. Based on this evidence the US authorites use bombings as a proxy for insurgent activity as well as actual attacks against US or Iraqi forces.

So bombings and insurgent attacks are good ways to measure insurgent activity--and we track this as a measure as to how well our counterinsurgentcy is doing. This is what you DO when fighting a counter insurgency. You have to track insurgent activity in order to assess the effectiveness of various tactics.

Bombings and insurgent attacks kill plenty of Iraqis, but a lot of murdered Iraqis die from causes not associated with either insurgent attacks or bombings. When you read about bodies being found, for example, these are all killings outside of bombings or insurgent attacks.

The death rate measures the intensity of violence from all causes. Up through last year, total deaths tracked insurgent activity. Most murdered civilians were Shias and some of them had been decapitated. Since jihadists publicly admit that they decapitate prisoners and have released videos showing them doing this, it is assumed that headless Shiites reflect jihadist killings. We don't find headless Sunnis. This is evidence that the at least some elements of the insurgency kills Shia civilians as well as Americans and Iraqi government personnel. So up through last year we had total killings tracking insurgent activity and strong evidence that insurgents were responsible for Shia deaths.

Recently, a new class of killings has appearred. We still see bombings and insurgent attacks. We still see dead Shia, some with no heads. But now we see a lot of dead Sunnis, some with holes drilled in their heads. And we are seeing a lot more dead people who were not killing in bombings or insurgent attacks.

Somebody is killing Sunni civilians, some in peculiar ways, in much larger numbers than Sunni civilians were being killed a year ago. We have many reports of Iraqi Police (or at least men dressed in police uniforms & with police ID) seizing Sunnis who later turn up dead. It appears that "police" are killing Sunnis. The police are controlled by Shia factions in the government and are mostly Shia. Many police are known to be members of Shia militias.

As a result this new violence directed at Sunnis total deaths have greatly increased from last year's levels. Yet insurgent activity (as measured by attacks and bombings) has not increased proportionately. This indicates that non-insurgents are doing the Sunni killing, which makes sense as the Sunni insurgents don't, as a rule, kill Sunnis.

The evidence implies that the "police" who are killing Sunnis are not insurgents or Sunnis. They are very likely members of Shia militias, Shia death squads, Shia police, or a combination of these. We know Shia death squads exist because we trained some of them (for anti-insurgency operations). We know large Shia milita exist and that they have thoroughly penetrated the police.

All these facts show that up through last year most violence was insurgents killing Shia civilians, Shia-dominated Iraqi government forces, and Americans. But today there is addtional violence perpetrated on Sunni civilans, presumably by Shia "death squads" and definitely by unifomed "police"--many of which are known to be in Shia militia.

This new violence has recently appeared. For years Sunnis have killed Shia civilians, but Shia were not doing the same. At that time the situation was an insurgency. But now Shia are killing large numbers of Sunni civilians. When two components of a single nation are fighting and killing each other, that is a civil conflict. Nobody contests that Iraq is right now in a civil conflict. It is fact. The level of violence is rising. It is a fact that there is a growing civil conflict in Iraq.

The violence is Iraq is qualitatively the right kind of violence for a civil war. All that is needed for everyone to agree on a civil war label is a sufficiently high level of sectarian violence. So if the civil conflict continues to grow it is only a matter of time until it becomes recognized by everyone as a civil war.

This means there IS evidence of what can rationally be called a growing civil war in Iraq.

Path to 9/11 Trounced By Football, Ties CBS Rerun
Apparently, there isn’t a big audience for myths about 9/11. Preliminary ratings information show that Path to 9/11 was not only trounced by Sunday Night Football, it only managed to tie a rerun of a CBS documentary about 9/11. A summary:

SHOW RATING SHARE
NFL Football (NBC) 15.1 23
9/11 (CBS, rerun) 8.2 12
Path to 9/11 (ABC) 8.2 12

Looks like predictions that the effort to correct Path to 9/11’s inaccuracies would improve ABC’s ratings were wrong.

http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=Path+to+911

-----------

I think people out here in the hinterlands want to forget-a-bout it.
The most popular response to a posed question these daze is "I have no idea."

[QUOTE=John J. Xenakis:
Thus, I would interpret the ABC miniseries not as a public shift from
left to right, but as a public shift from "believing in government"
(a Boomer-left view) to "not believing in government" (a Millie-right
view).
------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought it was the Xer's that were "not believers". The civics become civics when the crisis hits by doing their civic duty, something we have yet to be mobilized to do. ("go shopping" was the Bush advice).

"No government" is what boomers have believed in for the last 30 years. Their goal was to out-do their parents. Their parents gave them great government. Their job was to destroy it. Mission accomplished. You seem to think of the boomers as liberals. They were only "liberal" in their youth when they rebelled against their civic parents by growing their hair long and refusing to SERVE THEIR GOVERNMENT. They also came up with lots of new ideas. End War was one of them... but so was END GOVERNMENT. I think if you check you will see that Grover Norquist is a boomer (as are Bush and Rove).

Actually I don't see warfare between the boomers and the millies. According to Strauss and Howe, they admire each other and work well together. The millies are good kids. They will do their duty. And the boomers will encourage them to do it. Until that day comes, the millies will look a whole lot like Xers with fewer tattoos. They have not yet learned their civic skills.

We have lived through 30 years of paranoia about govenment. You see it in "hell no I won't go" and "hell no I won't pay a tax". It is rampant narcissism. It is inner-directedness to the max. And it is, like Bush, a desperate need to out-do their very great parents. Unfortunately they have infected other generations with their "me, me, me-ism". Hence your grave fear of government.

Me, I only fear repuglican government. In a 4T you need to mobilize against a threat or many threats. Government is one of the quickest and best ways to mobilize. Corporations are not a good way to mobilize. Take a look at how Halliburton helped us rebuild Iraq. Repugs hate government and therefore cannot accomplish anything. Remember that hole in the center of NYC 5 years later, Remember Osama bin Forgotten, Remember the Gulf Coast and NoLa. They can't even accomplish what they say they want (like ending abortion...or flag burning for that matter... or illegal aliens). How come? When we had power we legalized abortion, we affirmed, we bussed, we taxed and we spent. What's their problem?

Either they are lying to us (a real probability) or they just can't pull themselves together to do anything but steal. Ahhh, the truth at last.

As for that program on ABC: It was a typically well-organized hatched job planned by the right wingers (ya see, it's not that they can't get ANYTHING done...they can always mobilize to stay in a position to steal all that they can). Now tthat program didn't bother me much because, we (the Dems) are always slamming the repugs every chance we get. Just tune into John Stewart or the Colbert Report any day of the week. What I found interesting was that the blogs mobilized a push back against it. All it says to me is that the liberals are baaaa--aaaa--cccckkk. And they are NOT BOOMERS..... check out those bloggers ages.

jadams makes a good point. From the time of the glorious generation voting themselves generious land grants in payment for their services in the 4t that bears their name, to the GI benefits, civics have always been big government generations. If a majority of the millies turn out libertarian ( an idea that wouldn't totally displease me, but I expect the opposite) they would be the first generation of American civics in history to do so.

Just sayin'.

Dear Rick,

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

> I guess I'm confused. Why would you ever favor the Democrats if
> you believe that they're cowards? Do you always favor this kind of
> gutless punk?

Originally Posted by Finch

> That's such a Boomer thing to say, I just had to laugh.

Not true. A Boomer would defend his own favored party and attack the
other party. I didn't do that.

A Millie would think was I was saying, though he might be reluctant
to say it out loud. A Millie wants to know why you're so feckless as
to be unhappy about what's going on but not doing anything about it
except to call the people you [presumably] support in government
cowards. A Millie wants to know why Boomers and Xers never do
anything but bitch and complain.

Originally Posted by Finch

> Second, I have no problem supporting cowards over sociopaths.
> Cowardice is something that can be overcome with a little
> training, encouragement and tough love. (I've done it myself.)
> Some of my best friends are gutless punks.

This is just bloviation. To you, some people are cowards and some
people are sociopaths. So you don't like anyone, but you don't do
anything about the problems, and you don't even suggest a solution.
You just complain about Boomers -- which is all that Xers ever do
anyway, isn't it?

Originally Posted by Finch

> You Boomers see the world in black and white. We Xers see the
> world in black and black.

Exactly.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com