Unlike Jeffersonian, the Hamiltonian approach to government is not to trust the capabilities of the masses; the leaders need to lead their ignorant sheep to what is good and right. It works well when things go well. But, when things go wrong, the leaders not only suffer for their mistakes; they also suffer from their revealed subterfuge. The lack of trust in the masses becomes the masses' lack of trust in their leaders.


What could have been, without the subterfuge? Rather than just hand-wringing or part of the blame game, I think the answer to that question could help us move forward on the best pathway from the point we find ourselves at today.

A hunger for Progress :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Originally Posted by Mr. Jamie Wilson in the [i

Guardian[/i] (UK) from Washington, D.C.] ... including bodies with electric drill holes in their heads.

Ah. It seems that the utilities are back up in Mesopotamia. :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Crush Serb Skulls! :arrow: :arrow: :arrow: Ventilate Iraki Crania?

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

A hunger for Progress :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Originally Posted by Mr. Jamie Wilson in the [i

Guardian[/i] (UK) from Washington, D.C.] ... including bodies with electric drill holes in their heads.

It will be interesting watching the White House try to quash and distance itself from the Iraqi government torture while still pushing Congress to allow the CIA's gulag system.

What was it that Ben Franklin said about trading off liberty for security? Who was it again who proposed building a city on a hill?

Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat, Vietnam veteran, and serving a conservative district in western Pennsylvania, is now calling for the US to withdraw from Iraq.

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat, Vietnam veteran, and serving a conservative district in western Pennsylvania, is now calling for the US to withdraw from Iraq.

Said immediate withdrawl will be a done deal this time next year, after the Democrats regain both houses of Congress. I just hope and pray that they don't follow up with an equally immediate and total unilateral disarmament (Though I fear that they will.).

- - -

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518

I just hope and pray that they don't follow up with an equally immediate and total unilateral disarmament (Though I fear that they will.).

That's not going to happen

I wish I could believe that, but I've seen too many indications over the past 37 years that tell me that they would, once they think they could get away with it IRT the American people.

Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518

I just hope and pray that they don't follow up with an equally immediate and total unilateral disarmament (Though I fear that they will.).

That's not going to happen

I wish I could believe that, but I've seen too many indications over the past 37 years that tell me that they would, once they think they could get away with it IRT the American people.

Don't you think the American people will demand it in the form of lower taxes and greater entitlements? There is a current of Isolationism running through the American psyche that one good recession or Asian flu epidemic would whip up to levels remembered by few living persons. Who needs carrier groups when we have no perceived interests beyond the Grand Banks?

- - -

Originally Posted by scott 63

Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518

Originally Posted by Mary Fitzmas

Originally Posted by Prisoner 81591518

I just hope and pray that they don't follow up with an equally immediate and total unilateral disarmament (Though I fear that they will.).

That's not going to happen

I wish I could believe that, but I've seen too many indications over the past 37 years that tell me that they would, once they think they could get away with it IRT the American people.

Don't you think the American people will demand it in the form of lower taxes and greater entitlements? There is a current of Isolationism running through the American psyche that one good recession or Asian flu epidemic would whip up to levels remembered by few living persons. Who needs carrier groups when we have no perceived interests beyond the Grand Banks?

That is probably how the new isolationism would be triggered. Not unilateral disarmament, but a retreat back to our own hemisphere. This would trigger outrage among my fellow Scots-Irish, but that scenario happened with the Brits after 1945 as well, and they survived loss-of-empire. We probably will too.

Originally Posted by Pink Splice

Originally Posted by scott 63

Don't you think the American people will demand it in the form of lower taxes and greater entitlements? There is a current of Isolationism running through the American psyche that one good recession or Asian flu epidemic would whip up to levels remembered by few living persons. Who needs carrier groups when we have no perceived interests beyond the Grand Banks?

That is probably how the new isolationism would be triggered. Not unilateral disarmament, but a retreat back to our own hemisphere. This would trigger outrage among my fellow Scots-Irish, but that scenario happened with the Brits after 1945 as well, and they survived loss-of-empire. We probably will too.

I suspect considerable movement in this direction is likely. The Military Industrial Complex was a necessary evil when fascism and communism had realistic hopes of expansion. At this point, well, socialism and entitlements work far better in Europe, where they spend much less on carrier groups. If we can only afford carrier groups or health care, I'm in favor of getting out of the World's Police Force business as quickly as reasonably possible.

But an instant recall? I don't think so.

Originally Posted by Kiff 1961

Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat, Vietnam veteran, and serving a conservative district in western Pennsylvania, is now calling for the US to withdraw from Iraq.

Excrementitious Equivalence

Originally Posted by a troubled soul

The traitor, Democratic Rep. John P. Murtha, agrees 100% with Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi that the Marine Corps, which is mangling the enemy on a daily basis in Iraq and suffering comparatively light casualties, should lay down its arms, call it quits, and abandon the people they are defending in the fledgling democracy of Iraq.

:arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Commercial Republicani$m :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Isolationism rising

Originally Posted by Ms. Georgie Anne Geyer

Someday, some psycho-historians will do an in-depth study of how this administration worked to create its own realities; meanwhile, one Yale scholar, Lloyd Etheredge of the Policy Sciences Center, has proactively analyzed the mind-sets and mentalities among Americans who tend to get us into "optional wars" such as Vietnam, Somalia and Iraq.

He lists as common characteristics in his writing: ambition and overconfidence; the desire for unchallenged domination and control; abnormal fear and suspicion; defective ethics and the absence of principled restraint; thought that is so emotionally organized that discussions appear "slightly drunken" and "decoupled from reality"; attitudes leading to cold and scornful aggression; an absence of modesty and good humor; and a hyperactivity that increases "to the point of obsession as earlier policies prove ineffective and challenges grow."

"If one needed any further confirmation of this administration's propensity to disregard the serious consequences of its embrace of questionable intelligence, one had only to note that, this week, Ahmad Chalabi was being whisked into the inner sanctums of Cheney's and Rumsfeld's offices."

The Trouble With Kurdistan

Originally Posted by Michael Rubin

Take the case of the Iraqi Kurds. Long championed as a model of liberalization, they are becoming a regional embarrassment. Rather than pursue democracy, the Iraqi Kurdish leadership is more consumed with self-enrichment. Following Iraq's defeat in 1991, the Kurds rose in rebellion against Saddam Hussein. The leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, Massoud Barzani, returned to Iraqi Kurdistan with little but respect for his family name. Fourteen years later, his personal worth is estimated at close to $2 billion. Corruption and nepotism are rife. No foreign businessman can strike a deal in his region without entering into partnership with Barzani or a favored relative. Human rights workers in Irbil say they have met Kurds imprisoned for failing to pay kickbacks. Across the region, the Barzani family conflates government, party, and personal property. Local militias uphold not the rule of law, but rather serve as Barzani's enforcers. The Kurdish Parliament, meanwhile, is flaccid; its power no greater than that of its Syrian or Libyan counterparts.

The cost of corruption goes beyond money. An embezzlement scandal sparked the 1994-97 Kurdish civil war between Barzani and his rival, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani, Iraq's current president. Barzani is not alone. With the complicity of United Nations officials and cynical politicians, Saddam Hussein siphoned off $1.8 billion from the UN's oil-for-food program. While children died for lack of medicine, he built palaces and his family members bought real estate in Amman.

I guess we're leaving.

Let the ethnic cleansing begin.

Just out curiosity, did any of the war supporters in the country happen to read a newspaper in the 1990s?

The worst bloodletting in the former Yugoslavia happened in areas of mixed ethnicities and religions; a majority of Iraq's provinces are this way. I sure wouldn't want to be an Arab in Kurdistan or a Christian in Greater Ayatollahstan a year from now.

Originally Posted by The Dude

I guess we're leaving.

Let the ethnic cleansing begin.

Just out curiosity, did any of the war supporters in the country happen to read a newspaper in the 1990s?

The worst bloodletting in the former Yugoslavia happened in areas of mixed ethnicities and religions; a majority of Iraq's provinces are this way. I sure wouldn't want to be an Arab in Kurdistan or a Christian in Greater Ayatollahstan a year from now.

Warlord government is a problem, if not the problem. When the European colonial powers used military force to create economic zones of influence from which they raped exclusive profits, it was called Imperialism. What you describe in the Kurdish north is the local home grown version of gangster government. Democratic limitations on power must be bypassed. Use of raw power without regard to rule of law or morality are symptomatic. In Afghanistan, the opium warlords are doing pretty much the same thing. Somalia has a similar problem. Saddam -- with his open admiration for and imitation of Stalin -- was a master of the same game.

In comparison, Bush 43's military and oil centered crony imperialism is somewhat more restrained, but I don't see the Neocon mindset as being too far distant from a warlord's. They just have PR problems if they exercise their disregard for law, pursuit of wealth, and readiness to use military force too blatantly.

A lot of folk are ready to label this trend as a return to fascism. This is not too far off. There is often an element of ethnic violence in modern warlord government, but the theme of expansion through invasion common to 1940s fascism is generally weaker or missing. Modern warlords are more gangsters than conquerers.

I see the US overthrowing one set of warlords in order to set up another group as problematic. Thing is, the role of government in current Iraqi culture was defined by Saddam. Cultures don't really change short of disaster. It also has to be the right sort of disaster. Problems caused by the warlords would have to result in anarchy if the next culture is to have a strong belief that warlord government is bad. In the current mess, will democracy bring a stable government, or will a strong man with lots of guns seem more advantageous?

I may not agree with Dude on whether these problems are solvable in the upcoming crisis, but he is barking up some of the right trees.

Eurasia might not succumb to reform? :?: :?: :?:

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

Eurasia might not succumb to reform? :?: :?: :?:

Yes. All that would be required would be for good men to do nothing.

might be found in Eurasia.

Originally Posted by The Dude

Isolationism rising

This contradicts the notion that we are becoming a fascist society.

This trend-if it becomes very broadly based-might prevent a potential source of conflict in our domestic politics.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Originally Posted by The Dude

I guess we're leaving.

Let the ethnic cleansing begin.

Just out curiosity, did any of the war supporters in the country happen to read a newspaper in the 1990s?

The worst bloodletting in the former Yugoslavia happened in areas of mixed ethnicities and religions; a majority of Iraq's provinces are this way. I sure wouldn't want to be an Arab in Kurdistan or a Christian in Greater Ayatollahstan a year from now.

Warlord government is a problem, if not the problem. When the European colonial powers used military force to create economic zones of influence from which they raped exclusive profits, it was called Imperialism. What you describe in the Kurdish north is the local home grown version of gangster government. Democratic limitations on power must be bypassed. Use of raw power without regard to rule of law or morality are symptomatic. In Afghanistan, the opium warlords are doing pretty much the same thing. Somalia has a similar problem. Saddam -- with his open admiration for and imitation of Stalin -- was a master of the same game.

In comparison, Bush 43's military and oil centered crony imperialism is somewhat more restrained, but I don't see the Neocon mindset as being too far distant from a warlord's. They just have PR problems if they exercise their disregard for law, pursuit of wealth, and readiness to use military force too blatantly.

A lot of folk are ready to label this trend as a return to fascism. This is not too far off. There is often an element of ethnic violence in modern warlord government, but the theme of expansion through invasion common to 1940s fascism is generally weaker or missing. Modern warlords are more gangsters than conquerers.

I see the US overthrowing one set of warlords in order to set up another group as problematic. Thing is, the role of government in current Iraqi culture was defined by Saddam. Cultures don't really change short of disaster. It also has to be the right sort of disaster. Problems caused by the warlords would have to result in anarchy if the next culture is to have a strong belief that warlord government is bad. In the current mess, will democracy bring a stable government, or will a strong man with lots of guns seem more advantageous?

I may not agree with Dude on whether these problems are solvable in the upcoming crisis, but he is barking up some of the right trees.

I agree that the forces we have unleashed in Iraq aren't fascist (aside from the Ba'athists who wish to reclaim control of the country). Fascism is really nationalist in character, and neither the Shia nor the Kurds are Iraqi nationalists. In a way that's part of the problem here. My point is really that successful democracies have tended to grow out of successful nation-states. France, Germany, Britain, Japan, even the United States were all successful nation-states before they became democracies in any meaningful sense of the word. Iraq is little more than a line drawn on the map by the British, and held together by the brutality first of the Hashemites then of the Ba'athists, neither of whom was terribly succcessful in building strong national institutions or suppressing local and sectarian identities for the sake of a national culture. And 2/3 of the country today - Shia and Kurds - has (evidenced by the nature of the constitution) little use for the development of strong national institutions and a national culture today. There will be no unifying state school system, and regions will be able to effectively field their own armies. The government in Baghdad will be too weak to protect Iraqi citizens from the more destabilizing effects of economic and cultural globalization, so that burden will fall on local communities. Iraqis are already learning something about the acute ills so much as the prospect of democracy can bring in the postmodern age, but they will over time discover the chronic ills it brings in the postmodern age as well, from rising (and eventually epidemic) crime and economic inequality to loss of state supports and loss of even local cultural cohesion. Irag is just not a country, and even if we manage to avoid the kind of sectarian bloodletting and ethnic cleansing that took place in Yugoslavia, there seems strong reason to believe that Iraq has any reason to exist beyond the distribution of oil revenues, and we shouldn't be surprised to find the country dissolve sometime in the next century.

Originally Posted by The Dude

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Originally Posted by The Dude

I guess we're leaving.

Let the ethnic cleansing begin.

Just out curiosity, did any of the war supporters in the country happen to read a newspaper in the 1990s?

The worst bloodletting in the former Yugoslavia happened in areas of mixed ethnicities and religions; a majority of Iraq's provinces are this way. I sure wouldn't want to be an Arab in Kurdistan or a Christian in Greater Ayatollahstan a year from now.

Warlord government is a problem, if not the problem. When the European colonial powers used military force to create economic zones of influence from which they raped exclusive profits, it was called Imperialism. What you describe in the Kurdish north is the local home grown version of gangster government. Democratic limitations on power must be bypassed. Use of raw power without regard to rule of law or morality are symptomatic. In Afghanistan, the opium warlords are doing pretty much the same thing. Somalia has a similar problem. Saddam -- with his open admiration for and imitation of Stalin -- was a master of the same game.

In comparison, Bush 43's military and oil centered crony imperialism is somewhat more restrained, but I don't see the Neocon mindset as being too far distant from a warlord's. They just have PR problems if they exercise their disregard for law, pursuit of wealth, and readiness to use military force too blatantly.

A lot of folk are ready to label this trend as a return to fascism. This is not too far off. There is often an element of ethnic violence in modern warlord government, but the theme of expansion through invasion common to 1940s fascism is generally weaker or missing. Modern warlords are more gangsters than conquerers.

I see the US overthrowing one set of warlords in order to set up another group as problematic. Thing is, the role of government in current Iraqi culture was defined by Saddam. Cultures don't really change short of disaster. It also has to be the right sort of disaster. Problems caused by the warlords would have to result in anarchy if the next culture is to have a strong belief that warlord government is bad. In the current mess, will democracy bring a stable government, or will a strong man with lots of guns seem more advantageous?

I may not agree with Dude on whether these problems are solvable in the upcoming crisis, but he is barking up some of the right trees.

I agree that the forces we have unleashed in Iraq aren't fascist (aside from the Ba'athists who wish to reclaim control of the country). Fascism is really nationalist in character, and neither the Shia nor the Kurds are Iraqi nationalists. In a way that's part of the problem here. My point is really that successful democracies have tended to grow out of successful nation-states. France, Germany, Britain, Japan, even the United States were all successful nation-states before they became democracies in any meaningful sense of the word. Iraq is little more than a line drawn on the map by the British, and held together by the brutality first of the Hashemites then of the Ba'athists, neither of whom was terribly succcessful in building strong national institutions or suppressing local and sectarian identities for the sake of a national culture. And 2/3 of the country today - Shia and Kurds - has (evidenced by the nature of the constitution) little use for the development of strong national institutions and a national culture today. There will be no unifying state school system, and regions will be able to effectively field their own armies. The government in Baghdad will be too weak to protect Iraqi citizens from the more destabilizing effects of economic and cultural globalization, so that burden will fall on local communities. Iraqis are already learning something about the acute ills so much as the prospect of democracy can bring in the postmodern age, but they will over time discover the chronic ills it brings in the postmodern age as well, from rising (and eventually epidemic) crime and economic inequality to loss of state supports and loss of even local cultural cohesion. Irag is just not a country, and even if we manage to avoid the kind of sectarian bloodletting and ethnic cleansing that took place in Yugoslavia, there seems strong reason to believe that Iraq has any reason to exist beyond the distribution of oil revenues, and we shouldn't be surprised to find the country dissolve sometime in the next century.

Optimist. I don't give the place more than a decade.

"for misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them" Mr. Martin van Creveld in the Forward Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War