Category Archives: The World

A post-mortem on containment doctrine, from 2003

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I got into sort of a mini-debate with Bud back here on the subject of the old Domino Theory, which in turn led to me running on and on about the Cold War doctrine of containment, which got me to thinking about this old column. That is to say a very brief interchange with Bud, then me weighing back in repeatedly here and here and here and here and here.

It ran in the paper four days after Baghdad fell, which means I wrote it a day or two after, which may be why the lede seems vague — it assumes a lot of immediate knowledge on the parts of readers. If you’ll recall, even though the drive toward Baghdad from Kuwait only took about three weeks, in about the third week, there were already naysaysers saying that our invasion had “bogged down.” Now that Baghdad had just fallen, their political opponents were nyah-nyahing back at them.

I was saying that they should not expect the invasion’s detractors to shut up, nor should they. But I was also noting that the relatively small antiwar factions at that time were somewhat voiceless, as they lacked a coherent narrative for what they wanted to do instead.

That was one theme of the column. Another was to point out something that seemed quite obvious to me then, and still does now: That the most natural opponents of the invasion, if ideology meant anything at all (an idea I often challenge, of course), were conservatives. I mean, paleo-conservatives such as Pat Buchanan.

Because even though it was being pursued by a particularly strong-willed conservative president, it was distinctly a liberal enterprise.

The two elements that I took off on in making these points were a fascinating lecture I had heard on C-SPAN by Prof. Alan Brinkley of Columbia University — a liberal opponent of the invasion, who nevertheless voiced the frustration of intellectuals who had trouble articulating their opposition in a way that he, at least, found satisfactory. That, and some things I had read in The New Republic, which called Bush “the most Wilsonian president since Wilson himself.”

As we all know, the invasion did “bog down” — after the technical, Clausewitzian war was over. Which means, the post-war occupation ran into huge problems with multilateral post-war violence, nearly sinking the entire effort in failure (before the Surge).  That I attribute to the fact that this effort to harness military power to liberal ends was being conducted by a conservative, one who had assured us before his election did not believe in nation-building. No wonder his administration was so bad at it.

But we didn’t know anything about that then. Remember that as you read this:

DEBATE OVER U.S. ROLE UNDERMINES ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ‘RIGHT’ AND ‘LEFT’

State, The (Columbia, SC) – Sunday, April 13, 2003

Author: BRAD WARTHEN Editorial Page Editor

Enough Acton: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, except when it does not.

-The New Republic

IN THE HEADY thrill of reaching the “tipping point” in Iraq, some people said some silly things on the 24-hour-chatter TV channels. Some even speculated that recent events would shut up all the naysayers with regard to America’s new role in the world.

Don’t look for that to happen. After all, it’s a free country. At the same time, don’t look for critics to come up with any helpful alternative ideas, either. I say that based on excellent authority.

On C-SPAN last weekend, I caught a remarkable presentation by Alan Brinkley, provost and chairman of the history department at Columbia University. Professor Brinkley is erudite, thoughtful and intellectually honest. He is also an opponent of what the United States is doing in Iraq. But to his own frustration, he can’t offer a compelling alternative to that policy.

Addressing a conference on the war in Iraq, he spoke with what I took to be understated nostalgia for the doctrine of containment that dominated U.S. policy during the Cold War. He paid particular attention to the fact that “containment” applied not only to the Soviet Union and other enemies, but to ourselves as well. Faced with a rival superpower, the United States held back its own power. We didn’t, for instance, invade North Vietnam during that war, or even bomb those missile sites in Cuba in October 1962.

Containment still managed to hang on to some extent after the Soviet collapse. “September 11, I think, provided the final blow to this already tottering edifice . . . whose original rationale had long since been removed,” he said.

Under President Bush, he noted, America has been guided by a whole new set of assumptions, along these lines: that Europe has abdicated responsibility for any active role in the world, “that the United States is the only nation in the world capable of dealing with the great crises that face the world,” and that America must act, even if unilaterally.

“(M)y own view is that the real perception in this administration of the threat they are dealing with is not weapons of mass destruction, not the alliance between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, not Saddam Hussein himself even,” but rather “the sense among conservatives in policy positions in Washington that we face now a large if somewhat inchoate threat . . . , and that threat is radical Islam and the . . . inherent instability and danger of the Islamic world to the survival of the world as we know it.”

He worried that Iraq was but the first step, and that the same logic would lead to other wars.

While he considers this to be an “extremely dangerous view of American foreign policy,” he generously posited that it was “not a crazy view,” but rather “the product of a real set of intellectual beliefs” that is “ideologically powerful.” Prof. Brinkley concluded his remarks with this concern:

“(T)here is at the moment no clear and coherent alternative model for American foreign policy. There is an instinctive return to the containment idea among some people, there’s an instinctive embrace of all sorts of idealistic-sounding multilateral slogans, but I have yet to see the production by liberals or people on the left of a coherent alternative foreign policy that would allow those of us who are opposed to the powerful model being presented by this administration to debate effectively. Um, thank you very much.”

It was a remarkable admission, and I respected the professor for making it. But I have to quibble on one point: This is not about the failure of liberals to mount an intellectually vigorous argument against conservative policies. In fact, if language means anything, this is a liberal war.

What President Bush has led us to do in Iraq – and quite successfully so far, although the really hard parts are yet to come – is not about conserving the status quo. It’s about blowing it up. It’s about being open to new possibilities. It’s about promoting liberal democracy in a region that has not known it. It is the greatest liberal policy adventure since the days of John F. Kennedy.

I’m far from the only one who thinks so. “In word if not yet in deed, Bush is becoming the most Wilsonian president since Wilson himself,” wrote Lawrence Kaplan in the March 3 edition of The New Republic. “He, more than his left-leaning critics, is harnessing American power to liberal ends.”

In an editorial headlined “The Liberal Power” in that same edition, the “liberal” magazine’s editors rejected the famous dictum of Lord Acton, asserting that “power may also ennoble, when it is employed for good and high ends. The notion that American power has never been so employed and can never be so employed is a sinister lie, and a counsel of despair to the hurting regions of the world.”

The editors continued, “There are terrors of which only American power can rid the world, and blessings that only American power can secure for the world.”

I couldn’t agree more. So does that make me a liberal? Sure. Just like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, “Scoop” Jackson, Paul Wolfowitz and all the rest of those wild-eyed leftists.

From the other end of the spectrum, the April 7 issue of National Review frets about the “Unpatriotic Conservatives” who not only oppose the war in Iraq, but have even recently taken distinctly anti-American (and, not coincidentally, anti-Israeli) positions. Essayist David Frum dismisses “paleoconservatives” such as Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak and Jospeh Sobran as not representing the conservative mainstream. Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be conservative to avoid this risky undertaking in the Mideast? Not right, but conservative. As in “prudent,” a la the first President Bush.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what you call the likes of Messrs. Novak and Buchanan, as long as you muster the good sense to reject what they are saying.

My point is, this isn’t about liberal and conservative. This is about America doing the right thing in the world.

Left, right; left, right: You can’t tell one from the other as America marches relentlessly down a promising, and intellectually unchallenged, new path.

Yep, they’re laughing at us in the UK, too…

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Rick Noble shared this with me today at Rotary, from The Economist:

IT’S a great day in South Carolina, and if you don’t believe it, ask Governor Nikki Haley. On September 27th the governor ordered the 16 directors of cabinet agencies under her direct control to change the way their employees answer the telephone. So now when phoning, say, the Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services or the Department of Employment and Workforce, callers are supposed to hear this cheery greeting: “It’s a great day in South Carolina. How may I help you?”

Ms Haley says the new greeting will boost the morale of state workers and help her to sell the state. “It’s part of who I am,” she declares. “As hokey as some people may think it is, I’m selling South Carolina as this great, new, positive state that everybody needs to look at.”

The blogosphere has been inundated with people mocking the new salutation and proposing alternative greetings. One suggestion: “It’s still better here than Mississippi. How can I help you?” Another was more explicit: “Thank you for calling South Carolina where unemployment is high, morale is low and political leaders are very busy wasting your resources. How may I direct your call?”…

Man, I miss reading The Economist. I used to get it at the paper. But I’m already paying for too much other stuff that used to be covered by the paper, so that’s fallen by the wayside. (Man what DID I spend my salary on back when my club memberships and subscriptions were paid for?)

I used to know the South Carolina writer who wrote for The Economist. I sort of see (or imagine I see — “That blame media is SO bah-ussed!”) her political views in the particular facts chosen in this brief piece — and they are not views that are consistent with those of the editors of The Economist. But I’m not going to name her, because it might be somebody else by now, and then I’d look stupid. Or rather, stupidER.

‘Obama: A disaster for civil liberties’… Really?

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On my way back to the office from Rotary today, I heard this guy Jonathan Turley on NPR going on and on about how Barack Obama is — gasp — “worse than Bush” on civil liberties (or words to that effect; I wasn’t taking notes while driving).

Conveniently, he wrote out his thoughts on this in an op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times recently. An excerpt:

Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for Obama. After the George W. Bush years, they were ready to fight to regain ground lost after Sept. 11. Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.

However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the “just following orders” defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama’s personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured…

As you know, I have commented upon the same phenomenon myself, only not as a bad thing. From my endorsement of his tough talk about Pakistan in 2007 to my praise of his national security continuity right after the election, through my noting the end of the “Kent State Syndrome,” I’ve been pretty laudatory.

What’s really amazing about Obama is that he managed to persuade people before the election, and many after, that he’s this antiwar guy who was going to undo all the supposedly wicked deeds of the Bush administration. I wasn’t hearing that.

But even I was unprepared for how much further Obama would take things than Bush. I guess he’s able to do it because he has the political permission within his own party. Sort of like it took Nixon to go to China, Obama is allowed the latitude to more aggressively pursue the (I’m going to use the term that his base avoids) global War on Terror. As you recall, I made the analogy earlier that Bush was like Sonny Corleone (the blusterer who had trouble getting the job done), and Obama is Michael (who speaks softly and convinces everyone he’s the peaceful don, but wipes out his enemies efficiently without a word of warning). Of course, I don’t see them as heading a criminal enterprise. Others disagree.

It really does put Democrats in a weird place. Some of my most reasonable Democratic friends used to make these extravagant claims about how George W. Bush had trashed the Constitution. They really seemed to believe it. They are quieter now.

Happy Birthday, John. Oh, give it a rest, Paul…

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A friend shares this today:

LONDON (AP) — A hint of autumnal Beatlemania was in the air Sunday as Paul McCartney — for the second time in his improbable life — climbed the steps of Old Marylebone Town Hall to get married.

True, thousands of heartbroken female fans crowded the venerable registry office in 1969 when he married Linda Eastman and only a few hundred showed up Sunday as he wed American Nancy Shevell. But the feeling this time was not regret at the loss of a bachelor heartthrob. Instead there was joy that McCartney, regarded as a national treasure, seemed happy again…

Oh, give it a rest, Paul. Still getting married, when it’s past time for him to be spending his time bouncing Vera, Chuck and Dave on his knee.

You know, at least he could have waited a day. Today is John Lennon’s birthday (his 71st). And Paul is gallivanting about with his new bride (here’s a picture) and his dyed hair, while poor John is moldering in his grave. Or would be, had Yoko not had him cremated.

John would pose the question, how does he sleep? The answer, of course, would be, not alone…

Seriously, I wish the old guy all the best. The happiest Beatle should continue doing his best to enjoy life. But honestly, my first reaction actually was, “Oh, give it a rest.” Then I realized what today was.

I don’t know WHAT I think about the ‘Chinese currency manipulation’ thing. You?

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I don’t know what I think about the issue that Lindsey Graham keeps going on about:

Graham Responds to Chinese Government Criticism of Senate on Vote over Currency Manipulation

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement in response to criticism from the Chinese government’s Central Bank, Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Commerce over Senate legislation to crack down on Chinese currency manipulation. (Articles below.)

Last night, the Senate voted to proceed to debate on legislation cracking down on Chinese currency manipulation.  The procedural vote was 79-19.  The Senate continues to debate the legislation today.

Graham said:

“China’s threats to the United States Senate should fall on deaf ears.  We should be examining their business practices, not their rhetoric.  China should be rewarded and engaged when they play fair and we should push back when they continue to cheat.

“The Chinese government’s criticism of our efforts to bring about long-overdue currency reform is ill-advised.  We all want a healthy trading relationship with China, but their business practices – from intellectual property theft to currency manipulation, has created an unhealthy business relationship.

“China’s pegging of the yuan to the dollar and keeping it consistently undervalued continues to create a competitive advantage for the Chinese.  China has too big of an economy to allow them to continue creating an unfair trade advantage.  Chinese currency manipulation has resulted in 2 million jobs being lost in the United States and over 40,000 in South Carolina.  China must stop cheating.”

#####

How would I know? Like I’m an international currency expert or something.

I know what my gut reaction is — to be mad at the Chinese for being all unfair to us and everything. But what does my gut know about fair currency policy?

From what I hear, what they do is fairly standard practice for developing economies. And they DO have a developing economy — a humongous, planet-eating developing economy, but still…

That’s it. I just exhausted by expertise on this.

The end (almost) of violence

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In my previous post, I referred to the “peaceful times” in which we live. That’s counterintuitive for many people, for two reasons: First, modern communications make them aware of far more, and more widely spread, instances of violence than they would have known of in previous eras. And second, those things grab our attention — indeed, they are reported in the first place — because they stand out as exceptions to the peaceful rule.

There’s a very good piece in The Wall Street Journal today (there are always so many wonderful pieces in that paper on Saturdays — the only day I take now, after my subscription price more than doubled) taking the long view, and explaining why “we may be living in the most peaceable era in human existence.” None of what it says is surprising or new — except perhaps for the statistics — but it’s nice when someone takes a moment and pulls it all together.

In “Violence Vanquished,” Steven Pinker describes six major declines in violence through human history. The first is one that our friends who believe that government is the worst plague ever visited upon mankind should contemplate:

The first was a process of pacification: the transition from the anarchy of the hunting, gathering and horticultural societies in which our species spent most of its evolutionary history to the first agricultural civilizations, with cities and governments, starting about 5,000 years ago.

For centuries, social theorists like Hobbes and Rousseau speculated from their armchairs about what life was like in a “state of nature.” Nowadays we can do better. Forensic archeology—a kind of “CSI: Paleolithic”—can estimate rates of violence from the proportion of skeletons in ancient sites with bashed-in skulls, decapitations or arrowheads embedded in bones. And ethnographers can tally the causes of death in tribal peoples that have recently lived outside of state control.

These investigations show that, on average, about 15% of people in prestate eras died violently, compared to about 3% of the citizens of the earliest states. Tribal violence commonly subsides when a state or empire imposes control over a territory, leading to the various “paxes” (Romana, Islamica, Brittanica and so on) that are familiar to readers of history…

Since those days, violent death has shrunk to less than 1 percent, even if you factor in war-caused disease and famine. Oh, and we’re not just talking about good or benevolent government. Even the plunder economy of the Romans had its positive effect:

It’s not that the first kings had a benevolent interest in the welfare of their citizens. Just as a farmer tries to prevent his livestock from killing one another, so a ruler will try to keep his subjects from cycles of raiding and feuding. From his point of view, such squabbling is a dead loss—forgone opportunities to extract taxes, tributes, soldiers and slaves…

And this is not just about pointing out how wrong the Tea Party is (although deeply wrong it certainly is). Some of our other friends on the left view commerce as though the taking of profit itself were inherently evil and destructive to mankind. Quite  the contrary; it is a civilizing force just as is a well-ordered government (which is why the haters of government and the socialists are both wrong):

Another pacifying force has been commerce, a game in which everybody can win. As technological progress allows the exchange of goods and ideas over longer distances and among larger groups of trading partners, other people become more valuable alive than dead. They switch from being targets of demonization and dehumanization to potential partners in reciprocal altruism.

Finally, back to that matter of perception. If you wish to be simplistic, you can say it’s “the media’s fault,” for always telling you about the bad things rather than the good. If you ever spent, say, a month having to make decisions for a media outlet, you would realize how foolish that is. Even when times were flush, a newspaper’s or television station’s resources, and claim on your time, were finite. If you’re a town crier, your job is to tell people about the one house that’s on fire, so they can rise up and do something about it. You are useless if you instead say, “99.9 percent of the houses in the village are fine.”

That’s not to say I don’t decry the effect. In the grand scheme, media have had a devastating effect on society simply by playing their rightful role as government watchdogs. Over time, readers have come to the shockingly erroneous conclusion that government is nothing but crooks and waste, and the ability of government to be that civilizing force has been seriously weakened. As for violence — one of the most distressing developments of recent years in media is the rise of 24/7 TV news, which creates unlimited time that has to be filled. Consequently, violent crimes that would have been purely local stories 30 years ago are now thrown in the faces of the world constantly. There’s always something bad happening somewhere. This type of coverage creates the impression that it’s happening everywhere all the time.

If you can gain access to the full piece, it’s worth reading. So might be Mr. Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Let’s hear it for the Norwegian UnParty!

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At Rotary today, Kathryn Fenner gave me the above bracelet, a souvenir from her visit to the Land of the Midnight Sun. She said it represented “the Norwegian UnParty.”

Naturally curious, I went to the website, and at first found absolutely nothing to argue with. On account of it being in, you know, Norwegian. But then I asked my browser to translate the site — which it did, into a sort of stilted version of English.

And you know what? I found a lot to like. Not that I agreed with everything, of course. Nor would I agree with everything that came out of a hypothetical UnParty convention. But it was not bad. The UnParty isn’t strictly a “Center Party,” which is how this translates, but a lot of the basic ideas are at least compatible. I don’t think any Senterpartiet member would get thrown out of an UnParty meeting (if only because we’re, like, way tolerant of differences, unlike some parties I could name). Here’s a sample, from the A’s:

Abortion

The Center will continue the current abortion laws. A fertilized egg is the seed of a new life. The community has a duty, through legislation and otherwise, to give the unborn child and the woman suitable protection. We will oppose the use and research on embryos, fetal tissues and aborted fetuses in humans.

Adoption

The Center will increase adoption support for 1G (70.256 million). Furthermore, we want to simplify the adoption process through, among other things, simpler regulations, and shorter processing times…

Alcohol

The Center aims to reduce alcohol consumption in the population. Besides a systematic public health with an emphasis on promoting healthy drinking habits, the controlled access and high taxes as the most active full measures to limit alcohol use and reduce alcohol related harm. Prevention among young people and raising the average age at onset of alcohol is of great value, so that alcohol use decreases. Minimum age for purchase is an important preventive measure.

Alternative Energy

Environment and climate change means we must invest heavily in developing new technologies and alternative energy sources. The Center’s goal for Norway to produce 23 TWh of renewable electricity by 2020. New energy in the form of district heating and goals for energy efficiency must be additional to this. The total hydropower resources to be used better. There should be more wind power on land and at sea, it will be extracted more heat and electricity from biomass, and energy production from the sea in the form of wave and sea heat should be increased….

Asylum

The Center will have an immigration and integration policies that put human life in focus and where the individual has clear rights and obligations. All who live in the country should have their rights and opportunities addressed regardless of the original national origin. Any individual applying for asylum and stay in Norway must have confidence that the legal rights protected and that have met their rights as individuals. Everyone should have equal opportunities and equal access to language training, education and work backgrounds and resources. New citizens must, on their own terms, contribute a great effort to be included in community life through learning the language, and through participation in key community venues such as work, organizations and education. Good integration policy is best for the community. The Center will have an immigration and integration policies that allow local knowledge and local involvement is bearing so that the integration is real…

I also sort of liked what they said was their basic ideology, as far as I can like any ideology:

Ideology

The ideology of the Centre builds on the ideas of responsibility, fellowship and a long-term and sustainable management of nature and the environment. A vibrant democracy and decentralization of ownership, power, capital and population are basic elements of the Centre’s policy.

You know, I need to get some of my UnParty ward heelers and lackeys to get organized and put together a proper manifesto for us. All we have so far is our basic “fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets:”

  • First, unwavering opposition to fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets. Within our party would be many ideas, and in each situation we would sift through them to find the smartest possible approach to the challenge at hand. Another day, a completely different approach might be best.
  • Respect for any good idea, even if it comes from Democrats or Republicans.
  • Contempt for any stupid idea, even if it comes from our own party leaders.
  • Utter freedom to vote however one’s conscience dictates, without condemnation or ostracism from fellow party members.

Perhaps I should elaborate. Or perhaps it’s perfect the way it is. I don’t know.

What I wrote later in the day on 9/11/01

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Yesterday, I showed y’all what I wrote in the first hour, more or less, after learning of the attacks in New York and Washington 10 years ago. That raw, stream-of-consciousness piece ran in the “extra” that The State put out that day.

As soon as I had handed that to the folks putting that special edition together, I turned to what we would say for the next day’s paper — for Sept. 12. Then, almost as quickly, but with the benefit of a couple of more hours to let the news sink in, I wrote the following column.

Still nothing I would hold up as one of my best pieces of work, but it has its moments. For me. See what you think. And remember again: This is not a piece written with the benefit of years of reflection:

NOW THAT REALITY EXCEEDS FICTION, WHAT SORT OF ENDING WILL WE WRITE?

State, The (Columbia, SC) – Wednesday, September 12, 2001

Author: BRAD WARTHEN , Editorial Page Editor

WE’RE IN TOM Clancy’s world now.

Mr. Clancy is derided as a writer by critics for many reasons, one of them being the fact that his plots tend to be so fantastic and contrived. Take his novel Executive Orders. It was too much to be believed. It opened with a 747 having been deliberately flown into the U.S. Capitol, shutting down the government. This is followed by a series of coordinated terrorist attacks that result in thousands of civilian deaths on American soil. And for most of the book, no one knows who is doing this to us, or why.

We now know what that’s like. In fact, what we are now facing is worse than Mr. Clancy’s fevered imaginings.

It may seem unbelievably frivolous to be thinking about pulp fiction at a time like this, but my mind keeps returning to it, and partly because this seems so much like something from the realm of fiction – or because I wish it were.

It certainly outstrips anything that’s happened on any one day in this nation’s real-life history.

The comparisons to Pearl Harbor are inevitable. But in so many ways this is different – and worse. The death toll is larger, and the bodies we’re counting – and will continue to count for some time – aren’t wearing uniforms. They didn’t sign up to fight. They were just going to work, in what they thought was a free and peaceful country.

It’s also worse because we don’t know where to go with our grief and our rage. On Dec. 7, 1941, those sailors looking up at the red suns on the wings of the planes that were killing their buddies knew exactly what to do – and so did the rest of the nation.

I wonder if we’ll ever know what to do about this, in the same, ultimately satisfying sense of being able to restore peace and security to our nation and world. Oh, when we find out who did this, there’s no question about what we’ll do in the short term. Give us a target, something to shoot back at, and it will soon be nothing but smoke and ashes.

It will be a very short war. But what will we do when it’s over? How will we deal with the other disaffected, unconnected people around the world who will take inspiration from Tuesday’s events? What can we do, and what will we do, about the fact that there are people who hate us for no better reasons than that we are strong, wealthy and free?

Pearl Harbor isn’t our only comparison. People have mentioned the explosion of the Challenger as being comparable – then, too, the nation watched in helpless horror as fellow human beings died, in real time. But as awful as it was, there were only seven dead. And we figured out how to fix it. It was a simple problem of engineering.

Better O-rings won’t take care of this.

There are no precedents. Nothing in our past was quite like this. Even the Civil War, the most traumatic event in our collective experience, was in a sense less unsettling, in that everyone had a clearer understanding of what was going on.

Just as we can take little comfort from the past, our future offers no solace. It’s certainly not going to be anything like what we expected.

Some of the changes will come only if we’re smart enough to make them happen ourselves. Americans are going to have to start caring more about foreign affairs, if we’re ever going to deal adequately with this challenge. We can’t just fire a few cruise missiles and then hide behind a magical “Star Wars” shield. We’re going to have to engage the world – or at least, we’re going to have to demand that our elected leaders do so. And those political leaders are going to have to set aside a lot of their petty, partisan differences – or we’re going to have to replace them.

In other ways, some kind of change is inevitable, and all we can do is pick between unsavory choices.

From now on, this nation will be either less safe or less free. The openness and the freedom of movement that we take for granted make us enormously vulnerable, a fact that is absurdly obvious today. I suspect that at least in the short term, we’ll choose being a little less free in order to be a little safer. And that’s a sad choice to have to make.

I said we’re in Tom Clancy’s world. That’s true up to a point. The biggest difference is that I know how the book ends – once Jack Ryan and the other fictional protagonists figured out who was attacking the United States, they made war upon them with devastating effectiveness. In the end, the nation emerged stronger than ever.

What will happen in real life? Our capacity to make war is undisputed. But in the long term, how will we ever be the same?

The fact is, we won’t be. Our challenge is to emerge as something better than we were, not something worse.

The first words I wrote after the planes hit

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I think I’ve told this story before, but to recap…

In 2001, the senior staff of The State — the heads of all the newspaper’s divisions (including news, advertising, circulation, HR, finance, production, marketing and of course, editorial) — met with the publisher ever Tuesday morning at 9. On Sept. 11, 2001, we had just sat down when someone from the newsroom came to the door seeking John Drescher, who was then our managing editor. John told us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, then left the room.

We had it in our minds that it was a big story, and certainly John needed to get started on it, but we were picturing (at least I was) another confused amateur pilot in a Beechcraft or something. The WTC bombing of several years earlier crossed my mind, but I didn’t take it seriously yet.

It seemed we had just resumed the meeting when Drescher burst back in and told Executive Editor Mark Lett (News and editorial each had two editors who were on Senior Staff. The newsroom was represented by Lett and Drescher, while Associate Editor Warren Bolton joined me in representing editorial) that a second plane had hit the other tower.

Now we knew it was a coordinated attack  on the United States.

That was it. Meeting over. Everybody jumped up. A few of us huddled over by the window and discussed putting out an “Extra,” before moving on to putting together the regular paper for the next day. I asked whether they’d like a column from editorial, just to inject a bit of opinion into the special edition. They said “yes,” and I went to get to work.

The first job was to get some sort of sense of what was happened — I mean the total picture, not just the Twin Towers (which probably had not yet collapsed as I began). That wasn’t easy. A  lot was happening at once — the Pentagon getting hit, the Capitol evacuated, the president up in the air, somewhere. And then there were some the unconfirmed reports that later proved to be untrue — I don’t even remember the details of them now, some sorts of smaller incidents going on in the streets of Washington. Once they were discounted, I forgot them so my brain could process all the other stuff going on.

Once I turned to my keyboard, it took me about 20 minutes to write the following. That didn’t keep Drescher from sending up messages from the second floor: Where’s the copy? We’ve gotta go. Of course, all news really had to do is grab the stuff coming in and put it on a page. I had to think about what it meant, on the basis of alarmingly incomplete information, and write it.

So you might say this was written in even more of a hurry than a similar number of words on the blog, and amid great confusion and a certain amount of duress. You can read that in these words. There’s some emotion, and some thoughts, there that wouldn’t have been there a day later, or even a few hours later. Very stream-of-consciousness. I wince at some of it now. But it’s a real-time artifact, at least of what was going through my head that morning. See what you think:

AMERICA WILL FIND A WAY TO PREVAIL AGAINST COWARDLY ENEMY

State, The (Columbia, SC) – Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Author: BRAD WARTHEN, Editorial Page Editor
Sometime within the next 24 hours, no doubt, some television talking head somewhere will say, “This doesn’t happen here.”
Yes, it does. It has.
It’s happened before, in fact. It just wasn’t this close to home.
We remember Pearl Harbor. We’ll remember this, too.
The question is, what will we do about it?
Two nights ago, the nation delved back into its history with a celebrated media event, the premiere of the television version of Stephen Ambrose’s “Band of Brothers.”
We marvel at how a previous generation responded to an unprecedented crisis – a sudden attack by a ruthless, remorseless enemy. We think of those people as the “greatest generation,” and they deserve that appellation because of the way they came together to settle their own crisis and secure our future.
And we all wondered: Are we like them? Do we have it in us?
We’re about to find out.
We’re about to find out if we can snap out of shock, pull ourselves off the ground, set our petty differences aside, and come together as a nation to deal with our enemies.
For now, there is no question that we have enemies. And these enemies are in many ways different from Imperial Japan. In some ways, they are worse.
Pearl Harbor was an attack upon a distant outpost of American military power. The attack, as sudden and dishonest and vicious as it was, was at least an attack that made strategic sense in traditional military logic. And while there were civilian casualties, the obvious primary target was our fighting men and their machines of war.
This time, there is no pretense of such rudimentary “decency,” if you want to stretch so far as to call it that.
This time, civilians were the target every bit as much – if not more so – as our men and women in uniform.
This was a strike – and a temporarily successful one – at the chief power centers that have given this nation the strength to stand astride the world as its only superpower.
We are the world’s largest economy, so they struck, with devastating effect, at the very symbolic heart of that strength.
We are the undisputed military champion of the world, guarantor of security not only for this nation but for the rest of the globe. And this time they struck not just battleships and sailors, but the nerve center of our military colossus.
The greatest gift this nation has given the world is our form of democracy. And they have shut down and evacuated our Capitol and the White House. The home of the most powerful man in the world stands empty, surrounded by nervous men with automatic weapons and itchy trigger fingers.
The nation that gave the world flight is frozen, earthbound, at a standstill.
We are stunned. This attack has been devastatingly successful. We don’t know who did it, and we don’t know how much there is to come.
Our response will have to be different from the response after Pearl Harbor. This appears to be a different kind of enemy – the worst kind of coward. An enemy who strikes, and ducks and runs and hides.
How to prevail against such an enemy and restore peace and prosperity to the land is not immediately apparent.
But we will find a way. This is the same nation that was laid low 60 years ago, by an enemy who thought we lacked the will or the know-how to stop them. They were wrong then, and they’re wrong now.
We may not be the greatest generation, but we are their grandchildren. We are Americans. We are shocked, and we will mourn.
But then we’ll dust ourselves off, and find a way.

Later, I briefly attended a newsroom meeting in which they were talking about the next days paper (the only time I remember doing that during my years in editorial), and then turned to directing my own staff and writing stuff for the next day. I’ll show you that tomorrow.

Robert Ariail’s take on the anniversary

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When I told Robert Ariail I had cartoon for Sunday from Bill Day and asked for one from him, he was glad to share, as always.

He decided to go back to black-and-white for this one, which I (and I think he) both prefer. I think color looks great on a lot of things, but this medium is stronger, has more gravitas, in black and white.

He mentioned that this was one he had thought of several years ago, and when he described it over the phone, I remembered it from when we were at the paper. So often, Robert had strong cartoon ideas (usually, several in a day), but came up with something he liked better for that day and set the first ones aside. I’m glad this isn’t one that ended up thrown away.

Which makes me think of something. Ten years ago, Robert, and Bill, and my old friend Richard Crowson, all had steady, good jobs at newspapers. So did I, for that matter, although I didn’t have their sort of talent.

Just another way the world changed.

Why do some languages sound so fast?

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Stan Dubinsky brought this interesting piece to my attention:

It’s an almost universal truth that any language you don’t understand sounds like it’s being spoken at 200 miles per hour — a storm of alien syllables almost impossible to tease apart. That, we tell ourselves, is simply because the words make no sense to us. Surely our spoken English sounds just as fast to a native speaker of Urdu. And yet it’s equally true that some languages seem to zip by faster than others. Spanish blows the doors off French; Japanese leaves German in the dust — or at least that’s how they sound…

But how could that be? The dialogue in movies translated from English to Spanish doesn’t whiz by in half the original time…

To investigate this puzzle, researchers from the Universite de Lyon recruited 59 male and female volunteers who were native speakers of one of seven common languages — English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish — and one not so common one: Vietnamese….

The investigators next counted all of the syllables in each of the recordings, and further analyzed how much meaning was packed into each of those syllables. A single syllable word like “bliss,” for example, is rich with meaning — signifying not ordinary happiness but a particularly serene and rapturous kind. The single syllable word “to” is less information-dense. And a single syllabile like the short i sound, as in the word “jubilee,” has no independent meaning at all.

With this raw data in hand, the investigators crunched the numbers together to arrive at two critical values for each language: The average information density for each of its syllables and the average number of syllables spoken per second in ordinary speech. Vietnamese was used as a reference language for the other seven, with its syllables (which are considered by linguists to be very information dense) given an arbitrary value of 1.

For all of the other languages, the researchers discovered, the more data-dense the average syllable is, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second — and the slower the speech thus was. English, with a high information density of .91, is spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second. Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second. Spanish, with a low-density .63, rips along at a syllable-per-second velocity of 7.82. The true speed demon of the group, however, was Japanese, which edges past Spanish at 7.84, thanks to its low density of .49. Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information….

So basically, with some languages it takes more syllables to say the same thing. So you have to say them faster to arrive at the same destination in the same amount of time. Weird that people around the world would be synchronizing their clocks that way.

Now you know.

Romney stoops to conquer, tries to get to right of Perry on immigration

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Well, this is interesting:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gave a speech in Florida Friday in which he talked a tough game on immigration, saying that “our country must do a better job of securing its borders.” He said it was time for “a high-tech fence” and insisted the country needs to “get tough on employers who hire illegal immigrants,” reports ABC News. Although Romney never mentioned Rick Perry by name, it was clear he was referring to the Texas governor who has what Time’s Michael Crowley characterizes as “a relatively moderate record on the issue.” Perry has supported granting in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants, has qualified the idea of a border fence that covers the entire border as “ridiculous,” and even supported a guest worker program.

You mean, Rick Perry, who seemed to have been assembled in a lab from pieces of dead right-wingers, is actually more like John McCain on this issue?

Or perhaps I should say, like George W. Bush? Maybe there’s something about living and growing up with actual Mexicans, having them for a long time as integral parts of your community, that causes Texans to be a little more realistic on the issue than Republicans from, say, Massachusetts. Or, in many cases, from South Carolina…

Moammar and Condi, sittin’ in a tree

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I reTweeted something about this earlier today, but on the extremely likely chance that y’all missed it, I just had to share:

In the ruins of Gadhafi’s lair, rebels find album filled with photos of his ‘darling’ Condoleezza Rice

James Eng and David Arnott, msnbc.com, write:

“Deeply bizarre and deeply creepy.”

That’s how the State Department is describing a surprising find inside the compound of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi: a photo album with pictures of Condoleezza Rice.

Rebel fighters who ransacked Gadhafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound have been turning up some bizarre loot, including the Libyan leader’s eccentric fashion accessories and his daughter’s golden mermaid couch. The latest discovery is a photo album filled with page after page of pictures of Rice, the former secretary of state who visited Tripoli in 2008.

Poor Condi. How mortifying…

Then, suddenly, things change radically for the better

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You get used to a certain state of affairs — for example, the rebels with an uneasy hold on part of the country, while Gaddafi defiantly hangs onto Tripoli — and then suddenly, the tyrant’s capital falls:

Rebels Sweep Into Capital

Libyan rebels seized control over most of Tripoli on Monday amid scenes of jubilation, a day after surging into the city’s center and meeting little resistance from Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s defenses, though heavy clashes were reported at Col. Gadhafi’s compound and the leader’s whereabouts remained unknown.

Tanks emerged from the compound and opened fire at rebels trying to storm it early Monday, rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Rahman told the Associated Press. Mr. Abdel-Rahman, who was in Tripoli, cautioned that pockets of resistance remained and that as long as Col. Gadhafi remains on the run the “danger is still there.”

The rebels’ top diplomat in London, Mahmud Nacua, said clashes were continuing in Tripoli, but opposition forces controlled 95% of the city, AP reported.

Rebel leaders said Col. Gadhafi’s son and onetime heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, has been captured, according to multiple reports. Along with his father, he faces charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, which said Monday it is seeking his handover. Another son, Mohammed, was under house arrest, AP reported.

No, it’s not over. But things seem suddenly headed toward a satisfactory result.

When things like this happen, it gives me hope about everything. Suddenly, any intractable problem, anything we think of as being “just the way things are,” seems subject to change for the better. I find that enormously encouraging.

A horrorshow comparison, oh, my brothers!

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That Stan Dubinsky veck, being the sort with a large gulliver, has drawn a comparison, oh, my brothers, between the rioters in England and your own Humble Narrator’s loyal droogs.

There may be a slight resemblance to one’s glazzies at first glance, but note that those grahzny bratchnies are not dressed in the heighth of fashion; they do not wear our platties of the night! Consider that before thou dost make up thy rasoodocks.

One thing is true: There aren’t enough millicents to put their rookers on them all, much less put them in the staja where they belong…

OK, I’ll stop now. I’m just sort of randomly grabbing stuff from the Nadsat dictionary.

Says Stan (Dubinsky, not Kubrick):

Those whose attention is on the London riots of 2011 might recall that Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick anticipated all this 50 and 40 years ago, respectively.  Time to dig out your copy of A Clockwork Orange, and read or watch it again.

It’s available for streaming on Netflix, by the way. But the book’s better.

Our nation’s strength just lost more than 31 men

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I probably shouldn’t have had this awful thought, because the loss of 31 soldiers is 31 individual tragedies that radiate throughout our countries, breaking the hearts of their families and friends, and all those who did or ever would depend upon them.

But the thought I had when I heard of the U.S. helicopter shot down in Afghanistan was, “I hope it wasn’t Special Ops people.” I said that because, having so recently read the account of the raid on Abbottabad, the initial details of the loss sounded like it was consistent with the kind of helicopter operation that SOC people perform all the time in that part of the world. And since our nation increasingly depends on that very small number of super-elite troops — the very same people being involved in taking out bin Laden, the Somali pirates and countless strategically important raids in Afghanistan and Pakistan — the loss of any significant number of them would be like losing a regiment in prior days. That’s the cold calculation that went on in my head along with the personal shock of losing so many fellow Americans, so many fellow humans.

But then my fears were realized:

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials tell The Associated Press that they believe that none of the Navy SEALs who died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan had participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, although they were from the same unit that carried out the bin Laden mission.

Sources say that more than 20 Navy SEALs were among those lost in the crash in Afghanistan.

The operators from SEAL Team Six were flown by a crew of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. That’s according to other AP sources, one current and one former U.S. official. All sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.
One source says the team was thought to include 22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers, seven Afghan Army troops, a dog and his handler, and a civilian interpreter, plus the helicopter crew…

God help their families. And the rest of us as well.

The big picture for Amazon

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South Carolina hardly rates a mention in this report in the WSJ today (“Amazon Battles States Over Sales Tax“), but I thought some of y’all, your nerves still jangled from the recent battle at the State House, might be interested in this step-back report on what was at stake for Amazon, and how SC fits into the company’s grand strategy. An excerpt:

SEATTLE — Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest online retailer, hasn’t charged sales tax in most states since its founding in 1994. And it has taken some extreme measures to keep it that way.

Among them: Staff traveling around the U.S. have been required to first consult a company map that shades each state red, yellow or green, said three people who have worked for the retailer. These people said they needed permission from managers or company lawyers before entering “red” states because a worker’s actions might trigger laws that force Amazon to collect taxes in those states.

Such steps to avoid local levies allow Amazon to undercut in-state retailers by the amount they must add in sales tax, which can exceed 8%.

A close examination of Amazon’s corporate practices, based on interviews with more than a dozen former employees and people who have done business with the Seattle company, as well as a review of corporate documents, indicates that the company believes its sales-tax policy is critical to its performance…

Slouching toward history’s first intentional Great Depression

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We’ve been here before, back in the late ’20s and throughout the ’30s. But this time, we’re going to do it on purpose.

There’s blame to go around, in the long view. The Democrats did their bit leading us up to this point, but they’ve been offering compromises lately, and occasionally even making sense. Here in the home stretch, most of the “credit” for a crash will belong to the Republicans and their Kool-Aid-drinking — I mean Tea-drinking — friends.

Yesterday, the five Republican members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation “distinguished” themselves by being the most obstinate state bloc in the GOP caucus. Not that the Boehner plan was anything to write home about, or anything likely to get us toward a resolution. Today, I see that Boehner’s doing better among his caucus, but for all I know, our guys are still firing on Fort Sumter. (Anybody see an update on the SC part? I haven’t yet.)

But after all the tears and folderol in the House, whatever they pass will be DOA in the Senate, where Reid has a plan of his own. I fail to see how these two plans lead us to an actual solution before Tuesday.

And here’s the thing, folks — it’s not good enough to raise the debt limit. The ratings agencies will still probably downgrade the nation’s (AND South Carolina’s) credit rating, which will likely take our already staggering economy (did I mention that the newspaper company that laid me off two years ago just posted a 2nd-quarter loss of 32 percent?), and knock it right down onto the mat. UNLESS we take serious steps toward getting the deficits under control. And that’s WAY harder than just raising the ceiling.

You’d think — what with the fact that about the only thing our state’s leaders have had to brag about for the last 20 years has been our vaunted AAA rating — that the SC delegation would want to do something positive toward averting this disaster, wouldn’t you? Well, so far, you’d be wrong.

You know what happened in the U.K. after the Conservatives — the real conservatives, not these ruffians over here who take pride in throwing the Tories’ tea into the harbor — took over the government? They cut spending, and raised taxes. I was there when the taxes went up (see, “The terrible, awful, horrible day that the VAT went up,” Jan. 4) Far as I know, England is still there. Scotland, too. Maybe even Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Nobody wants to raise taxes at a time like this. It can have a cooling effect. Nor does a sensible person want to see drastic spending cuts, which can do the same. But the alternative to doing both looks considerably worse at the moment. And wanting to do one without the other — no, insisting upon doing one without the other, no matter what — is a form of madness.

Just something to think about, guys. Here at the last minute.

While WE waste time on the stupid debt ceiling…

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Bud has a legitimate desire to read more about the debt debate here. And if I can when I get done with ADCO stuff today, I’ll have something to say about the embarrassing behavior of South Carolina’s House Republicans.

But in the meantime, I’ll take just a second to express my utter frustration that we’re having such a big fight over THAT (which we should have been able to work out in a few hours, long before now), when there are things such as this going on in the world:

WASHINGTON—The U.S. for the first time formally accused Iran of forging an alliance with al Qaeda in a pact that allows the terrorist group to use Iranian soil as a transit point for moving money, arms and fighters to its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Treasury Department outlined on Thursday what it said was an extensive fund-raising operation that uses Iran-based operatives and draws from donors in oil-rich Persian Gulf countries such as Kuwait and Qatar. The Treasury said it had sanctioned six al Qaeda members for allegedly overseeing this network.

The U.S. has long been concerned about alleged Iranian support for the terrorist group, though Iran and al Qaeda hold differing interpretations of Islam and divergent strategic interests.

But Tehran, anticipating the U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, has been moving increasingly to assert its regional influence. Iran has helped smuggle sophisticated weapons into those countries to hasten the withdrawal of American forces, the U.S. says—a charge Tehran has denied….

That was the lede story in the WSJ today. But this idiotic ideological garbage over debt is sucking up all the oxygen…