Codevilla on Statecraft

Codevilla has written another thought provoking essay on our war policy that goes beyond the standard boilerplate posturing of mainstream politicians. He’s a critic of our policy of nations-building and the on-going occupation of Iraq. “Because the U.S. government's occupation of Iraq violated the principles of statecraft, America is on the verge of losing a crucial round in that long war.” To many of us it didn’t start out this way. Codevilla remembers:

“The occupation was unnecessary to any rational American purpose. As President George W. Bush spoke on April 30, 2003, under the banner ‘Mission Accomplished,’ representatives of the State and Defense Departments in Iraq were putting the finishing touches on the provisional government to which they were to devolve the country's affairs two weeks later. There was to be no occupation. Iraqis would sort out their own bloody quarrels. The victorious U.S. armed forces, having turned Saddam Hussein's regime over to its enemies, would challenge the Middle East's remaining terror regimes to adjust their behavior or suffer the same fate.”

At this point we heard of a new mission:

“The Bush team then declared that occupying Iraq was necessary to transform it into a peaceful, united, liberal democracy, whose existence would coax nasty neighboring regimes to be nice. Bush had acceded to the private pleadings of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as of British Prime Minister Tony Blair—whose advice reflected the unanimous wishes of Arab governments. While the administration's newly minted mission was abstract and inherently beyond accomplishment, the Arab agendas—which had nothing in common with Bush's—were intensely practical. And they prevailed.”

Codevilla constructs a detailed narrative of competing objectives—all antithetical to American’s interest—as various players influenced post-war policies. The State department, CIA, Arab governments, politicized Generals and culturally ignorant administration advisors all added to the muddle. “The liberal internationalist agenda of secular nation-building attempted to merge piecemeal the clashing interests of Iraqi and American interest groups. The realist agenda, which dominated the occupation, consisted of trying one way after another to conciliate the Sunnis by empowering them, as well as to reconcile somehow the incompatible agendas of the region's various protagonists while pretending, vaguely, that America's interests were being served. The Bush team had too many agendas, and none.”

The administration is reduced to seeking a momentary stability—a truce—that is little more than a “plan for extricating U.S. forces while maintaining a veneer of success.”

“Armies don't build nations. If statesmen can point to people or things whose absence would do good, armies can kill or destroy them. But the most unnatural thing you can ever do with or to any army is to turn it from combat to occupation. After Vietnam, the U.S. officer corps resolved never to repeat the experience. Today's officers apparently like to talk as if occupation is the ‘new kind of war,’ and thus busy themselves buying new armor and perfecting techniques for searching houses. One wonders why. Better tactics can't rescue bad strategy.”

We could have proceeded otherwise.

“Statecraft would have required viewing Iraq's realities—which reflected the growing worldwide enmity between Sunni and Shia, between Arabs and Persians—from the standpoint of what America could do to crush or cow regimes that export terror, whether Arab or Persian, Sunni or Shia. After the invasion, only our occupation prevented Iraq's Shia majority from ripping out the Ba'ath party's last bloody roots, both to avenge its tyranny and because it is Sunni. Had the Shia done this, the Arab world's Sunni regimes would have begged America not to let the same fate befall them. The Shia, for their part, would not have had to be persuaded by what America had done for them, but would have been impressed by what it could let happen to them. … Our interest lies in being feared and respected by both sides.”

Codevilla has waged a one-man intellectual battle within the conservative camp to provide a constructive alternative to the current muddled Republican policy. His exasperation is showing:

“There is no excuse for losing a war. Those whose disregard for statecraft is responsible for this mess are more highly credentialed, paid, and honored than they deserve. … Incompetence about so many things over such a long period of time disqualifies them from being taken seriously ever again, and discredits the institutions, foundations, and publications that have accredited them. It challenges us to ascertain what intellectual viruses disabled otherwise functional minds, and to educate leaders who will be free of them.”

Indeed, what intellectually disabled these well-educated intelligent people? He leaves us with the most important question unanswered.

Update: Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein tackle that question here. (H/T CapMag)

Freedom of Speech and the Islamic Threat

Freedom of speech is under assault. First and foremost is the threat to Wafa Sultan (hat/tip AOW). Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, she is a vocal critic of Islam. Very few step forward to speak the truth; few of us become public figures. The blessings of liberty that we, as listeners and readers require if the truth is to prevail, can only be as secured by protecting the few brave souls who enter the public realm and speak the truth.

In Europe, the threat is so great that Geert Wilders’ film can not be shown in public. After van Gogh’s death, no one will sponsor a showing. Even the Internet isn’t exempt from the threats of jihadists. His film was removed from several venues because of the threats to the families of the owners of these websites. But it keeps reappearing. At the moment it is here (hat/tip FPM). Watch it; it is powerful!

It’s important to stress that liberty requires that we defend those who speak whether we agree with them or not. Freedom won’t be there for us if we don’t defend the speakers today that some find objectionable. The debate must proceed if we are to judge the truth. A government that fails to protect the individuals who step forward to speak in the public square fails in its most important function: securing our freedom to talk, think, and reason. We can’t live in an intellectual vacuum. We need to breath the air of liberty if the ideas we require to survive are to grow to maturity.

Update: Paul Belien has an excellent article on appeasement in the Brussels Journal. He reviews the pre-WWII suppression of those critical of Nazism in his native Belgium: “Belgium’s submission to the Nazi demands, however, did not prevent Hitler from invading the country in May 1940. The only result of the Belgian authorities’ appeasement policies was that many ordinary Belgians, at the behest of their own government, had not been able to read articles critical of Hitler.”

How is this different today? “Geert Wilders … has made a 10-minute movie, called ‘Fitna’ (the Arabic word for ‘ordeal’). Releasing the movie has become Mr. Wilders’s ordeal. Whether or not Mr. Wilders is right about Islam is a matter of opinion. The way in which he is treated by the political establishment, however, is eerily reminiscent of the way in which democratic governments such as Belgium’s gave in to Nazi bullying in the 1930s.”

Update2: Superlative coverage on the file Fitna at Gates of Vienna including translations into several languages and internet venues with dubbed copies.

Update3: OK ... I didn't think of this angle.

Update4: Rule of Reason on Wafa Sultan: "If Wafa Sultan is not free to speak her mind, than neither you nor I are free to speak ours. None of us can tolerate this encroachment upon our ability to communicate our ideas."

History Repeating Itself

In the aftermath of the dissolution of the First Bank of the United States the individual states continued to charter and regulate banks. Paul Johnson writes [P285]: “Each state bank was allowed by the state legislature to issue bills up to three times its capital … literally a license to print money. During the War of 1812 America was awash with suspect $2 and $5 bills … Such gold as there was flowed straight into Boston, whose state banks were the most secure … [by 1814] every bank outside New England was forced to suspend payment.”

The Federal debt incurred by the War of 1812 and the nationalism that follows war led to an abandonment of the constitutional objections to a Second Bank of the United States, which was created as a national monopoly to bring about the discipline of specie-backed bank notes. It did just the opposite.

After initially restraining the state banks, William Jones, the bank President reversed course. Sean Wilentz describes Jones’ new outlook [P206]: “The original BUS [Bank of the United States] … had been too conservative in its credit operations.” Thus, a new credit expansion was born. “Rather than force state banks to curtail their inflated emissions of notes and loans, Jones approved lavish lending, especially by its new branches on the western urban frontier. By putting so many BUS notes into circulation, Jones abdicated the leverage he had had over the state banks early in 1817—for no longer could the national bank demand specie payments without being pressed for such payments in return.”

Paul Johnson explains the effect of this policy [P285]. “Indeed, he managed to create a fragile boom which was a miniature foretaste of the Wall Street boom on the 1920s leading to the crash of 1929. Jones’ boom was in land. From 1815 the price of American cotton rose rapidly and that in turn fed the land boom. At that time public land was sold primarily to raise revenue rather than to encourage settlers, who needed no encouragement anyway. Each was charged $2 an acre in minimum blocks of 160 acres. But they only had to put 20 percent down, borrowing the rest form the banks on the security of the property. The $2 was a minimum; in the South potential cotton land was sold at $100 an acre in the boom years. The SBUS, fueling the boom by easy credit, allowed purchasers to pay even the second installment on credit, again raised on the security of the land, like a second mortgage.”

“Jones … ran this federal central bank like a bucket-shop. He actually allowed the SBUS to deal in ‘racers,’ short for Race Horse Bills. These were bills of exchange paid for by other bills of exchange, which thus raced around rapidly from one debtor to another, accumulating interest charges and yielding less and less of their face value.”

“Jones’ easy-credit policy was further undermined by the activities of the SBUS’s branch offices… In Baltimore the branch was run by two land speculators … who financed their speculations by taking out unsecured loans from their own bank… Here was a typical example of the general credit expansion Jones encouraged, raising the debt on public land from $3 million in 1814 to over five times that amount ($16.8 million) three years later. Some of this went into house purchases—it was the first urban boom in the US history too.”

Of course it was not to last. “Suddenly, the cotton bubble burst, as Liverpool cotton importers, alarmed by the high prices, started shipping in Indian raw cotton in huge quantities. In December-January 1819 the price of New Orleans cotton halved, and this in turn hit land prices, which fell from 50 to 75 percent. The banks found themselves with collateral in land worth only a fraction of their loans, which were now irrecoverable. Jones compounded his earlier errors of inflation by abruptly switching to savage deflation, ordering the branches of the SBUS to accept only its own notes …”

The result was the Panic of 1819 and following depression.

Muslim Women Expose Islam

Muslim and ex-Muslim women are in the forefront of exposing the threat of Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one notable example. Wafa Sultan is another courageous woman speaking out against injustice.

Defending those who criticize Islam in the West, she says:

“Any belief that chops off the heads of its critics is doomed to turn into terrorism and tyranny. This has been the condition of Islam, from its inception to this day. … The Danish newspaper exercised its freedom of speech. Liberties are the holiest thing in the West, and nothing is more important. … Westerners who read the words of the Prophet Muhammad 'Allah has given me sustenance under the shadow of my sword' cannot imagine Muhammad's turban in the shape of a dove of peace rather than in the shape of a bomb. The Muslims must learn how to listen to the criticism of others, and maybe then they will reexamine their terrorist teachings. … The reactions of the Muslims, which were characterized by savageness, barbarism, and backwardness, only increased the value of these cartoons, and gave them more importance than they merited, simply because they proved that these cartoons were true, and that the message they were conveying was true.”

Criticizing the Islam and the Koran as a political ideology:

“… you know that you cannot separate Islam from politics. Islam is not a religion, but politics. You must let me express my views the way I want. When you called me, you didn't say I was not allowed to discuss Islam or the Koran. Islam says to them that they will 'kill or be killed', and here [in Gaza] they are—killing and being killed. So what's wrong with that? They want to be martyred and to meet their black-eyed virgins, and Israel is merely helping them get what they want. What's wrong with that? If you want to change the course of events, you must reexamine your terrorist teachings, you must recognize and respect the right of the other to live, you must teach your children love, peace, coexistence, and productive work. When you do that, the world will respect you, will consider you in a better light, and will draw you in a better light.”

"I Hate Islam"

From the New York Times:

"After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

'I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,' said Sara, a high school student in Basra. 'Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.'"

This sounds wonderful. Is it a trend?

"In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged ..."

One would like more than 40! For years reports from Iran gave a similar picture. They know what to hate:

"Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer..."

That's a tough sell, always was. The problem is that they don't know, in conceptual terms, the ideals that are the antithesis of this vicious ideology. The French hated the old regime but got the Reign of Terror; the Russians hated the Czar but got Communism; then they hated Communism and got Putin. Knowing what to hate just doesn't narrow it down. But it creates an void. Now what will fill that void?

Hat Tip: Donald Douglas

Pakistan Censors the World?

Upset with the trailors for a film on Islam by the Dutch politician and filmaker, Geert Wilders, Pakistan disrupts YouTube worldwide. From AP:

"On Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered 70 Internet service providers to block access to YouTube.com, because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc.

The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

The block was intended to cover only Pakistan, but extended to about two-thirds of the global Internet population, starting at 1:47 p.m. EST Sunday, according to Renesys Corp., a Manchester, N.H., firm that keeps track of the pathways of the Internet for telecommunications companies and other clients."

One wonders what risks foreign governments pose to the Internet if this was by accident.

War Then and Now

Diana West: (Hat Tip: Nicholas Provenzo )

"Writing in the Winter 2007-08 issue of the Objective Standard, John David Lewis offers an illuminating analysis of another U.S. occupation, this one thoroughly successful, in Japan (1945-1952). President Bush, of course, frequently refers to the democratization of Japan as a model for the democratization of Iraq (and the wider Islamic Middle East). But, as Mr. Lewis' must-read essay makes historically clear, the president has been comparing apples and oranges.

It isn't just that the total defeat and utter devastation of Japan nullifies the comparison with Iraq (which it does). There is something else. There is the completely different U.S. approach to Japan's animating, warlike state religion of Shintoism, which, not incidentally, bears striking similarities to the animating, warlike state religion of Islam.

In 1945, our government was of one mind regarding state Shintoism. Mr. Lewis quotes Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, who wrote: 'Shintoism, insofar as it is a religion of individual Japanese, is not to be interfered with. Shintoism, however, insofar as it is directed by the Japanese government, and as a measure enforced from above by the government, is to be done away with... [T]here will be no place for Shintoism in the schools. Shintoism as a state religion — National Shinto, that is — will go... Our policy on this goes beyond Shinto... The dissemination of Japanese militaristic and ultra-nationalistic ideology in any form will be completely suppressed.'"

Discuss!

Hollywood Then and Now

Andrew Klavan reminds us of the days when Hollywood was patriotic and what it has become today. From Libertas:

Our Founding redefined nationhood along social-contract lines that Europeans can still only theorize about. Our love of nation at its best was ethical, not ethnic. Our patriotism was loyalty not to race, or even to tradition, but to ideals of individual liberty and republican self-governance.

The films of World War II often reflect just that sort of patriotism. Yes, there’s plenty of pure jingo, not to mention racial slurs so nonchalant that they’re now hilarious: the enemies are always krauts or dagos or—my personal favorite from Fighting Seabees—“Tojo and his bug-eyed monkeys.” But many World War II films emphasize what America stands for. The ceaseless Hollywood roll calls of Spinellis, O’Haras, Dombrowskis, and Steins highlight the e pluribus unum of it all: an ethnically diverse nation unified by democratic ideals. Those ideals were embodied by the characters themselves—by their rough, easygoing demeanor, their friendly interaction over ethnic and class lines, and their suspicion of fascist strongmen. Mussolini “kinda thinks he’s God, don’t he?” says a cynical Humphrey Bogart in Sahara. “Someday that guy’s gonna blow up and bust.”

Most people love their homeland, but these movies understood that, for Americans, the democratic ethos constituted the substance of that land. It was that substance that was worth fighting and dying for, even when the battle was lost. As a doomed soldier remarks in Bataan, “It don’t matter much where a man dies, as long as he dies for freedom.” Hold your breath and wait for a modern filmmaker to say that about Vietnam or Iraq.

Another Form of Cultural Relativism

Are we a slave to our culture? Is our culture fixed? Are our cultural virtues and values right for us and only us? Is there no objective right and wrong inherent in human nature?

These questions were debated in Athens during the 4th century BC. The Greeks were aware that other cultures had different values. They asked what is true by nature and what is true by convention? The Sophists argued it is all relative and there are no objective truths. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle disagreed. Except for the last two centuries, the absolutist version of truth has dominated Western history.

Ethical truths, however, aren’t adopted by simple acts. Character is a lifetime achievement. One can’t jettison one’s character and be another person by a simple act of will. Character has to be cultivated. Culture – a character of a society – is also fixed at any given moment. It often takes generations to change a culture. Today, this truth is often forgotten.

John Kenneth Press, in his book Culturism, does an excellent job of describing the significance and intransigence of culture. Not everyone wants to be free as our President claims; indeed, many will fight against it with every fiber in their body. Others might find the idea appealing but they will readily give up the fight and submit. Facing the fact that culture limits the actions of those in another society is just facing the fact that the ability to act contrary to character is severely limited.

Press is right descriptively but what does he do with this knowledge? For Press, it is all convention. This is how people are and this is how people have to be, given their character and culture, therefore this is what is right for them. Good does not stem from human nature; it comes from cultural conventions and it is for the people of that culture. Each culture has a right to preserve their cultural identity.

I couldn’t’ disagree more. The human mind is man’s tool of survival. Cultivating the habits of character to grasp and understand reality – i.e. reason – is required for survival and flourishing. Reason, therefore, isn’t good by convention but required by our nature. Close you eyes, turn your mind off, and wish for the best; and you’ll die. Diminish your ability to understand the world around you and you’ll be engaging in a spiritually unhealthy practice that endangers your physical well being.

It is true that other cultures don’t hold reason in high regard. To the extent that they reject reason, implicitly or explicitly, they diminish their ability to deal with the challenges of life and in the long run suffer because of it. Just as physical health requires the achievement of certain values so does mental/spiritual health. The mind isn’t superfluous to one’s well being. Neither is one’s character.

Ironically, Press is advocating that we go against our core cultural values. Absolute truth, based on reality and knowable by human reason, is an idea that goes back to the Hellenic philosophers. But merely rejecting “our way” isn’t my complaint with this gentleman’s work. As he notes, we have an evolving culture. However, the question of how we should evolve should be answered with objective reality-based evidence. Our health, wealth, and survival depend on it.

We should be proud of the strengths of our culture but proud because they are objectively better and demonstrably so.

Ali vs. Harris

Ayaan Hirsi Ali takes on Lee Harris and wins in the first round. In a new book Harris examines the West and declares that its main problem is its reliance on reason. Harris gives his reasons in a recent article on the conservative website, TCS Daily. Harris’ final paragraph sums it up:

“In a world that absurdly overrates the advantage of sheer brain power, no one wants to be seen as a member in good standing of the stupid party [as John Stuart Mill once called the British Conservative Party]. Yet stupidity has been and will always remain the best defense mechanism against the ordinary conman and the intellectual dreamer.”

Harris’ bizarre mental gymnastics leads to the above conclusion. Perhaps he’s strangling in his own rationalistic sophistry. Ayaan, flaws and all, still gets to the essence of reason: it is a process of grasping reality that is iterative, testable, and self-correcting.

“Enlightenment thinkers, preoccupied with both individual freedom and secular and limited government, argued that human reason is fallible. They understood that reason is more than just rational thought; it is also a process of trial and error, the ability to learn from past mistakes. The Enlightenment cannot be fully appreciated without a strong awareness of just how frail human reason is. That is why concepts like doubt and reflection are central to any form of decision-making based on reason. “

It is individualistic in both process and purpose.

“But what makes America unique, especially in contrast to Europe, is its resistance to the philosophy of Hegel with its concept of a unifying world spirit. It is the individual that matters most in the United States. And more generally, it is individuals who make cultures and who break them.” …

“Harris also fails to address the enemies of reason within the West: religion and the Romantic movement. It is out of rejection of religion that the Enlightenment emerged; Romanticism was a revolt against reason.”

“Both the Romantic movement and organized religion have contributed a great deal to the arts and to the spirituality of the Western mind, but they share a hostility to modernity. Moral and cultural relativism (and their popular manifestation, multiculturalism) are the hallmarks of the Romantics.”

Perfect? Perhaps not but she goes for the jugular. You have got to love her.

Update1: Ayaan is under constant threat from Islamists. Support her protection. (Hat Tip Jeff Perren)

The New Religion

Socialism is often described as a religion that replaces God with society. Socialism is passé; in concentrated form it has led to the deaths of over 150 million. Besides, socialism, as the word suggests, is too people-focused for the adherents of the newest form of transcendental experience. John Baden explains it here:

“All religions have a litany and the Greens have theirs. We are sinners who sully creation. Our materialism wrecks our planet. Things are bad and getting worse for (other) people want the wrong things. Damnation awaits and darkness is nigh. Repent and renounce now else the end is near. Global warming will ruin our lives and destroy creation.

John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, told of his desire to go to the 'high temples' to 'worship with nature.' Joseph Sax, author of Mountains Without Handrails, wrote that he and his enlightened consorts are 'secular prophets, preaching a new message of salvation.' ...

Genesis tells us Noah built his ark for God would soon send a giant flood to cover the earth. This was deserved punishment for sinful ways. And Al Gore received a Nobel Prize for telling us a similar fate is coming via warmth rather than water. …

… modern secular environmentalism has become a religion; it's Calvinistic asceticism minus God.”