Pat Buchanan: “First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.”

This is an old argument: African Americans have benefited from their ancestors coming here as slaves. They’d be worse off in Africa. Therefore, slavery is a net positive.

Of course, the same could be said of American Jews: The Eastern European Jews who fled the Holocaust certainly benefited from being here rather than behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Better living standards. Less anti-semitism. You could argue that aside from Israel, this is the best country for Jews to live in.

So by Buchanan’s logic (and that of other conservatives who use the Thank God For Slavery argument), the Holocaust is a net positive, and American Jews should be glad it happened.

Do we see a flaw here?

Obama said he wanted to start a conversation about race. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation is coming from the mouths of bigots.

Consider, for example, this post from the Instapunk blog about Obama: “You see, you’ve just given life to the suspicion that black people in America are, and have long been, a fifth column — unanimously hating the very country that has afforded the highest standard of living ever achieved by black people in human history. We’re teetering at the edge of believing that you’re a secret society, a massive collection of sleeper cells just waiting for your chance to do serious harm to the rest of us. You’ve made it possible for us to believe that. Because you’re never outraged by what the worst black people do. Because you continue to make excuses for what should be inexcusable to everyone.”

Sleeper cells? Not sharing Instapunks attitude toward African Americans equates to a terrorist network?

And as Glenn Reynolds points out, white candidates aren’t required to express outrage on white behaviour: Nobody requires Bush to specifically say he despises Timothy McVeigh or to offer an opinion on white teens wearing their pants too low, but journalist Tim Russert finds it perfectly logical, apparently, to ask Obama (and in an earlier interview, Colin Powell), to criticize singer Harry Belafonte for making negative comments about Bush (no white interviewees have been asked that question.)

The post also makes an argument that I’ve heard before and always annoys me: “Here’s the dirty secret all of us know and no one will admit to. There ARE [n-word—and yes, he actually used the word]. Black people know it. White people know it.”

If the blogger had said that some black people are obnoxious, annoying, inconsiderate or vile, fair enough: Every category of human beings—white, Catholic, Republican, Democrat, atheist, black, Greek, Baptist—contains obnoxious, annoying, inconsiderate and vile people.

But the n-word isn’t short-hand for “You are not a good human being.” In this kind of discussion, used by a self-confessed “old white guy” it’s an insult and a racist smear (and yes, I’m aware some African Americans use it in conversation, but that doesn’t change my opinion any). While Instapunk says he doesn’t want it in general use, he also applies it not only to public figures he despises—Jeremiah Wright, OJ Simpson—but to teens with baggy pants, spinning rims on their car wheels, listening to rap music.

From Cow and Boy

One of the points he makes to prove that whatever we do in the Middle East, Muslims had it coming, is that they don’t denounce the terrorists “enough.”

A few years ago, the cry was that Muslim leaders didn’t condemn terrorism and violence.

Then, when right-wingers couldn’t deny that some Muslims did just that, they switched to the idea they’re not condemning terrorism enough. Which is brilliant, because no matter what Muslims say or how many they say, “enough” is so flexible that Williams and his ilk can continue in the same groove indefinitely.

In his column today, Walter Williams announces that despite claims from “experts and talking heads” that Islam is a peaceful religion “In terms of national policy, it’s irrelevant … whether most Muslims are peaceful.”

How so? Because, he says, if a Muslim nation attacks us, the fact it may be only a small percentage of the people who are hostile is irrelevant: We still have to fight back. Besides, “because peace-loving Muslims do not speak out and expose terrorists … they become enemies of the West … Muslims should be prepared to suffer the full might of the West in its efforts to fight terrorism.”

In the first place, this is typical hypocrisy from Williams: He’s been shrieking about Muslim terrorism since 2001, but when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building, Williams’ response was to devote a column to the evil things the US government does that turn people such as McVeigh into terrorists. So much for speaking out.

Second, it is indeed relevant whether Islam, as a religion, is innately hostile to the West. If Islam is some innately evil murderous religion, we have to take different steps than if bin Laden or other Islamic terrorists are simply homicidal sociopaths who happen to be Muslims (which is how I’d classify them).

Third, as a policy guide, Williams’ column is pretty much mush. Williams compares Islam to Nazi Germany — even if a lot of Germans didn’t want to conquer the world, we still had to go in and fight them — but Islam isn’t a nation. Is he suggesting that because bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are both Muslims, attacking Iraq was a logical response to 9/11?

Probably. A running theme in right-wing commentary is that Islam is one vast, monolithic enemy: 9/11, the Muslim conquest of Spain, the siege of Vienna, the Barbary Pirates preying on American shipping and every other clash are somehow all part of the same vast conspiracy against the Western world. Therefore, all Muslims are against us, therefore Iraq, Iran and whatever other country our president points at are legitimate targets (usually, if it’s pointed out this is bigoted and verges on a justification for genocide and ethnic cleansing, the anti-Muslimites will insist that no, no, of course they didn’t mean that … though they’ll be pretty vague about what the alternatives for dealing with such a supposedly evil, bloodthirsty religion are).

I’m sure this plays very well with the hard-right portion of Williams’ audience (white terrorists like McVeigh are justified! Brown-skinned non-Christian terrorists are the enemy of all that is good!), but it’s balderdash.

The second thing we’ve learned is that insurgents—or guerilla fighters, as they used to be called—are darn hard to stop.

History should have already taught us that: It took three years of bloody, brutal fighting to put down the resistance movement in the Philippines after we took the islands from Spain. And in Vietnam, the insurgents won, even though, as has often been said, our forces won every pitched battle. So how do we do better next time?

A large part of that is tactics and strategy, from what I’ve read, but there’s also a bigger question: Should we be preparing to fight more of these wars?

An article in Christian Science Monitor today, for instance, discusses a proposal to create a 20,000 person corps of “combat advisers” to train foreign troops in counterinsurgency, and by so doing, also win “hearts and minds” to our side.

The article discusses the merits, but several military officers interviewed argue this is making the classic military mistake of assuming the next war you fight will be just like the last one: What if we pour our resources into fighting counter-insurgencies and terrorist campaigns and we’re faced with a conventional war next time?

Then again, what if it is another counter-insurgency next time?

I’m reminded of the 2002 war games in which the “enemy” army defeated the superior US forces at first by using boobytraps, suicide attacks, hand-delivering all messages so there was nothing to eavesdrop on–after which the rules were readjusted, or so one of the officers involved says, to make sure the US won.

It’s true, we don’t know what war we’re going to face next. So how do we prepare?

Derbyshire on NRO, again: “I have enjoyed much harmless merriment from contemplating the names of African politicians. There’s been a bit of a lull recently, since the passing of such as the Rev. Canaan Banana and Oginga Odinga (father of the loser in December’s contested Kenyan election).
Now a new generation of can’t-help-but-smile African onomastic pioneers has taken the stage. Let’s give a hearty welcome to Tokyo Sexwale, Enoch Godongwana, and Playfair Morule.”

I’m sorry, but I think that’s just plain rude.

And then we have this gem (both reported by a blogger on Obsidian Wings) in an attempt to refute Obama’s recent speech on race:

“Not so much lies as a sort of slippery sleight-of-mouth. I’m starting to really dislike Obama.

‘Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation … came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land.’

Segregation was not “the law of the land” in the 1950s. It was the law in a minority of states.”

And Derbyshire’s point is … that therefore segregation didn’t matter? That it was silly for African-Americans to make such a fuss about it? He seems to think this is some sinister bit of verbal voodoo, but honestly, how does it affect Obama’s argument?

Later in the same column, Derbyshire responds to Obama’s criticism of segregated schools and the inferior education they provide with: “It’s true that there is widespread school segregation today. In my state, 60 percent of black students attend schools that are at least 90-percent black. From what I can see, the main reason for this is the great reluctance of nonblack parents to send their kids to schools with too many black students, which they assume are beset by all the problems associated with poorly run public schools. Do you think that they — actually we, as my wife and I share this reluctance — are wrong to think like this? How will you persuade us to think otherwise? Or will you depend on judicially-imposed forced integration of the schools?”

Frankly, I’m embarrassed that Derbyshire is English. I was embarrassed when he wrote a column saying women are only sexy from 15-20 (the man is in his thirties) and again after he condemned the students at Virginia Tech for not charging the gunman who attacked the campus and taking him down (why didn’t they just count the number of shots and jump him when he ran out of bullets?). Unfortunately, it appears nothing he can say is so dumb NRO won’t print it.

When Hilzoy on obsidian wings has something to say, it’s a pleasure to read:

“Invading Iraq was, obviously, completely different. Iraqis needed to set up a society virtually from scratch. They badly needed our help: help like ensuring basic law and order after the regime fell, and protecting infrastructure from looting. Even if we had not failed utterly to do those things, though, their task would have been immensely difficult. Imagine how much is presupposed by the fact that I can walk down a street in Baltimore and assume that no one will rob me, or bundle me into a car and hold me for ransom; or by the fact that people who own warehouses or equipment yards need to protect their property against small groups of people, but not against trained private armies. There are, after all, a lot of people who need money, and yet, oddly enough, very few of them do these things. A whole lot goes into making that true: culture, policing, a whole network of shared understandings and assumptions and social mores. In a country like Iraq, when you excise a tyrannical government, all of that is gone.

Likewise, consider how difficult the Democrats are now finding it to agree on a fair resolution of the problem of the Michigan and Florida delegates. What counts as fair? we wonder. Who can we trust? Different sides have different arguments, and many of them are colorable; and yet it seems awfully hard to adjudicate. Now imagine this situation, with the following differences: (a) it’s not just Michigan and Florida; the whole political system is up for grabs; (b) for that reason, there is nothing like the DNC rules to appeal to, or to base your arguments on; (c) if your side loses, you and those you love and your entire community might be killed; (d) the people on the other side are people you hate and distrust not the way people hate and distrust those who have pulled the odd unfair political trick or said something that seems way out of line, but the way people hate and distrust those who have killed their friends and families. Or, in brief: the stakes are life and death, not just for distant people but for you; there are no rules; and anything goes.

Fixing problems like these is orders of magnitude more difficult than anything we did in the first Gulf War. And no amount of purely military skill or power will do the trick.

In a sane world, we could count on people with high policy-making positions to know these things, and to bear them in mind. Apparently, we don’t live in a sane world. We live in a world in which Danielle Pletka, “vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute”, can describe mistakes she made before the Iraq war as follows:

“Looking back, I felt secure in the knowledge that all who yearn for freedom, once free, would use it well. I was wrong. There is no freedom gene, no inner guide that understands the virtues of civil society, of secret ballots, of political parties.”
The appropriate next sentence would be: Of course, the fact that I thought there was a freedom gene means that I am a complete idiot, so having confessed this in the New York Times, I plan to retire to a life of small good works, carefully chosen so that my complete ignorance of human affairs and my staggering lack of judgment will henceforth be unable to do anyone serious damage. Alas, Ms. Pletka does not seem to have drawn the appropriate conclusion.

Having been completely let down by our government, by many policy analysts, and by a lot of people in the media, we have to remember these things ourselves. War sucks. It is horrendously destructive to everyone it touches. It can shatter entire societies. Sometimes it’s necessary, just as sometimes it’s necessary to amputate all your limbs, but that doesn’t make it any less awful. It should never be undertaken lightly — and it was certainly advocated lightly by a lot of conservatives. (Ledeen Doctrine, anyone?)

There should never be a rush to war, any more than there should be a rush to an outbreak of plague, or having your city hit by an asteroid, or any other utter catastrophe. Any time people seem to be rushing to war, that is a time to stop short, catch your breath, and think things through as carefully as you possibly can. Because if people are rushing to war, they have probably gone collectively insane, and it is imperative not to join them.

If the case for war is not clear, it is probably wrong. (For instance: “Though as a realist, I felt queasy about the “democratic peace theory” behind the war (”only despots make war, while democracies are inherently pacific”), I hesitantly thought, Why not? Maybe the fall of this horrifying regime would serve as an example to all the other despotisms in the neighborhood.” — “Why not?” is never, ever a good enough reason for a war.) If the case for war rests on magical thinking, it is certainly wrong. And if it relies on the idea that a country can be reconstructed essentially from scratch without enormous effort and commitment and skill and luck, then it rests on magical thinking.

If any good can come of this war, it would be that we remember these things.

***

I can’t write this without quoting Richard Cohen again:

“I owe it to Tony Judt for giving me the French ex-Stalinist Pierre Courtade, who, wrongheaded though he might have been, neatly sums it all up for me: “You and your kind were wrong to be right; we were right to be wrong.”"
Wouldn’t it be nice to think so?

Richard Cohen: you were wrong to be wrong, and wrong yet again for choosing a self-gratifying fantasy over an honest acknowledgement of that fact. The idea that there is anything noble about wrongly advocating war, or that when you feel a weakening in your resolve to send good men and women to their death, the right response is to “(steady) myself by downing belts of inane criticism”, is part of what got us into this mess in the first place. The heroes are the men and women, Iraqis and American, who have died*, in part, because of fantasies like these.”

For my column this week, I chose to rip into Bush’s speech on how brilliantly he’s leading us to victory, and McCain’s enthusiasm for keeping the war going. So my backup column idea—things we’ve learned from the war—is going here. Which is good, actually, because I have more space, though I’ll still be breaking it up into parts.

The first thing we’ve learned: Boots on the ground matter.

To occupy and pacify a foreign country takes manpower—unfortunately, a lot more than we were willing to commit at the start of this venture (though I’ve heard it argued that given Iraq’s underlying instabilities, we still might not have been able to pull it off). So one question our military planners need to consider is where we’re going to find the men for the future.

The last time this subject came up, one conservative informed me that he didn’t see much chance of another occupation any time soon (this was well before Bush had put Iran on his hit list, or I imagine I’d have gotten a different response). The trouble is, that’s not something we can predict: Did anyone foresee America’s first war of the 21st century would be with Afghanistan?

Much as I oppose the Iraq war, I do believe taking out the Taliban was justified (though Bush’s decision to pull out and attack Saddam has allowed the Taliban to resurrect since). It may not be the last time we need to occupy a foreign country, and while I’d prefer that be a last resort, it’s an option that should be on the table. So how do we maintain an army big enough to occupy a country without breaking under the burden as we seem to be doing in Iraq?

Recruit more people? Extremely expensive, not just in what it takes to convince people to sign up, but in the potential costs of benefits if they stay in.

Use mercenaries—er, private contractors? Also expensive, though I’ve been told the higher rate of pay for Blackwater agents is balanced out in the long-term by our government not having to shell out for benefits, and we simply don’t have enough control over them. If we’re fighting a war, the people in the field need to be directly answerable to their superiors, not sheltered by the legal maze that seems to surround the security contractors and protect them from liability.

Can we increase the size of the reserves, so we have the manpower ready when we need it? Military veteran/writer Phillip Carter (of the excellent site Intel Dump has argued that while it seems logical, it won’t work: It would require massive changes in the way the military equips its reserves, and probably higher pay, enlistment bonuses, etc.—and those run into the problem that the full-time Army is supposed to receive a better deal than one-weekend-a-month reservists (note: I have no first-hand experience, so if I’m misreading Carter’s depiction of the reserves—in the pro-draft article mentioned below—feel free to point it out).

Revive the draft? I’m strongly opposed to this myself, but Carter, in a Washington Monthly article makes a good case. I’m still opposed, but I have enough respect for his analysis that it deserves mentioning.

The current approach—prolonging deployments, the use of stop/loss—isn’t sustainable, and I think it’s also immoral and unfair to the troops, the equivalent of a draft but falling on people who’ve voluntarily committed themselves to the service.

So what’s the best solution? Any suggestions?

Opening night for Twelfth Night (for paying audiences, not students) went wonderfully last night. The cast was full of energy, our performances were good, I had friends in the audience and the audience was sooo responsive, picking up on some of the dirty Shakespearian jokes the students missed. I feel great! Also exhausted, but great.

Although the box office is saying tickets are sold out, there were empty seats last night, so don’t give up on trying to buy tickets at the door. Not that I’m hinting or anything.

Theater rocks!