My Fox News Contribution

I’ve been watching a lot of the Fox News Channel throughout this campaign. If you can somehow remove your mind from the implications of what the people are actually saying, it is really some of the funniest material available on television. It is the kind of humor that doesn’t really make you laugh per se, but provides you with a constant and unending supply of snickers. I've decided that I want to be a Fox News editor, and I've been coming up with some possible headlines. Here are a few:

• “New poll reveals that most Americans think Bush has bigger penis than Kerry”
• “Bush campaign charges Kerry with ‘riling up good negroes in Florida’”
• “Expert panel: stockpile of lost weapons in Iraq deemed small relative to all weapons on Earth”
• “God campaigning for GOP in key senate races”
• “Bush on cocaine use: ‘It gave me tax cut idea.’”
• “GOP investigation links John Edwards to Al-Quaeda via online dating service”
• “Computer model predicts that Kerry victory will cause catastrophic herpes outbreak”
• “Photos reveals that Saddam Hussein wears pink jumpsuit underneath uniform”
• “Republicans accuse Democrats of partisanship”
• “Amid flu vaccine shortage, Bush urges Americans to ‘grab their balls’”
• “New bin Laden tape: Osama calls Kerry ‘deliciously deceptive’”
• “Study finds that Bush’s sperm count highest among 20th century presidents”
• “Osama bin Laden and Tipper Gore – the secret love letters”

I dream of Defense Secretaries

General election seasons pervade my entire mind. A couple of nights ago, I had a dream in which I was driving on a local road, and this silver car (very boxy model, like a Chrysler) totally cut me off and forced me to veer off the road and stop short on somebody’s lawn. The driver of the car stopped, rolled down his window, and it was Donald Rumsfeld.

He casually said, “Sorry, man.” And then he drove away.

The Hunt for Red November

There is a story in the New York Times today about a recent photo-op/pseudo-event on the part of the Kerry folks – the story is called, “Kerry on Hunting Photo-op to Help Image.” Apparently, the Kerry campaign invited reporters to cover a goose hunting expedition, in which Kerry participated, in order to “deflect Mr. Bush's portrayal of Mr. Kerry as a weak-kneed liberal, and fit into a broader effort this week to show him as a "regular guy," drinking beer while watching baseball, and speaking in a folksier style.”

So let me get this straight. Kerry is trying to beef up his image as a tough guy by shooting birds? Birds? No offense, John boy, but when I think about courage and the relative strength of a person’s knees, the ability to track and kill fowl does not enter into the equation. Were these particularly aggressive and dangerous birds? Were they terrorists?

Also, while I am from the New York City area, and cannot say that my experience of American men is highly typical, I must say that in my view, “regular” men do not shoot birds. In my experience, irregular men shoot birds. Still, my narrow regionalism notwithstanding, listen – I drink, I adore baseball, and I speak my share of folk, but if the means by which one may appeal to men is by shooting fowl with a 12-gauge shotgun, I think that it is time that we, as men, re-examine the public perception of our leisure activities.

Are you the singing Bush?

Anybody who is paying even a minimal amount of attention to the current campaign sees something quite disconcerting and almost spine-chilling about this election. However, I cannot seem to put my finger on it. Yes – our candidates are strikingly similar in a multitude of ways, they are slinging mud at each other constantly, they are both telling half-truths that happen to support their cases, and there is far more attention to relatively inconsequential aspects of the candidates rather than to the concrete issues at hand. The only problem is that this has been going on for years, and yet, something seems different this year. Here are a few examples of what I mean:

* In the second presidential debate, Bush called Kerry “the most liberal member in Congress,” and it was universally acknowledged as a political insult of sorts, meant to invoke a calculated negative response from voters. I have two problems here. First, the fact that liberalism is now considered a political liability for Democrats seems almost eerie. Second, the notion that John Kerry is the most liberal of the liberal, though untrue, makes me physically ill.

* What’s the story with Bush trying to bash Ted Kennedy? He’s pretty much approaching townsfolk and proclaiming, “I saw Goody Kerry with the devil!”

* The whole voting record accusation thing is out of control. Uh, Bush - there's a difference between 2004 and 1979, and there's a difference between being a senator and being president. Just for the record, John Kerry voted against freedom 16 times, he voted against morality 37 times, and he voted against trust in government 78 times. Now he’s changing his position!

* Is it me, or is Bush advocating that all our nation’s problems can be solved by issuing different types of identification cards? What’s next? Issuing ID cards to children in case they get left behind? No - let's issue ID cards to terrorists.

* We currently have a Democratic nominee for the presidency that strongly supports, and indeed has centered much of his campaign platform around tax cuts, military intervention and victory, and smaller government. Adlai Stevenson is rolling over in his grave right now.

* Bush’s little sinister laugh is freaking me out. It is the perfect mixture of hilarious and downright disturbing. I must wonder if the Bush campaign focused tested that laugh. If so, who did it test positively with? Comic strip villains? The all-powerful ‘dirty old men’ voting bloc?

* Someone pointed this out to me the other day, and was surprised I had never heard it before: George Bush looks like Alfred E. Neumann. This is the funniest thing I have heard all month. I can no longer look at Bush and not see this. Thus, if re-elected, I will have as my country’s leader – the man who dictates our foreign and domestic policy and is leading us into war – Alfred E. Neumann. As Richard Pryor once said, “I went to the White House. I met Reagan. We in trouble.”

* By far the most disturbing aspect of this campaign is my personal realization that there is a part of me that finds Laura Bush attractive.

A new GOTV rock-bottom

I just officially bottomed out in my efforts to get some of my lethargic friends to vote in the upcoming general election.

After many months of persistent urging of a particular friend, I have resorted to making the act of voting more attractive by pointing out to a friend that doing so would permit him to use the "Revenge of the Nerds" quote, "We've got Bush. We've got Bush." while exiting the voting booth.

Weak, like clock-radio speakers

Yesterday, I was listening to NPR, and someone was lecturing about America and how it needs to change. This person (can’t recall the name) was talking about how corporate interests dominate the policy and machinations of government, how mass media outlets that should be informing the electorate are increasingly owned by a few large companies, how campaigns are financed by external and special interests, etc., etc., etc. The crowd was more than willing to show their approval and support of his arguments constantly by means of warm, loud applause. These are the types of arguments that, in my view, are supported by the vast majority of American ‘democrats,’ and perhaps by the majority of Americans period. Find me a large mass of voters that advocate for concentration of media influence in a few corporate hands. Find me a mass that supports corporate influence in politics. I’ll tell you what you’ll find – a very small group of white men, with maybe a token minority or woman, all with the same haircut and roughly the same sense of style.

You can certainly find a load of supporters of free markets and small government, but nobody supports the dominance of corporations in government (you don’t necessarily need to tolerate the latter if you support the former), and almost everyone thinks things should change. Many people blame corporations, many people blame politicians. Many people say that they wish we had politicians and representative government that would change the negative aspects of this state of affairs, and blame those we currently have, who do not do so. This blame is valid, if not productive.

Yet the fact remains, it seems to me, that the people who WILL change things are right in front of us during every single modern presidential election campaign. Their names? Kucinich. Moseley-Braun. Nader. They are there for us. They say the types of things that we all want to hear, and judging by the applause they got during the last primary debates, they are right on target. They advocate for government pushing out special interests and corporate financiers. They promise universal health care, which most Americans support. They promise to regulate the media industry, and in general, to make decisions in the interests of the average American, rather than of corporations. And in contrast with John Kerry, George Bush, and anyone else who has a legitimate shot a nomination these days, they actually mean it.

So why does Dennis Kucinich travel to the Democratic National Convention every four years with barely enough earned delegates to split a taxi cab with? It is very odd to me that we as a country (at least most of us) want these things, and yet we continually fail to consider nominating and electing the people who will actually get them done. This goes for me too – I love and voted for Kucinich, I support almost every stance he takes on every issue, I would lay down in traffic for him if he were actually nominated for president, and yet I am willing to tolerate the fact that he has no shot at even double-digits in any given state primary. I lament this fact, but I tolerate it as the state of affairs in modern American politics.

So what is my point? That we are all WAY too tolerant of bullshit, and yet all too willing to accept our powerlessness. In addition, somewhat ironically, it is not the “system” that causes these problems. The system actually provides a choice. We simply don’t take it.

Unfortunately, these points are nothing short of the same old bullshit complaining that puts us here in the first place. And yet I cannot deny the fact that I myself have done nothing but feel some kind of fake superior insight into the problems at hand, which everyone is aware of anyway (thereby negating my original insight, and rendering me, as always, just like everybody else). Therefore, I have decided that, in 2008, I am going to actively campaign for Kucinich. I am going to get my share of doors slammed in my face, but women have been doing that to me for years, and I am quite used to it.

Book Recommendation: Choosing War

Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam
By Fredrik Logevall
University of California Press
2001

This is the best Vietnam history book I have ever read, and I have read many of them. The focus is on the decisions made between August 1963 and February 1965 (called the ‘Long 1964’), and the primary thesis is that, contrary to much (but not all) of the literature on the topic, there was an opportunity to end the war and forego escalation during this time period, but it was more or less ignored by American policymakers, who made a conscious and in large part illogical decision to “Americanize” the war, a decision that culminated in the early months of 1965.

I will skip the specifics of the book, and instead focus this brief recommendation on my impressions. I find Logevall’s approach to be remarkably concise, comprehensive, and convincing. He examines the international as well as the domestic context in which decisions were made, and he does a fantastic job of examining all sides of the argument – all possibilities of interpretation of events.

My strongest assertion (and in my view, the strongest statement I can make) is that I have been a student of Vietnam War History for almost ten years, and this book changed my perspective permanently and in fundamental ways. The thesis that the war was not inevitable, but rather a result of conscious policy decisions despite the clear opportunity for negotiation and eventual withdrawal, is an argument that you always get the sense of in reading other historical works on the topic. However, I have always walked away from these other books with the impression that forces were nevertheless aligned against the Johnson Administration such that withdrawal was not a viable option. I am a very stubbornly skeptical person, but this book converted me. It has my unqualified recommendation, for whatever that is worth.

George Ball is rolling over in his grave - Iraq and Vietnam

Despite a great deal of comparison coming from many sectors, Iraq is not Vietnam. There are too many fundamental differences between the two situations to draw any kind of overarching parallels. In Vietnam, the United States intervened in an explicit civil war between the communist north and the “democratic” south. Most of this effort, at least until very late in the war, was aimed at passifying the communist insurgents in the south – the so-called Viet Cong – rather than engaging in battles with the very large, motivated, and powerful North Vietnamese Army (NVA). There is no such national liberation movement in Iraq, the scale of the war effort is much smaller, and the geography is totally different. Thus, it can be effectively argued that the circumstances of the war – the logistics – are completely different. However, as a student of Vietnam War history – the parallels in terms of the political dimensions of the war are beyond disturbing.

1. Iraq may not be engaged in a explicit civil war, as were the Vietnamese (north and south) during the 1950’s and 1960’s, but the fact remains that factions within Iraq oppose the recognized (at least by us) government of their nation, and that these anti-government factions are fighting against an Iraqi state that maintains its war effort and political viability by means of U.S. aid, in the form of manpower, materiel, and money. We are propping up an administration that we favor by means of violence, and justifying it in terms of “spreading freedom.” Therefore, we are waging war in Iraq without a clear definition of victory, as we did (most explicitly) between 1965 and 1972 in Vietnam. We are passifying insurgents in Iraq in order to maintain the current political regime, as we did in support of Ngo Dinh Diem and his several successors in Saigon throughout the 1960’s. And once again, our political justification for doing so is the interests of “freedom” in Iraq and around the world, as well as, as a result, our own safety at home.

2. Just as we claimed to be – and actually were until the escalation starting officially in 1965 – merely assisting the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) fight their war against the National Liberation Front (NLF) or Viet Cong, we claim to be merely assisting the Iraqis fight a war that they want to fight against insurgents in their own country. However, in both cases, it is very clear that our assistance is far more akin to dominance than some kind of a secondary support role. Can we realistically frame this war in this fashion – as assistance of an effort that the Iraqis themselves want to carry out? Perhaps so, but the degree to which we emphasize the Iraqis as spearheads of the war effort, as we did in the case of the ARVN, is misleading at best.

3. We claim to be carrying out this war for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and yet their opinion of us as liberators, and our victory in the arena of their hearts and minds, is doubtful at best. Just as in Vietnam, we have ground troops fighting in an environment in which they cannot be sure who is their enemy, and many of the indigenous peoples, despite our role as “liberators,” are willing to die in order to drive us out. There is much evidence to suggest that we had more local support in South Vietnam than we currently maintain in Iraq. However, every day, we hear that the freedom that we are facilitating in Iraq is the purpose of the war, and that we are the liberators of the Iraqi people. Although war has historically been a necessary evil in the context of liberation, the American tendency to justify military intervention in terms of spreading freedom is definitely sounding quite hollow these days.

4. George Bush, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, continually urges us to “stay the course,” and warns us that the battle will be long, difficult, and costly. He lashes out at dissenters and paints them as unpatriotic cowards, just as Johnson and Nixon did during the Vietnam War. And yet, the timetable for victory – in addition to the definition of victory – eludes us. We are told to stay the course until the end, but we are provided with little in terms of a definition as to what constitutes the end, and how we plan to attain those goals. In the meantime, Americans soldiers are dying at an increasing clip, Iraqi civilians are being needlessly killed by bombings and stray fire, and we and they are absorbing these most precious costs with only the assurance by the Bush Administration that we must persist in order to win.

5. Once again, as in Vietnam, we are fighting a war in a region where the insurgents have the distinct advantage in terms of intelligence and knowledge of the terrain, and we are using troops who know little or nothing about the culture to win the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people. In Vietnam, at least at first, while there was certainly suspicion of western nations and occupiers as a result of the long war with the French imperialists, there was not a majority anti-American sentiment per se. We are liberating a country that we have waged war against twice in the past 20 years, in a mideast political environment that is overwhelmingly anti-American. And we are doing so while simultaneously portraying this as an effort in the interests of the Iraqi people.

6. Although war in Vietnam was largely a foregone conclusion by 1964, the official, party-line justification for escalation was the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, and the subsequent congressional resolution authorizing the president to use whatever force necessary to stave of the communist aggression in South Vietnam. Even at the time, but certainly now, the validity of that justification has been largely discredited (the first attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin was provoked, and there is little evidence that the second attack ever occurred). Similarly, the WMD and Al-Quaeda ties justifications have almost no evidence in the case of Iraq. In both cases, there was the result of a congressional resolution supporting the use of force that received almost unanimous congressional support, and yet in both cases, both justifications turned out to be false and yet war continued. Are we ignoring the evidence now, as we did then? It seems fairly obvious to me that, at least to some extent, we are ignoring the facts in the Iraq case. How can we possibly continue to wage war when the justifications for that war have turned out to be false? Were the original justifications not the important ones? Why were they presented as such?

7. Despite mounting casualties, and the rate of these casualties on the rise every month, we hear the familiar refrain that we heard from LBJ, William Westmoreland, and the Johnson Administration: “Progress.” We are making progress, we are passifying resistance, we are bringing freedom to Iraq. The progress in Vietnam turned out to be in no small part illusory, and yet many of us fail to question this President in his assertions that we are moving in the right direction (although many of us, of course, are asking those questions, and asking them pointedly). Although I am heartened by the American people’s faith in government, I must question our lack of skepticism and our willingness to trust an administration that has very clearly misled us.

8. Just as we fought in Vietnam as an “episode” of the Cold War, we now fight in Iraq as an episode of the War on Terror. In both cases, it is good against evil. Just as Vietnam was generally argued by those in power to be a centerpiece – a vital area – in the Cold War, so is Iraq in the War on Terror. We justify a small war in terms of a larger war. And just as Vietnam was, as the years passed, painted more and more as a misallocation of Cold War force, Iraq has already very clearly been painted as a “diversion” from the War on Terror. The latter assertion may end up being judged by history as false, but the possibility remains.

9. Once the escalation of the Vietnam War had become a reality in early 1965, despite exhaustive efforts to build a coalition of nations aligned against communist aggression in South Vietnam, the US was left with just one true ally - Australia. Austrailia was the only nation willing to make only a token commitment of ground troops to the effort. Similarly, despite our best efforts and also despite the fact that a global coalition was a stated precondition for war in Iraq, the Bush Administration has failed to put together anything but a very marginal commitment from the global community, and the US continues to absorb the vast majority of the cost - in terms of blood and treasure - of the war. Once again, we are unilaterally taking military control of the situation in a foreign land, and once again we are doing so without anything resembling support from many of our closest allies.

Iraq is not Vietnam in any overarching sense of valid comparison. However, while the comparison may not be sufficiently valid to warrant the assertion of equivalency, this does not preclude the validity of similarities, just as it does not mean that the lessons of the Vietnam War do not apply to certain aspects of the Iraqi War. The lack of validity of a grand-level comparison means that we cannot say that since Vietnam was a mistake, as is generally acknowledged, Iraq is also a mistake. It does, however, mean that we can view the Iraq War in terms of certain aspects of that in Vietnam, and that we can justifiably apply many lessons learned from the latter to the former.

In my personal view, the mistake of Vietnam had immeasurably horrible consequences for American foreign policy, and perhaps more importantly, for the image of America in the minds of Americans, and for our participation in our system. Making that same mistake twice in the span of 50 years will accentuate this effect, perhaps drastically and in unforeseen ways. We are too good a people to let this happen. At least I hope we are.