Weblog: March 2003

Dr. Lawrence is Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, at Morningside College, and his numerous accomplishments include founding of the Electronic Communication & Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association and extensive work on the nature of the hero myth in America. More information is available on his Web site, American Superhero.com.

Sam's scenario for Saddam Hussein's tactical military victory and political triumph in world opinion is the most cunningly appalling I have seen. I hope that Sam won't be captured by Iraq's secret agents as strategic adviser – in the manner of Kim Il Jong's kidnap of the South Korean film director and actors a decade ago.

Consistent with the wily plan outlined, yesterday's news (3/25) reports a communication allegedly sent by a key al Qaeda figure to "our brothers in Iraq." It advises furtive, small unit hit-and-run tactics modeled on resistance in Afghanistan.

As for the politics, Saddam has already restored his standing for much of world opinion, even in countries announcing their support as members of the attacking coalition. It's a begrudging concession to Saddam, based on a fear of the U.S. that is greater than the fear of him. He is meritorious to the extent that he is standing up against the power proclaimed to be #1 bully, which has a neo-colonialist vision of Iraq and perhaps of other spokes attached to the axle of evil. Just as bin Laden won the affection of the Islamic world post-9/11 because of America's style of warfare in Afghanistan, Saddam's survival tricks have given himself an aura of virtue by drawing out the worst in American limitations of vision and erratic behavior. Although we destroyed much of Iraq's domestic infrastructure in the bombing raids of 1991, and enforced years of sanctions that damaged Iraq's health and economy, we are expecting that they will recognize us as their true and truly gentle friends. After days of bombing Baghdad and producing civilian casualties, we still seem to imagine that we will be greeted as liberators once we finally arrive. GWB's mantra in 2003 has been, "We never come to conquer but only to liberate." The U.S. fairly compares the civilian casualties under precision guidance to other wars and finds the current practice admirable. But statistics don't make good propaganda in the face of destroyed homes and bandaged babies.

Early during the run up to war in Iraq James Woolsey wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal comparing GWB to High Noon's Will Kane and the members of the UN to the cowardly citizens of Hadleyville. In acknowledging that Will tosses his badge in the dust after he kills all the bad guys (assisted by his formerly pacifist wife), Woolsey joined the chorus that disdains the United Nations as impotent in the face of evil.

But I think there is another mythic scenario that better fits the premises of our current campaign – The Lion King; it is far more current than High Noon and much more in the hearts and minds of U.S. citizens after a decade of blockbuster successes. The relevant plot? Poor little Simba, innocent and sweet, has been done out of his rightful leadership role by an aggressive Uncle Scar. Simba even feels guilty about his own role in the death of his father – actually engineered by Scar. Things get so bad in jungle that the helpless creatures go looking for Simba to come back and recreate a happy natural order. Simba answers the call, engages Scar, who actually kills himself by falling among the evil hyenas he employed, and accepts his role as the king of his community. All creatures, even those that he eats for dinner, approve his rulership and celebrate his dominance. It is a pleasing fantasy of power and innocence, in which the least aggressive rise to the top through their purity of heart – which makes their physical power lovable rather than threatening. The continuing popularity of this fable – long-running stage hit, film, IMAX film – suggests the America fantasy of being loved and being on top while getting accepted for its good intentions. The more angry the world becomes about our neo-colonial scheme, the more misunderstood we will feel and the more justified in lashing out against tormentors.

And just as real life lions don't have a clue about how to create a happy order among all creatures in the jungle, I don't think the U.S. has a clue about the reconstruction of Iraq as a democracy. The country is a very artificial creation of British colonialism; Saddam has intensified the conflicts growing out of the Sunni/Shia/Kurd miseries by tribalizing Iraq, both in the elevation of his own people from Tikrit and in the encouragement of tribal identity and organization as an alternative to a politics that might diminish his power or that of the Baath Party from which he rose. (Sandra Mackey's book The Reckoning lays this all out in depressing detail.) In accepting the responsibility to fix Iraq in our way, it is easy to imagine ourselves becoming the target of years of resistance and prolonged terrorism in Iraq.

I think we have come to the moment in history when it will mean something very different to be an American in the world. We will have a lot of explaining to do when we get the chance. For those of us who regard the current situation as a grand mistake, we should hope that others in the world will be willing to acknowledge the difference between a particular regime and the citizens who live under it.

However, the war itself, like most wars, is generating new justifications in the process of being fought. With the dirty tactics, the POWs, the fallen soldiers, the ingratitude of the Iraqis and the Arab world, the anger of the rest of the world toward us, most of our nation may be fighting mad and create the political warrants for several years of quagmire fighting with those sneaky agents of Saddam that Sam speculates about.

This was quick and off the top of my bald head. But I have thought systematically about pop culture heroic fantasies, millennial religion and holy war in books at my Web site mentioned above.

:comments?

Okay, I did my little evil scenario blog the other day. Next morning, out of feckin' nowhere, ABC News (Diane Sawyer Division) is doing this story in southern Iraq, I think, where people were happy to be liberated (they hate Saddam), but were already bitching about where's the humanitarian aid. One guy they have on camera is saying there's no food, my kids don't have food, my woman doesn't have food, etc. It's the US' fault. Already, and that's in an area where they're hoping to see Saddam dead.

So this morning on ABC News, they report that several trucks with food have rolled into this one "liberated" area. Iraqis are swarming around the trucks, waves of them fighting to get their hands on the food, and they're all chanting. The reporter at first thinks they're chanting something about how they're happy we're there, but his translator turns around and says, no, they're chanting something about how they'll gladly die for Saddam.

The crowd was evidently split into two groups:

1. those who support Saddam and don't want us there, but will take our food anyway, and
2. those who support Saddam and don't want us there, and would rather starve than take our food.

We might want to hold off on planning the ticker-tape parade through downtown Baghdad for a few more days, because so far ain't nobody throwing rose petals beneath our feet.

:comments?

Dr. Will Adams is a retired professor of political science who has taught in Irkutsk, Russia; Tallinn, Estonia; Prague, Czech Republic; and elsewhere.

For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7.
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. Hosea 8:7.

About twenty years ago, not long after Yugoslavia broke up, I attended the annual national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Within that umbrella organization there are many small groups specializing in the study of particular Slav nationalities: Ukrainians, Poles, Slovenians, Czechs, Slovaks, etc. Among the 400 or so panels, each group is allowed to have two or three.

One afternoon I went to a panel that I thought sounded interesting, but it turned out to be quite boring. I left and went down the hall to the room next door. I didn’t even look to see what the panel was. It turned out to be a panel organized by Serbian Studies. When I entered, a man was presenting a paper. He was passionately spitting hatred for the Muslims of Bosnia. He called for vengeance for the slaughter of Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo. I soon realized that the event he referred to occurred in 1389!

At the time I thought: Good heavens, if the hatred survives over twenty generations later, what hope is there for peace in the Balkans? I thought of this again a decade later, when the U. S. was bombing Belgrade as Serbian President Milosovich’s army was engaged in ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Americans like their issues clear cut, and we like the quick fix. Oust Milosovic and bring peace to the Balkans. But our troops are still there, and in view of the longevity of hatred, are in for a long stay.

Historian George Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason (1905-1906), "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." As we wreak destruction and death in Iraq, I’m wondering whether six centuries from now (or sooner), the Muslim world will wreak destruction and death on us for "attacking Islam" in 2003. Hatred has a much better survival rate than love. If the Balkan nationalities could keep it alive for six centuries when the Battle of Kosovo took place long before the advent of photography, TV, or videos, imagine how easy it will be to imbue hatred for us when, in centuries to come, every Muslin child can have his own DVD showing "The U. S. Attack on Islam."

:comments?

Though unlikely, as the title indicates, Sam’s blog on "Can Iraq Win?: An Unlikely Scenario" painted a rather compelling picture. I posted a brief response via e-mail, and included a note about an issue that had been troubling me for a while. It concerns American self-perception, Iraqi perception of Americans, and general death and destruction. The self-examination has nothing to do with the weeping-in-your-beer self-recriminations of "the ugly American" still being indulged in elsewhere. It does have a lot to do with trying to capture the hearts and minds of people while we try to capture their land (if for nothing more than a temporary trusteeship).

Interesting considerations, Sam. With the guerilla war argument proposed as the outcome of our work at the end quite likely to my mind also. Possibly the greater concern we will have, once the conventional forces are eliminated. Iran might well become safe sanctuary for the Iraqi guerilla, as was Cambodia for the Vietnamese, though they hate each other.

Here's something that we, as mass communication scholars should be considering, I think:

A significant part of the ability to pursue this war successfully does seem to rest on the belief that the people will at least support us, if not rise up in rebellion against our enemy.

I was watching Nightline last night and an interesting and telling observation was made ... these people have been under Saddam's controlled mass media umbrella for decades. They do not know who we are. Especially the young men who would rise up for or against us. Paraphrased, the most damning line from the reporter was that these people know so little of us, we could be Israelis invading their country. That's as I recall, and if not correct, the line as written serves this purpose well anyway.

This is no sweeping ethnic slur or slam. Just the observation that there is no way the populace can be reasonably expected to separate us from the people they've been taught to hate. They don't know us from Adam. Or whomever.

Now, I began thinking about that. We've been dropping leaflets letting the soldiers know how we will kill them unless they surrender and the ways they can surrender. And we've dropped paper letting the civilian population know they should stay indoors and not drive in the desert while we're all out killing each other on the battlefield.

But has anyone in this American system addressed the idea that maybe these people need to learn who we are, and the reasons we can be trusted? I have never heard of any kind of leaflet drops addressing this information-need. Am I just being cynical, or could I be right here, that what we need to do is educate the people of Iraq into who we are, and not be so arrogant as to believe they have the same image of us as saviors, if you will (I'm aware of the irony), as we have of ourselves.

Have we failed ourselves by assuming everyone knows us as we believe ourselves to be? Shouldn't we spend a lot of time softening the battlefield of the mind, as well as the desert, by engaging in mass communication/propaganda intended to shape the perception of who we are? Rather than simply threatening people with death? Is our highly vaunted psyops work (based out of Ft. Hauchuca here in Arizona, as I understand) so centered on sending a message of dominance, that they have failed to remember that you have to gain credibility in the eyes of your message-target before your words are even considered, much less believed.

[NOTE: Personally, I kind of puke when I hear about the reverence people have for psyops. Our mass comm training should give us a really skeptical viewpoint of the propaganda we're getting from the military and government about the effectiveness of the "psyops." The term has become as powerful as the word "voodoo." It is not that voodoo is really effective, but the belief in it can kill. I'm afraid the U.S. belief in "psyops" has become powerful enough to kill off rational and reasonable thinking about what we should expect it to do. Which is, in the end, very little. Seen any mass uprisings in Basra lately?]

In the end, there is a rule of life we can all see around us all the time ... Better the devil you know, than the one you don't. Battered women return to husbands because of the uncertainty surrounding the idea of leaving. Even when support and love is offered on the outside as the alternative, they keep going back.

An abused population is no different. It will endure much hardship from a dictator if the trains continue to run, the gas is in the tank, and the cost, though high, is not too dear.

We should not expect the population to see its plight in the same way we see it. If you've ever counseled an abused wife, you know exactly what I mean. Their perspective is not the same as yours. It does not fit into what you would call an expected response, and you have to keep the love and understanding flowing. You cannot expect her to see the same rationale you have, unless you spend a good deal of time trying to help her reshape her perspective of the world, herself, and her right to expect better.

A country's abused people are no different, and I'm concerned we have failed to do that. And continue to fail to do that.

THREE HOURS LATER (another e-mail):

Well, then.

The Shia in Basra seem to be engaging in a bit of a popular uprising at 10:30 CMT.

My last note, somewhat sarcastically said, "Seen any mass uprisings in Basra lately?"

Let me try this then with a bit of hope: Seen any mass uprisings in Baghdad lately?

Okay ... that's a bit of hope and humor. Now, the question that comes to me is the concern that this may not be all that good. With the Shia in the south rising up, the Sunni in Baghdad might get freaked and fear the coming of the Americans more than ever, thinking the Shia will walk in alongside and kill them off.

Always looking for that cloud in the silver lining…

:comments?

Some friends – specifically Greg and Lair, the Brothers Stene – have recently been pondering how, exactly, we're going to win this war – and by "win" we're talking about terms of resolution, not merely body count or square miles under technical control. Superior firepower notwithstanding, there comes a time when this turns into a streetfight, a door-to-door campaign through a city with a population the size of Chicago and Houston combined, against an opponent that has a distinct home-turf advantage and nothing at all to lose. If we can't get Saddam, and if his generals don't sell him out, this has serious ugly potential, something our military leadership has acknowledged.

Now, add to this a second question: how can Iraq win? This is the really tough one, because at a glance it looks like the best they can hope for is to take massive losses, but somehow wait us out and hope we lose our will. They aren't going to drive us from their soil via direct application of military force, so under what conditions would we say they have won, and what would they have to do in order to win obviously and conclusively, if such a thing is possible?

Believe it or not, I think there is at least one scenario by which Saddam can win outright (that doesn't involve the rest of the Muslim world joining in, which seems unlikely for the moment). I'm not sure I see this as likely, but it might be something for our leaders to think about, if they haven't already, because if it were to come down this way, the implications for American influence and status in the world would be devastating. Further, even if the scenario doesn't play out this way this time, I doubt this will America's last foray into international conflict, and the object lesson remains there for any future Saddam to learn.

Now, if we might begin with a martial arts metaphor, our method of attack on Iraq is what you'd call a "hard style" – it's a direct, aggressive application of force aimed at essentially beating the opponent senseless. Boot to the lips, lather, rinse, repeat. How do you counter a hard style, assuming you lack the capability of effectively waging combat through application of your own hard style? Simple – you employ a "soft style," a strategy aimed at using the opponent's momentum and force against him. He throws a brutal punch, and all of a sudden you aren't quite there, a little misdirection, a little subtle unbalancing maneuver, and next thing he knows he's on the floor.

If you're Saddam, what's the soft style you can use against the US, which is currently employing the most vicious hard style the world of war has probably ever seen? Well, for some time the Bush administration has been wanting us to believe that Iraq has provided aid to al Qaeda, but suppose we turn that dynamic around and ask instead how might Iraq have benefitted from bin Laden. No, I'm not suggesting there was a formal exchange of any sort, but rather, what might Iraq have learned if they had taken the time to study al Qaeda and their methods?

So, a scenario, offered for your entertainment. As a caveat, this little speculation makes some assumptions, the most important of which is that somebody in Saddam Hussein's inner circle – perhaps Saddam himself – is willing to take a long view of the current conflict.

Let's hypothesize that Saddam has been paying attention to al Qaeda and other terror organizations and learning from their distributed organizational techniques. Let's suppose that over the past few months he has not only been equipping his Republican Guard units to face the coming attack head-on, but has also invested heavily in preparing a contingency campaign, a fall-back strategy, where once it's apparent that the battlefield is lost, these units disperse and "melt" away, disappearing invisibly into Iraq's cities and villages. Say they've spent months laying in the operational and technological infrastructure needed to convert the great big, lumbering 20^th Century army into thousands of small, semi-autonomous cells – the invisible army of the 3^rd Millennium.

The battle ensues, US forces hammer away, Iraqi leaders put up what resistance they can, but eventually see that they're losing the battle of the last century, so they give the order to melt. The first act of the melt assures that the invading force finds itself assuming control of a humanitarian quagmire, as the elite Iraqi Guard launches a quick, crippling strike against its own country's survival infrastructure, essentially targeting the lower rungs of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (the physiological and safety levels, basically). Any facility or system for the delivery of food, health care, electricity, clean water, etc., is disrupted. Given what we know of Saddam, these units might even release slow working biological agents into the population, something nasty, debilitating, and contagious. A hantavirus outbreak, maybe, something that will require an inordinate amount of attention by whoever is in charge. This can be accomplished quickly and efficiently because it has been planned for months, and it can be done in a way that causes the confused, terrified population to blame US bombs, not their own troops and leaders.

The US marches triumphantly into Baghdad, declares victory, and looks around to discover that it has conquered the Stone Age. It surveys hunger and disease on a scale it can barely imagine – a scene that will require hundreds of thousands of people, billions of dollars, and a couple years, at least, to bring under control.

But the Republican Guard is gone. Mostly gone, anyway. And it will not be lost on American forces that there are a lot of missing black hats, and they will certainly set about trying to identify former soldiers and round them up. How successful they are depends in large measure on how the US is viewed by the general citizenry, and we can expect a mixed bag. A number of these soldiers would be fingered, probably, and some indeterminate number of cells might be busted. But due to the very nature of the organizational structure, quite a lot of cells would survive.

They might lie dormant for a while, but periodically operations would be carried out – against US troops, against humanitarian workers, against any Western economic development operations (read, oil companies) that dared set up camp in Iraq, and most crucially, against the humanitarian infrastructure. Anything that can make life better for the civilian population is a target – hospitals, schools, food convoys – and even if these operations claim innocent Iraqi lives, it is entirely possible that US forces will be blamed for their failure to provide the promised security.

So instead of rapid relief, prosperity, freedom, etc., the Iraqi people are treated to a lingering hell that, even if slightly better than what they had before the war, is certainly nowhere near the boom they might have hoped for. In short, Saddam is gone, but are you really better off? Remember after the fall of Communism in Russia, when significant numbers of people found themselves longing for the good old days, when they stood inline for hours to buy a roll of toilet paper? Uh-huh – imagine this collective mentality festering in the bowels of Baghdad.

But what about Saddam and his subhuman offspring? Well, somewhere between now and the arrival of the liberators he accepts that offer of sanctuary from Bahrain (or maybe slinks off into exile somewhere else, disappearing into the secure fold of any number of sympathizers he might have in the Arab world or beyond). He's gone, but not dead, and certainly not forgotten. And after a period of months, during which the US sinks to the knees, then the hips, into the quicksand that post-war Iraq has become, he appears in an exclusive interview on Al Jazeera.

This is a new, well-spun Saddam, who cries for his people, for the losses they have endured at the hands of an imperialist America that only wanted the oil after all. And so on. And if resentment against the US has been simmering before, what happens now? A growing sentiment in favor of returning to Saddam's Iraq, because humans can't help romanticizing the past, and the devil you know is better than the one you don't know, etc. While he remains defiant regarding the US, he shows his people a glimmer of hope, a vision of the glory of Iraq restored, of the triumphant return of their favorite son from exile, of the eternal victory of the spirit of the Iraqi people as the last beaten American occupier, head bowed in defeat and dishonor, steps onto the last transport out of Baghdad.

Soft style. Maybe it doesn't happen quickly – maybe Saddam dies in exile, but if he does his martyrdom only empowers his sons, who vow to continue fighting in the name of the people, who have no doubt noticed that a disproportionate amount of American money has been concentrated around the oil fields of Basra.

There are plenty of reasons why nothing like this can possibly happen. But hey, it's just a flight on fancy, and I'm sure nobody in Iraq is smart enough to have thought of this.

:comments?

This is the first contribution to the Pit from Aaron Butler, a former colleague of mine from US West who is currently pursuing his JD at Indiana Law.

OK, I admit it: I support the war on Iraq. I support it while at the same time opposing what I think are the reasons that the administration is fighting this war.

This war will make life better for Iraq's people. That is why I support it. But we are saving the Iraqi people from a situation we created by imposing 10 years of sanctions that only hurt Iraqis, not Saddam. The sanctions only made Saddam richer, while tightening his grip on his people. He and his party are obviously in just as strong a position now as they were at the end of the first war.

I support the liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s regime. The hard part is recognizing that while good is coming out of this war, it is being done for reasons I do not support.

I also think that many war opponents actually also like the idea of killing/exiling Saddam – they just can't figure out how to articulate the fact that the big-picture reasons this is being done by our administration at this time are utterly repulsive to them. So they protest a war that is obviously going to have favorable consequences for the people of Iraq now – finally. Far too late.

I think many who oppose the war do so mostly because they don't want to give Bush credit for it – because they recognize that he would never actually liberate a country from a horrible dictator except by complete accident. And now he wants credit for that accident. Those who oppose the war recognize that we are not attacking Iraq to save the Iraqi people. If we cared about them, we'd never have left them to starve under sanctions for 10 years.

It seems to me that we are attacking Iraq because (1) the Bush administration needs to distract Americans from the fact that they are doing an utterly miserable job of running the country, and (2) the administration needs to distract Americans from the fact that we can't actually fight terrorists. The real terrorists (like bin Laden) are impossible for the administration to stop/catch (unless we get incredibly lucky, which we do once in a while).

By fighting this war Bush is temporarily accomplishing both those goals, and maintaining credibility he should not have at this point. Still, I support the war because although the reasons the U.S. is attacking Iraq are repulsive to me, the results of this war will be good for the people of Iraq.

The problem is that this war is only good for Iraq. It is not good for America. The war is bad for America because it is being used by the administration to hide the truth from us:

• The truth that a "war on terror" cannot be fought successfully under any strategy the administration has so far attempted;
• The truth that the administration has no idea how to run a country, only how to give political breaks to their corporate pals;
• The truth that terrorism is the best thing that could have possibly happened to this president, because without it he would have had no chance at being re-elected in 2004.

This is the truth we need to keep in mind when Bush points to the liberated Iraqi people next year and says "re-elect me – I fought terrorists and freed people from a horrible dictator!" Because he didn't. It was an accident.

:comments?

Bill Keller of the NY Times had an insightful take yesterday on "Why Colin Powell Should Go." That op-ed points to the ways in which Powell has been used up by the Bush administration, and inspired this comment from Lair Stene.

I have, over the last two months or so, repeatedly wondered with some disappointment at how Colin Powell had become the unquestioning mouthpiece for the Bush agenda.  What created that transformation?

If my memory serves right (increasingly infrequently unfortunately), Powell had initially turned down the Sec of State offer from Bush to focus on family, etc.  I thought that this was yet another sign of him being a balanced man.  I've always liked the (idealistic) soldier-statesman model and Powell seemed to fit the bill.  Be an outstanding soldier, but decry the human costs of war and resist the power that high position brings.  I'd assumed that Bush had to cut a deal with him to get him to come on board, including allowing Powell his "voice of reason" public expressions.

It seemed to happen suddenly, the switch of Powell to a man lending his credibility and celebrity (of public admiration) in unequivocal terms to Bush's ham-fisted march to war.  I wonder if we'll ever know the true story.  There has to be more to it than a "get onboard" heart-to-heart with the Prez.

The loss of Powell's steadfast behavior as a true servant of the country (v. government), a voice of reason, an admirable soldier-statesman, is one of the sadder casualties of this war plan.  I still admire and respect what he has done in the past, but he's recently spent a lifetime's accumulation of political and personal capital for a war effort that has been poorly sold, if not erroneously conceived.

:comments?

Another little exchange that occurred in e-mail. Nothing earth-shattering here, just a desire for honesty. We can take it. We promise.

Lair: Please give me a reality check:

Somewhere between the cynical (we're invading at the direction of a president who came to power in a coup, supported by an Administration made up of Texans, who want their own private Texas-sized oil well in the Middle East) and the naive (this is only about – mix 'n match  – the war on terrorism, enforcing UN resolution x, WMDs, installing democracy, saving Iraqi children, or the President's megalomaniacal fixation on the demise of the guy who tried to kill his dad), is the truth that one of the drivers for this war is indeed oil.

There are some good strategic reasons, in terms of world economics and geopolitical power.  One I haven't heard discussed is that friendly control of the Iraqi (and Kuwaiti, for practical purposes) oil supplies effectively breaks the back of OPEC, a wild card that the world market can do without.  Admittedly, it hasn't caused a lot of trouble lately, but we've seen the havoc that it can cause.  And we've seen our normally reliable Venezuelan supplies restricted recently  – our largest source second to Middle East oil.  And the early plan of drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge has reelection risks.

Frankly, a stable global market for oil benefits the world, not unlike keeping the sea lanes open, another cause we will take unilateral military action to support.  I would have preferred an honest discussion of the benefits of a stable world market for oil to the constantly shifting moral excuses that have been used to support the impending war (not precluding that there may be some validity to one or two).

Sam: Yup. No doubt about it. It's one of the curious quirks of human society that we have things we just won't say. In a case like this, they know it's about oil (among other things, of course, as you note, but everybody knows oil is a reality), we know it's about oil, the whole world knows it's about oil, and if they came out and said it's about oil, and made the case that we have to act to secure valid economic interests, especially since the failure to do so would destroy the global economy, I think the argument would fly.

But we can't say it, because it isn't a moral argument. Which is odd, since taking action to prevent economic disaster, which would claim untold lives, strikes me as being quite moral.

More moral than the somewhat fuzzy, drum-and-fife corps flag-waving rationale we're being given instead? You make the call....

:comments?

This, on CNN.com this morning: Feds consider adding another terror risk level. According to the story, “U.S. government officials are discussing the current five-color terror threat alert system to determine whether a higher level of risk should be added before a possible war with Iraq.”

“The debate is not over whether to add a new color, sources said. Instead, a slightly higher warning level may be added within orange.” No, I'm not making this up. The Saturday Night Live skit with Darrell Hammond playing Tom Ridge and describing the five levels of the system – taupe, beige, off-white, etc. – doesn’t seem nearly so ludicrous all of a sudden.

What’s driving the desire to add a darker shade of orange? "There is fear that raising the risk to the ultimate warning level would do serious harm to an already-shaky economy, the sources said."

Uh, okay. What's hurting the economy is the color of the warning. Investors must be dumb as grass, I guess. We’re ramping up for war, and financial pros are making their buy/sell calls based on the color of the threat warning. Because they don’t read the news section, and their only source of information about whether they should be leery of investing is the color of the threat level. And if we march off to war and the gubmint raises the threat level to red, it will kick Wall Street into a panic, while if you only raise it to burnt sienna the markets will continue to clip merrily along with the same unbridled optimism we’ve been seeing throughout the Bush administration’s unrelenting campaign for peace.

Now I get it.

:comments?

It begins with Matt Taibbi's column in New York Press.com this morning: "Cleaning the Pool: The White House Press Corps politely grabs its ankles." You really need to read this first.

So Dr. Denny Wilkins, our friend and colleague at St. Bonaventure University (no connection to the basketball program, by the way), sends the column along, and it touches off a little exchange involving him, Greg Stene, Col. Jay DeFrank (that's Dr. Col. DeFrank, actually, Director of Press Operations, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs – in layman's terms, that makes him director of Media Relations for the Dept. of Defense), and myself. I've collated these e-mails into what I hope will be a semi-coherent blog.
_____

Greg: Truly an excellent piece. Representing reality as it is, unfortunately.

We all know the old lines about the press corp not being able to do its job without being punished for too much aggressive reporting. This argument (applied at both presidential and local levels) has been a perennial. But, as much as I hate to say it, no one has come up with a solution to the problem yet. You can't boycott the prez. No one will stand for that. So we put up with softball questions and let the prez look stupid when he fails to deal with a question.

The real problem for anyone who saw the press conference was the fact that the prez did look stupid. He was not "staying on his talking points," as so many of the commentators mindlessly spewed that evening in the analyses. If you saw the conference and Bush's response, you saw, stunned, that he was incapable of answering any question outside his prepared answers. It was not staying on point, it was desperately holding onto a point, no matter how inappropriate, because he could not answer a real question.

If there were any question in any person's mind about Bush's inability to really run this administration intelligently, it should have been answered that night. And we should all be very much afraid. This was a spectacle of stupid the likes of which I've never seen in a president before.

Denny: The last sentence is the most telling point – "desperately holding onto a point." Increasingly, given the failure to get UN votes and increasing pressure to hold off on an invasion, I sense ... desperation in the administration's rhetoric.

Desperate leaders should not engage in first-strike thinking. Desperate leaders probably aren't thinking clearly at all.

Sam: So, Greg, in light of my most recent blog, do I take this observation on your part as a shift in your stance regarding the war? I mean, listen, if the guy can't answer basic questions, do you really trust him to get something as complicated as the war right?

Just aksin', is all.

Greg: Who runs the war operations? The military. Not Bush. Do I trust the military? Yes, in terms of military actions, even though I do see chem/biologicals being used and a bad time in the streets of Baghdad. If the American public will stay with it, we can take him out.

However, I do not trust the military to intelligently administer a post-war Iraq. And since there is no real plan stated that seems to be able to take care of the Vietnam-like wars we should expect inside the country when the overall war is finished, I am concerned.

Sam: Nor is there a plan to pay for it, a fact that seems to have Wall Street a bit on edge. But, in your estimation, George Dubya Bush cannot fuck up the military's ability to get it done?

Fine. In all cases along the path, consider the potential impact of presidential action. I understand that Bush won't be micromanaging the battlefield, but so much that is critical, pre-war, during the war, and post-war, is his call. Think back a few short years: Stormin' Norman wanted to finish the job, but Bush the Elder made the call. The powers of the Commander in Chief have not been diminished since then, unless I missed something.

Greg: Is this post-war concern enough to eliminate my support for the war itself? I'm actually wavering now.

Denny: The most significant enemy we, as a public, face is vagueness.

• What reasons?
• What costs?
• What post-war reconstruction?

Given the treatment given the press at Bush's press conference, we will not get answers to the most basic questions:

How much will it cost and who's going to pay for it? In lives? In dollars? In credibility?
_____

Jay: Yes, quite unlike my press conferences here [at the Pentagon]. I don't think anyone who sits where I do could consider the Pentagon press corps "lap dogs."

I am finding coverage of our media embed plan very interesting though. Media were absolutely howling for access. We provided it by embedding over 500 media with our troops under the most permissive ground rules in decades, if not ever (for perspective, there were 30 in the D-Day invasion, all of whom agreed to total censorship). And, this is only one leg of coverage. The others include being coverage in theater where media who don't want to make the embed commitment of time and resources can go to the daily briefings and make short-term visits to our forces, and then, there's coverage from here, both at the Pentagon and in military communities all over the country. All that is in addition to whatever coverage "unilaterals" get.

Still, now that we're getting some great stories from embedded reporters, we're being criticized for somehow seducing reporters into bed with us and coopting them by making them dependent on us. Considering that there is no First Amendment right to battlefield coverage, and that it both complicates operational security and has a logistical impact, I feel like we've gone the extra mile. In my cynical moods I get the feeling that to many media execs, bureau chiefs and editors the expectation is that military action is a spectacle staged for their benefit and that we should manage it as such.

I could tell you the most amazing stories all day that if I wrote them for a creative writing class would have been handed back with the critique, "not credible."

:comments?

Yet another of the Pit's insightful readers weighs in. Mary Freeman, like a number of others I have alluded to, has a better argument for the war than anything you've yet heard out of the Bush camp, or are likely to.

In the world play being staged now, into which we are being really swept, it occurs to me (this after hearing Bush speak last night) that the script, from our side's writing of it, is all wrong. We should not be saying defense (implied, of ourselves) but rescue, as the young knight (America) ought to be doing since he is young, of the innocent from the dragon, or the innocent from the Bully. Why can't it be stressed that two million people have been starved, tortured, killed in the last 35 years in that place and that the Bully needs removing just on the basis of this and to do so would be risky but heroic?

Who is writing this script? It's terrible, it's all the wrong emphasis – protect us? We have not been hurt enough to feel as though we need protecting, but the others have, the victims of the Bully.  Shouldn't we be rising to the occasion of saving others, if not ourselves? We do not want to save ourselves, feeling, really, no threat, and yet we do really want to save others, which is why we are identifying those who will be killed as an outcome of the war as ones we want to save, not ourselves. Who believes we are being threatened by the Bully? Not us – I don't believe it. But I can justify going to war for the ones who are being killed and who have been for decades, in the name of stopping it.

If this war is to protect us, someone needs to stress that these are indeed grandiose plans the Bully wants to realize – to be remembered down through history as the one who brought the great Satanic power (that's us) to its knees, but that since even the Bully himself knows this is not likely to happen, then that is why he has been killing his own and any opposition to him all this time – he's taking out (as any weak man, or Bully,  will) his frustrations on his dog, or wife, or anyone weaker.  And that that is why we should be stopping him.

Whoever is putting words in Bush's mouth can't see a story people can get behind, though the outcome might be the same. I think the way it is written now, everyone will boo and hiss at the end of the play. He is repeating over and over, in fifty words or less, what doesn't ring true for a rationale stirring men to right moral action. The best any moral person who doesn't see Saddam for what he is can do, is to try to stop the war and save the innocents who will (will really) be killed because of the war – not presented right and so not seen as right.

:comments?

Time for a quiz.

Q1: You're charged with murder. Who would rather have defending you?

A: The best lawyer in town, the guy who graduated top of his class, nailed the bar exam first try, and can't remember the last time he lost a case.
B: The guy who partied all the time, was just barely bright enough to get by, and who's only practicing now because his father is a senior partner at the biggest firm in the state?

Q2: You've just been diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition and you need surgery. Do you want your surgery to be performed by:

A: The best surgeon in town, a guy who finished tops in his medical school class and has since earned a sterling reputation among his peers.
B: A doctor whose daddy bought him into a prestigious medical school, where he made all C's (after all, ask anybody whoever attended med school and they'll tell you that C=MD).

You see where this little pop quiz is headed, I trust? Let me say in advance that I may ramble a bit, but please, please bear with me, especially if you're one of the 47% or so of Americans who favor attacking Iraq. I'm not setting out here to attack you or insult you, but I am asking you to step away from whatever preconceptions you have about the issue for a few minutes to consider my point. In return, I'll set aside for the moment my previous arguments against invading Iraq, and will accept the premises established by some pro-war advocates in recent days. Ultimately, this piece isn't about the merits of the war, and I believe the point I'm advancing is equally salient for pro- and anti-war camps alike.

Regarding our pending campaign against Iraq, when all is said and done I think my biggest opposition to the war – the single issue that concerns me the most – has very little to do with the merits of the war itself and everything to do with the faith I have in our leaders to prosecute the campaign successfully. My faith – or rather, my lack of it – results directly from what we have seen of our president so far, and from the fact that we have precious little evidence before us suggesting that he and his advisors possess the level of intelligence you want of your leaders when talk turns to war.

It's important to note that while I have made what I think are some good arguments against the war in previous blogs, there have also been some very intelligent arguments made for the war by people whose smarts, judgement, and integrity I greatly trust. Dr. Greg Stene, for instance, has made what I consider to be a compelling case that, forget the terrorism boondoggle, taking out Hussein moves us along the path toward a host of worthy foreign policy goals. He doesn't argue that the path is clear and free of risk, but he does believe that it is doable, that the benefits justify the risks, and that it should be done. (See Greg's argument in the previous blog entry below.)

Another highly credible (and related) position is advanced by Thomas P.M. Barnett of the US Naval War College in the March issue of Esquire (thanks to Jim Gwyn for forwarding this piece along). Barnett argues that there are significant regions of the world "where globalization is thinning or just plain absent...regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and – most important – the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists." He concludes that America must deal with these areas as a "strategic threat environment," because failing to do so consigns us to (my words now, not his) a long and disastrous rear-guard campaign that will amount to a Cold War with terror. Barnett is making a globalization argument that essentially suggests a sort of economically driven Pax Americana, and while I'm not on board with all his reasoning, he does make an informed, reasoned case. And I'd rather have an intelligent opponent than an ignorant ally any day of the week.

In sum, I have encountered what I take as credible, defensible arguments in favor of Whaqing Iraq. But here's the problem, and Bush-backers take note: the intelligent arguments have come from outside the Bush camp. The people prosecuting the war – Dubya, Cheney, Rummy, Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, even the sainted Colin Powell – have presented us with a series of arguments that simply don't withstand a lot of scrutiny, in part because the administration's case is a moving target. The ultimate truth of the issue aside for a second, the last few weeks and months of Bush's pro-war PR campaign have amounted to an occasionally farcical search for a dog that'll hunt, and it's hard to invest heavily in somebody who's story won't sit still, even if they're right.

Worse, Bush's case invites an inordinate amount of scrutiny – and not just because the decision to go to war should always be one that is subjected to the most intense and vehement critique possible – but because they began by insulting our intelligence with claptrap like an alleged Iraq/al Qaeda link.

As soon as you try to pull one over on me, you've then pissed away whatever presumption of integrity I might previously have afforded you. From then on you won't be able to say hello without me sniffing for the lie, and this is as it should be.

This is where we stand. I've heard intelligent arguments for war, but from the people pushing the war I've heard nothing credible. So, back to where this little missive started. I've been unjustly charged with murder, my life is on the line, and into the courtroom walks my court-appointed defense attorney, Lionel Hutz from The Simpsons. Uhhh, your honor?

The man calling the shots here is arguably the least intelligent man to hold the office of President of the United States in history. He is certainly the dimmest bulb to illuminate the Oval Office in my lifetime. And I need to make clear that I don't want those who voted for Bush or those who support the war to take this as an insult to them. I frequently find people who like Bush acknowledging that he's no scholar. All I'm saying is that our president is at best possessed of modest intelligence (I'd guess his IQ is in the 95-100 range if we were taking bets, which is statistically average). Some things he's okay with – for instance, when dealing with issues that lend themselves to clear-cut judgements he can be crisp and decisive. In other words, he's fairly reliable on most black and white issues. But when the issue before him is complex, requiring a deeper analytical capability and a modicum of subtlety, the wheels fall off. Shades of gray are automatically translated into black or white, and all numbers are processed by some arcane ciphering mechanism that rounds fractions to the nearest million. This doesn't make Dubya an idiot or a bad human being, necessarily (hell, the man owns a Scottish Terrier, so he can't be all bad), but there are a lot of nice folks of normal intelligence that we wouldn't want in charge of running a war.

From all we can gather, George Walker Bush was at best an indifferent student, seemingly happy doing just enough to garner the "gentleman's C." And why not – he certainly knew that his academic performance would have pretty much zero impact on his future opportunities. Whether he pulled a 4.0 or flunked out, he was still going to be George Bush's son, and that meant more rich, powerful connections than you could shake a stick at. When George Bush called asking you to find a place for his son, you weren't going to ask for the boy's transcript, now were you? If life had dealt me the same hand as it did Bush, I might not have tried as hard as I did, either.

Then Dubya got an MBA – from Harvard! – so that says something positive, right? Well, not necessarily. Just the other day I found myself discussing the subject of Bush's intellect with some folks, and a man who was ostensibly setting out to defend Dubya acknowledged, upon encountering only the hint of a challenge, that no, of course the MBA wasn't to be taken seriously, that it was a "gentleman's MBA." This is what we routinely get from his apologists.

And there's that term again – "gentleman's" – that euphemism so many of us have encountered in our lives, the phrase that connotes breeding, pedigree, the right family, and which tacitly admits that intelligence is more or less beside the point. Most of us know somebody like this, at least indirectly. Maybe we went to school with one of them, worked twice as hard, performed twice as well, but somehow never got half as many breaks. Maybe we work with one of them. Maybe we work for one of them.

(digression) As a side note, I have always marveled at how frequently people who hate the living hell out of privileged little rich boys getting everything because of daddy seem to love and passionately vote for the most rich and privileged sons of the Country Club Elite. Worse, it's not that they rationalize the contradiction poorly, it's that they seem not to notice the contradiction. (/digression)

People say these things, and acknowledge that Dubya was never what you'd call a committed student. But what's a little odd is that I never hear people saying that while he didn't try very hard, he was nonetheless brilliant. I know students like that. I taught college for ten years, and it was a rare class where I didn't have one or two kids who were clearly bright as hell, but who simply put nothing into it, for whatever reason. You can spot these students a mile away, so there's no mystery. Their teachers recognize it, other students recognize it, frequently even their families recognize it. Some of them are so smart they can putz off the whole semester and still earn an A, while some are just fine settling for a B or even the gentleman's C.

But I don't hear people saying this about our president. Even people who defend him frequently offer up something like "he's a lot brighter than people give him credit for being." That's half a compliment at best – there's a lot of daylight shining between "brighter than people give him credit for being" and high average.

Further, I'm somebody who tends to credit many different kinds of intelligence, and I know people who excel and fail on most every scale. IQ, for instance, is a decent tool for measuring a certain kind of brainpower, although it and all standardized tests fail horribly at measuring other breeds of genius. I have one friend whose IQ has been rated in the 170+ range, and another who's above 200 – damned near off the scale. On the other hand, a couple of the most intensely insightful and intelligent people I know struggled to hit 900 on the SAT.

I have an open mind on what constitutes intelligence, and it is my studied opinion that George W. Bush isn't overly gifted with any of its many varieties. Which is distressing. You might tolerate middling intelligence from any number of people you deal with, but when you're talking Most Powerful Man in the Free World, you have a right to expect the brightest and best. On the subject of US President, the discussion should never be whether he's relatively intelligent or not, it should be whether he's exceedingly brilliant or merely moderately brilliant.

So here we go, off to war. There are scenarios – several of them, in fact – whereby it proves to be a success, resulting in anything from desired regime change to stabilization of the region to massive, overwhelming peace and prosperity in the Middle East and beyond. However, even those supporting the war acknowledge that it might not be easy, that any number of complications could arise (Hussein uses Weapons o' Mass Destruction, Hussein kills his own people to create a hindering humanitarian crisis, Hussein destroys his oil fields, Hussein SCUDs Israel prompting them to retaliate, touching off fundamentalist uprisings all over the Middle East leading to a regional conflagration, the invasion sparks dramatic terrorist attacks against the US and its allies all over the world, even though we win it proves incredibly difficult and expensive to reconstruct Iraq after the war, etc. – this part could go on for pages).

On the one hand, we have a number of success scenarios, ranging from mild to spectacular, and on the other a number of failure scenarios, ranging from lingering quagmire to economic collapse to World War 3. Understand, which of these scenarios comes to pass hinges in large part on the intelligence and savvy of George Bush and the rampaging, bloodthirsty pack of chickenhawks who seem to have his ear these days. The smarter Bush is, the better your odds of getting one of the success scenarios. The less intelligent the man at the wheel is, the more likely you are to effect one of the failure scenarios. Simple stuff, really, and there is no argument to be made that dumber is better or that brains don't matter. None.

Press START. The man at the wheel isn't surpassingly bright – he has all the resources in the world and his reasons to attack aren't half as good as those offered by any number of freelance commentators. Barrett has been, apparently, advising the Department of Defense on his "Core/Gap" theory, which is illustrated in the article linked above, but for some odd reason his analysis hasn't been employed by the Bush camp (and if you want to argue that his article in Esquire is just that, I'd respond that I don't want to hear the best reasons for going to war through indirect PR channels – I want to hear it, clear as a damned bell, from the President's mouth). Bush has, in 18 short months, inconceivably squandered the most overwhelming outpouring of goodwill the US has received perhaps in its history. He has been unable, using every leverage point the world's greatest power has at its disposal, to persuade long and loyal allies of the importance of a cause it presents as being nearly self-evident. You know, if we were ramping up for this war and our president were, say, Ulysses Grant, I'd be more optimistic. Washington. Lincoln. Jackson, Ike, Truman. Bush the Elder, you bet. Not Carter, though.

If there were evidence that Dubya were listening to his father, who handled US/Iraq I pretty adeptly up until the end, even then I'd be more comfortable, but as Douglas Harbrecht, BusinessWeek Online's senior news editor, points out, Bush the Younger has failed repeatedly to learn from his father, who one would assume he actually trusts and respects. (Read Business Week article.)

Nope, we're entering one of the most complicated operations we've ever initiated relying on the capability of a man who is patently ill-equipped for assessing, processing, and acting upon complexity, and worse, who has proven unable or unwilling to learn basic, critical lessons of diplomacy from one of our country's recent masters of it, his father. This, more than anything else, is why I fear disaster.

It's like my medical analogy above. I accept that I need open-heart surgery, that it is the only thing that can save my life. Problem is, the anaesthesiologist is getting ready to put me under, and into the operating suite oozes another of my favorite Simpsons characters.

"Hello everybody, who's ready for a little open-heart surgery?!" It's Dr. Nick Riviera, and as the gas begins to hit me, a voice says, "I want you to start counting backwards from March 17th."

17, 16, 15....

:comments?

Sometimes the important stuff goes down via e-mail. Greg Stene and I have been having a pretty good back forth over the pending war, and what you have below is one of the e-mail exchanges. I apologize that things are picking up in medias res, but you can sort of infer what has been said by who and when.

Sam: Apologies, in advance, for the forthcoming rant. No offense intended, despite the strident issues I take with your argument.

I think you are dead right about the value of force as a tool of diplomacy. But I think, as I have noted, that this case [Iraq] simply doesn't meet the criteria. It doesn't address the stated issues at all, period.

Greg: Here's where I think what I'm saying is not coming across clearly. More further down. The "stated issues" have little to do with things. Those are merely red herrings laid out to distract from the real issue ... the real point to be made.

Sam: And make no mistake, we cannot lead the world only by force - we don't have the military might to compel all nations to follow. We can only lead by consent, and consent requires credibility.

Greg: Credible force, is what I'm talking about. The morality of many nations is a matter of the greater force, and the ability to impose will. It is not a matter of a religiously based, or humanist morality, but one of having the force/power to instill and maintain peace. The credibility of that morality lies in occasionally having to use the force behind it.

Greg (earlier message): If you do not extend your power through force, you are perceived as weak. And the vultures will come to pick at your eyes and comment on whether you're too salty to the taste.

Sam: What if you exert force independent of morality and reason, and do so in the face of stout opposition from your own allies? What would Sun Tzu say about that?

Greg: Sun Tzu, would, I believe, say that morality lies in the reasonable application of force to bring about peace. We're not playing by any western morality here, where love, or the idea of sheer righteousness found in some ambiguous "morality" rules. We will bring peace, through the use of force.

Sam: But Greg, WHO EXACTLY ARE THESE COUNTRIES WHO ARE PRO-TERRORISM? Or failing to be anti-terrorism? Who are we talking about?

Greg: Let's avoid the problems of Iran and N. Korea. Special considerations must be paid to them. But a couple more ... Syria and Lebanon, to name a couple. A few of the 'stans, Indonesia (a supporter through its failure to pro-actively rip out the cancer), what used to be Burma (I can't spell Myanmar) and so on. To varying degrees. Others. Perhaps a narco-country in S. America?

Sam: Sure, there are terrorist nations out there – why exactly aren't we attacking the guilty instead of singling out a nation that is patently innocent on this count?

Greg: Because they would not be as easy as Iraq. Very simple. And this is not cynical. If you get caught up in a morality play about your power, you have to administer that power in a coup de main. A sudden overwhelming force.

If you spend your time in the jungles of Indonesia, you get Vietnam all over again and you appear weak. But seriously, as long as Syria and the Lebanon, and the 'stans provide comfort, there will be trouble.

Greg (earlier): Iraq is nothing more than an object lesson. And it must be done because until we do, we will be perceived as being weak. This has nothing to do with old-fashioned democracy and the rightful use of force. The "new normal" of a new democracy is what's operative here, and that normal has no place for a weak-kneed relationship to the world. Order, our fucking order, is what matters.

Sam: If Iraq is a satisfactory object lesson, given your criteria and the realities surrounding them, what nation ISN'T a potential object lesson? Seriously, why Iraq? I can take your reasoning and the evidence in this case and justify attacking 3/4 of the Arab world, a number of nations in New Europe, most of Central and South America, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cuba, you name it.

Greg: Again, Iraq is doable as a short war. A great demonstration of power. And note that we are now "embedding" reporters from around the world in our forces so they can report with the correct amount of awe. What comes later in the occupation is something not terribly well-considered or communicated to our public, I'm afraid.

Sam: Dammit, I am waiting for someone, ANYONE, to put two and two together for me. I FULLY understand and appreciate the principles you're advancing. FULLY. I have ranted in the past that we weren't aggressive ENOUGH in pursuing them. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that we act consistently and coherently.

If this is about 9/11 and deterring terrorism, there are NO TIES to Iraq, while there are at least five nations who, based on the evidence we have, clearly merit a good whacking, starting with our dear friends, the Saudis.

Greg: Here's where the problem starts. The Iraq-thang has nothing to do with the terror connection that may or may not be there. That was an argument stupidly put forth by the government in a time of panicked "how can we justify this?" and they've been backing off it ever since. They're now saying, "It doesn't matter if there is or is not a current connection, we cannot let one develop."

Seriously, as long as you look for that terrorist-Iraq connection, you'll be disappointed. The Feebs really are back-peddling that one. Now, it's just "disarmament ... complete, total, and immediate ... those three things," per Ari Fleischer this morning. I have yet to understand what the difference is between complete and total.

Anyway, forget terror connections. Iraq is purely about a demonstration of power, and the upturning of a society of terror so that we can have greater influence in that part of the world as time passes. It will give us an opp to wean ourselves off the Saudi oil tit (we cannot attack them, the center for the Hadj is in Mecca and we would deserve the wrath of any Muslim), and/or apply political pressure to make them more compliant.

A number of realpolitik benefits derive from the overthrow of the Iraqi regime. Please, again, forget about the terror connection as justification. We are carrying on the Iraq-thing as a warning, and as a power-play in the region. This thing, I'm sure, has been scripted out for the next 20 years. Think in those long-range terms, and I believe things will make more sense. You still may not agree with them, but they do make sense at that long-range level.

Sam: If it's SOLELY about showing the world how bad we are, then hell, why not save ourselvesthe expense of arraying against nations on the other side of the world when we could quite cheaply and efficiently make an example of Winnipeg?

Greg: No one knows where it is.

Sam: Connections. That's what I need. And nobody – not Bush, not Rumsfeld, not Cheney, not Connddoolleezza Rice, not John McCain, and so far not even you, who are smarter by half than any of these people – nobody has connected the "terrorism" dot to the "Iraq" dot. THERE IS NO CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Greg: Right. So let it go. It does not exist. Think in broader terms of regional control. Not just oil. But political influence.

Sam: And if we don't do that, then the lesson we're teaching the world is that when terrorists strike us, some innocent motherfucker that we don't like for completely unrelated reasons is gonna his ass kicked.

Greg: Your use of the word "innocent" is something I'd quibble with. I don't believe there is a single innocent among the nations I mentioned above.

Sam: That sends a message to the world, all right, but not the one I think we want to send.

Greg: It's all a gamble. Ain't it?

:comments?