Not To Get All Unhinged About It


Bush's question in 2003 was, can we go back to the early 20th century and have a sort of Philippines-like colony with a major military investment? The answer is, 'no.' Iraqis are too politically and socially mobilized to be easily dominated in the way the old empires dominated isolated, illiterate peasants. The outcome of the Israel-Hizbullah war this summer further signalled that the peasants now have sharper staves that even penetrate state of the art tanks. The US can still easily win any wars it needs to win. It cannot any longer win long military occupations. The man who knew this most surely in the Bush administration, Donald Rumsfeld, most egregiously gave in to the occupation route, and will end up the fall guy as the public mood turns increasingly ugly in both countries.

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((sigh))

If that is the Invasion Party's great question, they have certainly managed to keep it a secret from their own supporters, not to speak of neutral or mainstream Americans. Back when The Party was riding high, their Mr. Rove used to kid us losers that 2000 was a replay of 1896, but he probably was not remembering the "Maine" when he said that, let alone remembering Aguinaldo and Douglas MacArthur the First. The invasionites of Crawford have offered explanation after explanation of why March 2003 was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but never yet have they appealed to America's well-known craving to possess Phillipines-like colonies with major military investments. They are not likely to start doing so now, not after last night. When the perps were plotting together behind closed doors before their perpetration, did they ask one another, "Gentlemen, why shouldn't we go back to the early 20th century and have a sort of Philippines-like colony with a major military investment?" It seems most unlikely, especially considering how they treated General Shinseki for wanting too much military investment, and how they welcomed dubious assurances from Mr. Adelman and Dr. Chalabi that it would be Operation Cakewalk.

The Phillipines of 1902 were not particularly "Phillipines-like," for that matter. It is to the national credit that the Republicans' Spanish-American caper produced a firmly moral anti-imperalistic movement with such stars as William Jennings Bryan and Mr. James of Harvard and Mark Twain, but that movement did not claim that The Party had already converted Uncle Sam into a major military investor, a "Prussian militarist" as it was called back then, and most assuredly they never claimed that Americans in general wanted to become Prussian militarists, or even dreamed that they might want such an exotic thing. The anti-imperialism of 1902 only warned that we could drift gradually and unwittingly into behaving just like the other (wicked) Great Powers if we didn't watch out. Of course by 1902 European standards, the GOP's "major military investment" in fighting the Dons and neo-liberating their colonies was derisory. Also by General Grant's 1864 standards closer to home. Dragging in the word "investment" at all suggests that one is really in Ike's World about the year 1960, in the vicinity of the "military-industrial-academic complex," and nowhere near 1902 Manila.

It would be good clean partisan fun to declare that The Party never met a cakewalk it didn't like, and therefore in 2002-3 the Crawfordites were beautifully set up to be deceived by Adelmans and Chelabis well aware that the shortest way to a Republican heart is to appeal to its traditional taste for shooting fish in a barrel overseas. One might even point out how they seem not so very eager to tangle with North Korea, puny weakling though it is. I don't think that is what happened, or not more than a small percentage of it, but it might be tolerably plausible if written up well.

On the flip side we find "Iraqis are too politically and socially mobilized to be easily dominated in the way the old empires dominated isolated, illiterate peasants. The outcome of the Israel-Hizbullah war this summer further signalled that the peasants now have sharper staves that even penetrate state-of-the-art tanks." If you gaze at that passage from the right direction with the lighting carefully arranged, perhaps it will mostly do. Except that the Crawfordites do not appear to have been trying at any point to "dominate" their neo-Iraqi subjects, and they make a very poor showing indeed as compared with the Indian Civil Service down to 1948. Crawfordites relish invading and conquering, obviously, and perhaps they don't even mind occupying too badly, but they have never had any intention of administering their conquered provinces. Perish the thought!, for it would lead them in the direction of Clintonian "nation-building," which, being Clintonian, must eo ipso be 100% wrong-headed and damnable. Warren Hastings and Cecil Rhodes and Lord Cromer never behaved the least bit like that, they did not hang around Government House twiddling their thumbs in the constant expectation that tomorrow or the day after the natives would see the light and do for themselves spontaneously exactly what their colonisers wanted them to do. That peculiar _modus operandi_ seems to be a recent innovation of the "Freedom Means Peace!" Crawfordites, perhaps in their role as the Party of "creative destruction," and I seriously doubt it would work with isolated, illiterate peasants any better than it has worked in Mesopotamia. On the other hand, it does make a big difference that our neo-Iraqi subjects have access to al-Jazeera, etc., and in that sense are not illiterate or isolated as Cromer's Egyptian subjects used to be. Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat: the Crawfordites have even flooded their colony will cellular telephones, which they boast as one of their great reconstructive accomplishments, evidently not noticing how convenient it is for the terrorists/insurgents/guerrillas also.

As to strictly military technology, the "stakes" of the "peasants," I should draw a broader moral than Prof. Cole cares to. Nowadays everybody can be strong, provided that she stays very strictly on the defensive. The Lebanese God Party did brilliantly in protecting their own turf, but shooting off all those rockets to annoy the Israelis was absurd and ineffectual. Conversely, now that the Tel Aviv régime has surrounded itself with the Bar Maginot Line, it does not get into serious difficulties until it undertakes aggressive adventures out beyond it. Similarly, al-Qá‘ida is extremely hard to find and pin down, but also extremely unlikely to pull off another Pentagon/WTC attack. The converse of that one is that even the Crawford régime would be safe enough, could it abstain from actively looking for trouble. The "peasants" of the world have no monopoly on this new product, it is available to pretty well everybody.

I only say "safe enough," notice, because if some party foolishly takes to the offensive, it can always do a certain amount of harm. Not as much harm as it suffers in the process, and not enough harm to accomplish anything of decisive strategic value, yet not zero harm either. As to the implications of this unanticipated new world order for the USA, consult your life and casualty insurers for full details. (You might also wonder why the Republicans never seem to suspect that the best bottom line on "global terrorism" might be located on their own favorite sort of literal bottom line. What did those gentry learn at HBS, then?)

Last and least, Secretary of War Rumsfeld. Allow me to bet Prof. Cole a quarter that he is not going to fall at all, or rather, that his boss is not going to throw Rummy off the Party sled to the wolves no matter how ugly the public mood turns. America grievously disappointed the Invasion Party yesterday, and their response will be to circle the same old wagons even more closely together. They devoutly believe that the Executive Branch has every right to be as unilateral and preëmptive inside the USA as the USA ought, in their opinion, to be in the world. Defending that position against all comers -- Supreme Court, Congress, media, "public mood," the opinion of mankind -- is where the invasionites will dig in and try to hold the line, come what may. Developments in Iraq, bad or worse (or even good), will have hardly any bearing on the question at all. Iraq is no more than a single instance of the general principle that the Crawfordite faction are resolved to vindicate. In the very last ditch, they'll explicitly defend their right to screw everything up totally in foreign and aggression policy rather than make any concessions to any of the parties mentioned, to anybody else whatsoever. Therefore Rumsfeld stays and I risk my quarter.

But God knows best. Happy days.