Recommended: Thank God For Humanitarian Bombs?

Walter Russel Mead has an interesting, and somewhat unsettling, take on President Obama's Libyan "humanitarian intervention" last year, in his National Interest piece Thank God For Humanitarian Bombs?. It may have seemed reasonable, and moral, at the time, but in hindsight the results have been less than one might have hoped for, and the "unintended consequences" may prove to be profoundly worse.

Once again, it seems to me, American politicians in their profound ignorance of geopolitics, history, and other cultures, have made poor choices. This isn't a Republican vs Democrat thing, nor a liberal vs conservative thing -- this has to do with the insular, somewhat self-righteous, narrow-minded views of our ruling elites.

Recommended: Civilization in Reverse

Victor David Hanson has published another of his insightful pieces: Civilization in Reverse. As he points out, there is no natural law that says once a civilization is established, it will "automatically" continue and improve. Civilizations are a product of human endeavor, and when the humans stop "endeavoring" the civilization rots way, as have innumerable previous civilizations in the world (think Persia, Rome, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, the French Empire, the British Empire.......).

The current Greek fiscal crisis, he points out, is a warning to the rest of us. Life is not as nice in Greece as it was a decade ago. If we don't pull up our socks and get to work here in America, the America of a decade from now may not be nearly as pleasant as it was a decade ago, or even as it is now. That certainly is the case in California, which has already declined from the "Golden State" to an increasingly troubled and backward place.

Recommended: Piercing the Fog of War

Brian Steed's 2009 book Piercing the Fog of War: Recognizing Change on the Battlefield: Lessons from Military History, 216 BC Through Today is a fascinating and very important book in today's world.

Steed examines in some detail six "aberrational" battles in history, from Hannibal's victory at Cannae (216 BC) to the Russian's debacle in Grozny (1994-95),and examines how each involved one side "thinking out of the box" to defeat the other side. He discusses the importance of initiative and maneuver and isolation and other tactical concepts, but he emphasizes especially the importance of understanding the opponent, of understanding how the opponent sees things and expects to operate, of empathizing to the point of being able to see out of the opponent's eyes and walk in his shoes and understand his thinking, both tactically and strategically.

This is an area in which America has been seriously deficient for many decades. We didn't understand the Chinese in Korea, nor the North Vietnamese in Vietnam, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghans in recent history. Our leadership, both military and political, but especially our political leaders, have been woefully ignorant of the cultures and world views of other influential nations around the world, and we have made stupid, avoidable and expensive mistakes repeatedly because of this ignorance.

This is not a light read, but it is a profoundly important book.

Defense Cuts

The new Pentagon proposal for defense cuts has been posted here. It seems quite well reasoned, and apparently has the support of military leaders. Of course members of Congress will fight to keep every job in their districts, whether it is needed or not, so I expect a good deal of political pushback. But if this proposal survives relatively intact, it will be a reasonable first step toward cutting the defense budget.

Recommended: What the Left/Right Gets Right

Thomas Edsall has written two consecutive pieces on the New York Times Op Ed pages in recent weeks that are worth reading: What the Right Gets Right (Jan 15), and What the Left Gets Right (Jan 22).

In the first case he asked some prominent liberal thinkers what they thought the conservatives had gotten right, and in the second case he asked prominent conservatives what they thought liberals had gotten right. The results are quite instructive.

Recommended: A Supreme Obamacare test

George Will has a good opinion piece today in the Washington Post entitled A Supreme Obamacare test. He lays out what is at stake in the Supreme Court challenge to ObamaCare.

The real issue of importance isn't about health care, though that is the substance of this law. The real issue is about how far Congress's power extends. As one lower court judge asked, if Congress can compel citizens to buy health insurance because it is good for us, can Congress also compel us to eat broccoli on the same basis?

And there is a financial issue here as well. Obamacare, as currently written, can COMPEL states to spend most of their budgets on Medicare. Should Congress have the power to compel states to do that, even if it puts them into bankruptcy?

I agree with George Will. This is probably the most significant constitutional issue to come before the Supreme Court in decades, and goes far beyond the liberal-conservative disagreement about solving health care, though that is what will probably get most of the play in the press.

Recommended: No End in Sight

I strongly recommend the documentary movie No End In Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos (2007), by Charles Ferguson. This will not be entertainment; it will not be easy to watch, but it is important. It deals with the Iraq War, and in particular with the massive US failure to plan for or execute anything like a post-war reconstruction effort, despite the advice of junior staffers who knew at the time that the decisions their superiors were making were disastrous, and tried to tell them so.

The arrogance and ideology-driven blindness of the main players (Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, Paul Bremmer, etc, etc) is exceeded only by their abysmal ignorance of Iraq, of the realities of warfare, and of the Arab world. President Bush is simply missing in action -- he apparently didn't even bother to keep up with what his advisers were doing. This movie takes Iraq up to about 2006, and now in hindsight we can see just how terrible their mistakes were. Indeed, as of today, Iraq appears to once again be descending into chaos and sectarian war.

The point is not to bash the Bush administration yet again - we have done that enough now. They are history. The point is to learn from these mistakes, because otherwise current and future politicians are and will make them again and again.

Rumsfeld's replacement as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, was much wiser and much more realistic and pragmatic, and his replacement, Leon Penetta, appears thus far to be pretty good. But the Obama administration hasn't yet shown itself to be any more competent in Iraq than the Bush administration was. It's true we are now (mostly) out of Iraq, but only because the Iraqis threw us out, not because we were smart enough to get out.

The main message is that the Washington power elites are too often completely out of touch with the realities on the ground - in Iraq then as they are with the economy now. That ought to worry the voters a lot more than it seems to.