BC #4: Dirty Wars - No, it's not porn with a war theme.

[vivacious]

This is what I mean when I say that Americans have no direct or cultural experience with this sort of thing. The most recent US history has to do with its rise to world power and winning wars (Vietnam being the exception and that has left an indelible impression of US psyche). In particular, successful interventions and expanding bases, de facto colonies, in other countries.

Not sure about this one either. We have had a string of failed wars. Korea (ended exactly how it started minus a few million people), Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, other lesser known involvements, etc.

You can argue that Vietnam was a success though. First we invaded the south, followed by the conflict with the north. It showed that America can and will kill millions of people and devastate your country if you don't do what America wants you to. It was an example for other countries, in the way that the atomic bombs were also.

[Dragline]

http://archive.is/lFUG ... This is not a spoof. While the site is no longer up, it was real. I first saw it back in the early 2000s. It's pretty much a recipe for empire. If you consider who signed it, it is clear that it foretold US policy over the next ten years.

There's your teleological manifesto. "Military strength and moral clarity." If you have complete moral clarity about everything, you are never wrong. And those who disagree with you are immoral and must be eliminated.

We come in peace. Shoot to kill!

[Chad]

@jacob
I see where you're going. We seem to be talking about similar things, but viewing them from different angles. I was suggesting we wrote our history books that way because we had no way of influencing the rise of Hitler. I was trying to emphasize why the US didn't have the experience and not just note that the US didn't have it. I wasn't trying to disagree with that aspect of your theory.

So my thesis is that Americans sees technology and institutions for how they can be used to "restore peace and order to the galaxy" and make, at least, Americans safer and see flag-waving and supporting the troops as a way of "standing united". Europeans tend to see how such institutions can be turned against them and flag-waving, troop worship, and uniting around nationalism as the preliminaries to something really bad.

My only issue with this is that it's not like Europe has weak institutions. Yes, European militaries and nationalism sees to be further out of focus than in the US (They are probably more comfortable moving towards the loose idea of global citizen than the US citizen is.), but there appears to be plenty of strong social institutions that initiate semi-concerning controls over Europeans lives (burqa's illegal in France, 1 camera per 11 people in England, homeschooling is illegal in Germany, etc.).

I'm not arguing against your "Americans sees technology and institutions for how they can be used to "restore peace and order to the galaxy" and make, at least, Americans safer" thesis. I'm just suggesting, I'm not convinced our differences in the use of institutions is truly explained by how we view institutions.

...when I visited the US in 2003, because I've heard tons about that and nothing associated with anything good. It's gotten a lot better since then. It's said that Obama won the Nobel prize for not being Bush. I believe that. People learned some quick "lessons in empire". That it's not as easy as such.

I hope we did learn some lessons. The Tea Party makes me worry that we didn't.

History repeats/rhyme and those who don't learn from it are doomed to repeat it. Of course it repeats because people are everywhere the same. The problem is that cultures learn by doing, unfortunately. Fortunately, the US [culture] has something that most other countries lack, namely a great faith in the constitution which also happens to be written to prevent exactly such problems.---Of concentrating too much power and covering government up in secrecy. I know of no other country where its people even care what their constitution says. However, constitutions seem to be written to prevent the problems of the past. The US constitution in particular was written to prevent the problems of Europe.

Yeah, I just wish more people were actually taught history and not just made to memorize dates. It would be nice if people were taught the "why" more often. For instance, I bet only a couple percent of the US population knows why Japan went to war with the US in WWII.

The US faith in the Constitution is a strength. However, it is concerning the Constitution might be showing it's age. It will be extremely difficult and risky to make the appropriate changes over the coming decades.

[Chad]

http://archive.is/lFUG ... This is not a spoof. While the site is no longer up, it was real. I first saw it back in the early 2000s. It's pretty much a recipe for empire. If you consider who signed it, it is clear that it foretold US policy over the next ten years.

This was definitely not a spoof. Scary stuff.

[jennypenny]

http://archive.is/lFUG ... This is not a spoof. While the site is no longer up, it was real. I first saw it back in the early 2000s. It's pretty much a recipe for empire. If you consider who signed it, it is clear that it foretold US policy over the next ten years.

This was definitely not a spoof. Scary stuff.

Why is it scary?

Honestly though, I don't have the same reaction to it that the rest of you obviously do. It was written in the years following Clinton's foreign missteps including the Battle of Mogadishu. It's an overreaction to be sure, but not surprising.

--------------
Not to derail the thread, but is 'empire' inherently bad? Is civilization possible without empires? Have we had a time without one?

[jacob]

Not to derail the thread, but is 'empire' inherently bad? Is civilization possible without empires? Have we had a time without one?

It is if you're on the receiving end. Conversely, if you're on the pitching end, it's wonderful for your "way of life".

Here's how it usually goes.

1) Big country establishes a presence in small country.
2) Big country installs governor, pays off the local ruler/puppet regime, or installs "democracy" to gain control.
4) Resources (commodities) go from small country to big country while money (wealth) and power goes disproportionally to a small group of people in small country.
5) Oppressed population in small country get angry at their ruler and the big country that supports him.
6) Violence obtains. Small country calls them freedom fighters. Big country calls them rebels or terrorists.
7) A crackdown obtains.
8) More violence results.
9) Control becomes more and more costly for big country.
10) Big country pulls out and hands over control to small country.

I'm not aware of any exceptions to this process. It usually takes about 100 years to get through it with each step being exponentially faster. That's also about the time your standard empire lasts.

This is why only the richest country can afford imperial status and why those countries who have already run an empire generally don't seek to reacquire the status. And no, I'm not aware of any period in history without an empire or someone seeking to establish some short term gains for long term pains.

[Chad]

Not to derail the thread, but is 'empire' inherently bad? Is civilization possible without empires? Have we had a time without one?

Jacob's outline covers the vast majority of what happens in empire mode.

Though, there have been instances where areas, cities, countries, etc. wanted to become part of an empire. This happened a few times when Rome was building their empire. It even happened a few times when the US was building it's empire. Though, there is still always someone mad at you.

I do think it would be possible for a modern empire to be good, as it seems we (humans) are getting better at building them without as much blood being spilled. Though, it would be unbelievably difficult to achieve. So difficult, as to be basically impossible at this point.

[Chad]

http://archive.is/lFUG ... This is not a spoof. While the site is no longer up, it was real. I first saw it back in the early 2000s. It's pretty much a recipe for empire. If you consider who signed it, it is clear that it foretold US policy over the next ten years.

Why is it scary?

Honestly though, I don't have the same reaction to it that the rest of you obviously do. It was written in the years following Clinton's foreign missteps including the Battle of Mogadishu. It's an overreaction to be sure, but not surprising.

From my point of view, it's obviously the public puff piece for the neo-con agenda. "Public" meaning that they never say what they really intend to do.

It also sounds a lot like what helped create the current mess.

I don't think this was the result of Mogadishu, but that Mogadishu gave them an opening.

[jennypenny]

From my point of view, it's obviously the public puff piece for the neo-con agenda.

I think our main difference of opinion is that I don't use the term 'neo-con' as a perjorative. I've had that term and just 'conservative' lobbed at me like it was supposed to insult me. It doesn't.

I do think it would be possible for a modern empire to be good, as it seems we (humans) are getting better at building them without as much blood being spilled. Though, it would be unbelievably difficult to achieve. So difficult, as to be basically impossible at this point.

Isn't that what Google et al is trying to do?

[Seneca]

The more you dig on military strategy, the longer term, and more resilient to party ebb and flow you'll see it is. There are lots of great reasons the Founding Fathers were so against large professional armies.

The ploy by politicians to whip up their parties with catchphrases seeking to differentiate themselves and create fear/needs is simply the work of political hacks and consultants using marketing principles to win elections.

I've been shocked at the lack of media drama against Pres. Obama for his fifth year waging war in Afghanistan following all the bad press Pres. Bush rightly got. (Claiming Afghanistan is "better", more just or to a more defined and obtainable objective in any way than Iraq is ludicrous.)

We're in a shooting war. The trigger pullers (JSOC, snipers, etc) always gain influence. We'll be back to the West Point-->Infantry Commanders and Annapolis-->Aircraft Carrier commander careerists wielding the power as soon as the war in the ME goes cold again. For a while.

[jennypenny]

My last post sounded cranky, but wasn't directed at anyone here. I don't think I'm being clear (still on phone). I agree with what Seneca said. I just don't see 'empire' as a symptom of a particular group or political movement. The Bush/Obama example shows that clearly.

[Dragline]

--------------
Not to derail the thread, but is 'empire' inherently bad? Is civilization possible without empires? Have we had a time without one?

I'd say "not necessarily." Unless you happen to oppose what the empire is doing or wants to do next. People become more subject to the whims of whomever is emperor at the time. And empires are more fragile because power is more concentrated.

A good example was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the late 19th Century that was a great place to be for a lot of people there and saw an outpouring of scholarship and invention, particularly in the social sciences, medicine and music. But Franz Joseph was pretty good as far as emperors go in keeping everything together and letting most people do what they wanted. You would strongly disagree if you were Serbian and wanted your own country, though. Once he went, the whole thing collapsed. And a lot of people missed it.

But the whole idea is anti-thetical to what the U.S. was designed to be, and tends to sap resources that could be used for other things. It also creates a great disconnect between citizens and non-citizens of the empire. Most people outside have seen the U.S. as an empire for some time now due to the way it behaves externally, which is all they see. The ideas of "unilateralism" and "American Exceptionalism" are just empire-speak to non-US citizens. Most US citizens still see the U.S. in WWII terms -- generally benign, but willing to step in where needed. You can hear this disconnect when you hear people say things like "they hate our freedoms" when referring to US critics. That makes no sense. They don't care about US freedoms within the US. What they don't like is US-power, which they see as anything but benign. The US media reinforces these illusions and this disconnect. But as more Americans travel, particularly younger ones, we are beginning to better appreciate how the US is perceived outside the US.

The irony is that, although we are extremely safe from foreigners -- more safe than virtually any other country on earth -- we exaggerate the fear factor and the potential risks to the point where we've given up our freedoms voluntarily through laws like the Patriot Act and NSA surveillance.

Empires are not necessary for civilization. The Greeks and Romans had civilizations before they had empires. And the US had no empire until the Spanish-American war, but was mostly civilized.

[vivacious]

@jacob
I see where you're going. We seem to be talking about similar things, but viewing them from different angles. I was suggesting we wrote our history books that way because we had no way of influencing the rise of Hitler. I was trying to emphasize why the US didn't have the experience and not just note that the US didn't have it. I wasn't trying to disagree with that aspect of your theory.

I don't know why you think that. Don't you know about the massive economic involvement between the U.S. and Nazi Germany? There was very strong right wing pressure to NOT make any changes in any way whatsoever even economically. IBM is an example if you didn't know that.

[Ego]

Someday I'd like to graph the potential damage one (deluded/psychotic) human being could unleash on the world without the help of others over time. The curve would be terrifying. Ben Franklin famously said, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither," more than 100 years before the invention of the bicycle. The world has changed from those days when a deluded man with a gun might kill two people in a minute if he was a fast load and a good shot.

Before becoming president, Obama was dead-set against many of the deeds covered in this book. That shift in position, in my mind, shows how easy it is to criticize and how hard it is to operate as the president, knowing that one wrong anti-drone or pro-Snowden decision might domino into disaster in the years to come.

[Chad]

@jacob
I see where you're going. We seem to be talking about similar things, but viewing them from different angles. I was suggesting we wrote our history books that way because we had no way of influencing the rise of Hitler. I was trying to emphasize why the US didn't have the experience and not just note that the US didn't have it. I wasn't trying to disagree with that aspect of your theory.

I don't know why you think that. Don't you know about the massive economic involvement between the U.S. and Nazi Germany? There was very strong right wing pressure to NOT make any changes in any way whatsoever even economically. IBM is an example if you didn't know that.

I also know that everyone else, at that time, was basically trading with Germany too. The US cutting off trade with them would have done little, as it wouldn't be comparable to how much of world trade flows through the US now. Cutting off trade would have been a moral victory, but not have much of any real impact on Germany's up coming war. And, yes, I know about IBM, Ford, and a few others. I'm not suggesting they shouldn't have cut it off. Just that it wouldn't have mattered much.

[Seneca]

Someday I'd like to graph the potential damage one (deluded/psychotic) human being could unleash on the world without the help of others over time. The curve would be terrifying. Ben Franklin famously said, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither," more than 100 years before the invention of the bicycle. The world has changed from those days when a deluded man with a gun might kill two people in a minute if he was a fast load and a good shot.

Unless you're referring to what a leader in control of a modern nuclear military can do, I don't think it's really changed that much (at least on a percentage of population basis). Particularly in the past, water and food supplies were extremely vulnerable, and a fire could wipe out a town. Gunpowder (for bombs) has been around a long time. Even lone psychopaths with just a knife have maimed and killed dozens repeatedly recently.

Before becoming president, Obama was dead-set against many of the deeds covered in this book. That shift in position, in my mind, shows how easy it is to criticize and how hard it is to operate as the president, knowing that one wrong anti-drone or pro-Snowden decision might domino into disaster in the years to come.

Whether or not one believes the veracity of what any candidate (Obama or other) writes, I still think this is quite true.

...despite that, I still think the last two presidents have been appalling.

[vivacious]

@jacob
I see where you're going. We seem to be talking about similar things, but viewing them from different angles. I was suggesting we wrote our history books that way because we had no way of influencing the rise of Hitler. I was trying to emphasize why the US didn't have the experience and not just note that the US didn't have it. I wasn't trying to disagree with that aspect of your theory.

I don't know why you think that. Don't you know about the massive economic involvement between the U.S. and Nazi Germany? There was very strong right wing pressure to NOT make any changes in any way whatsoever even economically. IBM is an example if you didn't know that.

I also know that everyone else, at that time, was basically trading with Germany too. The US cutting off trade with them would have done little, as it wouldn't be comparable to how much of world trade flows through the US now. Cutting off trade would have been a moral victory, but not have much of any real impact on Germany's up coming war. And, yes, I know about IBM, Ford, and a few others. I'm not suggesting they shouldn't have cut it off. Just that it wouldn't have mattered much.

Ok. I think the supplies if not the pure economics in terms of money would have set them back though. For example Nazi Germany used punch cards as the computers of the day to administrate many aspects of their government which they got from IBM. I think America helped make Nazi Germany a lot more efficient and helped its rise increase more rapidly. They were getting some good equipment from America for awhile.

[Chad]

Before becoming president, Obama was dead-set against many of the deeds covered in this book. That shift in position, in my mind, shows how easy it is to criticize and how hard it is to operate as the president, knowing that one wrong anti-drone or pro-Snowden decision might domino into disaster in the years to come.

Whether or not one believes the veracity of what any candidate (Obama or other) writes, I still think this is quite true.

...despite that, I still think the last two presidents have been appalling.

This is an interesting question. Is it actual danger/events/information that causes this? Or, is it the weight of the bureaucracy and one person (even a President with well staffed White House) only has so much personal capital and energy to go around? I kind of lean towards the later. The President knows that the majority of what goes on in the intel world won't get out, so they don't have to worry about creating a " public campaign" for it. This means they probably don't waste a lot of the heavy lifting management time making changes to the intel side.

[jennypenny]

This is the issue I was trying to articulate with my comment about the US being too big to fail, but I didn't do a good job.

The word on the last two presidents is that they weren't very interested in the intel side of things. They both had other agendas they wanted to pursue, so they left the intel and state depts to run themselves for the most part. A president can't run everything because the government is too big and expansive now. Even if they wanted to try and run everything, he/she would be in briefings 24/7 just to stay abreast of everything. It's the same way Jamie Dimon manages to keep his job after the whale revelations. He argues that he couldn't possibly know everything in a bank that size, he trusted his subordinates to do their jobs, he'll change things and put controls in place to make sure it doesn't happen again, etc, etc. Too big to fail means to big to govern.


Now that I've thought about everyone's comments on the book, I have two lingering thoughts...
--If we're the current 'empire' as defined above, maybe black ops are a way for us to conduct our business while letting smaller countries save face. If the US wants to take someone out in Pakistan, we can get covert permission and assistance, carry out the task, but then let Pakistan deny involvement and feign outrage to mollify their people. In that scenario, what the US is doing could be viewed as a better solution for smaller countries as opposed to making them bow down publicly and hand over their own citizens.
--The federal government is too big in my view. I would argue for less government and some here would argue for more. Maybe the compromise is to move some of the bigger parts of government back to the states. We have to decide what we want our federal government to focus on, and then let the states, or someone else, handle the rest. The states can't manage diplomatic relations, but they can handle WIC and other similar programs. The other option would be to establish a fourth branch of government that handled entitlements and had elected leaders.

[Ego]

This is an interesting question. Is it actual danger/events/information that causes this? Or, is it the weight of the bureaucracy and one person (even a President with well staffed White House) only has so much personal capital and energy to go around?

Reminds me of the epicurean paradox.

His anti-intervention stance was a (the?) defining characteristic of candidate Obama. He has done a 180, not once but continually. He has been proactive about the use of interventional force. I didn't read the whole thing, but I got the impression that that was the theme of the book. In my mind being proactive is very different from giving in to the bureaucracy. He would not have spent much personal capital by refraining from using drones as a result of top secret information. He would have been acting on his stated beliefs. I believe those beliefs changed the moment he realized that HE was the one on the hook if something went wrong. It would be on his conscience if he failed to take the pre-emptive action that he had the power to take.

For the first time he saw the depth of the threat. That drawing back of the curtain and the responsibility that goes with it scared him in the same way it scares most everyone on the intelligence committee.