A Mug's Game

Starting a war is a mug's game.

This has been true in almost all cases in international wars over the past two centuries. Just think of the examples:

British invasion of the American Colonies after having earlier withdrawn all forces (1776);

Napoleon's invasion of Russia (1812);

Santa Ana's attack on American forces along the Nueces River in 1846 (President Polk provoked the Mexican attack and then took full advantage);

Confederate States of America attack on Ft. Sumter (1861);

Austrian declaration of war against Prussia (1866);

French declaration of war against Prussia (1870);

Austrian attack on Serbia (1914);

Russian attack on Germany (1914);

German attack on Belgium and France (1914);

Italy's attack on Ethiopia (1935);

Germany's attack on Poland (1939);

Germany's attack on the Soviet Union (1941);

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor (1941);

North Korea's attack on South Korea (1950);

US intervention in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (1964).

There are other examples. There are also a few examples of apparent successful aggressive wars, but the more normal outcome is temporary advantage, followed by stalemate or back-sliding.

It is too early to say what the long term effects of our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan will be.

By the way, soldiers don't start wars. Civilians do that.

Mission Accomplished?

Tonight's TV news showed joyous scenes of our military members returning from Iraq to be united with their families.

Those who answer their country's call have every right to be proud of what they did.

Those who sent them into Iraq with the flimsiest of excuses and a bodyguard of lies have nothing to be proud of.

I have not forgotten the air of triumph exuded by the neocons who pushed this policy. From their standpoint, getting the United States to go to war against Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11, was a great accomplishment.

There was no wisdom here.

It is well to turn the future of Iraq back over to the Iraqis. Where will this lead? No one knows. There are those who believe our presence has accomplished little in the long run other than to strengthen the political and military influnce of Iran in the region.

I'm not prepared to accept this view, either. We shall see.

For a cautionary tale, one might read the triumphant celebration of victory penned by the leading neo-conservative, Richard Perle, in USA Today in the spring of 2003:

Posted 5/1/2003 5:44 PM
Relax, celebrate victory "By Richard Perle From start to finish, President Bush has led the United States and its coalition partners to the most important military victory since World War II. And like the allied victory over the axis powers, the liberation of Iraq is more than the end of a brutal dictatorship: It is the foundation for a decent, humane government that will represent all the people of Iraq. This was a war worth fighting. It ended quickly with few civilian casualties and with little damage to Iraq's cities, towns or infrastructure. It ended without the Arab world rising up against us, as the war's critics feared, without the quagmire they predicted, without the heavy losses in house-to-house fighting they warned us to expect. It was conducted with immense skill and selfless courage by men and women who will remain until Iraqis are safe, and who will return home as heroes." How long is a quagmire? How many lives is a quagmire? How much blood and treasure  is a quagmire?

Election Protest Grantsboro

Yesterday morning the Pamlico County Board of Elections met to complete the hearing on the protest of the Grantsboro election. We sustained the protest and forwarded it to the State Board of Elections for action. The State Board plans to hear the protest on December 22.

Wealth Comparisons

Here is an interesting graph by Sylvia Alegretto, labor economist. I finally managed to edit the graph down to size. By the way, the Waltons got their money the old fashioned way - they inherited it. Read the article here.

Democracy: What Is The Recipe?

I have spent my adult life in defense of democracy.

Even so, I sometimes find democracy puzzling. What is it, exactly? How do you get it? How do you keep it?

I have some ideas on the subject, which I hope to share from time to time.

The first question to examine is, what is the relationship of democracy to elections?

Can you have democracy without elections? Possibly. There may be other methods of popular choice of leaders than elections. Offhand, I can't think of any historical examples, though.

Can you have elections without democracy? We have seen all too many examples of that.

Tentative conclusion: "popular choice of leaders is a necessary but not necessarily sufficient condition for democracy."

Give it some thought.

Above Politics

“I don’t want politicians who are ‘above politics,’ any more then I want a plumber who’s ‘above toilets.’”

(Ta-Nahesi Coates)

Future Politics (Not Necessarily Imaginary)

“Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought they disliked politics, making them putty in the hands of their rulers, like always.”

(Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars)

Aristocratic Anarchists

“The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.”

(G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday)