| Monday,
September 17, 2007 I have medical
appointments this afternoon. This will have to be short.
Jacobinism and
Iraq: a discussion
Greg Cochran, who often sees things clearly
and always says precisely what he thinks, has been unrelenting in his
contempt for those who put us into this war. He is convinced that they are
both stupid and evil, with the emphasis on stupid; and that there is nothing
to be said in their favor or in explanation of what they have done. Of
course this means that the entire Congress, and much of the Executive Branch
of government are not merely deluded by virulent ideologies, but just dumber
than dirt.
A minute's thought will convince you that
this view can't be correct. These people have been clever enough to be
either elected or appointed to positions of power; and to delude the rest of
the nation, who are presumably smarter than they are (or else the lot of us
are stupid, with Cochran being the only intelligent person in the land).
Cochran is correct: there was insufficient intelligence (the old fashioned
kind, smarts, not military intelligence) applied to the Near East situation.
A very smart group with an agenda was able to convince an equally smart
group of people to do a very stupid thing: something that, seen in
retrospect, is very stupid. But did it seem stupid at the time?
Among those convinced to go along with the
invasion were both Hillary Clinton and William F. Buckley, Jr., neither of
whom is stupid under any acceptable definition of the term. Buckley was even
persuaded to allow the egregious Frum to denounce all those who did not
enthusiastically endorse the invasion of Iraq, to allow Frum to insult
Stephen Tonsor and other intellectual conservative philosophers who pointed
out the errors in the egregious Frum's article, and stuck to his guns when
it was apparent to much of the nation that the invasion was a mistake to
begin with and the implementation was a disaster. It took Buckley a long
time to realize that the invasion was a ghastly error.
I have before said that the explanation of
all this is Jacobinism. Buckley, no Jacobin, was persuaded by Jacobins and
the argument of patriotism and national unity, but Jacobin arguments
affected him as well. I have said this often, sometimes in reply to
private mail by Cochran.
Today I received from Greg:
" Further elaborations could be found
in a transcript of an interview with The Wall Street Journal <http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/09/17/
qa-greenspan-on-bubbles-saddam-cheney-and-bernanke/> :
Tell me about your views on the
importance of deposing Saddam. My view of the second Gulf War was
that getting Saddam out of there was very important, but had nothing
to do with weapons of mass destruction, it had to do with oil. My
view of Saddam over the 20 years … was that he was very critically
moving towards control of the Strait of Hormuz and as a consequence
of that, control of the oil market. His purpose would be very much
similar to [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez’s actions and I think
it would be very dangerous for us. So getting him out, to me, seemed
a very important priority.
Did you share this view with Cheney and
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld? Oh, yeah.
But he definitely wanted to make clear
that he did not influence the White House’s decision to start a war
that has become the albatross around so many leaders’ necks lately.
“Their decision had been made prior to my discussions with them,” he
said."
The problem, as always. is that this statement is
totally untrue. Saddam has no chance of controlling the strait of
Hormuz: his army was in tatters and getting worse all the time. He was
not "moving towards control". I wonder if Greenspan even knows where the
Strait of Hormuz is.
Gregory Cochran
P.S. Jerry, maybe 'Jacobinism' blots out all your
knowledge of geography. Ya think?
My reply:
Now if you want to descend to that level of debate, go
ahead.
My view remains that most of those who thought the
invasion would be a cakewalk did so because of Jacobinism: they really
believed that given the overthrow of the monster, people would leap at the
prospect of freedom and democracy. Hell, they still say such things.
This was compounded by Chalabi the Thief who told them
what they wanted to hear: that Iraq would unify, that the people of Iraq
thirsted for democracy and were basically pro-western, that control of this
civilized country would be easy -- and it would then ally with the West.
That doesn't mean that Jacobinism was the reason for the
invasion. Most of those urging the invasion have national interests at
heart. Unfortunately they are not all US national interests. And some had
commercial interests at heart.
But intelligent people went on with the silly invasion
because they actually believed that when tyrants are overthrown, then
democracy can be encouraged; that we can carry liberation into the Middle
East on the points of our bayonets.
A few of us, including me, pointed out that it wasn't
going to work that way, but we were drowned out because Jacobinism is the
national sentiment, taught in every US college and high school. In every
human heart beats the desire for freedom. Democracy is the only legitimate
form of government (counting noses and weighing the vote of the village
idiot the same as that of the professor is the only legitimate form of
government) (being governed by the first 500 names in the Boston telephone
directory rather than Harvard University faculty is the only legitimate form
of government)...
My point being that Jacobinism is so pervasive in our
political thought that we have forgotten Madison and Hamilton and Jay, and
George Washington, and the Adams dynasty and in general our national
heritage.
Greg Replied:
Happy to. I've never thought your "Jacobinism'
notion was much of the explanation. Bush may believe in it, but then he
also believes that there _must_ have been a burgeoning Iraqi weapons
program ( he still says so privately) - because he'll believe anything
that keeps him from having to admit he's a God-damned fuckup.
But the central point is something else: I'll bet
money that Greenspan really thought that, and it's ridiculous. The Iraqi
state was lying there rotting, barely able to keep the lights on - no
sane and informed person could have thought that Saddam in 2002 was
"very critically moving towards control of the Strait of Hormuz." The
people running things are pretty damn ignorant, and it's something that
you have remember every single moment when trying to understand what
they do. As are voters of course - voters evidently have permanent
beliefs that 10% of the US budget goes to foreign aid, that we're
supporting countries that are in fact subsidizing US consumption through
massive trade deficits, etc. I'd love to give a speech in which I
promise to cut back aid to 1% of the budget by _sundown_.
And if you any noticeable number of people really
believed that democratic self-rule was as inevitable as death and taxes,
they had to be pretty fact-free themselves. The hard core of Bush
supporters have never shown much belief in democracy anywhere else and I
sure don't hear them talking about it much anymore: I think they support
their side, which they identify with their country, and that they would
have fiercely opposed, indeed derided a Democrat who did _exactly_ the
same stupid things in Iraq. I don't remember those hard-core Bush
supporters being wildly enthusiastic about building democracy in Bosnia.
Herd instinct was far more powerful than any
belief in Jacobinism, for most people. Right-thinking people just _knew_
that Iraq was some kind of threat, even thought it hadn't been two years
earlier, even though nothing about Iraq had changed in the meantime,
except to rot a bit further.
Gregory Cochran
And I am out of time, due to a medical appointment. I have
to keep emphasizing: what Greg calls herd instinct is certainly correct
(Pareto has a much better analysis); and in the US the intellectual herd
instinct is Jacobinism. It is politically incorrect to say that Democracy is
not the end goal of history, the only worthwhile form of government. We no
longer even hear of the defects of Democracy. Writers like Parkinson and
books like his Evolution of Political Thought are out of print
although fortunately they can still be found on line. (I have not
investigated the copyright status of the various eBook versions of his book
which I recommend highly. Surely one of them is authorized? )
Everyone in government starts with the assumption that the
desirable end result of history is democracy. That's the herd instinct.
Wishful thinking -- within every human heart beats a burning desire for
freedom and democracy -- does the rest.
The disaster in Iraq began at Yale and Princeton, and
until the modern political ideology is defeated in academia, it will
continue to inspire imbecilic policies like open borders, pre-emptive wars
against people who are no threat to us, entangling alliances, interfering
and involvement in the territorial disputes of Europe and Asia and
elsewhere, and putting cheap goods ahead of the national interest and
welfare.
I agree that much of the intellectual establishment has
been stupefied and acts stupidly; but merely saying so is not going to
change things. Before you can cure a disease you must diagnose it: and my
diagnosis is that we still believe in "The End of History", the simple
minded philosophy of the enlightenment, and the ideal of egalitarian
democracy. Until we expand our intellectual horizons we will continue to act
stupidly, and after the policies fail, wonder how we could be so stupid.
================
I have to get out of here now. I note that the incoming
Fire Chief of Los Angeles has said that ending discrimination will be the
number one job of the Fire Department.
I would have thought that preventing and putting out fires
was more important, but clearly the entire City Council and the Fire
Department Officials think otherwise. And they tell me that Jacobinism isn't
pervasive.
=============
I have returned from my EENT appointment. They find
nothing treatable, and nothing to worry about. Tinnitus isn't treatable. My
other difficulties don't seem to be degenerative. It looks as if I'll be
around for a few more years.
===============
Robert Jordan, RIP
Mark Graves sent this:
I thought this said it best.
"Requiscat in Pacem
James Oliver Rigney, Jr 17OCT1948 to
16SEP2007
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Mr.
Rigney served two tours of duty in Vietnam as a chopper pilot, receiving
the Bronze Star with 'V' and cluster, the Distinguished Flying Cross
with cluster and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with palm -- twice.
After his return, Mr. Rigney attended The
Citadel, where he graduated with a degree in physics, then served the US
Navy as a nuclear engineer.
A historian, hunter, pipe collector and
true Southern Gentleman who lived in a house in Charleston built in
1797, Mr. Rigney also dallied as a writer.
Fond of his privacy, Mr. Rigney wrote under
pen names: Regean O'Neal, Jackson O'Reilly and Chang Lung were some of
those -- but he was probably best known as Robert Jordan. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jordan>
Rest in Peace, sir.
LawDog"
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/
2007/09/17/robertjordan-obit.html
===============
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