| Friday, May
9, 2008 Subject: What might
have been -- our government's plan for post-invasion Iraq
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/05/020472.php
"Doug Feith was not only privy to the planning, he did
much of it. And in his new, invaluable, book War and Decision <http://www.amazon.com/
War-Decision-Inside-Pentagon-Terrorism/dp/0060899735> , Feith
describes what the plan was, how it was developed, how the State Department
fought against it, how President Bush approved it, and how L. Paul Bremer
cast it aside. (In Feith's account, the vaunted "Future of Iraq" project was
not a governance plan; it was just a series of ideas which, contrary to the
conventional narrative, the so-called neocons thought were mostly fine).
In this post, I'll focus on the Defense Department's
plan. In a follow-up post, I'll examine with more particularity the State
Department's opposition to that plan. And I'll describe how Richard Armitage
advocated a multi-year U.S. occupation even though he understood that it
likely would result in instability and possibly terrorism against U.S.
forces. Armitage was motivated by a determination to ensure that "externals"
– Iraqi exiles and Kurds – would not assume leadership in Iraq. In the end,
of course, we got both instability/terrorism and the "externals."
The Defense Department's plan might have avoided much
of the instability and terrorism. It was predicated on the idea that the
U.S. should not be viewed as an occupier because that perception would breed
violence. Thus, it was vital to get the Iraqis involved and out-front
promptly. The original concept, developed by Feith, was to follow the
Afghanistan model. That meant installing a provisional government
immediately and placing it largely in charge of governing the country."
Having done that planning thing with the Army for
longer than I care to remember, I can state without reservation that there
is a plan for everything, usually more than one so whoever is in charge can
make a decision about them. I wasn't in the right place to see pre-war
planning, but I can easily believe that DoD and State were fighting over
what to do and how to do it. Trying to run two plans at once is also a great
way to ensure neither works.
Serving Officer
I am in the process of reading Feith's book, which
will likely be the book of the month next month. It is a remarkable
document. As most know, I didn't want us in Iraq either time, and for the
same reasons. The first time we were faced with the intolerable dilemma of
raising false hopes only to dash them and cause the deaths of tens of
thousands -- the course we chose the first time-- or of staying an trying an
incompetent occupation --the course we chose under Bush II.
As to why those were our choices, rather than
choosing competent empire, I've written about that before. Democracies are
not good at empire. The Athenians showed us that, and we've been learning it
ever since. One reason for the collapse of the Roman Republic was
acquisition of Sicily and other provinces that were never going to be
admitted to the Republic but which were governed by Rome. The consequent
inevitable corruption did much to destroy the old ruling class. Lots of
money with little accountability.
Wealthy Republics do not last long. Wealthy
Republics that try their hand at governing subjects soon cease to be wealthy
republics. Often they cease to be neither.
=========
Subject: Teaching to the right
side.
Jerry When I look back on my own experience in High
school I am continually thankful for the shop classes that taught me basic
skills for surviving in the base job market. Even though I have moved into
MIS and technical positions at work I started as a mechanic and machinist
because those were easy starting jobs at decent pay when I came out of
school in the late 50s. Even then I noticed a tendency of some teachers to
concentrate on those students they felt would or could go to college.
Those they felt would go into trades or would not make
good college material were virtually ignored and while not specifically told
to drop out and go to work they given the feeling that they were wasting the
teachers valuable time by just being in the classroom. Today from my
observations the situation is much worse, if the teacher does not feel the
child is capable of being able to go to college then the child is made to
feel unable to be anything worthwhile, and then drops out of school. And
because they do not having the basic comprehension of working for a living
given by shop classes they get into gang activities and end up in prison.
Because these individuals are not going into the job
market we have a vacuum there that must be filled in order to provide
materials and services to the community. This leads to illegal immigration
of foreign workers desiring to fill these good paying jobs our young people
either are unqualified for or feel they are to good to stoop to. It also
leads to exporting jobs to areas where there are willing workers to take the
jobs. So both job flight to off shore regions and the illegal immigration
problem can directly be blamed on our school systems for not teaching the
basic work skills and pride in them to those to the left side of the bell
curve.
With a return to skills teaching we would solve many
of the nations problems in one fell swoop.
Off shore job flight.
Overfilled prisons and lack of sufficient police.
Illegal immigration, might not stop it completely but
it would be greatly reduced from what it is now. If there are no jobs for
them to fill then they will not come!
It would also make it easier for an aerospace engineer
who had his job position eliminated to get a better job than fry cook at the
local fast food joint.
-- James Early, Long Beach, CA
==========
Subject: Missing piece of the
education puzzle maybe
Dr Pournelle
Glad you are recovering. Will continue to pray for
your successful recovery. And for strength for Roberta. (And for fewer
software hiccups.)
I have seen much discussion on this site and others
about the benefits of the GI bill. Only you give space to education for
those not bound for college. But I think something has been forgotten.
The greatest educational benefit to World War II GIs
-- at least in terms of numbers -- was not the GI bill. It was vocational
skill training.
Congress -- in one of the few wise decisions it made
in the 20th century -- realized that releasing into society 10 000 000
trained warriors without job skills was a recipe for rebellion; they
mandated job skill training for enlisted men.
When my father entered the army in 1944 he was an
unskilled farmhand. When he left the army in 1946, he had been trained in
carpentry. He quickly found work as a carpenter. Over time, he rose to
become a general contractor.
This is anecdotal, but it seems to me to be likely
that my father's experience was repeated -- with varying degrees of success
-- millions of times. During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States had the
largest middle class the world has ever seen, as a percentage of the total
population. I believe this was fueled by the blue-collar skills of veterans.
Certainly more so than by the skills of intellectuals.
You yourself pointed out that draftsmen at Boeing rose
to become engineers.
I think that if we search history, we may find that
the schools never turned out many skilled tradesmen. (And by skilled
tradesmen I mean skilled apprentices.) In fact, the vocational training
given by the US Army after WWII fueled the boom of the 1950s and 1960s.
Does anyone out there have any data on this? More
important, how do we reproduce it?
Respectfully h lynn keith
I am inclined to agree.
==
Debt, Education and Other Incentives About Children
Dr. Erwin writes:
<<In Economics of Feudalism, Rader also showed that
the inheritance of debts from generation to generation (or, equivalently,
the inability of families to build up capital) would lead over time to a
highly in-egalitarian society, with almost all families in debt slavery, and
with a very small domestic product primarily serving the consumption of the
(small) elite class. To avoid concentration of wealth, the social system as
a whole has to invest in children so they can start out free of debt and
with valued skills. >>
The modern American social system is deliberately
designed to discourage investment in children. Consider the following:
Any social system is a set of incentives and
disincentives. The state (through laws) and the economic complex tells the
individuals who participate in that system what is desirable and what is
not.part of that system. Family formation, like any other part of the
society, is subject to the workings of those same complexes.
In order to have families, one first must have
potential parents. The current social setup discourages parenthood in
several different ways;
a) a media environment that emphasizes immediate
consumption and short-term pleasure-seeking. In the American case, this
occurs through easily available credit-card debt, television/media
programming that models consumerism and easy sexuality as moral
ideals---"Friends" and "People" magazine, for example;
b) Extremely low-cost (if not "cost-free") and
easily-available contraception and abortion; this reinforces the idea of
consequence-free behavior as a social norm;
c) a legal environment that discourages stable
relationships by making marriage easy to get out of, as well as relatively
less desirable than serial monogamy ("cohabitation"). Corporations and the
state allow those in all sorts of non-marital relationships to receive
fringe benefits at virtually the same levels as married people, thus
providing less incentive to remain together---why risk going through the
hassle and potential expense of a divorce ?
d) A tax code that places the perceived cost burden of
raising children squarely on families, while socializing the costs of
consumption. Remember that it was not long ago that one could deduct
credit-card interest on one's taxes. Most people in their child-bearing
years grew up under such a tax regime. Also, the modern child exemption does
not even begin to cover the costs of child-raising.
e) A credentials system that requires considerable
expenditure of time and money to become marginally employable at a
socially-acceptable standard of living. This reduces the time and money
available for child-rearing.
f) As a corollary to e), a workplace environment on
the elite/near-elite level that is relatively more rewarding than being at
home raising children. (See A. Hochschild's "The Second Shift"). This
reduces the desire to do the difficult work of actually caring for and
raising the irrational little creatures we call "children".
End results: a reduced probability of stable,
committed relationships, as well as a reduced probability of said potential
parents wanting to devote time and resources to raising children once they
are born.
What makes our present situation historically very
unusual is that the vast majority of our public debt (and no small amount of
our private debt) has been run up largely for the purpose of providing
medical care for the (relatively unproductive) elderly. The Silent and now
the Boomer generations have managed to set themselves up as a de facto mass
elite class; State policies effectively subsidize the lifestyles of the
elderly at the expense of children. One might be tempted to describe the
current state of affairs as "intergenerational cannibalism"; where the older
generations devour the young.
The long-term problem arises as succeeding generations
arrive in numbers too small to maintain the expected lifestyles of the
electorate. Cutting back on benefits and ease-in-lifestyle will end the
power and tenure in office of the political class, so another solution has
to be found. Often, this means importing poorer people from elsewhere. In
Western Europe, this means Muslims from the Near East. In the US, this means
Mexicans. Unfortunately, this is at most a two-generation solution. The new
arrivals will, invariably, displace the old. America in 2100 may well be run
from Mexico City.
Cordially,
Mark Schaeber
=========
Nuclear power, Rocky Mountain
institute, energy
Jerry,
Glad to hear your promising news about your treatment.
God be with you and your physicians.
I've been reading and listening to a lot of material
from Amory Lovins and his group at the Rocky Mountain Institute. (www.rmi.org).
I'd be curious as to your reactions to his work.
I was introduced to his work by watching a video
podcast of him at the TED conference -- 20 minutes that shook up what I
thought I knew about energy and transportation:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/51
The talk is a precis of a book, "Winning the Oil
Endgame," which RMI has made freely available for download:
http://www.oilendgame.com/ReadTheBook.html
In their recent newsletter, they have an article on
nuclear claiming that far more cost-effective alternatives exist, even when
carbon emission is taken into account -- interested in your take.
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid467.php
Finally, I was introduced to his work by a series of
lectures he gave at Stanford on energy in building, transportation,
industry, etc. He has also consulted extensively with the Pentagon, and is
very concerned about security implications of our energy choices, both in
terms of easily-disrupted infrastructure and geopolitical liabilities.
The lectures are here (large video with downloadable
slides)
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid231.php
or here as audio-only podcasts:
http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/
series/si-energy.html
Hope this is of interest.
Best,
Michael
I have known Amory Lovins for more than twenty
years, and I have great respect for him. He is charming and persuasive, and
he spends a lot of time working on his position papers. You could make a
good case for him as the father of the Prius and other hybrid automobiles. I
have chaired panels with Amory as a guest, and I am always glad to speak
with him. He knows and respects numbers. He is also a great debater.
Lovins has always said that the cheapest erg we can
buy is to conserve one we have already generated. He makes a good case. I
think he makes too much of a case, of course.
My point has always been that conservation alone
will not do the job. Amory and I have disagreed on numbers for many years.
Since he spends most of his time on this and I don't, he will often win any
particular debate we have. I can only continue to say that if a nation could
conserve its way to prosperity, Bangla Desh would be the wealthiest nation
on earth. They conserve everything there.
We need new sources of energy.
I have no quarrel with conservation, only that it's
not enough, and there are often hidden costs. Prosperity has a high negative
correlation with the price of energy, and if energy gets cheap enough, it
makes little sense to conserve energy at high costs.
=========
apprentices and rockets
Jerry, Blake said "What ever happened to apprenticing?... College
curriculums are in serious need of modernization, especially those that deal
with computers and technology."
Well, some colleges and universities understand this. XCOR, Masden, and
other rocket companies are working with various institutions including
Embry-Riddle University to train engineers before they graduate. XCOR's
internship program is six months hard work on the shop floor as well as
engineering theory that usually leads to employment with us. If not us, then
employment at Orbital or Scaled Composites or another excellent company in
the business of producing new stuff.
Several other universities have recently written to us about internship
programs. Even the U.S. air force and navy have inquired. While it's not a
movement of any great size, it is something we didn't see ten years ago.
This is very encouraging.
Aleta
Truth in advertising: Aleta is a long time friend,
having formerly been an L-5 Society manager back when I was Secretary, and
now an XCOR executive. My son Richard is a VP of XCOR.
My stories written in the 1970's and 1980's had
reference to engineers and scientists and managers who were "graduates" of
Westinghouse, General Electric, and other major corporations, and mentioned
apprenticeship programs much as Boeing used to train a good half of its own
engineers. I used to think that was the way the US would go, given the
rapid deterioration of the universities.
Alas, American with Disabilities and the various
Civil Rights Acts reversed those trends. It is very difficult to show why
you have hire an apprenticeship graduate over a graduate of a prestigious
university, even if it's pretty clear to everyone that the prestigious
university graduate is less qualified and a benefit of affirmative action.
(And no, I am not saying that all minority race graduates of prestigious
universities are beneficiaries of affirmative action, or that all
affirmative action beneficiaries are not qualified; I have given plenty of
examples of my own students who are exceptions; only that there are enough
that the suspicion is always there.) Credentialism follows quotas and
lawsuits as the night the day. A personnel officer wants credentials to
point to when a reject for a job cries "Discrimination!!!!"
I wish the internship/apprenticeship movement well,
but I suspect the Trial Lawyers will end it soon enough, and I hope that the
companies that attempt these programs can survive the inevitable lawsuits
when someone notices they have not met their quotas.
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