Libya, Iowa, and F22 View 687 20110814

View 687 Sunday, August 14, 2011

Libya and Syria

According to Aquinas, it is just to go to war to defend the innocent. There are restrictions, but this is not an unfair statement. Presumably that is why Obama considers it just to continue to break things and kill people in Libya. And recently Qaddaffi used helicopters, which once again put him in violation of the UN resolution, and thus required that the US kill some more Libyans and break some more Libyan property in the name of NATO acting for the UN.

Meanwhile, a Syrian corvette is shelling a Syrian city from the Mediterranean, and the US watches with curiosity, but there is no intervention.

One necessary condition for a war to be just is that there is a reasonable expectation of success. Success is defined in many ways, but you might sum it up by saying that in the end there would be more justice in the world after the war ends than there would be if it never started.

If we continue the intervention in Libya, do we expect that when it is all over there will be more justice in North Africa than there is now? And if we intervene in Syria, is there a reasonable expectation that what comes after the end of the thugocracy in Syria will be better than before we went in? I ask this seriously. Iraq is certainly better off without Saddam and his thuggish sons, but there were probably better ways to accomplish that than a lengthy occupation.

Republics seldom do Imperialism with any great competence. Competent Empire requires long term commitments, and a number of subtleties including the use of silver bullets, puppet regimes, auxiliaries and foreign legions, and other devices that do not win popularity in free elections. Incompetent Empire can leave both patron and client worse off than before. Washington warned us not to become involved in the territorial disputes of Europe. It is not isolationism to understand that we don’t know how to achieve some otherwise desirable results; and it is unjust to go to war without a battle plan under which we can realistically expect the world to be better off after our intervention than it would be if we did not undertake it.

The Iowa Straw Poll

The Iowa straw poll does not traditionally predict the Republican nominee. The participants tend to be party activists and have strong opinions, and tend to be more conservative than the average voters. One clear result of the straw poll is that the conservative wing of the party, and the Tea Party advocates, took a very high percentage of the votes. The Country Club did not come off well.

I had thought that Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty had damaged each other too much for either to come out number one, but clearly I was mistaken. Pawlenty has dropped out: given what he spent on his campaign, getting a very low third (just over 13%) to Ron Paul and Bachmann (who were very nearly tied for second and first at 28% and 29% respectively), was too ominous an omen.

The race will go on. Newt did a bit worse than I expected; I thought he would come in over 5% and possibly go to 10%, even if did make a point of not catering to the whims of Iowa, but I will cheerfully concede that I am no expert on modern Iowa. I last lived there in 1954, and I haven’t been there since I was keynote speaker to a conference back in the last Millennium. I don’t expect Newt to be the nominee. I do hope that he will become part of a strong team that does win. Newt is a national treasure, but his strong point is not in executive actions. His advice ought always to be taken seriously.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party component of the Republican Party came out of this stronger than it went in. The Country Club can be expected to react strongly to this; it will be interesting to see which one burn their bridges behind them.

The Chinese have launched an aircraft carrier. Carriers are the force projection system par excellance. Viet Nam has reinstated conscription. Japan is considering expansion of its self-defence forces. Few others in the world are made joyful by the news. Taiwan announced a sale on missiles that can kill aircraft carriers.

Meanwhile the entire F-22 stealth fighter force is grounded because we don’t seem to have a way to generate breathing oxygen for the planes. (Opening the hangar doors when running the engines might or might not help.) China has one stealth fighter. Unless we get the F-22 flying again the pilots may lose their proficiency ratings and have to go back to flight school or something. The Iron Law seems to apply to everything, but I may be misreading the situation. There was a time when I was supposed to know something about human factors in aircraft operations, but that was quite a while ago.