Egypt protests

   
 

   
 

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Saturday

January 29, 2011

   
 

Egyptian Protests

   
 

When the Chinese filled Tiananmen Square in 1989, we supported them. Nothing really happened to reform the Communist Party in Beijing, though. When protesters filled the streets more recently in Tehran, Iran, we supported them, too. But nothing really happened to reform that government, either.

Now protesters fill the streets of Cairo, and so we support them as well. But, again, nothing is really going to happen to change things in those countries. There might be cosmetic changes, maybe even the premier will have to step down in an extreme case, but still the ruling class will continue in power as before, and the oppressed will still live the way they always have.

These protests don’t aim at the ruling class, but only at the government, and that’s why these protests fail. The larger point for us Americans is that, since we don’t realize that the protests are almost always destined to fail, we just get people, the protesters, in trouble when we support them. Given that we do not possess the will to go in country and really eliminate the ruling regime, we should just shut-up.

That is to say, our existing foreign policy, in which we verbally (and very publicly) support the protesters, but don’t really do anything substantive, could truly be called: “speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That is absolutely the worst mistake you can make in foreign relations.

Either crush the ruling class or do nothing at all – those two moves are both defensible moves. But by all means don’t, on the other hand, just talk a lot and then do nothing forceful or compelling. That failure only gets the protesters in a heap of trouble with their government since they are now branded as pro-American, and an international confrontation has been set in motion.

In addition, we must remember that the protesters are naïve and think that when the US supports them in front of the entire world, good things cannot fail to happen. But they are in for a shock when, at the moment of truth, our foreign policy establishment quietly draws the curtain and retires from the scene, leaving those “pro-democracy” demonstrators to their grisly fate with a brutal government.

   
 

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Why nation-building can’t work

 

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Wednesday

January 26, 2011

 

 

Why Nation-Building

Can’t Work

 

 

(1) You can’t impose your goals on others as if they were simply empty vessels for you to fill. Alexander the Great tried to Hellenize the world he had conquered, but to no avail: That world threw off the Greek customs just as soon as he died. To think that foreign people have no preexisting customs or goals of their own is hubris, thus let us learn from the mistakes of Alexander.

(2) To impose democracy on foreign people or to nation-build in their country is a utopian impossibility. Where are you going with this? Do you actually imagine you’re going to impose democracy on the entire world? Do you know what you would have to do to accomplish that, the amount of force that would be required?

(3) The project of nation-building is a cop-out: We only engage in it so as to cover-up our lack of will to really take care of the problems we have with certain other countries in the world. In other words, we are afraid of killing the somebodies in troublesome countries and so we content ourselves with killing the nobodies. We have the deadpan nerve to call that wisdom.

(4) Nation-building actually keeps alive the very problem it was slated to take care of. In other words, when you go in to nation-build, you naturally keep the domestic factions apart and thereby prevent them from coming to a settlement among themselves. The very logic you’ve set in motion by invading you then prevent from being played out to its conclusion. This then keeps the existing ruling class from being defeated and annihilated. You’ve kept the troublesome people in power by sheltering them, and you’ve essentially taken their side by nation-building. (If you had the sense to simply crush that ruling class, you would certainly also have the sense to leave forthwith after that, and not get involved in their domestic tangles.) And oh, yes, please don’t mention elections sponsored by us in the foreign country: I just ate, and I don’t want to vomit. Clean clothes, you understand.

(5) It’s too indecisive. Americans naturally want short wars, not long drawn-out ones. Nation-building gets indecisive for two reasons: Domestic factions in America will start to clamor, with some of them taking the side of the enemy. This will pressure our government to be more gentle with the enemy, that is, with the ruling class, the foreign regime, than is necessary to defeat it. This will draw-out the war. Also, to nation-build, you must use the military as a police-force, to act as crowd-control basically, and it is most certainly not that type of animal. The purpose of a military force is to crush. But this mere policing will result in a stasis that draws things out, too. In fact, it’s the actual image itself of drawing things out: The military reduced to patrolling the streets indefinitely.

(6) It harms our national security. We will use up our resources in a mistaken, profligate way, and in addition simultaneously spout pieties about universal peace. The latter activity makes us sitting ducks for the unscrupulous, who will take advantage that we are not pressing our own advantages or emphasizing our self-interest. We will get taken to the cleaners by eschewing natural self-regard.

 

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Poem

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Tuesday

January 11, 2011

   
 

poem

 

 

   
 

 

   The high cloud table

Of the orange sunrise,

Admonishing us into silence

As it glows through

The limbs of sycamore and ash,

Stops time in its tracks –

But merely a moment, my love

 

 

   
 

   
 

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Winter poem

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Friday

January 7, 2011

 
 

 

 

Winter poem

 
 

The dark of winter reigns,

And it’s late now

Judging by the perishing sky,

But still I linger alone

In the piercing cold;

Out with the mountains

And with the stars,

With the desolate ether

 Of unmoving midnight,  

Still stubbornly alone, like an animal,

I remain;

With nothing but the owl

To perceive

In the horrible stillness,

I truly have nothing but

The shudder of those wings

In my heart

 
 

 

 

 

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On Big Government

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Thursday

January 6, 2011

 
 

On Big

Government

 
 

The big government model is a wrong turn. As it takes over the responsibilities of the individual, it undermines personal morality by relieving the individual of accountability. It effectively eliminates competition, and thereby eliminates the chief motivator to excellence. All this costs a lot of money, too – it will all be paid for through the seizing and confiscation of privately, and legally, earned wealth.

If you think it’s all okay because it’s the right thing for government to do, that it’s the moral thing to do, the humane, altruistic, idealistic way to go, then you are a gullible dupe. In fact, of course, there is no moral obligation to be in favor of big government at all, or in favor of its various programs.

Big government is not what it claims to be – it says of itself that it’s helping the disadvantaged, the oppressed, but that’s just talk. It’s really a patronage system. It’s a system of favors sought and favors granted. As it grows bigger and more multi-faceted, it concomitantly increases its power to dole out largesse and it further ensconces itself and its members in a guaranteed life-style, sheltered from the empirical world.

For example, the issue of global warming – it clearly is false, exaggerated science, designed to lure more people into the tentacles of government, into being government clients, and is therefore designed to make them dependant on government. The same is true of Obama Care and gay marriage – a disingenuously emphasized issue is put before us, with a putative moral obligation to agree, but it’s all untrue.

In reality you are being taken for a ride: you give them your personal liberty and your personal integrity and the freedom of your mind in exchange for not much, just a subsidized life at the expense of the private sector.

This thinking seeps into our foreign policy, too. That is, a strong policy of international relations needs the will to seek outright victory at times over the neighborhood bully, and not just stand pat forging compromises with him (he is, after all, merely a child testing the limits of his parents).

But, with a government dedicated to favors and patronage and subsidies and clients, are we really capable of mustering the will to win from the Oval Office or from the State Department? Or will we rather just seek out more ways to grant favors and reach a paltry settlement with those who threaten us?

 

 

 

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