Acting Globally, Thinking Locally

The debate about a Presidentially-ordered surge in troops in Iraq is a set-piece designed to distract us, and a lot of us have fallen right into the pit.

President Bush has all the forces, money, and Constitutional power necessary to achieve his redeployment objectives—call it “escalation”, or “augmentation” (Condoleeza) or “acceleration” (Chuck Hagel, I think he misspoke)--without anyone's agreement, even to override any conceivable action the Congress could do in the short-term to prevent him from making it happen.

Short of changing his mind, and it's well documented that neither hurricane nor civil war can achieve for us that objective, he can do what he intends, and all the protests in the world and legislation on the Hill won't stop it. Expending a lot of time or effort to blocking it is by definition wasted effort.

Over the course of six to 19 months, though, Congress can affect the conduct of the war through controlling special appropriations for Iraq. They should put Bush on a shorter leash, giving him extra funds for the next six months to get training, reconstruction, final offensive operations, and planning for redeployment completed. Future funding would depend on making the case to Congress, and on finding budget cuts--I'd start with unwanted weapons systems and Star Wars anti-missile fantasies--to pay for additional special appropriations for purposes agreed upon by Congress. A further escalation in six months—when this effort falls short—can be precluded.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, needs additional funding and NATO forces, though that is another story. In Iraq, we should be looking to buy a small amount of time to make the political deals required to decentralize the police, to prepare the way for the exit of our combat forces, and to give the regions autonomy and a fair distribution of the oil money.

Speaking of money for oil, I have to weigh in on the hottest local topic: the Mayor's new Hummer!

Of course no one can deny Mayor Bobby Duran the right to get the private vehicle of his choice. I've always felt that one may drive a gas-guzzler as long as one doesn't complain about the price of gas. The fact of the Hummer's military origin in its design is irrelevant: getting some civilian benefit from military expenditure would be great, if the vehicle were not so useless in civilian life. Instead of Duran's personal vehicle, we should instead focus on the fuel standards of the town's fleets of passenger vehicles and trucks, with hybrids and biodiesel being the standard for each that we should be aiming at.

Mayor Duran's political albatross is all his, though I could suggest he donate it to the town: we could plate in in bronze and put in the Plaza with other controversial past heroes. Perhaps it has an excellent stereo that would provide music for plaza visitors. That would certainly be proof of his big-ness, which seems to be the hidden issue.

The real issue--one that should be obvious though it doesn't seem to come up-- is that the mayor's actual role is mostly one of providing leadership. In the campaign for his recent, narrow re-election (see, for example, a previous commentary, "Bobby Duran, No Mas" at http://chinshihtang.blogspot.com/2006/02/first-fifteenth-monthly-review.html) we all saw that the town is run by others, and that mayoral policy-making in this town is basically limited to breaking tie votes in the council. The rest is what he/she provides by argument and by example. In this regard, it would be better to lend one's image to ground-breaking for bike trails than to the right to take up two spaces (even if he pays for both meters) in our limited downtown parking areas.

Duran's choice is therefore a political judgment we may be called upon to validate or reject. Someone mentioned to me that this issue is all about making a wedge issue out of the differing value systems of longtime residents and new residents. I'll admit that there is such a gap, but let's not let that keep us all from thinking intelligently about the issue at hand.

Articles on Giant Marine Catches--Significance?

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/rarely-seen-sea-monster-captured-then-following-script-dies/

An excellent article. I will now try to locate the one about the recent catch of the mega-giant squid caught recently off New Zealand. This will be posting the future into the past, if my suspicion about the way they show dates of articles is correct. 2/23/07

Couple more Thoughts re: Iraq

First, I have to give some credit to Hillary and to Joe Biden for coming up with the logical rejoinder to Bush's lame "surge" proposal: put the troops in Afghanistan! We need to counter the increase in Taliban activities, and it seems we are stretched very thin there. Unlike Iraq, we have a government there worth preserving, direct effect on the war on terror, and a situation not yet irredeemable. And, if Dubya wants to do something for his legacy, capturing or killing Osama and Mullah Omar would seem his best bet on the anti-terror front.

Second, a concept for Congress: let Dubya have a little maneuver room, but at the same time a shorter leash. Authorize expenditures for the Iraq war for a shorter period of time, six months, at a slightly higher spend rate than was initially requested (pre-surge). Dubya could do his short-term ramp-up, but he wouldn't be able to sustain it for long (the real danger of escalation); he'd need to come back pretty soon to ask for more money, and that's when we put the drawdown requirement on the conduct of the war.

Letter to President Bush on Escalation

Appended to my signature to "Give'm Hell Harry" Reid's petition:

I plead with you to adhere more closely to the Iraq Study Group recommendations for diplomatic initiatives, training, and redployment. Help seal a peaceful political framework around four areas--Shia Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Sunni Iraq provinces, and Baghdad--each with proportional representation in Parliament and a confederation of four. Break up the National Police.
We can get the troops out and close the bases before your term ends.

What I didn't say: Whatever could be accomplished by a surge of forces in the two areas--Sunni Iraq and Baghdad-- can be done through administrative adjustments, taking from the other two areas, without a noticeable change in overall troop levels. This political battle coming up over escalation is purely a symbolic argument. The key is to somehow change this President's mind; I think Harry's letter appreciated that, as well. Soon it will become how Bush can best leave the mess for others to clean up.

Jeb for VP....

..not.

We've seen the trial balloons being floated for Jeb Bush, who just ended his second term as Florida Governor. The balloons say, "Jeb doesn't want to run for President, the nation is weary of Bushite Presidency, but he'd be a great VP". It's unclear whether these balloons are arising from the McCain camp itself, or from Jeb staffers who want a new job.

Hold on a minute here. Jeb may be the smartest of the Bushes, the most policy oriented, with the best personality, and he might be a tad more moderate than Dubya, but it's incumbent on US to pop this bubble before it gets started. Exactly because the nation is weary of Bushite Presidency.

McCain is 70+ and hasn't even announced his candidacy yet. We don't see his health records, but he's had some hard times, physically. He could run for one term, then decide not to run again, and who would be in the shotgun seat, ready to move over to driver? Of course, in these times one should never exclude the possibility of assassination or something.

Nothing (too) personal, Jeb, but VP's too close in the line of succession. I'm not taking a hard line against your holding any public job, it could even be a Federal one, but it better be a good distance down the line. Defense, or HHS, or CIA, or national security advisor. All good jobs. But if we see a Bush--any Bush-- named on the ticket, we'll fight it like it was Dubya himself running for a third term.

Saddam's "Electric" Hanging

I am "shocked" at the "shock" about the "shocking" pirated video of Saddam's hanging. It's quote-shock-unquote-cubed.

First, the pirated video didn't really have much in it that was unexpected. There was a bit of nasty banter and chants of "Muqtada", letting Saddam know that it was really the al-Sadr camp that was doing him in. Perhaps he didn't quite realize to what extent that was so, and reacted more than he wanted to do; as for US, we might have realized, if we'd thought about it.

That's actually the hopeful part of this episode: We can hope that this bloodletting, this legalized lynching, will help to sate the Shiite partisans' lust a bit. As for the Sunnis, I'm sure they had no illusions. Our government's representatives, the US forces, delivered the Sunnis' former leader, unreconciled, into the hands of his greatest enemy, the militant Shiites (the Iraqi Kurds being a close second). As one would expect during wartime, the priority was to dispatch him immediately by the most handy means available, and that's just what the Iraqi government folks did. We should hardly be surprised if the Sunnis see the episode as proof of our perfidy, and of the declared hostility of the forces driving the current Iraqi government.

Besides our Pontius Pilate-like handoff, we affected the same pretense of moral superiority the Romans took towards the Jewish hierarchy in the Jesus Christ case. Not that Saddam qualifies as a martyr for anyone, and of course the simple fact of his death gives us all a guilty moment of pleasure. Our hometown executions may have the appearance of allowing the condemned some dignity as he submits to his murder, but ours give the victime no more choice nor any different motive than Saddam had: try not to give them any pleasure by showing fear.

How can any of us expect more from the Iraqi government than to do what they have done? If the point of the outrage is that we expect Iraq to be a "civilized nation-state," I'd say they did their part.

Finally, how can I be surprised at the moral myopia, arrogance, and lack of perception from our political and media leaders in their reaction to this normal Hobbesian behavior? Do I have a right to expect better?

Simple Confederation Formula for Iraq

I am a big fan of confederation as an approach to a permanent, potentially democratic, solution to some of the world's complex nationalism problems--I recommend it specifically with regard to Greater China (PRC, Tibet, Manchuria, Taiwan, Hong Kong) and Palestine (not geographically contiguous regions but culturally- and religiously-defined community "islands" co-existing within the state formed from the current borders of Israel, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank).

Everyone is freaking out about the complexity of Iraq and the political settlement required before any kind of secure regime can take hold. A lot of the trouble seems to be about division of the oil, naturally, so the solution should apply both to the parliament and to the net revenues from oil and gas production.

My proposal would be to make Iraq into four federated regions, each with considerable autonomy to make laws along the lines of our federal states. This differs from Biden's proposal, essentially to break Iraq into three countries, by one unit--Baghdad. The formula is: 50% to Shia provinces of the South (readily identifiable), and each of the other three regions getting 16 2/3%: Iraqi Kurdistan, Baghdad, and the Sunni-dominated provinces other than Baghdad.

I believe these correspond pretty well to the population distibution (they should be adjusted slightly to correspond to it as well as possible) with the exception of a disproportionate weight to Baghdad. This is appropriate for that key metropolitan area, which would allow the central government facilities there to get funded properly without being suspected of stealing from the other regions.

As in the current constitution, a 2/3 majority would be needed to govern, and in today's world that would still probably be primarily a Shia-Kurd coalition. As Shiite politics develop and Shia nationalism recedes (inevitable once some stability develops), this region's influences could divide around other issues and form alliances with factions of the other regions (such as Baghdad's inevitably fractured political forces).

Once this formula was announced, the focus in security efforts would be to make plans to pacify Baghdad's neighborhoods and ensure suppression of Al Qaeda in the Sunni areas; then they could govern themselves and we could get ourselves gone. As it stands, we can surge or whatever but we have no clue what we are producing there, and neither do they.

Any questions?

2006 Word of the Year: Weltschmerz

Here's the link to Wikipedia's excellent summary of the word's use: http://www.answers.com/topic/weltschmerz

A couple of key points about it, and how it qualifies, among all the words of the English language, to be the "Word of the Year":

First, it is a compound word coined from the combination of the German words for "World" and "pain", and it arises from the Romantic movement and is central to the Romantic philosophy (and Wikipedia also mentions it with regard to the modern "goth subculture").

It is credited to Jean Paul Richter (see http://www.answers.com/topic/jean-paul for an assessment of his work, also quite relevant, but here's a great quote from him: "The child is not to be educated for the present, but for the remote future, and often in opposition to the immediate future.") The Wikipedia entry on Weltschmerz includes this amazing phrase: it "denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that the physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind".

I think this captures my 2006 political mindset, and that of many others as well.If we gave this year's version of the American electorate a single identity and a single purpose, it attempted to throw the bums out for their failure to create a physical reality in Iraq which matched up with their imagined one.

The emotional feeling, described as "sentimental pessimism", may be a perennial danger, but there are certain times when the pain becomes more acute, and most of this year was one of those times.

And, coincidentally, it was the word misspelled by Finola Hackett, the runner-up in this year's National Spelling Bee.