A Hawk Questions Himself as His Son Goes to War

A Hawk Questions Himself as His Son Goes to War: "None of this predetermines the outcome, of course, or foretells the consequences of a muddled success or a blurred failure in Iraq. Historians have the comfort of knowing how past wars played out. But short of clairvoyance, no one can forecast the outcome and the second- or third-order effects of events as they unfold. Five or even 10 years from now, we still may not be able to judge our Iraq venture in a definitive way. Unfortunately, that philosophical detachment is cold consolation in the here and now, as young men and women go off to war."



Others -- Atrios, Brad DeLong, Belgravia -- have quoted Cohen, with regard to his contempt for the incompetence of the Bush administrations.



What interests me is the confusion of narrative with analysis.



In a narrative, one event follows another; the drama is the struggle to overcome and the climax resolves the action; in prospect, there are many contingencies, and we can never forecast the "outcome" in all its manifold glories. We love stories, but stories are not analysis.



Analysis is about systemic necessity. One thing does not "follow" another; one variable relates to another, one thing drives another, and the system functions, the system is under control . . . or not.



Analysis is the basis of science -- it is Newton's laws of motion, Darwin's natural selection. It is dramatic and epic in its own way, but not in the way of Homer's Illiad or Genesis or Washington Crossing the Delaware.



Cohen says, "If we fail in Iraq -- and I don't think we will -- it won't be because the American people lack heart, but because leaders and institutions have failed." And, that belief that we will not fail is defended by the paragraph I quoted above, by the substitution of narrative uncertainties for analysis.



Analysis Cohen is capable of. The article is chock full of pithy summaries of analysis. The analysis all points at one capital fact: the U.S. has failed in Iraq. Over and over again, the U.S. has failed. The U.S. failed most critically in the reconstruction, which has stalled, sucked dry by corruption. The U.S. has failed to keep order -- from the earliest days of large-scale looting down to the cluster screw-up at Abu Ghraib to every damn day.



The present leadership and the present "strategy" has failed. And, the present leadership promises to "stay the course", a failed course.



Cohen says, "For this president, the war is the defining decision of his tenure, and he knows it. Whatever his faults may be, a lack of determination is not one of them. And in war, character -- and above all persistence -- counts for a very great deal."



Yes, character does count for a great deal, and this President's character accounts for the U.S. failure in Iraq. Bush is a coward. Bush is a liar. Bush is a lazy, unaccomplished, callous, seriously uncurious man. If the U.S. had credible plan for the occupation and reconstruction in Iraq, that responsibility goes right to George W. Bush. We did not have a plan, because George does not know enough about history, organization, government or anything else, to realize that that he needed to have one and a good one. He did not demand a good, well-reasoned plan from his subordinates. And, that is why we have failed in Iraq. No plan. And, we have had no plan, becuase of George's weakness of character.



We have failed in Iraq, and as we continue to continue, we continue to fail.



The greatest tragedy is that many Iraqis wanted our success, in order to have their own success, and it is they, more than we, who will suffer the failure in all its prolonged horror.



For George W. Bush, the failure will be the latest in a long, long list of failures, and he may not notice.



Will America notice? And, will America blame the Republicans, as they should? That will not depend on analysis, but on narrative and the dramatic unfolding of events -- the coming storm.

Bursting the Housing Bubble

Angry Bear: "Since the real estate sector has been the main source of job creation for the economy for several years, I'm concerned that the coming RE slowdown will create a large pool of displaced workers that will have to take a substantial cut in pay. Therfore the housing slowdown might have a larger impact on the economy than many economists expect. "



The bursting of the housing bubble is going to have a serious impact on employment.

Decadence, corruption and decay

Salt Lake Tribune - Opinion: "Silverstein details the ballooning of the practice called ''earmarks'' in the federal budget. As it is true of much of what is wrong with our politics, the practice is not new - pork barrel politics has a venerable history - but it is spiraling out of control. The same thing has happened with gerrymandering, also an ancient practice, and campaign contributions. They've always been part of politics, it's just that now they are so much more so. Indeed, what have been just deplorable flaws in our system are now eating the whole system - the flaws are getting bigger than the functioning, with the result that serving the public interest is rapidly disappearing. "



Whether connected to the prospect of a cleansing storm or not, an alternative vision of the trends facing the political culture is one in increasing corruption, corruption, which is eating away the foundation, hollowing out the institutions of American life.



Here's Billmon noticing the decline of pundritry:

Whiskey Bar: Forever Blowing Bubbles: "There is no doubt in my mind that the existence -- and seeming indestructibility -- of 'analysts' like Jim Glassman is one of the key reasons why we have asset bubbles. Since the collapse of the Nasdaq bubble in early 2000, I've watched, first with amazement, then with a kind of morbid fascination, as Glassman has continued his flourishing and no doubt lucrative career as a financial pundit and supply-side snake-oil salesman, instead of being banished to the get-rich-quick infomercials on late night cable, which is where he belongs.



"Perhaps if the collapse of his Dow 36,000 theory had done more lasting damage -- if we had breadlines and soup kitchens instead of a booming real estate market -- Glassman would have gotten his just rewards: universal ridicule and a well thumbed page in the history book of error, like poor professor Irwin Fisher, who never lived down his pronouncement, just days before the '29 crash, that stocks had reached a 'permanently high plateau.'



"Or maybe not. Glassman is a product of the closed loop of modern punditry, in which career success has absolutely nothing to do with being right about anything, and everything to do with being ideologically au courant and politically well connected. In other words, Glassman is to the financial markets what Charles Krauthammer is to Iraq -- a symbol of the triumph of a consensus fantasy over a subversive reality."



Billmon extends his thought, by reflecting on a gathering of rich people, to contemplate "ideas.":



Billmon: "If you want supporting evidence for my thesis that the American 'marketplace of ideas' is in an advanced state of decay, you could do worse than read some of Liquid List's posts from the Aspen Institute's 'Festival of Ideas' conference."



If I had some links available, I would link to people contemplating the decline of corporate America, where once great organizations have been stripped of their expertise and worn to a frazzle. The collapse of Enron and the debacles at WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, and the rest, are merely symptoms of the greed and incompetence, cases, where things got so bad that they became actually felonious. Much of the rest of corporate America is teetering on the edge of the precipice, because of decades of bad leadership and budgets tightened to send the bonuses due to top management into the stratosphere.

TPMCafe || Hope on the Fourth of July

TPMCafe || Hope on the Fourth of July: "Act III has finally begun. The methedrine-like Mission Accomplished militarism has turned to chaos, ugly revelations, and melt down.

I keep hearing the Leonard Cohen song in my mind, 'There are cracks in everything; that's how the light gets in,' and this regime is finally and seriously cracking up. "

Hullabaloo

Hullabaloo: "...At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced."



Frederic Douglass, 1852

Whiskey Bar: Have Another Slice of Yellowcake, Karl

Whiskey Bar: Have Another Slice of Yellowcake, Karl: "Which naturally raises the question of whether Fitzgerald's team and the FBI have been talking to each other lately, and what they may have been talking about. If there are strands of evidence that tend to walk the responsibility for the production and/or disseminaton of those forged documents back to this side of the Atlantic, and if any of those strands lead towards the U.S. government, or 'an internal working group dealing with Iraq' . . . well, Rove (and others) might find that perjury charges are the least of their worries."



Oh, we live in hope. Please, let some semblance of professionalism rescue us from these ruthless, would-be autocrats . . .

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth: "Failure here is not an option."



This is it. What the Republican right-wing has been working toward for a generation: a radically conservative judiciary led by a radically conservative Supreme Court.



For 70 years, since FDR's court-packing scheme panicked the Supreme Court of the gilded age into allowing the New Deal to move forward, the Supreme Court has been the sure guardian of the advance of liberalism and idealism. That is about to be reversed.



This is not about the coming of a storm -- this is about cooking the lobster, about bringing the pot to a boil, at which point the lobster is dead and ready to be buttered.



Morons will say that court appointments are unpredictable. Not this court appointment. This one will be very predictable. This one will be Scalia, if we're lucky, and Thomas, if we're not.



Liberal politics of all kinds will be dead for a generation or two, made completely impotent by a judiciary, which will simply find nothing to enforce, even when the liberals manage to write something into law. There will be no personal right, which will not be completely eviscerated as to substance. (A Scalia will at least preserve the empty form of rights; a Thomas will toss it all out.)