by Charles
While it’s important to revisit errors past in order to not repeat them, we are where we are. The place we’re at right now is the middle of rebuilding Iraq, trying to defeat terrorists and Sunni paramilitary squads and trying to usher in a free, peaceful, non-theocratic representative republic. Improvements to our strategy and tactics can surely be made, but success ultimately depends on our will to prevail, nothing more. To that end, blogfather Josh Trevino has set up a new site, No End But Victory, as his contribution toward strengthening American political will and forebearance. All I can say is, godspeed Josh.
but success ultimately depends on our will to prevail, nothing more
well that’s simply not true.
I think stupidity and incompetence trumps will any day of the week.
The triumph of the “will to prevail”? Brr. Somehow that phrase does not inspire confidence.
Indeed, but it’s a fine example of the sort of hubris that got us into this mess.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t the “non-theocratic” part already been given up for dead?
You’re not cheerleading hard enough!!! *zzzzzzzzzzzzzap*
Excellent post, Charles.
For those who criticize: The question is not what has gone wrong before (much has). The question is not what we should do in a perfect world (this isn’t one). The question is not whether it was right to oppose the Iraq war (reasonably minds can disagree).
The sole question is what goal we must have today.
There is only one answer: Our goal must be victory.
“our will” — dear allah you are all such a bunch of raving ramboesque egomaniacs.
success will be achieved by the IRAQIS’ will, not ours.
Cleek got there first but this is incredible:”…but success ultimately depends on our will to prevail, nothing more.”.
Why not just wish for a pony too!
It doesn’t work that way von.
It seems the only way we can win in Iraq is if we spend even more money, time, and lives. And Americans simply don’t want to do that.
It’s pretty simple. This is just a cost benefit analysis. To win we must do X. If Americans are unwiling to do X then we can’t win. Period.
All this talk about “we must win” is the kind of meaningless blather that got us in this mess to begin with.
Every losing side in every battle has a some point said that winning was the only option. And they were all wrong.
Leaving Iraq ahead of time (in effect, losing) is very much an option. Unless Bush can convince Americans that the cost of winning is worth it, somethin he has failed to do up to now, we will leave.
This is what the pro-war or pro-stay-the-course side needs to acknowledge.
Interesting taxonomy of Enemies. Are Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army “terrorists” or are they (at this moment) on the side of the Shining City on the Hill?
Charles wrote that “victory” means rebuilding Iraq, trying to defeat terrorists and Sunni paramilitary squads and trying to usher in a free, peaceful, non-theocratic representative republic.
Does Tacitus’s manifesto even define his terms so clearly? That site strikes me as incredibly vague in specifics, for a groupblog launched with such a high profile. Is it really just an anti-anti-war site?
What if “winning” (helping to establish a stable Iraqi democracy) = “losing” (e.g. they vote for a repressive theocratic regime a la Iran).
Have we “won” or “lost?”
And as TS Eliot asked: “Would it have been worth it, after all?”
I stare at statements of “will” in gape-mouthed astonishment. Mr. Trevino is allegedly a well-connected, erudite political actor. So he must know that wars are not won with “will” alone. If they were, then Generalplan Ost would still be in operation and Hitler would have died in his sleep still ruling most of Europe.
Wars are won by allocating sufficient resources and applying them effectively. That means bullets, gasoline, food, uniforms, tanks … and soldiers. If supplies of these are insufficient to the task at hand, you lose the battle no matter what level of will you can muster (cf. Battle of Berlin). Similarly, money is the sinews of war; you can’t expect to win a war on the cheap.
The current call for timetables and plans is just a reflection of America’s impatience with the unseriousness of this Administration. “Stay the course!!!” isn’t a plan. It’s the criminal avoidance of a plan.
People who claim to be serious about this war should demand that the Congress immediately impose a war tax to pay for it. That is the starting point for serious debate. Not some mewling cry for bucking up the national “will.”
Why not just wish for a pony too!
The will to pony?
There is only one answer: Our goal must be victory.
For real? Here I thought our goal should be sweet, delicious candy.
Of course, to address your point in equal seriousness but less flippancy, we’re back to the whole point about goals being well-defined and attainable. It’s all very well to say that one’s goal is, for example, to marry a supermodel; it’s quite another to, well, accomplish that, or even go about that in a meaningful way. Thus far, I don’t see anyone putting forth evidence for the fact that we can achieve “victory” in Iraq — provided one defines it in a non-trivial fashion — beyond the classic “We’re America, we can’t possibly lose!” or worse, “We’re America, the only thing we need is willpower!”* That’s not only not how “victory” works, it’s a dangerous, dangerous delusion that will get people killed for little or no gain towards our ostensible goals.
All of which leads to the crux: the language being employed here betrays thinking that is, dare I say, pre-9/11. “The will to prevail”, “our goal must be victory”… these are phrases more suited to Manichean geopolitics, to military conflicts against aggressive nation-states, to, well, sports teams.** Like “the War on Terror”, they imply paradigms and exigencies that simply do not apply to the present conflict; Al Qaeda has no army, there is no easily-defined end-condition like the fall of Berlin or the surrender of Hirohito, “victory” is a nebulous, ill-defined and quite possibly impossible condition, and so forth. And to repeat something I’ve ranted about previously: also like “the War on Terror”, this isn’t merely a poor choice of words by people who are otherwise clear on the essentials; the words are poor precisely because the thinking on the subject is sloppy, unclear, based on premises that are false, or based on reasoning that is at best slipshod and at worse (as for instance I believe holds within the Bush Administration) culpable.
Pinker remarked that “If the eyes are the windows into the soul, then language is the window into the mind.” No offense to von or Charles, but when phrases like “success ultimately depends on our will to prevail, nothing more” and “There is only one answer: Our goal must be victory.” get thrown around, I really, really don’t like what I see.
* Historical examples are well and good, but I’m unconvinced they’re germane. Yes, we rebuilt Germany and Japan into something like our own image — hello the hubris — but the scenarios were simply too different for me to accept the nation-building analogies.
** I’ve noted, as have many others, the disturbing usage of sports metaphors and paradigms when war supporters are describing the conflict, a sort of idiot’s retranslation of metaphors back into their original language shorn of all context. See, for instance, the old translator’s saw on “Out of sight, out of mind.”
The “will to prevail” is surely a necessary condition, but hardly a sufficient one.
But the real trouble with the “will to prevail” is that it tells us nothing about what we must do. It may evoke an image of resolve and determination, but unless these are matched by practical action it is nothing but a feel-good phrase, a substitute for hard work.
If you really have the will to win it means you are prepared to sacrifice towards that goal, to take the steps needed. Having a will to win at, say, football, means you practice a lot, study your opponent, work out intelligent strategies, etc. It doesn’t mean you stride boldly out onto the field and pound your chest and yell.
One sacrifice that a will to win implies is the sacrifice of self-delusion. It requires a realistic assessment of the situation and its requirements. Yet we have an Administration that is mired in self-delusion – on financial requirements, troop requirements, the difficulty of the task, and other things. Perhaps the first step toward some sort of victory is to get leaders who have a real will to achieve it.
“”The will to prevail”, “our goal must be victory”… these are phrases more suited to Manichean geopolitics, to military conflicts against aggressive nation-states, to, well, sports teams.”
You forgot comic book superheroes. Seriously, Charles and von’s words seem to me to be precisely something a comic book writer in my youth would use as an internal monologue. It’s escaping the hard issues of how to accomplish the goal, and pretending that if one wants the goal enough, everything else is merely roadbumps.
MyDD has some recent poll results. Fifty-three percent of those polled think the US should withdraw within 12 months, or sooner. Thirty-eight percent think we should stay until the Iraqis can handle their own defense. I thihnk the number of people willing to stay would go up if the “victory” was defined in a way that made victory seem possible.
“..we are where we are”
Yes, this would be true.
And, yes, a sizable war tax, steeply progressive. NOW.
Further, until Josh Trevino calls for a war tax surcharge (at least to fund the government’s response to the violent opposition to his beloved Draft), his lovely words, written with his Dagny Taggert chin jutting into the howling wind of the “deeply depraved” war opposition and his eyes misting over at every new plot of hallowed ground, are those of a bit player in a child’s school play, waving his plastic sword at the little girl playing the evil Witch.
Unless, of course, his opposition to all new taxes is merely a way of using the War as another way of forcing the bankruptcy of Medicare.
Then I would understand.
But he is sincere. And that is the most important thing.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE TRIUMPHANT VICTORIOUS WILL OF VICTORY!
As long as a people has the strength for a revolution, for a change in worldview and a reordering of its life, it remains capable of making history. If it loses the will and the strength for national renewal, it sinks into the mists of history and perishes.
It established values that will bring unity and greatness over the centuries. It has set goals that will bind the will of generations. It has established laws that will bind the most distant future to the worldview decision of the present.
Historic and worldview battles always are about the victory of an idea that seeks to become absolute, that takes upon itself the transformation of the world. If a victorious revolution has won freedom of action, it cannot be distracted or stopped by complaints about intolerance.
From:
The Victory of Faith
H. Mehringer, “Sieg des Glaubens. Zum 30. Januar,” Der Schulungsbrief, (January 1939), pp. 2-4
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/schul01.htm
“This site must and will be the online rallying-point for all Americans and Iraqis from all political persuasions who understand that the war in Iraq must be won.” (From the site.)
I must believe that Josh Trevino must stop using the “must” key on his keyboard so frequently. He must! (Myself, I kinda wonder about announcing a goal that is, practically speaking, impossible.) (Although if successful, you could get quite good ad rates.)
….wars are not won with “will” alone.
Guerrilla wars and insurgencies generally are.
Let’s qualify: will is hardly the sole criterion for victory, but it is its sine qua non.
Just to be pedantic, will is the sine qua non of every voluntary action.
frex, each of the commenters needed to muster the will to respond to the post.
and now for something completely different: Tacitus, best of luck. quite seriously; for once i’m not being sarcastic.
i wish you all the best in finding a way to bring reasonable peace and tranquility to that troubled country.
(that is what you mean by victory, isn’t it?)
Lovely, by the bye, how a reference to political will immediately conjures up barking references to German nationalism and fascist claptrap.
‘Cause, you know, that’s a thoroughly apt metaphor for the American effort in Iraq. And America itself. Right?
You keep on with that, guys.
Let’s qualify: will is hardly the sole criterion for victory, but it is its sine qua non.
That’s true in a trivial sense: people who don’t have the will to keep fighting generally stop, and if they haven’t won yet when they stop, that means they don’t win. But what examples do you have in mind of guerrilla wars or insurgencies in which the guerrillas or insurgents were beaten by a force that was willing to keep bleeding longer than they were? I’d buy the idea that guerrillas and insurgents win by convincing the other side that the cost is too high to continue the fight, but that doesn’t mean that the answer is for the other side to always be willing to continue the fight regardless of whether the benefits justify the costs.
Francis: yep.
If I thought withdrawal would achieve that, I’d be for it.
….guerrilla wars or insurgencies in which the guerrillas or insurgents were beaten by a force that was willing to keep bleeding longer than they were?
The American Indian wars, the Boer War, the Phillippine Insurrection, the Lebanese Civil War, and the Vietnam War, off the top of my head. (The last surprises people, but we did in fact eliminate the insurgency in the south — once the Viet Cong were destroyed, the war post-1969 was carried on by NVA regulars.) I would argue that the Algerian War is also an instructive example: the FLN “survived” as a political entity in exile, but the French succeeded in driving it from the field, and by the time they capitulated (which was not due to FLN pressure, mind you) there were far more Muslims in the field for France than for the rebellion.
There is only one answer: Our goal must be victory.
Yeah, but from Katzman’s screed, and his glowing citation of Wretchard’s “Mordor,” one wonders: against whom?
Interpreting Charles’ post charitably, I take it to mean: will is not enough; you also need e.g. materiel, soldiers, etc. But since we have those, will will turn out to be the sticking point.
I don’t really agree with this. I think that there are several reasons why we risk losing in Iraq (= having the country dissolve into civil war or become a failed state.) (And leaving aside for now the fact that that was always a serious possibility, Iraq being the country it is. I’m focussing on our contributions.)
The most important is the unbelievable recklessness and ineptitude with which the war has been prosecuted, the unwillingness to rethink assumptions even when they were obviously wrong, and the virtual absence, even now, of anything resembling a strategy.
This is, in my view, also the most important reason why people are losing their will to fight the war. I do not think that the American people lack the will to accept casualties, commit to a fight, etc. What they do lack, understandably in my view, is the will to accept casualties when they suspect that there is no good reason why they are being asked to do so. (And ‘a good reason’ here means not ‘a good reason to fight this war’, but ‘a good reason to fight it in more or less the way it’s currently being fought’.) And they are not willing to commit to a war that even the administration is unwilling to take seriously enough to plan or ask for sacrifices for.
I did not want to go to war with Iraq in the first place, but as I have said before, I think that now that we are there, losing would be a disaster, and that we have to do what we can to avoid it. I have said what I think we might still be able to do. But I cannot imagine why I should support the President in this, since (imho) he has made the crucial and astounding mistakes that got us into the war, got us into the mess we’re in now, and destroyed people’s confidence in his ability to lead us to anything remotely resembling success.
Nor can I see the point of these endless exhortations to will that overlook two crucial points: first, is it still possible to win? and second, what does the President have to do to deserve our commitment?
Then again, perhaps I should not comment, since I am unlikely ever to be one of the “men of good faith” to whom Tacitus’ manifesto was addressed.
More than will we need a coldly calculated analysis of what is really happening on the ground, which means listening to the people who made the unpardonable error of being right about the difficulties of occupation before the first shot was fired. It means accepting that the people currently running the show have made grave errors and either they must completely restructure their worldview or they must be replaced. If neither of these things happen then the patriotic thing to do is to push for withdrawal, with all the negative consequences that implies. The alternative is to watch the US sink further into the swamp, losing lives and credibility.
Victory is preferrable, but you go to war with the politicians you have, not the politicians you might like to have. As long as we’re stuck with the neocons, declaring victory and retreating is less harmful in the long term than trying to do the same self-defeating things over and over again.
OK, now take the next step. How do those examples compare to the situation in Iraq? How did the application of superior will lead to the desired political end state (I don’t seem to recall our “victory” over the Viet Cong as having led to a peaceful and prosperous South Vietnam)? What were the costs, and were they worth it? Just saying “we can keep bleeding indefinitely if we have the will to do so, and as long as we’re willing to keep bleeding we can’t be defeated” isn’t quite the “Eureka!” moment for some of us that it seems to be for you.
And as to allusions to the unsavory history of political rhetoric based on the purported power of the superior will: it’s not enough just to sneer. When you start dismissing disagreement as mere weakness of will, you’re placing yourself in some ugly company, and it takes more than “we’re not like that” to explain why that history isn’t relevant. That doesn’t mean people are asserting that you’re broadly comparable to Hitler, but only that you need to consider whether you’re engaging in the same sort of delusional thinking that ended badly for Germany and Italy in WWII.
Von, I like you, but this:
For those who criticize: The question is not what has gone wrong before (much has). The question is not what we should do in a perfect world (this isn’t one). The question is not whether it was right to oppose the Iraq war (reasonably minds can disagree).
The sole question is what goal we must have today.
There is only one answer: Our goal must be victory
is silly.
In a perfect world, of course, victory could be defined by specific criteria (what is victory? Winning. How does one win? Through victory. But what does victory entail? Winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis. How do we do that? Through victory.) Victory is, once defined, achievable. Furthermore, even “given” will, and given that victory is both defineable and achievable, there needs to be at least some meaningful chance that the subset of substantially possible strategies employed by the Bush administration can lead to victory.
I don’t know what “victory” is, and neither does the Bush administration. It cannot be defined without referencing puppies and imaginary numbers. It is thus unachievable. Even if it were achievable, this administration lacks the desire to actually implement any strategy that would accomplish victory. Will has nothing to do with it, not in a perfect world, but BECAUSE THE WORLD IS NOT PERFECT.
IN THIS UNPERFECT WORLD, the question of what goal must we have today is going to be answered by how much money and lives (not to mention the significant national security risk we undertake by tying up our national security resources) we are willing to throw away before we give up.
(Disclaimer: I was against going into the war. Once we went into the war, up until midsummer 2004, I was against leaving because the result would be catastrophic. Though the result STILL WOULD be catastrophic, it has come to my realization that the catastrophy is inevitable, and the size and scope of it, along with the difficulty of managing it, increases substantially the longer we remain. Better the smaller catastrophy now than the greater one later).
I read the Trevino Manifesto at the new site — it is his typical garbage. Frankly, he cares less about winning, and more about preventing Republicans for being accountable for the losses that have already occurred on their watch. Completely missing from his Manifesto for “No End But Victory” is any discussion or recommendation on what must be done to achieve victory other than cheerleading the current failed leadership.
As if the will to win somehow matters more than competence and a basic plan for winning, and that left wingers are somehow causing the failures that have occurred to date. Sorry — your dear leader gets 100% of the blame for failure to date, and expect more failure so long as you continue to back him.
My first suggestion for addressing the Iraq war mess — insist on the prompt resignation of the Bush administration (yes — Bush admits error and leaves) since they obviously get an F for their efforts, and we’ll pick new leaders after a debate amongst them about what they would do and who we think has the best plan.
I am sure this plan would top anything Trevino proposes, and has no chance of being supported. No — its more important to demonize the war critics than get it right. Which by the way (as Hagel said to great effect recently) was the Viet Nam pattern and had a lot to do with causing failure in that instance.
By the way — which politician was reponsible for what Trevino describes as the cut and run Viet Nam strategy, which we should allegedly not repeat in Iraq? That would be Nixon (I can hear it now — “but he was forced into it by those lefties”).
It’s not reasonable to expect Bush to resign. It might just be within reason to hope that he would fire the neocons and replace them with regular common sense conservatives. If, in addition, he was to appoint a group of nonpartisan experts to formulate a reality based strategy for victory that would be a best case plausible scenario.
dmbeaster: I read the Trevino Manifesto at the new site — it is his typical garbage. Frankly, he cares less about winning, and more about preventing Republicans for being accountable for the losses that have already occurred on their watch.
You can say a lot of things about Trevino, but I think here you are quite wrong. He sincerely cares about winning. Whether his prescriptions will lead to his desired end is an entirely different question, but I think he means what he says here.
“‘There is only one answer: Our goal must be victory’ is silly.”
Yeah, but who can always stifle their Inner Patton?
Lovely, by the bye, how a reference to political will immediately conjures up barking references to German nationalism and fascist claptrap.
No — the point (which you get put pretend not to) is that empty cheerleading rhetoric about “will” has no meaning, as evidenced by the fact that anyone can and has given the same message (including odious Nazis). Or for that matter, any football coach during a half time rah rah speech to inspire the team. Would you feel better if someone instead used as an example the half-time speech for the 1-9 team down three touchdowns?
Its just hot air, and while nice and inspiring as icing on top of something substantive, it is vacuous when detached from real policy discussion. And your new site seems more interested in cheerleading than policy.
“Which by the way (as Hagel said to great effect recently)”
Yes. (I may have another post on this in the future.)
Tac,
as others point out all voluntary actions require will so simply saying we need the will to win isn’t saying much.
But if what you mean to say is that we must be willing to outbleed and outlast the insurgents then I think you need to address the reality that Americans simply have no appetite for that. As Rumsfeld could have said you go to war with the public you have, not the one you want.
All this talk of will is meaningless until you explain how to convince Americans that their cost-benefit analysis is wrong.
And your new site seems more interested in cheerleading than policy.
Does Trevino have the legs for that? Unlikely, I should think.
Belgravia Dispatch
For those who get tired of bashing Tacitus and want a perspective on the war not wholly opposite to Tac’s but omitting much of the partisanship I recommend Greg Djerejian.
The will to act foolish!
Aren’t there some smart people, both military and civilian, in both the U.S. and Iraq, who feel the American military presence is what is predominantly fuelling the insurgency?
And, like, what’s the plan, Stan?
From A Farewell to Arms(1932)
[Gino] “Have you ever noticed the difference [food] makes in the way you think?”
“Yes,” I said. “It can’t win a war but it can lose one.”
“We won’t talk about losing. There is enough talk about losing. What has been done this summer cannot have been done in vain.”
I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene besides the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rives, the numbers of regiments and the dates. Gino was a patriot, so he said things that separated us sometimes, but he was also a fine boy and I understood his being a patriot. He was born one. He left with Peduzzi in the car to go back to Gorizia.
You can say a lot of things about Trevino, but I think here you are quite wrong. [Frankly, he cares less about winning, and more about preventing Republicans for being accountable for the losses that have already occurred on their watch.]
Yeah — he clearly cares about winning, so my emphasis is off, but anyone who really cares about winning must be a massive critic of the current leadership. Trevino cares way too much about bashing lefty critics at the expense of a logical discussion about what has gone wrong, and will say all sorts of odious things for that purpose.
Case in point — who is it that he says has to be countered (per Charles link above)? The anti-war, cut-and-run crowd, which fears not defeat, nor dishonor, nor an Iraq under the terrorist heel…. It’s this sort of childish demonizing rhetoric, detached from any real assesssment of why things are going wrong, that demonstrates his priorities. It’s about bashing war critics rather than promoting “victory.”
Plus its funny to now see that “Iraq is becoming like Viet Nam” is now a convenient rightie talking point if the issue is “cut and run.” But of course, it isn’t if we are talking about why Iraq policy has been a failure to date.
The talk of will doesn’t imply Nazis to so so much as it implies that victory is primarily a military matter, which is not the case. Hearts and minds and nation-building are at least as important as military might. For example, if we are going to have a victory in Iraq, meaning the successful establishment of a free, peaceful government, we and the Iraqis will have to deal effectively with situations like the torture done to Sunni prisoners in a Interior Department bunker. By “deal with” I don’t mean coverup, minimize, ignore or rationalize away. There cannot be a victory if the government we help create is torturing people. Unfortunately this administration isn’t in a very good position to tell the Iraqi government that they must not use torture. It is over issues like this that we court failure.
Bob, Belgravia might be less partisan, but its all either obvious or trife.
The blog makes great heyday of the likelihood of Shias massacring Sunnis and Sunnis fighting in a civil war if we withdraw. Well, guess what. The likelihood of that isn’t going to change, and us putting the Shias in all sorts of powerful position is just going to make the catastrophe worse. If “winning” means “no civil war”, then the problem is Bush has failed to outline a scenario where that even happens, much less one in which our actions prevent this from happening. Unless you propose simply a permanent presence, in which our country will go bankrupt while we are unable to deal with even worse humanitarian crisies (Sudan, Rwanda).
Given the lack of concrete specifics at Endless War…I mean No End But Victory, and given Josh Trevino’s history as a “speechwriter for the George W. Bush Administration” (so he knows of what he speaks!), I fear that dmbeaster may be quite right: this is just another attempt to demonize the loyal opposition.
I think we should also insist that our “victory” in Iraq not come at the cost of a larger loss – IOW that we not pay too high a price for our victory. For example, several years ago the United States government could have expressed outrage at the revelations that Shiite members of the Iraqi government have been torturing Sunni Iraqis and have been taken seriously. What’s more, we would have had the moral conviction and the moral authority to do something about it. Now, we don’t, and may not for a long time to come. To me, that’s a significant loss and it has to be balanced against any “victory” we might have.
I feel like I’m trying to express something profound and important and not doing it very well, but I hope that it’s coming across. If someone else can say it better, please do.
We can’t win if we don’t want to fight anymore, that’s for sure. But if the proponents of this thing want people to get behind it, they’re going to have to offer something more than ‘the beatings will continue until morale improves.’
The Admin has had its way with everything about this war. Whatever opposition there has been has had no effect up to now, and won’t have any more for at least six months. You’ve had all the ‘will’ you needed — and where are you? Is victory just around the corner? Have maybe the various corners been oversold?
You want people to support the thing? Stop treating them like children, traitors, or both. The leadership should start acting like grown-ups, and give up petulance. Admit prior errors. Reach across and see what the other guy wants.
The current position of war proponents in the internal US debate is ‘submit now, or we all die.’ I guess it’s better than ‘submit now, anyone who doesn’t is traitor scum’ but don’t you think ‘hey we need to work together to get this thing right’ would maybe be a little more productive?
If you want allies, act like it.
We are not now the people who defeated the Native Americans, and we will never be those people again.
I am going to take my crack at an interpretation, and after that an analysis, of Tacitus’ position and see what falls out…
The debate here has largely been turning upon the ‘will’ comment. Okay; let’s look into this. Now, it would clearly be the act of a fool to assume that will alone is the ONLY thing we need for victory, correct? And Tacitus, whatever his other faults, clearly isn’t a fool, though like all of us he might be foolISH at times. So I’m going to assume that Tacitus believes the following as givens…
1) That, in addition to the will to prevail (succeed, triumph, insert your synonym of choice here) one also needs the resources (in this context men and equipment) and the ability to marshall them (via COMPETENT policy executed through equally ‘managerial’ personnel) in the execution.
2) That this country and our assorted allies (yes, yes, insert your own ‘what allies we have left’ snark here) have more than enough resources and competent people to marshall them to prevail in Iraq specifically and the larger worldwide effort against Islamofascism and terrorism.
Number 2 leads into…
3) Since we have the resources and the men to use them, therefor, all we need is the last leg of the tripod, the will to follow through.
In the absence of him telling me I’m wrong, I’m going to go with this interpretation of Tacitus’ words, because I am a charitable man.
Now, for what it’s worth, I think he’s absolutly right. We DO have the resources to achieve victory in Iraq, victory being defined as an open, democratic society with the institutions to preserve and protect progressive values. And this country is brimming with people who are probably smart enough to pull it off.
But let’s talk about this pesky will thing, eh?
Now, it seems obvious to me, an admitted layman, that what we need to succeed in Iraq are the following things;
Enough men to secure the ENTIRE COUNTRY AND ITS BORDERS, all the time (that’s 24/7/365), until we can train an entire, fully-functioning, Iraqi army corps and police force (by which I mean a civil, non-military peacekeeping authority.)
To give the country a modern infrastructure. It HAD this under Saddam, you know; electrical grids, mine-free, paved roads, functioning sewage system, state-of-the-art oil extraction industry, all that good stuff. If a two-bit asshat like Saddam can build that stuff, we should be able to do so; and the process needs to be open, and audited and reviewed FIERCELY; none of this no-bid contract, nine billion dollars being handed out off the back of trucks shit.
And to establish a functioning Iraqi government and the institutions therein through a long, deliberative, open, process, that treats these subjects with the dignity and gravity they deserve, over an extended tiemframe of leisurely debate and construction. You don’t RUSH something like that, it takes however long it takes.
Now, we clealry have the ABILITY to do all this. But do we have the will?
And you know what? I say, with all respect to Tacitus, and to Charles Bird, and to Johann Hari and Andrew Sullivan and all the other bloggers and Senators and Congressmen and everyone else whose calls for the freedom of the Iraqi people have been loud and laudable…
No, sir. No, we do not.
And you know why? To get the men we’d need to fully secure the country, WE’D NEED A DRAFT. And above and beyond THAT, we’d need to seriously overhaul how we train these new draftees, as fighting an insurgency and securing towns in a foreign country that additionally has a foreign CULTURE is a lot different than being trained to fight a well-defined enemy on the field of battle, which is, in fact, how we train our soldiers.
To rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure, we’d need to pour billions and billions (that’s billion with a ‘B’) more dollars, both in cash and in materiel, into the country, neccessitating certain fiscal sacrifices here at home. And making the process open and uncorrupt would not be in the best interests of many companies and industries that, let us be frank, have a LOT of influence on our government.
And promulgating an extensive, drawn-out, COMPLETELY OPEN Iraqi government building process (no back-room deals, none of this flying our hand-picked hatchet men to Baghdad to twist arms behdin closed doors at the last minute) risks them coming up with something we, or at least the administration, find ‘unacceptable.’
The current administration has proven, categorically, time and time again, that it simply doesn’t have the will to manage this occupation. It cannot build infrastructure without corruption. It cannot manage its money correctly. It sends 24-year old CHILDREN whose only qualification is commitment to an extreme neo-liberal economic philosophy to try and rebuild a shattered nation. Obsidian Wings has documented its malfeasence extensively, and even if it hadn’t, throw a rock; you’ll hit another source that’s done it as well or better. The Bush administration lacks the will, the DISCIPLINE, the basic ability to clean house, roll up its sleeves, and govern COMPETENTLY, to, as it were, nation-build. It actually doesn’t seem interested in doing so, truth be told; it wants to rebuild Iraq using the absolute bare minimum of troops, and using a specific political and economic idealogy, and won’t countenance anything else.
As for the military situation… disregarding the politicians for a moment, the COUNTRY won’t accept a draft. I don’t believe it will, not for one second. That makes it political suicide for the party that proposes it and tries to push it through.
So, to both Tacitus and Charles, after going through all this in my mind, both today and many times over the preceding months, I have to say; I don’t think anyone WANTS us to lose in Iraq. But I’m not seeing a way to victory. We do, in fact, lack the will. And I, personally, blame our leaders for getting us into this mess in the first place, where there doesn’t seem to be any good way out.
Wow, that was a long-ass post. The perils of wanting to form ones thoughs as complete as possible, I suppose. I hope I stayed at least reasonably on-topic. And that posts made in the hour I spent writing this didn’t render it irrelevant. ^.^;;
Ted: I feel like I’m trying to express something profound and important and not doing it very well, but I hope that it’s coming across. If someone else can say it better, please do.
I think you made your point just fine, and it’s a point worth making.
CharleyCarp: We are not now the people who defeated the Native Americans, and we will never be those people again.
I did wonder about this example. I’m sure if we had the will to ethnically cleanse Iraq, we could do it. Then we could settle the place, defend the borders with our massive, technologically superior military, and declare victory. What is hard about the current conflict is that the war is more immediate and more transparent than it has ever been in the history of man. You can’t talk about the will of the American People to do what has to be done without also talking about how the information age is making it more difficult than ever to pretend that war isn’t among the worst horrors man can visit on man, and more difficult (though not impossible, as we saw just this week) to sweep atrocities, including our own, under the rug.
Aside from dropping snark about how “will” seems to be directly measured by how many websites you start up or post in, it’s difficult to discuss this when “will” is defined as following the policy I think is right. (though “think” doesn’t convey the level of certitude involved)
“Josh Trevino’s history as a “speechwriter for the George W. Bush Administration””
He writes the lies the whole world sings…
Sing it!
dmbeaster: Would you feel better if someone instead used as an example the half-time speech for the 1-9 team down three touchdowns?
Anyone have the email of the Duke football coach? Let’s see if the only thing standing between them and a victory over Virginia Tech (in Blacksburg, no less) is “the will to prevail”.
To the topic: what CharleyCarp and Mercutio said. “The will to prevail” is actually secondary here; first, you need a (meaningful) plan to put your will behind. And bluntly, it’s pretty damn obvious that what we actually need to do — including, as repeatedly noting upthread, firing the incompetents (I’m looking at you, Bush Administration) who got us into this mess, and generally injecting accountability into the picture — we’re not willing to do. Absent calls for for real strategy, for real accountability, for real leadership, for real sacrifice, for real commitment, any “will to prevail” is so much hot air.
And yes, Tac, when exaltations of the “will to prevail” (I know it’s not your phrase, so consider this a genre rather than a specific citation) are coupled with denunciations of the opposition as traitors — does “He’s not anti-war. He’s just on the other side.” sound familiar? — it does indeed sound fascistic. I’m not saying that you’re about to don jackboots and march around DC looking for a beer hall to putsch or anything, but I’d recommend you have a long hard think about why it is these refrains of yours have overtones of 1922 and 1933 and what this means about the direction these policies are headed.
I’m pretty certain you’re a) not going to, and b) dismiss this with some sarcastic sneer (likely using the word “obsessive”, which would just be sad in this context) but hey, I tried. And good luck with the project (like Francis, no sarcasm at all here); odious right-wing slander notwithstanding, pretty much everyone wants us to succeed to Iraq, myself most definitely included.
Jon H.: He writes the lies the whole world sings…
This is way out of bounds.
“This is way out of bounds.”
No its not, he’s just writing them by order of his political masters. They aren’t *his* lies.
“And good luck with the project (like Francis, no sarcasm at all here); odious right-wing slander notwithstanding, pretty much everyone wants us to succeed to Iraq, myself most definitely included.”
Indeed.
Lily says: “The talk of will doesn’t imply Nazis to so so much as it implies that victory is primarily a military matter, which is not the case. Hearts and minds and nation-building are at least as important as military might.”
This is entirely right, except for the one correction that hearts and minds and nation-building are what the Iraq mission is, as a necessity of a foundation for any further good to come from Iraq.
The military aspect of providing security in Iraq and hunting down enemy fighters is only important insofar as it supports the establishment of political stability and democracy in Iraq. (Although a cynic might argue that the latter can be done without if the former exists; that’s probably true, but it’s not what I’d call a “victory,” exactly, myself.)
“Wow, that was a long-ass post.”
But worth it, and important. IIRC, Tacitus has called for a draft(encountering strong opposition from his friends and allies), and the expenditure of greater resources, which would come from budget cuts. Tacitus might also agree with much in your comment, and express deep sorrow at some sort of decline in American’s willingness to sacrifice. Tacitus is not the most fervent Bush supporter, but is a good Republican and conservative. He may perhaps via the new site hope to provide in a small way, the national leadership Bush has not.
…
I would speculate or philosophize that Tacistus and his allies are reaping what they have sown. Conservativism and libertarianism are unlikely to foster the unity and national will to great projects and sacrifices. The period of America’s greatest power & prestige was not coincidentally the age of liberal ascendency.
Well, recently. I have long arguments about this, involving Sparta & Athens, Teddy Roosevelt’s connected progressivism and imperialism, etc. Not today.
I am a liberal and Democrat(converted from casual libertarianism after 9/11) because I believe in a strong defense; and I favor a strong defense approaching militarism and imperialism because I believe it is the only means to sustain a liberal society.
“Conservativism and libertarianism are unlikely to foster the unity and national will to great projects and sacrifices.”
That’s national greatness conservatism, Bob! You can’t diss them here in the war room!
Oops, sorry. L’il Merkin Muffley moment.
Mr. Trevino’s condescending answer is insulting enough that it must be countered:
Lovely, by the bye, how a reference to political will immediately conjures up barking references to German nationalism and fascist claptrap.
‘Cause, you know, that’s a thoroughly apt metaphor for the American effort in Iraq. And America itself. Right?
Here’s a bit of advice for Mr. Trevino: if you don’t like being compared to the Nazis, then stop writing like Goebbels. You reference the abstract “will,” but you don’t say anything specific about how to achieve the “victory.” You do, however, identify the Enemy Within:
The anti-war, cut-and-run crowd, which fears not defeat, nor dishonor, nor an Iraq under the terrorist heel, is well-organized. Its online haunts are well-known enough…
This is the Dolchstosslegende. You don’t like being compared to the Nazis? Too damned bad. You choose to demonize Americans as cowards and traitors, because they think this war has been fatally mis-managed. That demonization was your choice.
…I favor a strong defense approaching militarism and imperialism because I believe it is the only means to sustain a liberal society.
Ack! A liberal society sustained at a cost to other societies. Or perhaps you meant “imperialism” in a way that I’m unfamiliar with.
stickler writes: “Too damned bad. You choose to demonize Americans as cowards and traitors, because they think this war has been fatally mis-managed.”
Not just mis-managed, but mis-conceived.
The people who lacked will were the administration hawks; they had only the will for a small war, so they prepared for a small war, but that was not what they got.
(Before anyone says “But this is a small war, historically speaking”, the point is, they planned for an even smaller war.)
That’s the failure of will that doomed this war. It was Bush’s lack of will, Rumsfeld’s lack of will, Cheney’s lack of will, Feith’s lack of will, Wolfowitz’s lack of will, etc, etc, etc, etc.
If America lacks will now, we’re just following our leaders’ examples.
This is the Dolchstosslegende.
Not yet; it’s only the Dolchstosslegende when we get blamed for the defeat of an otherwise invincible State. Though a number of people on the right have done this (Dave Neiwert was tracking the evolution of the American Dolchstosslegende for a while, don’t recall any examples off-hand), I haven’t seen Tac perpetrate that obscenity.
Demonization, however? Yeah, it’s that in spades.
Not yet; it’s only the Dolchstosslegende when we get blamed for the defeat of an otherwise invincible State.
It’s Dolchstosslegende foreplay.
A Fallujah update, by the way.
“Mr. Trevino’s condescending answer is insulting enough that it must be countered”
Have you no glove? Or second?
I’d like to return to the commitment to victory. Let’s be economists for a second and assume that the will exists. What would be really nice would be a little three-part series:
1. Here’s where we are (data, not anecdotes, on iraqi polity, economy and military).
2. Here’s where we’re going (the conditions under which US troops will leave Iraq).
3. Here’s the general parameters of the plan to get from 1 to 2 (continue grinding out troop training and wait for the outcome of the elections; do something radically different …)
for all we talk about iraq, we (ok, I) have relatively little information on how things are over there. What is the crime rate? Production of electricity? Delivery of potable water? Provision of sewer services?
How many cities have effective local govt? Who provides those services and will they step down following elections? Are schools open and attended by both boys and girls?
Is there an economy? What is the unemployment rate? What can be done about unemployment — like providing job training?
The daily casualty count is exhausting and the “good” news, like the capture of another Al Qaeda in Iraq lieutenant, doesn’t have much force to it and the body count news (“another 50 insurgents killed”) is meaningless when we don’t know how many insurgents there are, whether we’re killing them faster than we’re making them and whether the pentagon numbers have any crediblity.
USAID’s website is so cheerful it’s hard to take seriously. I’d prefer a more honest approach which recognizes the setbacks that have been suffered.
once again, best of luck on achieving victory.
OT: Gary’s link to the Fallujah story gives me an idea.
It seems like it could be a good thing if we could provide friendly Iraqis a means to mark IEDs they see installed, without identifying themselves as narcs.
Like, maybe, dayglow-orange paintballs.
Basically, if a friendly spots some Iraqis planting an IED in the neighborhood, the friendly could (if within range) hide behind a curtain indoors and shoot a few dayglow paintballs at the IED.
Even if the IED isn’t in range of the paintball gun, they could make a warning splatter that would be better than nothing.
It would be difficult for insurgents to identify the source of the tip, making it safer to provide the information.
By directly marking the IED with paint the message would be immediately available to local troops at risk, without the delays of passing a tip by phone through channels (or the risk of a tip being intercepted by compromised Iraqi personnel).
Perhaps the paintballs could use some kind of marker wavelength that would be invisible to the naked eye, but visible through some kind of equipment. That’d make it harder for insurgents to respond by marking everything with dayglo, or marking a pile of junk next to the real IED.
Just a thought, anyhow.
Or they could give the secret signal, a la Team America
Jon H – alternatively a phone number with guaranteed anonymity. I gather that cell phone use is pretty widespread in the areas where the worst violence is taking place. Nobody wants an IED to go off in their neighborhood unless they are supporting the insurgents.
“Or they could give the secret signal, a la Team America”
That kinda assumes they’re around when the troops happen come by.
I’m guessing they don’t want to be hanging around in the vicinity of an IED if they can avoid it; at least not without some good walls in the vicinity.
There are worse things in the world than losing a war. One of them, sometimes, is continuing the war (see Vietnam). Sometimes, losing can be a blessing over the long run (see Germany 1939 versus 2005 or even the US in 1960 versus 1976). Victory is usually better, but only if it can be acheived by reasonable means. Don’t want victory so bad that you’re willing to make any sacrifice to get it–including sacrifice of the values that make the US a country worth fighting for.
Friendly Iraqis pointing paintball guns out of their windows along roads frequented by U.S. troops?
I’ll give you credit for thinking outside the box, but I suspect participation would drop off dramatically once these Iraqis start getting shot by U.S. troops who take them for snipers.
togolosh writes: “Jon H – alternatively a phone number with guaranteed anonymity.”
That would provide anonymity, but it adds bureaucracy which could prevent the message from being received by endangered troops in time. And there’s language issues, and the difficulty in expressing the IED’s position.
Better if the soldier in the truck can see a marked IED on the road ahead.
“Friendly Iraqis pointing paintball guns out of their windows along roads frequented by U.S. troops?”
Hm. Perhaps a less gun-shaped paintball gun would help.
Seems solvable, however.
Interpreting Charles’ post charitably, I take it to mean: will is not enough; you also need e.g. materiel, soldiers, etc. But since we have those, will will turn out to be the sticking point.
That’s not what I meant, Hil. We need to improve on our strategy and tactics, and I believe the clear-and-hold strategy, similar to the CAP program in Vietnam, is a workable one. But since this is a gritty terrorist-guerilla war, we’ll continue to make mistakes and fall into snafus as we go. That’s where the will part must come in. Not just will, sustained will. The president needs to be fully involved in communicating this and, until last week, he hasn’t. Bush also needs to start talking about interim goals and milestones (something he really hasn’t done), not just the ultimate end goal. And at the risk of being a broken record, he also needs to regularly and consistently communicate that victory is defined by a substantive quelling of the terrorists and Sunni groups, and by the establishment of a free, peaceful, non-theocratic representative republic. At this bumbling stage of his presidency, he really doesn’t have any other choice.
” Not just will, sustained will.”
Will may help win wars, but will also helps people drink themselves to death.
You’re not going to get public’s will unless we know what it is we’re being asked to apply it to.
And that’s going to be difficult at this point, since we don’t trust the Bush administration to come clean. Indeed, the Bush administration is deeply averse to coming clean on anything.
Clear and hold will require a significant increase in manpower, unless you are going to leave the “hold” part to Iraqi forces, who clearly aren’t ready for primetime now, or in the immediate future. If that. And a true CAP, even if effective, will probably mean a rise in the casualty rate, as it’s counterpart in Vietnam experienced.
More soldiers. More casualties.
And, really, for what end?
Jon H: i’ll join in giving you credit for out-of-the-box thinking, but i suspect that your friendly iraqi would have a dramatically reduced lifespan. Does he really have much of a chance of tipping off the americans on a regular basis without getting caught?
Collaborators can receive some of the harshest punishment.
Indeed, the Bush administration is deeply averse to coming clean on anything.
Though they did come clean and admit to using white phosphorous as a weapon in Falluja.
Also, the clearing part of clear-and-hold probably means more people in detention being tortured.
CB:
The Pres needs to convince people that he can accomplish the victory you are talking about. This has two parts, that it can be done, and that it can be done by his administration. You may believe both, but there are plenty who disbelieve one or both of these propositions.
Calling such people traitors, or a drag on the war effort, or whatever, might play well with the base. It would certainly appeal to many of the first commenters at Mr. Trevino’s new site. It’s not going to convince anyone of the two propositions, though. That would take the hard work of governance — and would have to start with some realistic talk from the President.
Does the President have the will to win, if doing so requires compromise with domestic opposition? If so, I haven’t seen any evidence of it.
Francis writes: “Collaborators can receive some of the harshest punishment.”
Yes, I know, that’s why I suggested paintball or some other projectile-based marking system, as opposed to, say, a spray can or post-it notes.
This would make it a lot easier to assist without exposing one’s identity. Shoot the paint pellets, near-silently, from a position of concealment. Could be from your bedroom, could be from a passing car, could be from behind a fence.
If the markings are not easily visible to the unaided eye, so much the better. The insurgents won’t even know their IED has been marked.
Even if the insurgents have someone watching the planted IED, it would be difficult to see the paintball in flight, and would be difficult to trace its path back to the source.
It wouldn’t be risk-free, but the insurgents would have a harder time pinning it down.
By comparison, going to the security forces carries the risk that you’re dealing with an insurgent mole.
CCarp writes: “Does the President have the will to win, if doing so requires compromise with domestic opposition?
What, you mean his Dad?
;^)
Ugh: the Pentagon came clean(er)… they still have some straight-shooting military types, aka dead-enders there. If it was up to the WH, Scotty would repeat “I have already answered that” until entropy claims him.
Clear and hold will require a significant increase in manpower, unless you are going to leave the “hold” part to Iraqi forces, who clearly aren’t ready for primetime now, or in the immediate future. If that. And a true CAP, even if effective, will probably mean a rise in the casualty rate, as it’s counterpart in Vietnam experienced.
More soldiers. More casualties.
And, really, for what end?>
How daft are you???
The end, you ask? But — the end is victory!
Don’t you know how to read?
People like you are the problem — you simply lack the will. Scratch that, not just the will — sustained will.
Tut tut.
“The end, you ask? But — the end is victory!”
And with victory, the tote bag!
CharleyCarp:
OK, now I’m curious. I can’t believe you would find Tac’s post more convincing if he reached out (or whatever). I find it hard to believe that you wouldn’t reject out of hand an argument which had as its thesis, “All it takes is will.” I may well be projecting my own epistemic system on you, but the thesis is pretty much all I need to read before classing it with claims about the moon being in the 13th house and the like.
I think we’re talking about two very different worldviews which are not translatable, and I think you’re on my side (of the worldviews). Assuming I’m right about your own worldview, isn’t it disingenous to ask Tac to reach out; you aren’t likely to accept the sort of argument he can make anyway. (The reverse is true, as well, obviously.)
I took a look at the site and noticed that windsofchange.net is a contributor. I stopped reading that site when the consensus among the contributors emerged that the nazis were leftists. At that degree of detachment from reality meaningful engagement is impossible. I think there is a real opportunity for good ideas to percolate from the blogosphere into policy, but the starting point has to be a willingness to reject dearly held beliefs. If the imperative to smear political enemies ranks higher than the desire to formulate solutions to difficult problems the enterprise is doomed.
Jesus told a parable with the punch line (I paraphase) “Be faithful with the little things, and you’ll be rewarded with bigger ones.” What I, at least, would need to see from the Bush administration is some good stewardship at home. Say, an independent audit of all money promised in State of the Union speeches to determine how much was asked for in budgets, how much budgeted, how it’s been spent, and what results there are to show for it. Or a review of all agency heads appointed this administration, focusing on the question “Why are you qualified for this job?”, with comparisons to similar positions in civilian life. Or anything of the sort – wholly within the executive’s power, so there’s no question of being undercut by sinister wimpy outsiders, run openly and honestly, leading to an outcome that promotes liberty and opportunity.
Then maybe we can start to talk about trusting them with anything else.
Another “Fallujah one year later” story, in Time, by Christopher Allbritton (of Back to Iraq.
From Fallujah One Year Later, the Iraq Catch-22 perfectly encapsulated:
At a recent meeting, city council members pleaded with Lieut. Colonel Bill Mullen to let Fallujah police itself. But Mullen refused and demanded that council members stop turning a blind eye to insurgent activities. “If the security situation does not improve,” Mullen said, “guess what? We’re not going anywhere.”
Tim, I agree that will is a sine qua non. I do not necessarily agree that “nothing more” is required, and I especially do not agree that conflating domestic sceptics (or opponents) with the enemy is moving the ball down the field in the right direction in any sense. CB had a most not long ago about the media theatre of the war, and I have to say how much impressed I was by the comments to the Xpost on RedState: the obsession on the part of so many with defeating the near enemy, with so little apparent interest in the far enemy.
As if the near enemy — Cindy Sheehan, the NYT, you, me, whoever — had any real impact on anything.
All that said, I think we are winning. In some senses, anyway. I had an interesting chat this evening with a guy from Human Rights Watch, who has been running down stories from the “Prison of Darkness” aka the “Salt Pit.” (A CIA black site near the Kabul airport). I had a declassified story to tell him. Anyway, he’s spent a lot of time in Afghanistan recently, and over the years going back well before 9/11, and told me how tired ordinary Afghanis are of the mujahadeen, and how little interest they have in the insurgency there. In contrast to Iraq, where he finds widespread sympathy. (He told me that US troops aren’t all that popular in Af, but NATO troops are very popular.)
So, not won yet in Iraq, but we’re getting closer to a government that will feel secure enough to tell us to leave. That’s victory, so far as I’m concerned. With us gone, the various paramilitaries will face off, and reach some kind of equilibrium, but all will reject the AQ/Zarqawi types. They are useful now to any number of interests, but with us out, their utility drops away, and the draw of Fighting the Crusader drops away.
So what is required of us other than will to acheive this victory? Actually not all that much. We should refrain from doing anything stupid. We should not destroy cities, or kill innocents (accidentally or by design). We should arm and train the Iraqi army. After the elections, we should start drawing down, and change our role on joint missions to more supervision and less actually doing stuff. Even this is hard and dangerous for our fine men and women, but we should make sure they, and everyone else understands, that victory here will and must be an Iraqi victory won by Iraqis.
I realize that avoiding humiliation/gloating/triumphalism requires great will power. What I wonder is whether our conservative friends have the will to actually win this thing.
Sorry Charles, looks like most of the objectively pro-Islamofacist posters here want tinkerbell to die.
Only you can save her. You will just have to clap louder yourself.
Since VN has been invoked again, I climb back up on my high historian’s horse to comment:
Tacitus, enumerating guerrilla wars won by the will to hold course: the Vietnam War, off the top of my head. (The last surprises people, but we did in fact eliminate the insurgency in the south — once the Viet Cong were destroyed, the war post-1969 was carried on by NVA regulars.)
This is indeed the view of Harry Summers, and has become a “meme” of the right, but it ain’t necessarily so. See in particular Peter Brush, “Reassessing the Viet Cong Rule after Tet” and various articles of Ngo Vinh Long, of which the most accessible is probably “The Tet Offensive and Its Aftermath” in Marc Jason Gilbert and William Head (eds.), The Tet Offensive (Praeger, 1996).
What Brush and Long contend, based on both American and Vietnamese sources, is that whereas the NLF (“VC”) did indeed suffer heavy losses during Tet (1968), they began to recover almost immediately thereafter, and remained a potent and numerous force in the provinces right up to the end of the war. It is true that the direct involvement of NVA forces in the south was much greater after that date, and they took the initiative in most of the offenses of the last six years of the war (esp. 1972 and 1975), but the NLF was still very much in existence, restored in number, and an active player in the war, not “destroyed” in any meaningful sense.
It is reasonable to assume that without the incursion of NVA forces the Saigon regime (and thus the US) would not have lost the war when it did. But that, as I have previously tried to explain, is not by any means the same as arguing that it/we would have won the war. If we were content to keep US troops in substantial numbers in South Vietnam – there were half a million there in 1969 – we could undoubtedly still be there. They couldn’t drive us out by force. But the losses of Tet did not turn around the war for the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese, as almost every study at the province or village level reveals. (E.g., Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An, Berkeley, 1972) The insurgency continued, and it is misleading to suggest that we had “destroyed” it by 1969.
I leave it to others to draw parallels to Iraq today, as they see fit.
Does anyone really give a shit about Iraq?
Seriously man we got our lives to lead right here at home. What is the worst that can happen if we pull out of Iraq right away. Nothing of any real consequence to us.
In three years no one will car any more about Iraq except for right wing toadies who don’t have a freakin life.
Gary Farber asks:
“Mr. Trevino’s condescending answer is insulting enough that it must be countered”
Have you no glove? Or second?
The first response I wrote was a good deal pithier. But it would have violated the posting rules. Spectacularly. So I toned it down.
To that end, blogfather Josh Trevino has set up a new site, No End But Victory, as his contribution toward strengthening American political will and forebearance.
Which includes: “Perhaps the biggest theme from the anti-war movement is that George W. Bush lied to the American people in order to get public support for the United States to invade Iraq.” (The essay asserts that Bush never lied: the lies are being told by Cindy Sheehan or Joseph Wilson or…)
It looks like your average right-wing website denouncing those nasty leftists.
It’s been asserted upthread that Tacitus does want the US to win in Iraq. Maybe so: but this website isn’t evidence of it. A website that concerns itself more with the domestic criticism of how the war has been carried out, than with the administration’s massive and appalling errors in conducting the war, is not concerned with winning the war where it is being fought, but with winning political victories at home.
Well, the fact that this site starts at exactly the same time that the new “Democrats are giving aid to the enemy” line by Bush can hardly be a coincidence.
If Trevino’s a speech writer for Bush (and, my god, talk about trying to give dance lessons to a pig!) then it’s not much of a surprise that he takes his rhetorical cue from the Bush Admin’s latest talking points.
I’d be more surprised if anyone outside his established claque takes him seriously as a commentator/analyst.
He was a speechwriter for Tommy Thompson, actually.
“Does anyone really give a shit about Iraq?”
Yes.
“Seriously man we got our lives to lead right here at home.”
Everybody has lives to lead. Almost everybody wants a home.
“What is the worst that can happen if we pull out of Iraq right away.”
Hundreds of thousands of people dying horribly, vast suffering, scattered torture or worse, destruction of communities, children never growing up, cultures damaged, irreplacable loss of art and historic objects, and significantly increased political instability in the Mideast. Nothing you should care about.
“Nothing of any real consequence to us.”
Well, sure, if “we” are moral monsters, utterly indifferent to human suffering, and also idiots completely unable to extrapolate from anything to anything.
I’m glad I don’t know anyone so foolish, and sad.
“Wow, that was a long-ass post.”
Saved me at least two hours that I don’t currently have available though 😉
Wat Mercutio said. And I agree with Jesurgislag too: the site is very partisan.
From what I’ve read from Tacitus in the past “the will to win” usually involves a lot of violence, blood and innocent victims.
If the US government cannot take its responsibility by admitting mistakes en re-introducing accountability, it cannot really change anything.
There has been to much willing, and not enough planning. If you want to assure victory you should at least try to change that loosing strategy.
And Jon H: If I were an insurgent in an area flooded with paintguns, I would quite happily encourage everybody to splash the whole environment orange. The kids would have a whale of a time and the troops would spent 24/7 investigating every meter of every road.
If this was the kind of post being published on Tac’s new website, then I’d accept that Tacitus is really, honestly, wanting the US to win in Iraq: wanting the Republican party – grassroots, Senate, and Congress – to take a long hard cold look at the Bush administration and its comprehensive errors in Iraq, and see what could be done to fix them.
But as it is – I’ve looked at some of the other posts now – this isn’t about US victory in Iraq; this is about blaming everyone but the Bush administration for the astonishing mess the US is in in Iraq.
“…that he takes his rhetorical cue from the Bush Admin’s latest talking points.”
Tacitus would toss Bush over the edge in a NY minute, if he thought it would benefit the Party.
I wish there were more discernment, more refined taste and discrimination in the bashing of conservatives. They are not all alike, and are often not alike in interesting ways.
Tacitus is the most profoundly partisan gentleman I have ever met. He is a Republican like Inigo Lopez de Loyola was a Catholic.
And he has added a little doohickey to his name. Is it pronounced Tre-veen-yo?
Yes (re Josh): It is “Treviño” but the “n with tilde” (properly an “eñe” in Spanish) doesn’t always copy on common (Anglo) keyboards/word processors. Try “Alt+0241” in Word.
Oh. OTOH, y’all might not be entirely wrong.
Tacitus would want to win in Iraq, but if he thought we were going to lose the war, he would be incensed and disgusted with Bush, but quietly, and try to shift the blame away in order to diminish harm to the Party. He might sincerely believe the loss came from a general pusillanimity with a concentration in the left contaminating a portion of the right. He might believe the loss was due to wicked and incompetent leadership.
In any case, the Dolchstosslegende would be to protect the Party (as it should and could be, not as it is) and in his case not a cynical act but a principled and idealistic one. Institutions have value far exceeding their actual practices and immediate usefulness. We exist to serve.
“Tacitus is the most profoundly partisan gentleman I have ever met. He is a Republican like Inigo Lopez de Loyola was a Catholic.”
Would he defeat Hugh Hewitt in personal combat?
Tangentially: could the five most partisan Republicans assemble into a Giant Transformer BattleBot to fight the counter Giant Democratic Transformer BattleBot?
Please?
I think this comment from Josh Marshall is relevant here:
No End But Victory fits into that idea quite nicely. Nowhere on that site is there evidence of an attempt to change minds about the war in Iraq. It’s a transparent attempt to rally the faithful, to keep them occupied.
I would not be surprised if a general order went out from HQ, and Josh Treviño simply chose the subject (the war) and the form (blog activism) that interested him the most.
“Tacitus is the most profoundly partisan gentleman I have ever met. He is a Republican like Inigo Lopez de Loyola was a Catholic.”
Would he defeat Hugh Hewitt in personal combat?
Tangentially: could the five most partisan Republicans assemble into a Giant Transformer BattleBot to fight the counter Giant Democratic Transformer BattleBot?
Please?
In any case, the Dolchstosslegende would be to protect the Party (as it should and could be, not as it is) and in his case not a cynical act but a principled and idealistic one.
Is this supposed to make us feel more or less nervous about him, bob?
Speaking of comicbook superheroes:
link
dr ngo:
Re Viet Nam, where Tacitus really misses the boat is thinking that the Viet Nam war was being driven by the VC. The war was a civil war between the NVA and the colonial remnants in the south, which we belatedly decided to prop up. The VC was always an auxilliary of the NVA, and never as important as the regular NVA. The NVA was always the driving force behind the war. And although the VC took a major hit in 1968, it hardly mattered to the overall war effort by the NVA.
To say we “won” because the VC was badly beat up after Tet is nonsensical.
Recent posts on Josh Trevino’s various weblogs show that he has, in fact, thrown Bush over the side for the sake of the Republican Party.
It gives me no comfort that idealistic principles (all very well) come through five years of reality fully intact right down to the dotted i’s.
Besides, since I, the American people (I am the American people, you know, but you aren’t), apparently now own Iraq without actually making the decision to purchase, (though I think the mortgage payments seem kind of low), I do find it, umm, irresponsible that Trevino and his Party don’t get to own George W. Bush — all of him and his deeds.
But, no, off they go, to the land of first principles. Where the living is so easy.
“you” is not Bob McManus. Actually he is the only other “American People”, besides me. Despite his imperialistic jumpiness. 😉
I would speculate or philosophize that Tacistus and his allies are reaping what they have sown.
Bob McManus’ misplaced finger has above defined Travino better than either his critics or defenders have. Josh isn’t a Facist. He’s a Tacist.
He’s a Tacist.
Would that make him Bordurian?
The wheels are long since off. At last
the political battle seems to have been joined.
Kevin Drum thinks the pull out will start after the elections, and Bush will claim victory. I think he is right. After all, what other choice does he have?
Way too much tomfoolery in this thread to address (dr ngo’s rape of history chief among them), especially as Typepad has taken to eating my comments at random.
Short, short version which will make several people mad and dig into their much-thumbed hardback Richard Evans tomes for the appropriate metaphor from c.1919-1945:
You don’t have to like the President. You don’t have to like the way the war is fought. You don’t have to think the war was a good idea. You don’t have to think the war is going well. You can be a Bush-loathing, things-are-bad-in-Iraq, invasion-was-a-terrible-idea sort of guy, and still be a good American in my book.
But if you are that sort of guy, and your consequent preference is to embrace defeat? Well. That’s not “loyal” opposition. Don’t expect the rest of us to pretend it is.
Tac:
Is there anyone against the Iraq war who cares about you opinion of them?
Sorry. Probably out of line. Feel free (or freer than otherwise) to delete.
But if you are that sort of guy, and your consequent preference is to embrace defeat? Well. That’s not “loyal” opposition. Don’t expect the rest of us to pretend it is.
If you are the kind of guy who, faced with an administration who will be in power for the next three years, who has run the US into a disastrous war, and you set up a website and invite people to criticize, not the administration, but those who oppose the administration, then plainly, you have gone beyond the bounds of being a loyal American, and into the madness of leader worship and despair.
The war in Iraq is going badly. You have people posting on your website who seem to think it’s the fault of those who have written about Bush’s lies and the Bush administration’s failure to plan the occupation of Iraq: who blame the disaster of Iraq on Joseph Wilson and Cindy Sheehan.
That’s the real problem: the number of people who are blindly embracing the idea that the problem is people in the US who are recognizing the face that if there is no change in leadership – if the Bush administration is allowed to continue uncriticized and unchallenged – then defeat in Iraq is inevitable.
You need Republicans like Sebastian Holsclaw and Von posting on your site. You don’t need an echo chamber of people who think the problem is that people aren’t loyal enough to George W. Bush.
That is, you need Republicans like Sebastian Holsclaw and Von if your goal is to create a discussion chamber for how the US may still win in Iraq: people on the right who’ll heartily criticize what the Bush administration is doing – and not doing – and not what one mother of a soldier killed in Iraq is saying in the US.
However, if your goal is partisan political victory in the US, your website is performing quite adequately. I suppose if you know in your heart of hearts that, thanks to Bush & Co, the Iraq war is already lost, it’s necessary to be able to blame it on anything other that the people directly responsible.
Is there anyone against the Iraq war who cares about you opinion of them?
Many of them, apparently, comment on Obsidian Wings.
….into the madness of leader worship and despair.
How ridiculous. The people advocating defeat need and deserve their opprobrium — and so does the Administration in many, many ways. Noendbutvictory.com is hardly a site that excludes the latter (uh, Aziz Poonawalla is an editor, after all). Your assumptions are….well, just that.
dr ngo’s rape of history chief among them
Josh, being a “speechwriter for the Bush Administration”…”knows of what he speaks!”
Tac, I advise you, when you order the sun to come up in the morning, be sure to order it to come up in the East.
I shouldn’t have to explain this to a library employee, 2shoes, but the noting of professional qualifications was never invoked as a blanket claim to all knowledge.
Ah, sorry. I forgot I’m not talking to a person of good faith.
Gary, in all honesty I do not see anyone who really gives a shit about Iraq. I see a bunch of people, like here, who pretend to care but it is all hot air, essentially meaningless.
The battle for Iraq is not about Iraq. It is about political power, or bragging rights, or something else but it definately has nothing to do with Iraq.
Three years after we pull out this will be so obvious that not even you will be able to miss it.
But if you are that sort of guy, and your consequent preference is to embrace defeat? Well. That’s not “loyal” opposition.
What exactly constitutes defeat? We have various people with various ideas of victory, some of them ludicrous, some merely hard to achieve. If we were to withdraw tomorrow Iraq would end up as a Shiite run republic with significant religious repression and involved in a civil war with the Sunnis. Kurdistan would probably secede, forming a quasi-democratic republic hostile to our ally Turkey, unless the SCIRI government decided to try keeping them in by force, in which case they’d more than likely ally with the Sunnis, leading to three way fragmentation.
That’s my read on what would most likely happen, and it doesn’t seem to me quite bad enough to call it defeat (at least not in the military sense). I’d prefer to see competent leadership which could head off fragmentation and prevent SCIRI from gaining too much power, but ham-handed efforts to achieve the goal of a democratic and free Iraq make fragmentation and theocracy more likely, not less. If the realistic choices are between my scenario above and a long occupation in which thousands of innocents are killed, America’s reputation is further tarnished, and Iraq ends up fragmented into three failed states, then I think “defeat” now is preferrable to “defeat” later.
This line of thinking is why I think that talk about will is deeply misguided. The issue is not will, it’s competence. Not military competence – we have that in spades. What we need is competence in nation building. If the site encourages discussion of how to bring about an effective management of the situation in Iraq, I will be glad to chip in, or at least read and learn. I haven’t seen any evidence so far that the contributors to NEBV have even correctly identified the problem, which makes finding a solution difficult.
the talk of the disloyalty of defeatists has bad connotations for me–too much like the WW1 diehards who didn’t care what the war was for or how many had to die so long as their side could claim victory.
Which isn’t to say Tac is like that. There are some very real reasons why it matters what kind of shape Iraq is in if and/or when we pull out, so i can understand why people want to sustain a commitment at least until some of the bad outcomes are avoided. However,I think the gist of this particular thread here isn’t defeatism at all. The idea repeatedly expressed is that it will take more than will to win, that the victory can’t be won by strictly military means, that the Bush admin. itself doesn’t have the will to pay for the war, and that the Bush administration, due to well documented incompetence, isn’t likely to use its will in a logical or effective way anyhow.
These are valid points and it isn’t defeatism to point them out–it’s some far more powerful– realism.
In order to win in any real sense, real problems must be addressed. So it isn’t productive or condusive to victory to perseverate on about defeatists.
Ah, sorry. I forgot I’m not talking to a person of good faith.
Tacitus, a person of good faith does not accuse a professional historian, writing in the field in which he has been teaching for thirty years, of the “rape of history,” even if he disagrees with his conclusions.
My error – I thought you were a civilized person, one who might be reasoned with, one who would not resort to gratuitous insults. I’ll know better next time.
“After all, what other choice does he have?”
Staying.
I don’t have any quarrel with the notion that Kevin may be correct. On the other hand, it’s a useful principle to not confuse one’s own evaluation with another’s, and assume that they’ll come to the same conclusion we do. After all, how often does George W. Bush do what you think is the only remaining reasonable thing?
Who’s 2shoes in this conversation, and how does one know he/she is a “library employee”, for whatever relevance that has? Or did I lose my decoder ring?
Well, it is true that he often is not reasonable, but it is also true (at least in my perception) that he cares very little for reality and is far more concerned with preserving image than with accomplishing anything of substance. He’s a classic bully, tough when it is easy to be, and into saving face the rest of the time. Remember how he flew home when the Terri Schiavo thing went against him? His alternatives are to stay the course and continue to lose support for himself and the Republicans in general, ask for a tax hike and possibly a draft, or declare victory and leave. My money’s on the last choice.
[DELETED]
….a person of good faith does not accuse a professional historian, writing in the field in which he has been teaching for thirty years, of the “rape of history,” even if he disagrees with his conclusions.
Your decades of teaching in your chosen profession have no effect upon the value of the history you present, except perhaps to lessen the excuse for its poor quality. No one denies that the Viet Cong/NLF continued to exist until c.1975 (when, it should be noted, much of their now-useless leadership was sent away for “reeducation” or worse). But they were never again a meaningful battlefield threat post-Tet. As you note, the NVA had to shoulder the burden of the Communist war effort thenceforth. My point stands.
Good God, Tacitus, do you have to be so rude?
dmbeaster Re Viet Nam, where Tacitus really misses the boat is thinking that the Viet Nam war was being driven by the VC. The war was a civil war between the NVA and the colonial remnants in the south, which we belatedly decided to prop up. The VC was always an auxilliary of the NVA, and never as important as the regular NVA. The NVA was always the driving force behind the war.
I’m interested in your evidence for this assertion, which runs contrary to most of the research I have read. Although fighting began in south Vietnam around 1960 (the “advisor war”), the “regular NVA” did not appear there until around 1965, and were not numerically or even operationally dominant among the resistance forces for a few years after that. It makes little sense to talk of the VC as an “auxiliary” to them before 1967/68 at the very earliest.
The war was indeed a civil war, one between the heirs of the communist-led “Viet Minh,” which fought the French 1946-1954, and the Saigon regime, which we propped up, as you note. But although the NVA is one of those heirs, it is not identical to the Viet Minh, which was essentially a political organization with a strong military arm, rather than a military organization. (Note that Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan, Truong Chinh, and most of the other policy-makers were not military men; only Giap, among the party leaders, was.) The NLF was another of the heirs of the Viet Minh, based on the remnants remaining in the South.
Perhaps what you mean is that “the driving force” was the Hanoi politburo, which was ultimately attempting to dictate strategy for both the NLF and the NVA. This is more plausible, though not firmly established. The NVA was under the direct control of the politburo, but the NLF, being more distant, tended to be a bit more self-willed and fractious, especially early on. Historians still struggle to interpret the founding of the NLF and its commitment to armed struggle, which had Hanoi’s imprimatur but seems — according to some evidence, at any rate — to have been their response to initiatives from southerners, originally. (Oversimplified: “We’ve had it with sitting quietly under the Diem regime, which is decimating us. We want to start fighting back – are you going to back us or what?”)
In any event, though you disagree with Tacitus’s conclusion, I believe you share with him a misconception as to how important the “village war” was in the south, going all the way back to the 1950s. I commend (again) Jeffrey Race’s book on Long An to your attention, though it is not the only study by any means. Race, who was with the US Army in Long An, then came back as a graduate student to analyze what had worked and what hadn’t (and why), concluding that the Saigon regime had essentially lost the war in that province – the battle for “hearts and minds” – even before the US forces arrived, and that nothing either the ARVN or the US forces did thereafter altered the fundamental equation there. This is the NLF at work, not the NVA.
….a person of good faith does not accuse a professional historian, writing in the field in which he has been teaching for thirty years, of the “rape of history,” even if he disagrees with his conclusions.
Your decades of teaching in your chosen profession have no effect upon the value of the history you present, except perhaps to lessen the excuse for its poor quality. No one denies that the Viet Cong/NLF continued to exist until c.1975 (when, it should be noted, much of their now-useless leadership was sent away for “reeducation” or worse). But they were never again a meaningful battlefield threat post-Tet. As you note, the NVA had to shoulder the burden of the Communist war effort thenceforth. My point stands.
“do you have to be so rude?”
I think you mean, “must you be so rude?”
This is a tarbaby thread and the whole point of Tac’s contribution is to have us beat up on him, with the goal to have a commentor or three get angry enough to toss some really nasty cracks so Tac can link to them and say ‘look at how bad they are treating me over there!’ Even now, he flirts with banning by outing a commentator. If he could get kicked off of the board, he would be holding it up as prima facia evidence that he’s right and everyone else is wrong. As the right side of this board won’t take any steps, I would suggest we just leave the thread now and let him stamp around the room slamming doors and kicking walls.
Hm. Surely he must, then.
a man quite bitter about his banning from tacitus.org
If you say so. But I think it’s more a case of you wish it so.
(a difficult feat, that)
Not really, actually. You just have to embarrass the owner of site by displaying his assertions contradict known facts. Then you are make it onto the Enemies List. And it’s only a matter of time then.
I certainly hope you flesh out NoEndButVictory.com a bit more than, say, the Consistent Life Ethic. Given, though, that victory is neither defined, nor the path to it charted in any sort of detail it seems more likely that it is what many including myself have speculated: a shiny bauble to keep the faithful occupied, and a pulpit for you to – once again – get in touch with your inner bully.
By the whiskers of Kurvi-Tacitus, over and out.
lj, maybe “let’s do our best to be polite to guests, however trying they are; and if we can’t be polite to them, just ignore them; and in any case, let’s trust in the Kitten” would be a better tack.
Incidentally here‘s someone who knew when to use the phrase “the rape of history”.
I wonder if the phrase goes back further than this rather, um, nasty version.
“Please don’t dominate the rap, Jack, if you got nothing new to say . . .”
Well, maybe it does belong on the other thread after all.
Tacitus: I am deleting the comment in which you out a commenter. If, as you say, people’s professions do not affect their arguments, then surely you agree that neither that commenter’s profession nor his name are germane here.
Don’t do it again.
Your remarks about dr, ngo tell us a lot more about you than about either Vietnamese history or him.
LJ has it right. Trolling is trolling, regardless of the troll’s history, contributions to other sites, self-importance, etc.
fwiw:
Tacitus has now posted the “eternal sunset of the defeatist mind” at NEBV.
Something about the title makes me doubt that the post is intended to reach out to those who have concerns about the ongoing endeavor in Iraq.
hmmm. can’t figure out why. any help from the peanut gallery?
as to the substance of the post, considering i’m not a military historian i tread on very dangerous ground here. but i note that following WWII, guerrilla forces were largely defeated by their own regularly constituted governments (PKK, Sendero Luminosa) or next door neighbors during the Cold War (Soviet satellite states).
those guerrilla movements crushed by occupying forces (Mau Mau in Kenya, Viet Cong, FLN in Algeria) were defeated, i suspect, by tactics considered unacceptable today.
(It’s probably also worth pointing out that the govts of each of those three countries since the end of the guerrilla wars have not exactly been characterized by stability or pro-west attitudes.)
(Also, for the historians in the group, it appears to me that the author is guilty of cherry-picking his data for favorable results. If internal conflicts count, I’m not sure why Greece is excluded. The collapse of Yugoslavia should probably be addressed, as well as that of Lebanon. Perhaps the IRA’s successes in Northern Ireland bear analysis.
In any event, I defer to those with greater expertise.)
The people advocating defeat need and deserve their opprobrium — and so does the Administration in many, many ways. Noendbutvictory.com is hardly a site that excludes the latter
And yet, all I’ve seen on the site so far is criticism of those not responsible for the disaster that is the Iraq war. Who, then, is posting sustained criticism of the people who are actually responsible for defeat in Iraq: the Bush administration?
(uh, Aziz Poonawalla is an editor, after all).
What name does he post under? Greyhawk, HaroldHutchison, haystack, Jim Geraghty, John Cole, Leon H., Macallan, Pejman Yousefzadeh, Peralta, Tim Saler, or Winds of Change?
drat, forgot the link to “eternal sunset.” try here.
i’d be fascinated to hear countervailing arguments (only, of course, from those competent to make them.)
War is Over
For those who need an alternative to NEBV, this is the second post in a row by “Kierkkegaard” over at Tacitus.org that I have enjoyed, even tho I find it overly optimistic. But I need that optimism, for today’s lefty blogs are celebrating the Murtha speech by pouring gasoline over what remains of the Democratic party. As they organize to derail the warmongeress Hilary, will it be Finegold to strike the match?
Ya know, I can’t believe I am reliving the sixties, too old for the drugs and sex.
Not expert enough in the relevant history to provide a full critique, but Tac’s latest does somehow seem just a bit derivative.
Aha! I finally located an article in Parameters, the Army War College publication, first published this summer, that argues against this idea that the media turns public support against wars.
Here’s a link to a PDF.
Here’s the conclusion:
That seems very sensible to me–especially that last dependant clause.
Okay, gotta go to dinner.
“the warmongeress Hilary”
She has two Ls. I have one. (My parents goofed.) And I am not a warmongress.
— Ogden Nash
But if you are that sort of guy, and your consequent preference is to embrace defeat? Well. That’s not “loyal” opposition. Don’t expect the rest of us to pretend it is.
What I expect is for you to keep pretending that anyone who is “that sort of guy” is presumed to embrace defeat. And therefore they are not loyal opposition.
Frankly, the forces “embracing defeat” would be those who in control of policy who, like in the Viet Nam era, keep telling lies about how things are going, and keep doing nothing to correct failed policies. They have put political self-interest in front of the national self-interest, and have created the problematic circumstances that now exist.
Bob, you’re never too old for drugs and sex.
(well, i’m not yet, nor planning on getting there. ymmv.)
as to K’s essay, i still have a great deal of respect for american values
(no, not hatred, bigotry, anti-intellectualism)
the ones that created the New Deal.
ral,
Much as I admire Ogden Nash, he was mistaken here.
There is not only a three-l lllama, but an N-l one as well.
Think of a major fire (in Boston, if that helps).
I left out the asterisk — I was unaware of it but it turns out Nash knew…
ral,
I confess. I read it somewhere, but didn’t remember that Nash himself knew of the problem.
Since the invasion happened, I’ve seen two basic reactions on the pro-war side of the aisle to unfolding events:
1) Look on in growing disbelief and disillusionment, and at some point get off the bus in digust, or
2) Retreat headfirst up one’s own rectum while spitting venom about how everyone who had the nerve to be right when the hawks were wrong is an unserious, defeatist traitor.
Clicking over to that site, I see articles like “Who are the real liars?” holding up Norman Podhoretz’ latest dishonest tripe as some kind of revelation, which puts it squarely behind door number 2. Thanks, but no thanks; these folks are welcome to preach to their increasingly small and vicious choir without me.
As to defining “victory”:
1. Put bluntly, any definition of victory that relies on Bush’s team ever being able to find their own asses with a roadmap is sheer fantasy. Any definition of victory that proceeds from current GOP talking points as truth is active self-delusion (for example, elections held to legitimate an occupation are not going to produce a stable liberal democracy, for much the same reasons that the elections Saddam held to legitimate his dictatorship didn’t do so).
2. A definition of victory that envisages the US occupation midwifing a stable state that could at some point be a meaningful democracy is very likely in the realm of fantasy at this point, given the steep uncertainties involved and the sheer amount of resources that would be required. Ergo brow-beating Americans about how they should sacrifice to achieve this vision of victory (particularly when Bush’s own base hasn’t been signing up to fight such a supposedly necessary war in large numbers) isn’t a very viable proposition.
3. Of course, the US has all the tools it needs to achieve a momentary tactical victory if it really wants one. All it has to do is starve out and incinerate several major population centres, and Iraq would probably be pacified until it left (at which point whatever puppet government it had put in place would no doubt reap the whirlwind). Unfortunately for the US this amounts to strategic defeat, since — the misplaced confidence of jingoists aside — America relies on the tacit or active support of many international actors to maintain the economic underpinnings of its swiftly-hollowing superpower status, and committing genocide in a war of choice is the best possible way to annihilate that support and turn the world decisively against American hegemony.
4. Engage option 3, but maintain the occupation indefinitely (with a veneer puppet government in place), reshaping America’s economy and society to whatever needed extent to do so. This one is back, I think, in the realm of fantasy and comes with all the drawbacks and many times the costs of option 3.
Failing these options, the US is left with figuring out what the least humiliating and degrading form of defeat would be. Almost any of the “peace first” options basically involves arming one faction sufficiently that it can destroy its rivals (the Friedman Final Solution, “let the Sunnis reap the whirlwind,” is only one version of this); since this basically entails sponsoring a bloodbath in order to save face on the domestic stage while withdrawing, “peace first” actually looks a hell of a lot more cowardly and degrading than most of its proponents seem to understand. In fact, it’s very likely just as disastrous as anything that could happen after an unconditional withdrawal, but with an extra helping of opprobrium for the outgoing occupiers and anybody left behind who was associated with them.
The only other available option would seem to be some variant of “get the hell out and hope for the best.” Does that suck? Of course it sucks. It sucks hard. But it preserves at least some vestige of American honor and has the added virtue of being actually realistic. People who don’t like being in this position should think about holding Bush and his cronies accountable, and (if they cheerleaded for the war) about taking a good long look in the mirror.
Isn’t Option 4 precisely what the self-proclaimed thoughtful realists of the right–Trevino, the Winds of Change crew, etc.–are more-or-less openly advocating?
It’s always seemed that way to me.
Not being sure who Tac outed, nor certain with what purpose in mind he attacked dr ngo out of substance, I say: bad form, Tacitus. If you’re at the point where you’re fresh out of civility, best hang it up for a bit, you’ve become that which you despise.
Whew! Finally made it all the way through the comments. Waaay upthread, mercutio had a very thoughtful post that articulated, as coherently as I have seen, the very large gap between what we need to do and what we have the will to do. As someone who does not support immediate withdrawal from Iraq, it certainly gave me a lot to think about.
I agree that the American people would not support a draft to put the numbers of soldiers in Iraq we would need to fully secure the country. I also think, as others here have pointed out before, that such a move would likely backfire at this point and only fuel the insurgency.
I wish I had a better idea of what is really going on with the Iraqis themselves. How popular is the insurgency among the Sunnis? And what is the real extent of the influence of al-Qaeda among the insurgents? How much control do the Islamists really have in the Shiite areas? And what is their real relationship with Iran? How willing are the Sunnis and Shiites to compromise in order to avoid a civil war? To what extent do the average Sunni and Shiite hate each other? Do the Kurds want independence badly enough that they are willing to risk invasion by Turkey and the guarantee of endless war with the Sunnis over Kirkuk, or are they willing to compromise and remain part of Iraq?
To me, these are the most important questions and the ones that will determine whether any kind of victory (i.e., a relatively stable, relatively democratic and relatively liberal Iraq that is not a haven for terrorists and not an Iranian puppet) is possible at all. I think I may have said this before, but to me the future is already in the hands of the Iraqi people. We can influence things with our actions, but we no longer determine the course of events in Iraq.
I still believe that we can do good in Iraq by training a national army and by pressuring the various parties to work together, and I think that an immediate withdrawal would precipitate a civil war and reflect badly on our image throughout the world. I hope that the Iraqis will find a way to work together, and actually build a functioning democracy. Maybe it’s a fool’s hope, but as long as it still exists I think we should stay and try to help make it happen.
Well, it’s late and I’ve depressed myself, so I’m going to bed.
Doctor Slack says:
“4. Engage option 3, but maintain the occupation indefinitely (with a veneer puppet government in place), reshaping America’s economy and society to whatever needed extent to do so. This one is back, I think, in the realm of fantasy and comes with all the drawbacks and many times the costs of option 3.”
And DaveL says:
“Isn’t Option 4 precisely what the self-proclaimed thoughtful realists of the right–Trevino, the Winds of Change crew, etc.–are more-or-less openly advocating?”
Is Option 4 what the “realists of the right” are advocating?
I’ve seen commenters at RedState call for a 20-40 year occupation in Iraq.
And it does seem that the Right is calling for a reshaping of American society to accommodate that long-term occupation. CB wants the US mass media to become an arm of the government in supporting the war. And many on the Right, from McClellan on down to posters at RW sites, advocate criminalizing opposition to the war.
Have any of them really thought this through?
Because it sounds to me as if what they want is an America that has tranformed itself completely for the sake of establishing some kind of stable Iraq. Not a secular Iraq; not a democratic Iraq; not even a confederated Iraq. Just some vague notion of stability, in one (frankly) not-terribly-important country… and for this they want America to become an authoritarian fortress-state.
Have they completely lost their buttons, or what?
CB wants the US mass media to become an arm of the government in supporting the war.
A little overstated there. It would be nice if the newspapers or broadcast TV would be a little open minded and reported from the Kurdish areas or the quieter Shia enclaves and showed the difference pre and post Saddam. Or lay out the stakes in this struggle between Islamists versus practically everybody else in the world, instead of being so politically correct. But they’re never ever going to do that. No, the “brave” thing to do is to attack US foreign policy, which have had no recent repercussions, as far as I can see.
And many on the Right, from McClellan on down to posters at RW sites, advocate criminalizing opposition to the war.
Funny how liberals can criminalize “hate speech”, casual conversation in the workplace and various other thought crimes, or discriminate against conservatives, let’s say college students for instance, but fantasize that they are oppressed or will be oppressed in the future. Or prosecute people on the basis of unknowable and unprovable intentions. Is that because precedents have been already been set by themselves?
No, the “brave” thing to do is to attack US foreign policy, which have had no recent repercussions, as far as I can see.
Please tell me this is a joke.
criminalize “hate speech”, casual conversation in the workplace and various other thought crimes
For what value of “criminalize” do you think this is true?
Please tell me this is a joke.
No, it’s not a joke. There haven’t been anybody thrown in jail for crititcizing US policy, as far as I know. Now if there are repercussions in the sense of people disapproving of the critics, well that is true.
George Bush will save us.
For what value of “criminalize” do you think this is true?
Trust me, there are cases where there is intent insinuated that is simply not so. I have a family member facing possible life in prison because some politcian types have seized on this for their own publicity. There was no hate speech, no bad thoughts or intentions, for goodness sakes this guy was a social worker, but for political gain, an accident has now become a murder case.
Good enough for you?
“Not being sure who Tac outed….”
Having also missed it, I assumed dr.ngo, although if so, I have to say that a) it’s rude to address people by names they’re not using in a given context, period, in my book, and b) it’s barely “outing” someone if it’s a matter of the subject using a nom de interweb that shows another name on the first page when dropped into Google. (To repeat for anyone slow: it’s bad to out people, even if they’re not exactly disguised.)
On substance, although I am neither professional historian, nor golf pro, nor speechwriter, nor many other things, including professor of bioethics, engineer, art dealer, accountant, godfather, sailor, soldier, tinker, toy, I have some familiarity with the history of the Vietnam War, and I’ve not yet seen anything here by dr.ngo that I’d quibble with.
“I’ve seen commenters at RedState call for a 20-40 year occupation in Iraq.
And it does seem that the Right is calling for a reshaping of American society to accommodate that long-term occupation.”
The right has wanted to reshape American Society since the 30’s. I wish the left took as much respnsibility.
We have reached, or are within reach of “peak oil.” How will that play out? What will the Oilocracies look like in 30 years as the wells run dry? What will the American and World economies look like? What will our social and political systems be?
IMO. FWIW. We be will militarily engaged in the ME in a large way for the rest of our lives. And all our societies will be utterly transformed, to a degree not seen in about a century. And this is about the best case scenario.
“It would be nice if the newspapers or broadcast TV would be a little open minded and reported from the Kurdish areas or the quieter Shia enclaves and showed the difference pre and post Saddam.”
From the point of view of making a documentary on any number of aspects of Iraq — a snapshot of the country on a given day, or as part of an overall view of progress in the political development of the country, or the military situation, for instance — that’s utterly reasonable.
But to simply say that news broadcasters and reporters should go out on a given day with a goal of Finding Good News: that’s not reporting. That’s not finding news. That’s doing propaganda.
It would be propaganda, as well, of course, if they went out on a given day looking for Things To Hurt America With. But they don’t do that. They do report Big Bad Dramatic Things, and Bad Trends, because it’s the job of news to find things people should be alarmed about, and warn them (if there’s a theory here, it’s that this might enable people, somewhere, to do something about whatever it is, at least in the future). It’s not the job of news reporters to find things to make us feel comfy and complacent and happy.
This is not a political or partisan bias. It’s the nature of the definition of what is “news.”
Explaining how things are now better than under Saddam is also a perfectly reasonable informative thing for someone to do, but that’s for someone who is desiring to make a point; it’s — and the word is neutral, not pejorative — propaganda.
“Not being sure who Tac outed….”
Having also missed it, I assumed dr.ngo, although if so, I have to say that a) it’s rude to address people by names they’re not using in a given context, period, in my book, and b) it’s barely “outing” someone if it’s a matter of the subject using a nom de interweb that shows another name on the first page when dropped into Google. (To repeat for anyone slow: it’s bad to out people, even if they’re not exactly disguised.)
On substance, although I am neither professional historian, nor golf pro, nor speechwriter, nor many other things, including professor of bioethics, engineer, art dealer, accountant, godfather, sailor, soldier, tinker, toy, I have some familiarity with the history of the Vietnam War, and I’ve not yet seen anything here by dr.ngo that I’d quibble with.
An observation about a certain kind of online “anonymity,” by the way.
“Not being sure who Tac outed….”
Having also missed it, I assumed dr.ngo, although if so, I have to say that a) it’s rude to address people by names they’re not using in a given context, period, in my book, and b) it’s barely “outing” someone if it’s a matter of the subject using a nom de interweb that shows another name on the first page when dropped into Google.
It wasn’t dr. ngo.
Find me one survey that shows a majority of “liberals” want to criminalize hate speech, please.
One. Go on. It should be easy to back up such a factual claim.
How about coming up with a single survey that shows that even a quarter of liberals want to criminalize hate speech? Still having trouble? Okay, please find one that shows 15% of liberals want to criminalize hate speech.
I’ll wait.
If it’s too hard, find cites for surveys showing that liberals want to criminalize “casual conversation in the workplace and various other thought crimes.”
I’ll still be waiting.
This is serious detachment from reality, DaveC. Real tin foil hat stuff.
“I’ve not yet seen anything here by dr.ngo that I’d quibble with.”
That is, about the Vietnam War.
“It wasn’t dr. ngo.”
Oh, well, then, Emily Litella.
“liberals” !-> 15% of liberals.
“liberals” -> >1 liberal.
“I’ve not yet seen anything here by dr.ngo that I’d quibble with.”
That is, about the Vietnam War.
Posted by: Gary Farber | November 18, 2005 at 03:00 AM
Distinction acknowledged, and appreciated, Gary.
Thanks to you and all who stood up against “outing” me, even though (1) I’m easily out-able, as you noted, and (2) it turns out it was not I who was outed. (I wasn’t sure at first, so I asked.) Civility lives.
About the outing, sorry to have been oblique about it, but if someone is being outed, it seems like a situation analogous to seeing someone’s fly open, in that you don’t want to make a big fuss. As noted above, it wasn’t dr. ngo. Perhaps I should have written the Kitten, but I was hoping that someone from the right would sweep in and point things out. And a pony, I guess.
Be careful, LJ: the era of Peak Pony is at hand!
I’ll disagree with bob; if peak oil is this year (which I tend to agree with) we will not be in the middle east militarily ten years from now. We won’t be able to afford something so expensive that won’t get us any more oil anyway.
Outing folks who choose to blog anonymously is a particular pet peeve of mine. I choose not to reveal my actual name at the moment, and I expect others to respect that, even if they could sniff out my real identity. So I’m not exactly defending the deleted comment, so much as pointing out a mitigating factor:
Finding the poster’s name required no detective work beyond a mouse-over.
I am deeply confused about the etiquette of outing the commenter’s other handle, which, as best I can tell, was truly anonymous. On the other hand, what is the etiquette of changing your handle, then re-engaging someone with whom you have a long-standing grudge?
If this sort of thing is not appropriate to discuss in the present context, please let me know, and I’ll drop it.
Oh, and I would like to reiterate my suggestion that respect for commenters’ chosen handles be integrated into the posting rules.
“Finding the poster’s name required no detective work beyond a mouse-over.”
If so, it’s ludicrous to call that an outing. It’s flatly not. Absolutely not. In no way. If their name is clearly visible — hey, it’s not concealed! If someone gives their name to you, they’re not concealing it.
As I said, I’m dubious that the next step — calling someone by their full name which you know because when you google the e-mail address, there’s their name — is “outing” someone, either, but I’ll go along with not challenging that for a bit yet. But, in general, if someone expects another name of their’s not to be used, they have to make some minimal realistic effort to actually conceal it (and it won’t work in the long run anyway, so I think people who try this are simply asking to get in real trouble eventually, and are idiots for not realizing it, but that’s me, and they’ll get to live with their own choices, so I don’t believe in “outing” them).
Dave, I’m very sorry to hear about this, and now that you bring it up again, I recall you’re making an equally vague reference in the past. My sympathies go out to your family in this time of trouble. I wish all of you all the best.
But, no, of course not. In an argument, you have to supply supporting facts and arguments. If you are incapable of doing so on some topics because of tragedy afflicting your family, that’s entirely understandable. And it’s entirely understandable that you might end up not making sense, because of whatever it is that’s going on that is so terrible and upsetting. And, again, sympathies.
But it doesn’t magically make illogic logic, and replace lack of facts. On the sort of claims you’ve been making, you’re raving. I very much hope things get better for you and yours.
“There haven’t been anybody thrown in jail for crititcizing US policy, as far as I know.”
Without debating the probable cause involved in imprisoning, in fact, thousands of non-citizen immigrants after 9/11, and keeping many imprisoned for months, treating many brutally, before finally releasing them after months, or deporting them for harmless visa violations, it turns out that no one has been arrested for defending the government and Republican politics, either. “Now if there are repercussions in the sense of people disapproving of the critics, well that is true.”
Yup. But this is still crazy talk: “Funny how liberals can criminalize ‘hate speech’, casual conversation in the workplace and various other thought crimes, or discriminate against conservatives….”
“Oh, and I would like to reiterate my suggestion that respect for commenters’ chosen handles be integrated into the posting rules.”
Seems reasonable.
Or prosecute people on the basis of unknowable and unprovable intentions.
This is what juries, and the high burden of proof, are for. I hope the jury does the right thing by your family member.
Fwiw: the outing involved a name, occupation, and another handle. Personally, I think that the name alone is out of bounds: if someone wants to post anonymously, for whatever reason, that should be respected.
In my case, for instance, I am much less concerned about people here finding out my real life identity, which is easy enough, but with my students finding my entire collected political views when they (inexplicably) google me; it’s not a big big deal, but I try to keep my politics and my teaching firmly separate, and having hilzoy come up in a google search would just make it that much harder. Would this ruin my life? No. Do I expect anyone who hasn’t read this comment to know that? No. But that’s exactly why we should respect anonymity: because we don’t know why people have chosen it, and in the absence of that information, outing them is just wrong.
The addition of more personal info, though, made it a lot worse, in my book.
Quoth Gary Farber: But to simply say that news broadcasters and reporters should go out on a given day with a goal of Finding Good News: that’s not reporting. That’s not finding news. That’s doing propaganda.
Of course, for those looking for propaganda, it would also help if the reporters they were attempting to browbeat had real freedom of movement in the country. Too bad it’s a warzone; makes it much harder to report how many schools have had billion-dollar paint slapped on them this month and whether the Kurds have opened another McDonald’s.
The reporters report what they have access to, more or less. Those complaining about how the “MSM” have been making Bush’s excellent adventure look bad will probably need to look to the situation, not to the reporters — a great many of whom, in any case, spent years being enthusiastic shills for the White House whenever they had the opportunity. (It’s never, ever good enough for The Base, of course.)
Dave C: No, it’s not a joke. There haven’t been anybody thrown in jail for crititcizing US policy, as far as I know.
I thought you meant US policy hadn’t had repercussions. Thanks for clearing that up.
Thus far, the PATRIOT Act has been more often misused against Muslims than anyone else, as far as we can tell. But you’re right, there’s no way it could possibly be used to squelch dissent. You’re no doubt better off worrying about whether conservative students are having actual facts about things like the Middle East forced down their unwilling throats by evil pot-smoking liberal professors.
And I’m not questioning the decision to delete the comment or to reprimand the offender. Simple etiquette justifies both. Just mentioning a salient fact that might not be self-evident.
“…if someone wants to post anonymously, for whatever reason, that should be respected.”
It’s your site, and you should do as you wish, but I think allowing repeated anonymous posting is destructive to conversation. I do feel quite strongly that, alternatively, respecting pseudonymity is highly important.
Is there anyone here in fact regularly posting anonymously, that is, repeatedly using different pseudonymns as a means to be anonymous, and not known pseudonymously? If so, what’s the argument for respecting that? I thought I recalled you both naming people for having done that, and having said you disapprove, but I could be all wrong and confused, and having a bad hair day, besides.
“…if someone wants to post anonymously, for whatever reason, that should be respected.”
It’s your site, and you should do as you wish, but I think allowing repeated anonymous posting is destructive to conversation. I do feel quite strongly that, alternatively, respecting pseudonymity is highly important.
Is there anyone here in fact regularly posting anonymously, that is, repeatedly using different pseudonymns as a means to be anonymous, and not known pseudonymously? If so, what’s the argument for respecting that? I thought I recalled you both naming people for having done that, and having said you disapprove, but I could be all wrong and confused, and having a bad hair day, besides.
Gary: you’re right, I meant pseudonymously.
“No one denies that the Viet Cong/NLF continued to exist until c.1975 (when, it should be noted, much of their now-useless leadership was sent away for “reeducation” or worse). But they were never again a meaningful battlefield threat post-Tet. As you note, the NVA had to shoulder the burden of the Communist war effort thenceforth. My point stands.”
The key to this seems to be defining “meaningful battlefield threat.” It’s a term that in and of itself is vague to the point of near-uselessness. Which makes it easy for different people, absent a definition, to think that another is being inaccurate when arguing about it.
How about both Tacitus and dr. ngo offer a definition, and then we can play some more? (Probably I’m the only one still interested in Vietnam debates, or at least debates about military aspects of the war, though.)
On first read it looks to me as if dr.ngo’s assertions about the VC/VCI support the notion that they were “meaningful” on the battlefield, whereas Tacitus seems to be using “meaningful” to mean something very much stronger, such as “dominant.”
Clearly the VC weren’t the main force attacking the ARVN after, say, 1969; that hardly means they weren’t “meaningful” on the battlefield, though. I’d find it educational if Tacitus would address this, and respond to the given cite with specifics, rather than his usual (in my limited field of view) insults and uninterest in substance beyond personal ad hominems (I’m sure Tacitus has a substantial body of work, but all I’ve ever read by him, for the most part, are his appearances here, and about 94% of his work in my field of vision has been nothing but ad hominem; I suspect he may not realize that this is the persona he’s presented here.)
. Sigh.
The incident seems to have spawned a mini-debate on the thread about anonymity and whatnot. Just for the record, yes, “Spartikus” isn’t really anonymous. As others note, I include an email (not my real one though) with my name, which when entered in Google is prominent for two individuals, and funnily enough despite the other one being a Hollywood special effects bigwig, I’m the first one. My blog currently has reference to my employment, and I see from my webstats that someone who could be Tacitus visited yesterday. And just for the record, while I very much appreciate Hilzoy’s stand I didn’t, and wasn’t, going to complain.
How he fit one handle, which was anonymous, to the other, I don’t know. I guess he must have gone into the registration records of Tacitus.org. Or maybe he just guessed. I will note that this seems to have happened to other people before. While two incidents doesn’t truly suggest a pattern, it does seem…odd.
What I really don’t understand is why I in particular would rate such ire, being only an occasional (and admittably ineffective) member of the commentariat.
It’s your site, and you should do as you wish, but I think allowing repeated anonymous posting is destructive to conversation. I do feel quite strongly that, alternatively, respecting pseudonymity is highly important.
I was going to post something using the word “pedantic,” but you’d probably just point out how I was using the word incorrectly, or something.
And it’s entirely understandable that you might end up not making sense
Ahem, that would be the deranged DaveC that steals my thoughts and seeks an outlet.
I prefer to remain anonymous because that’s a way to minimize my email, by the way. I dont like to registering and logging into sites. I think everything has gone to hell since the days of 300 baud acoustic couplers. I don’t have any political, academic or professional credentials of any interest either. You kids have no respect for your elders and the music sounds like noise.
Is there anyway to find old pre-scoop Tacitus archives? Occasionally I go back into archives, particularly Winds of Change, to refresh my memory about various things.
“‘Spartikus’ isn’t really anonymous.”
Well, by definition, it couldn’t be, could it?
I have to wonder if everyone actually knows what “anonymity” means. [scratches head]
You can’t actually be known by a name and be “anonymous,” after all. If you’re known by a name, you are definitionally not anonymous. You are known if you are known. I’m not clear what’s unclear about that, so I’m back to thinking some folks don’t understand what “anonymity” means.
It’s true that the person whose e-mail address is J—- G—– posts pseudonymously as “Spartikus,” but, of course, no one has any way of knowing whether JG is the name on the birth certificate of the writer, and, more relevantly, no one has any reason to care.
People change names all the time. They’re adopted. Their parents divorce, and they are given a new family name at the age of three. They seek independence, and pick a nickname to be known by at age 12, or 17, or 28. They marry and change it. The move to a different country, and localize it. They decide to repudiate their family or father. They decide to make a new start. They don’t want to be known at work as the author of the opinions posted on a given site or sites. There are a million reasons people change names, sometimes many times in a lifetime.
Whatever. It’s all frigging arbitrary, including whether your great grandparents had the same name you do (hey, most of them didn’t!). That people often seem to have a purely magical belief in “real names” is an artifact of being blinded to what is a product of their own culture and what isn’t; nothing more. Names are no more or less “real” than any other names, or words. Thinking otherwise is a map/reality category-error confusion.
“‘Spartikus’ isn’t really anonymous.”
Well, by definition, it couldn’t be, could it?
I have to wonder if everyone actually knows what “anonymity” means. [scratches head]
You can’t actually be known by a name and be “anonymous,” after all. If you’re known by a name, you are definitionally not anonymous. You are known if you are known. I’m not clear what’s unclear about that, so I’m back to thinking some folks don’t understand what “anonymity” means.
It’s true that the person whose e-mail address is J—- G—– posts pseudonymously as “Spartikus,” but, of course, no one has any way of knowing whether JG is the name on the birth certificate of the writer, and, more relevantly, no one has any reason to care.
People change names all the time. They’re adopted. Their parents divorce, and they are given a new family name at the age of three. They seek independence, and pick a nickname to be known by at age 12, or 17, or 28. They marry and change it. The move to a different country, and localize it. They decide to repudiate their family or father. They decide to make a new start. They don’t want to be known at work as the author of the opinions posted on a given site or sites. There are a million reasons people change names, sometimes many times in a lifetime.
Whatever. It’s all frigging arbitrary, including whether your great grandparents had the same name you do (hey, most of them didn’t!). That people often seem to have a purely magical belief in “real names” is an artifact of being blinded to what is a product of their own culture and what isn’t; nothing more. Names are no more or less “real” than any other names, or words. Thinking otherwise is a map/reality category-error confusion.
“I was going to post something using the word ‘pedantic,’ but you’d probably just point out how I was using the word incorrectly, or something.”
I doubt Gary would do that unless you were writing in a way that changed the meaning of what you wrote from what you intended to communicate.
Do you really think it’s “pedantic” to try to untangle the confusion that results when someone writes something that isn’t what they mean?
Or do you really think that the difference between writing pseudonymously and anonymously is trivial and unimportant?
You, say, wouldn’t mind if we all actually posted anonymously?
What anon says makes sense to me.
We should all post anonymously!
R u a moron?!!! If we al posted that way, no 1 would tel us a part!!#!
Shuddup, pen-dart! This is BETTAH!!!!!!!
. . . including whether your great grandparents had the same name you do (hey, most of them didn’t!).
Now that’s an understatement! We each have 8 great grandparents. The odds that even one of them has the same name as you are remote: even if you are Gary Herbert Farber IV, your great grandfather would be Gary Herbert Farber Sr. Not the same name.
Yes, one can adopt the name of any of one’s 8 ggparents. I don’t feel much like an Eleanor, though . . .
Data points: the US Census did not record anyone named Gary Farber from 1790 through 1930. There are something like 100 adult Gary Farbers in the US at this moment. Only 3 people named Gary Farber have died in the US from 1950 to the present.
An impressive uptick, and at this rate, the entire world population will be named ‘Gary Farber” by — well, can one of our math whizzes give the figure?
No one is scheduled to discover my clones until 2024, when we form the critical mass!
You must all die, now.
Gary is a pendant for not posting anonymously!
it’s barely “outing” someone if it’s a matter of the subject using a nom de interweb that shows another name on the first page when dropped into Google.
Gary: I don’t disagree on this point, nor on the distinction between pseudonyms and anonymity. But since this was apparently written with reference to my own “nom de net,” I thought I’d google “dr no” and see just where and how my true identity is revealed. [Taking into account all of the epistemological questions raised about names and “true identity,” maybe I should change that to my “conventional nomenclature” or “the name I was born with (and actually go by).”]
I was a bit surprised to find that when I googled “dr no,” this information did not show up, at least on the first page (or first few pages). Possibly I did it wrong; this has certainly been known to happen. Or, just possibly, I Am Not Who You Think I Am! Boggles the mind …
Try googling “ngowen,” the name on your typekey profile, which we see when we put the mouse over your posting ID.
“It’s your site, and you should do as you wish, but I think allowing repeated anonymous posting is destructive to conversation. I do feel quite strongly that, alternatively, respecting pseudonymity is highly important.”
Gary is entirely right – or rather, I agree entirely with Gary. I expressed some unhappiness with a commenter here who had changed handles, and I would likely have done the same in this thread except that it seemed inappropriate in context.
“Dave, I’m very sorry to hear about this, and now that you bring it up again, I recall you’re making an equally vague reference in the past. My sympathies go out to your family in this time of trouble. I wish all of you all the best.”
Gary is again entirely right, except for “you’re”.
Gary Farber: You can’t actually be known by a name and be “anonymous,” after all. If you’re known by a name, you are definitionally not anonymous. You are known if you are known. I’m not clear what’s unclear about that, so I’m back to thinking some folks don’t understand what “anonymity” means.
You mean, like these folks?
Perhaps someone should start an organization called “Pedants Pseudonymous”.
So if everyone were forced to post as “anon,” that would make no difference whatever to you, Gromit? I mean, anon?
It would make a difference to me. What does that have to do with whether a person posting under an assumed name can be described as “anonymous”?
How many angels can fit through the eye of a needle?
Discuss.
“It would make a difference to me.”
Why are you being such a pedant?
People who claim it makes a difference are pedants! Pedants, pedants, pedants!
That’s what I’m in favor of.
Thats not you doing the exercise is it? I mean your blog name, strawman.
DaveC, “rosenschale” means “bowl of roses”, if that’s what you’re asking about.
I guess I was expecting a vase, or something.
One thing I have wonder about Tacitus, is why he keeps making new blogs. Is he a Johnny Appleseed? Or after a while does he think “Nobody goes there, it’s too crowded”.
I miss crionna.
I wonder if he would allow an occasion diary entry like that to be posted in comments, although he really dowsn’t come here anymore.
<ObPedantry>
You can’t actually be known by a name and be “anonymous,” after all. If you’re known by a name, you are definitionally not anonymous.
Depends on how you mean “known by a name”. We ascribe names to anonymous authors (see, e.g., the various debates on Biblical authorship); we can refer to individuals who perpetually change IDs by one of their nicks; or writers by some identifying traits within their letters or posts; and so forth. To be pseudonymous, to me, requires that the individual adopts a name which then has a persistent connection to that individual — unless you count, e.g., “Bourbaki” as a pseudonym, which I don’t really — over a multiplicity of works, thus providing, in some sense, an authorial “life” wherein everything matches up to reality (author actually wrote those letters, etc.) in everything except the name.
To put it more concretely, were I to write a single letter to the editor signed “Abbyrium” (to make up a name on the spot), I think it would be completely legitimate to describe my authorship of that letter as “anonymous”, my fake name notwithstanding. [You could also describe it as pseudonymous too, but I’m not sure to what end.] Were I to write further letters to the editor under different names — “Jack Ham”, “Togo”, and “Myxomandiosus”, to pick three further random examples — I think it would be fair to describe me as anonymous but not, in any meaningful sense, pseudonymous… even if everyone referred to me as “Abbyrium” since that first letter was so gol-danged good. [Hence, I’d be “known by a name” which is nevertheless not in any meaningful sense my pseudonym.] Were I to write further letters to the editor under the same name, however, it would be inappropriate to describe me as anonymous and appropriate to describe me as pseudonymous.
That distinction — repeated writings connected to the original author via the same name as chosen by the author — is crucial to my eyes. Pseudonymous communication on the net, for example, is very similar to conventional RL communication in many respects since it allows for persistency of communication, reputational systems and the like. Anonymous communication is vastly different — even if, as I said above, you happen to be known by a name — and much trickier. [Anonymous RL communication exists, but most of us don’t indulge.] So while I certainly agree with your larger point that the distinction between “pseudonymous” and “anonymous” needs to be maintained, I think you have to be a lot more careful in describing what exactly that difference is.
</ObPedantry>
What about that excellent(*) early music group, Anonymous Four? Are they anonymous or pseudonymous or neither (since they have their pictures and “real” names on the back cover of the CD)?
(*) Really. Devotees of medieval music (**) for women’s voices should track them down, if you haven’t already done so.
(**) Including pseudo-medieval music, such as the [modern] score written to accompany Dreyer’s silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc.
My mother-in-law went thru a phase where she liked to enter sweepstakes, any kind of sweepstakes she encountered. She liked it so much she entered us in the sweepstakes as well, sometimes multiple times. Needless to say, we got some interesting mail for a while after that. Thank goodness an email address wasn’t required on the entry form.
Exactly so.
Pedantry is “a ostentatious and inappropriate display of learning.” It’s not “making an important distinction.”
The difference between pseudonymity and anonymity is hardly insignificant. If it were, one couldn’t switch one for the other and not be bothered.
I am deeply confused about the etiquette of outing the commenter’s other handle, which, as best I can tell, was truly anonymous. On the other hand, what is the etiquette of changing your handle, then re-engaging someone with whom you have a long-standing grudge?
Sorry to return to this, but since I pointed out the outing first (perhaps it would have gone unnoted had I not?), I should toss in my 2 yen.
I think it is deeply wrong to refer to someone’s real-life identity, which is what happened here. It’s made worse by the fact that the person who did it went apparently went into the registration information of one of the sites he runs to dig this out and use it. (btw, isn’t this what Fitzgerald is working on with Libby?)
As for pointing out that the person is changing his/her handle to continue an attack, if that had been all that was pointed out, I would have had a lot more sympathy.
One question this does raise is how much we need to credit a person’s real life experiences when they write. Well, if they use that experience and it turns out that they embellished or manufactured that experience, I think that is misleading their audience and it should be pointed out. However, I think that their real life identity shouldn’t be threatened because that is an escalation. Perhaps it will be that this person using that pseudonym won’t be able to show their face on that particular blog. And it is possible that people may chase them to other blogs as a form of cyber-stalking, which is not so nice, but given the way blogs work, not possible to police. But there should be a bright line separating the information here and real life identity, unless that information could have an impact on other people’s lives in the real world.
We’ve had two incidents (not counting Gary playing anonymous to make his point about how an anonymous poster could disrupt a forum, which brings back a strange nostalgia about Usenet) here that bear on this. IIRC, one was when a longtime poster chose a different handle and started an argument with Slarti. Slarti pointed out that the person had the same IP address as another poster who made remarkably similar arguments. The commentor said that he changed his handle every so often for no special reason. This was hooted down and the person stopped commenting here, I think. I think this led to Slart looking over the IP addresses and found that a set of particularly virulent commentators who often argued against Hilzoy’s posts were all from the same IP address. The IP address was banned, and I don’t think anyone has since appeared displaying that commentator’s brand of rhetoric. Thus, there seems to be a default policy of banning people who get obnoxious and post with multiple handles from the same IP address, so though there is not a specific mention in the posting rules, it seems to have precedent in the ObWi book. And it would certainly fall under the rubric of ‘disrupting the conversation for its own sake’
I’m quite sure that when I write things here, I’m writing them in real life.
I’m pretty sure this blog exists in real life. This isn’t all a dream, is it?
For really real
link
I guess you’ve not been around the internet very much, eh? I bet you don’t even have a blog!
Pedantry is “a ostentatious and inappropriate display of learning.” It’s not “making an important distinction.”
A pedant can also be “a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning”. It is the pedant who fails to realize that the distinction in question is important to him, and to him alone. For example, I recently saw a Burger King commercial in which an Imperial Stormtrooper lights a grill with his blaster. I remarked, with no small amount of disdain, that the blaster fire should not be blue, as portrayed, but red. Clone Troopers’ blasters fire blue bolts. The Blastech E-11 issued to every Stormtrooper fires red bolts. Any idiot knows this.
My wife rightly noted that I was being pedantic. Those weren’t the words she used (which, for the sake of my dignity, I’ll not transcribe here) but that was the message, in a nutshell.
Don’t get me wrong, there are important distinctions between pseudonymity and anonymity, but in the case of a person who uses a pseudonym to conceal his real name, as far as I’m concerned, both may apply. Hence Alcoholics Anonymous, in which members are known only by their first names. By the strict standard you advocate, the members would not be “anonymous” at all. Perhaps you would argue this point with the organization’s founders. However, they would be justified in labeling this argument “pedantry”.
not counting Gary playing anonymous to make his point about how an anonymous poster could disrupt a forum, which brings back a strange nostalgia about Usenet
There does seem to be some sort of poetic justice about this anon poster disrupting things, but lets not assume it is Gary. And Its hard to believe Gary didnt read Tacitus in the olden days.
That is a very good point, DaveC, I should have written
“not counting someone (who I think may be Gary?) playing anonymous with multiple handles…”
One of the hive mind could look at the IP address(es) used, but I would much prefer they write posts rather than have to do that.
I am Spartikus. No…I am Spartikus.
Go right ahead.
OK, you are Spartikus. Can we go home now?
Okay, okay, I take back my pedantry charge, which was levelled not because Gary thinks the distinction between anonymity and pseudonymity is important (it is) but because I thought he was intentionally taking the long way to that point.
Looking back at Gary’s post, I see that he may actually have been confused about Hilzoy’s meaning. From context, it was pretty clear to me what she meant, but I can see how a reasonably intelligent person could be confused, given that we did have some pseudonym switching here.
Which I kind of regret, I have to say. Not the detective work, but the dragging of any of the end products out into the public eye. The identity of the posters is not anything that y’all should be concerned with. It is, however, something that I concern myself with when it threatens to disrupt the conversation.
I am here in this old thread sent by someone to whom Atrios sent me when calling Trevino the wanker of the day.
I would like to comment on one of the comment by Francis.
“those guerrilla movements crushed by occupying forces (Mau Mau in Kenya, Viet Cong, FLN in Algeria) were defeated, i suspect, by tactics considered unacceptable today.
(It’s probably also worth pointing out that the govts of each of those three countries since the end of the guerrilla wars have not exactly been characterized by stability or pro-west attitudes.)”
In fact the FLN and the Vietnamese communists were victorious. In Vietnam Hanoi achieved its war aims. From 1964 on, the Viet Cong followed orders from Hanoi (denied at the time confirmed since then). They, like the FLN won the war after losing all the battles.
Similarly, the Mau Mau were a Kikuyu movement aiming for independence and Kikuyu hegemony. Both were promptly achieved after their alleged defeat. The British generally assumed that Kenyatta was the true leader of the Mau Mau insurgency (no proof or confirmation was or is available). He became dictator soon after the Mau Mau were “defeated”.
Francis is wrong about one thing though, Kenyatta was pro western. In this case, the British achieved their aims by aloowing their perceived greatest adversary to take power (see also “Cyprus and “Makarios”).
If the British were right about Kenyatta,
the three examples of defeated insurgencies turn out to be three insurgencies whose aims were completely achieved.
Trevino’s claim about what could be achieved in Iraq if our will does not falter is based on claims about what could have been achieved in the past if someone’s will had not faltered.
There are two cases of genuinely defeated insurgencies, Africaaners in South Africa and communists in Malaysia. In each case, the insurgency was fought by an ethnic minority (in South Africa a minority of Whites). They were genuinely defeated, although it is true that the Africaaners obtained power half a century after their defeat.
Way back in 2005 this might have made them seem relevant to Iraq. Now that Iraq is in civil war and we don’t want to take sides with the Shi’ites, the cases are irrelevant
I am here in this old thread sent by someone to whom Atrios sent me when calling Trevino the wanker of the day.
I would like to comment on one of the comment by Francis.
“those guerrilla movements crushed by occupying forces (Mau Mau in Kenya, Viet Cong, FLN in Algeria) were defeated, i suspect, by tactics considered unacceptable today.
(It’s probably also worth pointing out that the govts of each of those three countries since the end of the guerrilla wars have not exactly been characterized by stability or pro-west attitudes.)”
In fact the FLN and the Vietnamese communists were victorious. In Vietnam Hanoi achieved its war aims. From 1964 on, the Viet Cong followed orders from Hanoi (denied at the time confirmed since then). They, like the FLN won the war after losing all the battles.
Similarly, the Mau Mau were a Kikuyu movement aiming for independence and Kikuyu hegemony. Both were promptly achieved after their alleged defeat. The British generally assumed that Kenyatta was the true leader of the Mau Mau insurgency (no proof or confirmation was or is available). He became dictator soon after the Mau Mau were “defeated”.
Francis is wrong about one thing though, Kenyatta was pro western. In this case, the British achieved their aims by aloowing their perceived greatest adversary to take power (see also “Cyprus and “Makarios”).
If the British were right about Kenyatta,
the three examples of defeated insurgencies turn out to be three insurgencies whose aims were completely achieved.
Trevino’s claim about what could be achieved in Iraq if our will does not falter is based on claims about what could have been achieved in the past if someone’s will had not faltered.
There are two cases of genuinely defeated insurgencies, Africaaners in South Africa and communists in Malaysia. In each case, the insurgency was fought by an ethnic minority (in South Africa a minority of Whites). They were genuinely defeated, although it is true that the Africaaners obtained power half a century after their defeat.
Way back in 2005 this might have made them seem relevant to Iraq. Now that Iraq is in civil war and we don’t want to take sides with the Shi’ites, the cases are irrelevant
There is today by the dress from the dick suck elevator to the next several months. Mandy.