Can Kerry Stop The War In Iraq?
Can Kerry Stop The War In Iraq?
Let’s assume the American people are losing confidence in this administration over the long war in Iraq, persistent economic failure, and disgusting exploitation of 9/11 in some order or combination of importance. Yes, I think most Americans have seen all the extremism and lies from the White House they care to.
What can a Kerry Administration do about this?
It can start by not compounding the lies but by dealing with the superficial nature of a merely “moderate” critique, not really an alternative:
First, new administration should make it clear that the present difficulties in Iraq and elsewhere are reflections of long-standing problems that the Bush Administration, actually the Cheney Regency, misread, misrepresented, and made far worse but that they did not exactly create:
The Reagan/Bush policy of helping Saudi Arabia prop-up Saddam Hussein as a barrier to Iran was already a failure, and post-Zionist sabotage of the Oslo Accords was already a success even before Bush/Cheney took office.
Both parties were and still are complicit in converting Great, World, and Cold War economic institutions into today’s crony capitalism, thereby undermining both the structure and level of wages at home and abroad.
Neither party has even begun to deal with profound changes in the very nature of war and military-economic challenges that these pose.
Second, going way back, the Democratic Party does not actually know how to function outside the Jim Crow framework of bi-partisan concession-tending established in 1874 and lasting until 1994.
My guess is that John KERRY will pick maybe even John McCAIN to run as V-P on the Democratic ticket and will try harder to draw Moderate Republicans into some sort of partnership than to re-build his own party from the ground-up. I am no fan of anything smacking of a bi-partisan coalition, but given that he will have to deal with (a) a GOP-controlled Congress for at least half his first term and (b) with a right-wing judiciary for a generation, I am not sure he has much choice in that.
Third, many institutions in American life, not just the Democratic Party, need to be re-built after all sorts of damage done by a century and a half of civil wars in America and Europe. Those are challenges for entire generations, not mere administrations.
Still, a new administration that does “get down” and focus on what it can and should deal with immediately and effectively could and should inspire new generations and re-inspire mine.
For my own part, I hope my friends in this caucus will not be dismayed by signs of “collaboration” in the Kerry camp or get carried away with antique notions of left and right and empty gestures of political correctness. Think about it: Is it realistic to expect a Boston Brahmin, albeit nominally Irish and Catholic, to rebuild this party nationwide from the ground up?
No! Whose responsibility is it to put more depth in our politics anyway?
Actually, it is ours. Moreover, Texas Democrats have some unique things to bring to the task:
We could have an Energy Policy in one state: Texas could make better economic and political provision for a stable Middle East and Central Asia than anything that anybody in New York or Pennsylvania has come up with in over a century by fashioning moving well beyond antique notions of "coaling stations" and "naval petroleum reserves", which is where all this got started and is still stuck.
We gave the nation and used to adhere to the conventions of Common Carriage: These are a better foundation for both national security and international economics than either the “protectionist” or “free trade” doctrines that bi-partisan concession-tenders in Washington embraced after the Great War swamped the popular and progressive doctrines that had emerged in the early twentieth century, not least, from Texas.
Finally, Texas does have a rather unique military, medical, and educational heritage: We had a notably successful militia, have both secular and religious foundations for universal provision of health care, and remain constitutionally commitment to and endowed with the means of universal public education. These have no counterparts, for instance, in the Thirteen Colonies. Texas was never a Colony of Great Britain or a Territory of the United States. So, if you want to build on robust foundations of popular sovereignty, this would be a good place to do it.
Here are two formidable impediments to re-inventing Texas, besides bogus history from the Second Klan to Walt Disney:
Jim Crow: This was a deal Texas Democrats entered into to get out of jail, so to speak, after the Civil War. It was not just or even mostly about denying the vote to former slaves. It was much more than that, and it still lives on, in the Texas Election Code, not least.
Legal expediency: Rather than overthrow that Jim Crow regime – a national system of bi-partisan concession-tending – sometime between 1964 and 1974, when we could have, Texas Democrats – liberal lawyers mostly -- relied on the federal judiciary to remove the most obvious manifestations of anti-black discrimination. This was superficial, to put it mildly, and is now reversible. In any case, the result is more racially “inclusive” forms of Jim Crow that are, however, more economically discriminatory than ever and that are more profoundly divisive than overt racism.
So, we have to deal with the old and new Jim Crow ourselves and definitively, not send appeals to the Fifth Circuit or complaints to the so-called Justice Department. We have to get rid of the worst two aspects of our heritage to exploit the best three effectively and rapidly.
Now, obviously, I am obsessed with the past and not too happy with lawyers, even liberal ones.
But, for Pete’s sake, look at what a bootless moron with no grasp of history is doing in the White House to ruin our country and much of the rest of the world. A new generation, two or three of them actually, is going to have to dispatch some of the past and recover some of the rest to Move On. And, more than one profession needs to be involved.
But, all that is not so hard:
Much is rotten and ready to fall. But, flailing around and whining will not hasten that day.
There are wonderful, albeit also dangerous, new technologies to work with and work on.
So, both political maturity and the boundless energy and creativity of youth are required today. Actually, John KERRY is my generation and has a lot of maturity. But, that is not necessarily depth. He need a lot of the latter, and it will only come from the ground up, if it comes at all.
So, can Kerry get us out of the war in Iraq?
Actually, the war against Saddam Hussein is over. We won. Big deal!
The war against al-Qaida and the like has hardly begun. The war in Iraq was and is a diversion. Somebody in the Bush Administration thought we could win it alone, quickly, and at a place and time of our choosing – in Iraq. They are fools, they were wrong, and they need to be booted out of or demoted from any offices or commands they hold.
I expect a KERRY administration to do that, but I expect it will, first, increase the scale and broaden the scope of U.S. forces in Iraq. It will take longer and more effort to secure a measure of peace and stability in Iraq than it took to make the mess there. Then our forces can be ramped down replaced with something as successful as the NATO peace-keeping force in Kosovo has been and the same sort of force in Afghanistan now needs to be. Neither is all that well off yet. So, it will be difficult to snatch anything good from what is now two years nearly of all-out war in Iraq and what was, before that, ten years of siege warfare.
There has been virtually no peace in Iraq since the end of World War II. And, will not be any soon, now.
In any case, we are probably in a long war with all sorts of what history calls “pirates and slavers”, what people today call “terrorists”.
That sort of war is not actually won. Pirates and slavers, like war, disease, famine, and death, generally, are only attenuated and held in check.
We should be able to see this clearly here in Texas.
Santa Anna thought the Texians were just “pirates and slavers”. He was more correct than not about that. Some were, but some were constitutionalists before the Alamo and many, after San Jacinto, were idealists and very decent folk.
Santa Anna, in contrast, was a tyrant and nobody knew or knows that better than Mexicans. In fact, those of us as escaped Mexican rule – white, black, brown, and red -- did not always do well here but have done much better than those as did not escape or much improve Mexican rule.
So, here we are. We are not in Utopia and will not get there from here.
We are just “Gone to Texas!”
And, we -- some of us -- have a future here, too, I hope. Some more, I fear, will go to Iraq as soldiers or workers and not come back. But, for those as stay or come back here, I expect there are many good days and years ahead. One thing is sure: There is a better track to be on than the one we are now on – a broken loop.
In fact, there are a lot of good tracks – “Seventeen Railroads (or abandoned roadbeds) to the Sea” here in Houston.
So, all of us now need to be “Workin’ on the Railroad”.
“The Eyes of Texas”, incidentally, was a progressive political anthem here in Texas. That was back when there was more singing and less whining in politics. It referred to a political battle against the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroad Monopolies. Only after the Texas (and California) Railroad Commissions were established did this very political ditty become a football “fight song”.
Here, then, is an interesting problem:
Progressive politics have tremendous momentum and carry on long after fashion changes and people forget how things got started. That is a problem of culture that only art, music, and literature can solve, a memory problem that biology, technology, and economics conspire to make worse.
Let’s assume the American people are losing confidence in this administration over the long war in Iraq, persistent economic failure, and disgusting exploitation of 9/11 in some order or combination of importance. Yes, I think most Americans have seen all the extremism and lies from the White House they care to.
What can a Kerry Administration do about this?
It can start by not compounding the lies but by dealing with the superficial nature of a merely “moderate” critique, not really an alternative:
First, new administration should make it clear that the present difficulties in Iraq and elsewhere are reflections of long-standing problems that the Bush Administration, actually the Cheney Regency, misread, misrepresented, and made far worse but that they did not exactly create:
The Reagan/Bush policy of helping Saudi Arabia prop-up Saddam Hussein as a barrier to Iran was already a failure, and post-Zionist sabotage of the Oslo Accords was already a success even before Bush/Cheney took office.
Both parties were and still are complicit in converting Great, World, and Cold War economic institutions into today’s crony capitalism, thereby undermining both the structure and level of wages at home and abroad.
Neither party has even begun to deal with profound changes in the very nature of war and military-economic challenges that these pose.
Second, going way back, the Democratic Party does not actually know how to function outside the Jim Crow framework of bi-partisan concession-tending established in 1874 and lasting until 1994.
My guess is that John KERRY will pick maybe even John McCAIN to run as V-P on the Democratic ticket and will try harder to draw Moderate Republicans into some sort of partnership than to re-build his own party from the ground-up. I am no fan of anything smacking of a bi-partisan coalition, but given that he will have to deal with (a) a GOP-controlled Congress for at least half his first term and (b) with a right-wing judiciary for a generation, I am not sure he has much choice in that.
Third, many institutions in American life, not just the Democratic Party, need to be re-built after all sorts of damage done by a century and a half of civil wars in America and Europe. Those are challenges for entire generations, not mere administrations.
Still, a new administration that does “get down” and focus on what it can and should deal with immediately and effectively could and should inspire new generations and re-inspire mine.
For my own part, I hope my friends in this caucus will not be dismayed by signs of “collaboration” in the Kerry camp or get carried away with antique notions of left and right and empty gestures of political correctness. Think about it: Is it realistic to expect a Boston Brahmin, albeit nominally Irish and Catholic, to rebuild this party nationwide from the ground up?
No! Whose responsibility is it to put more depth in our politics anyway?
Actually, it is ours. Moreover, Texas Democrats have some unique things to bring to the task:
We could have an Energy Policy in one state: Texas could make better economic and political provision for a stable Middle East and Central Asia than anything that anybody in New York or Pennsylvania has come up with in over a century by fashioning moving well beyond antique notions of "coaling stations" and "naval petroleum reserves", which is where all this got started and is still stuck.
We gave the nation and used to adhere to the conventions of Common Carriage: These are a better foundation for both national security and international economics than either the “protectionist” or “free trade” doctrines that bi-partisan concession-tenders in Washington embraced after the Great War swamped the popular and progressive doctrines that had emerged in the early twentieth century, not least, from Texas.
Finally, Texas does have a rather unique military, medical, and educational heritage: We had a notably successful militia, have both secular and religious foundations for universal provision of health care, and remain constitutionally commitment to and endowed with the means of universal public education. These have no counterparts, for instance, in the Thirteen Colonies. Texas was never a Colony of Great Britain or a Territory of the United States. So, if you want to build on robust foundations of popular sovereignty, this would be a good place to do it.
Here are two formidable impediments to re-inventing Texas, besides bogus history from the Second Klan to Walt Disney:
Jim Crow: This was a deal Texas Democrats entered into to get out of jail, so to speak, after the Civil War. It was not just or even mostly about denying the vote to former slaves. It was much more than that, and it still lives on, in the Texas Election Code, not least.
Legal expediency: Rather than overthrow that Jim Crow regime – a national system of bi-partisan concession-tending – sometime between 1964 and 1974, when we could have, Texas Democrats – liberal lawyers mostly -- relied on the federal judiciary to remove the most obvious manifestations of anti-black discrimination. This was superficial, to put it mildly, and is now reversible. In any case, the result is more racially “inclusive” forms of Jim Crow that are, however, more economically discriminatory than ever and that are more profoundly divisive than overt racism.
So, we have to deal with the old and new Jim Crow ourselves and definitively, not send appeals to the Fifth Circuit or complaints to the so-called Justice Department. We have to get rid of the worst two aspects of our heritage to exploit the best three effectively and rapidly.
Now, obviously, I am obsessed with the past and not too happy with lawyers, even liberal ones.
But, for Pete’s sake, look at what a bootless moron with no grasp of history is doing in the White House to ruin our country and much of the rest of the world. A new generation, two or three of them actually, is going to have to dispatch some of the past and recover some of the rest to Move On. And, more than one profession needs to be involved.
But, all that is not so hard:
Much is rotten and ready to fall. But, flailing around and whining will not hasten that day.
There are wonderful, albeit also dangerous, new technologies to work with and work on.
So, both political maturity and the boundless energy and creativity of youth are required today. Actually, John KERRY is my generation and has a lot of maturity. But, that is not necessarily depth. He need a lot of the latter, and it will only come from the ground up, if it comes at all.
So, can Kerry get us out of the war in Iraq?
Actually, the war against Saddam Hussein is over. We won. Big deal!
The war against al-Qaida and the like has hardly begun. The war in Iraq was and is a diversion. Somebody in the Bush Administration thought we could win it alone, quickly, and at a place and time of our choosing – in Iraq. They are fools, they were wrong, and they need to be booted out of or demoted from any offices or commands they hold.
I expect a KERRY administration to do that, but I expect it will, first, increase the scale and broaden the scope of U.S. forces in Iraq. It will take longer and more effort to secure a measure of peace and stability in Iraq than it took to make the mess there. Then our forces can be ramped down replaced with something as successful as the NATO peace-keeping force in Kosovo has been and the same sort of force in Afghanistan now needs to be. Neither is all that well off yet. So, it will be difficult to snatch anything good from what is now two years nearly of all-out war in Iraq and what was, before that, ten years of siege warfare.
There has been virtually no peace in Iraq since the end of World War II. And, will not be any soon, now.
In any case, we are probably in a long war with all sorts of what history calls “pirates and slavers”, what people today call “terrorists”.
That sort of war is not actually won. Pirates and slavers, like war, disease, famine, and death, generally, are only attenuated and held in check.
We should be able to see this clearly here in Texas.
Santa Anna thought the Texians were just “pirates and slavers”. He was more correct than not about that. Some were, but some were constitutionalists before the Alamo and many, after San Jacinto, were idealists and very decent folk.
Santa Anna, in contrast, was a tyrant and nobody knew or knows that better than Mexicans. In fact, those of us as escaped Mexican rule – white, black, brown, and red -- did not always do well here but have done much better than those as did not escape or much improve Mexican rule.
So, here we are. We are not in Utopia and will not get there from here.
We are just “Gone to Texas!”
And, we -- some of us -- have a future here, too, I hope. Some more, I fear, will go to Iraq as soldiers or workers and not come back. But, for those as stay or come back here, I expect there are many good days and years ahead. One thing is sure: There is a better track to be on than the one we are now on – a broken loop.
In fact, there are a lot of good tracks – “Seventeen Railroads (or abandoned roadbeds) to the Sea” here in Houston.
So, all of us now need to be “Workin’ on the Railroad”.
“The Eyes of Texas”, incidentally, was a progressive political anthem here in Texas. That was back when there was more singing and less whining in politics. It referred to a political battle against the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroad Monopolies. Only after the Texas (and California) Railroad Commissions were established did this very political ditty become a football “fight song”.
Here, then, is an interesting problem:
Progressive politics have tremendous momentum and carry on long after fashion changes and people forget how things got started. That is a problem of culture that only art, music, and literature can solve, a memory problem that biology, technology, and economics conspire to make worse.
posted by John Robert BEHRMAN at 4/14/2004
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