Month: October 2009

A reader writes:

Okay, I completely agree with your point about Obama, but the metaphor is killing me. "Mushy steel?" It makes my head hurt. Steel that was mushy wouldn't have the primary characteristics that you're trying to convey — sharp, deadly, unyielding.

The closest metaphor to this that actually works is usually "iron fist in a velvet glove," but that misses here, because it implies a polite veneer covering ruthlessness, which isn't quite the same. I would rather propose, closer to "mushy steel," the "sheathed sword."

To wit, in order to demonstrate power, Bush "drew the sword" early and often, both in domestic politics and in foreign military engagements. To him, to leave the sword sheathed was a sign of weakness, in all cases.

Obama, on the other hand, keeps the sword in the sheath and a smile on his face well into the conflict, to the point that you either think he's weak, unnerved, or naive.

Opponents generally have two reactions — either they think it's naivete, or weakness, and then you get what you've called the "beep beep" moment, except in my metaphor, it's when Obama, like Cyrano composing a poem as he fences, effortlessly cuts the opponent to shreds.

The other alternative is that the sword, unseen so much of the time, starts to take on a larger-than-life quality, and opponents back down for fear of it coming out. We're not to that point yet — Obama needs to cut up a few more opponents for that effect to really come out. But once the reputation is established, the longer the sword stays in the sheath, the scarier it gets.

As an aside, I think the direct application of this to American military involvement is extremely apropos. The extended conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have provided the textbook on how to fight the US military. Our military power was far more terrifying when its use was reserved to swift, decisive actions. Now, our threats still have weight because of our ridiculous advantages in technology and capacity, but lack the aura of invincibility we once had. The sword in the sheath is both an offering of peace and a veiled threat, both in international military tactics and in domestic politics.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar flubs a Jeopardy! question about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Kristol plucks out this rather sensible point by Rahm Emanuel:

It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop level if, in fact, you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing the Afghan country.

To which Kristol responds:

If it’s reckless to commit to 108,000 troops without a reliable Afghan partner, it’s reckless to ask 68,000 troops to fight without a reliable Afghan partner.

Well, yes. But that was true for the final years of the Bush presidency as well. Bush kept going because he could hardly withdraw, given his rhetoric about democracy, freedom, etc. But Bush had no strategy, except to keep throwing young Americans into a regional quicksand. I think it's pretty obvious that Obama's campaign critique of Iraq made it necessary for him to back Afghanistan. But he backed it as a justified war, not as a successful one. Yes, it seems he under-estimated the severity of the collapse there in his first few months.

But it's silly to argue, as Kristol does, that he could somehow have rescued the election process. He sent more troops for the election, but the depth of the corruption is not something more troops could have prevented.

So we are where we are. And it is perfectly reasonable for a young president to take stock and time in figuring where to go next. Kristol urges – surprise! – more war:

[W]hat’s reckless is further delaying the troop deployment orders. If the president issued the order now, he could always delay or revoke it later, if the political situation seemed truly insupportable.

And we know what Kristol would say then, don't we? This dog's breakfast of an eight-year war/occupation is not Obama's fault. It is, if anyone's, the neoconservatives'. And yet they now declare those tasked with cleaning up the mess as reckless. The chutzpah continues.

Laura Rozen, as usual, has the full scoop. She’s now working for Politico? Great catch for them.

I've ended back where many Americans are: in support of a public option, administered by the states,  as a means to ensure that the working poor can afford insurance, while also restraining costs. And I see no reason why this couldn't come back into the final health insurance bill, especially if the option is left for the states to decide on. Baucus appears to be open to that federalist twist. The Post poll finds the following:

On the issue that has been perhaps the most pronounced flash point in the national debate, 57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it. Support has risen since mid-August, when a bare majority, 52 percent, said they favored it. (In a June Post-ABC poll, support was 62 percent.)

If a public plan were run by the states and available only to those who lack affordable private options, support for it jumps to 76 percent. Under those circumstances, even a majority of Republicans, 56 percent, would be in favor of it, about double their level of support without such a limitation.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the swing back. The point is that a clear majority has long supported a public option, alongside a mandate. Beutler explains the rationale behind Pelosi's current strategy – make the public option a plus for budget-worriers. If you can make the public option compatible with both federalism and fiscal conservatism, its logic is pretty powerful.

A reader writes:

Thank you for directing me to Rev. Honey, and Father Keating on Sunday, and for the quote from Metzinger. I believe  after listening to these men, (and women – Karen Armstrong) that the difference between an "atheist" like myself, and these wise people, is exactly nothing. Their conception of God is exactly my conception of a universe without a "god". How can that be?

Perhaps once we take organized religion out of the picture, we all are on the same page.

My own view is that so long as faith never loses sight of the search for truth, so long as it never loses doubt, so long as it always understands the ineffability of the divine, the possibility for engagement with atheists, agnostics and every other faith is real, and human, and urgent.

In other words: humility is the thing many Christians have recently forgotten. Pride is an ism.

Dreher:

The term "RINO" — Republican In Name Only — doesn't have a left-wing equivalent. The ability to maintain ideological discipline on the Right has long been a key to the GOP's success, but now the habits of mind and behavior that served the conservative movement so well for so long are precisely what prevent it from listening to conservative dissidents.

Steve Coll has a long essay in Foreign Policy on the military dilemma:

By comparison to the challenges facing the Soviet Union after it began to "Afghanize" its strategy around 1985 and prepare for the withdrawal of its troops, the situation facing the United States and its allies today is much more favorable. Afghan public opinion remains much more favorably disposed toward international forces and cooperation with international governments than it ever was toward the Soviet Union.

The presence of international forces in Afghanistan today is recognized as legitimate and even righteous, whereas the Soviets never enjoyed such support and were unable to draw funds and credibility from international institutions. China today wants a stable Afghanistan; in the Soviet era, it armed the Islamic rebels. The Pakistani Army today is divided and uncertain in its relations with the Taliban, and beginning to turn against them; during the Soviet period, the Army was united in its effort to support Islamist rebels. And even if the number of active Taliban fighters today is on the high side of published estimates, those numbers pale in comparison to the number of Islamic guerrillas fighting the Soviet forces and their Afghan clients.

His bottom line:

America's record of policy failure in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the last 30 years should humble all of us. It should bring humility to the way we define our goals and realism about the means required to achieve them. It should lead us to choose political approaches over kinetic military ones, urban population security over provocative rural patrolling, and Afghan and Pakistani solutions over American blueprints. But it should not lead us to defeatism or to acquiescence in a violent or forcible Taliban takeover of either country. We have the means to prevent that, and it is in our interest to do so.