Paralysis by analysis

Robert Kaplan has a new piece online at The Atlantic, one of GWS's favorite non-snark repositories. Kaplan offers something of a mea culpa for his support of America's invasion of Iraq, and while GWS normally admires Kaplan's realist-minded work, he's struck by...well, all of this drivel. If Kaplan wants to get some painful emotions off his chest, he should buy a diary.

Regarding the costs of Iraq, Kaplan seems unwilling to take the bull by the horns. He offers an apology and a veiled bit of shoe-gazing about how he and his fellow hawks failed to understand how difficult it might be to remake Iraq in Athens's image. But it's unconvincing, and as the piece progresses, Kaplan offers up what can only be described as a) cognitive dissonance, or b) a creaky arithmetic facility.

Talking about the human and financial costs of the war in Iraq, Kaplan says "To coldly state, without qualifiers, that these costs have been a price worth paying is to reduce foreign policy to the realm of inhuman abstraction. In any case, I don’t believe anyone making such a claim could pass a polygraph test." GWS concurs.

Six paragraphs later, however, Kaplan hints that he himself might fail such a polygraph: "Most fundamentally, does Iraq meet the parents’ test? Can you look parents in the eye and tell them it was worth losing their son or daughter over? As awful as it sounds, quantity matters here, for it says much about the scope of violence that is unleashed for the sake of a higher good." Wait...in the final analysis, the only cost we have to consider is if we could tell a parent in good conscience that his/her son/daughter's sacrifice was worth it? The bar we have to clear has been reduced to stone-jawed stoicism? Ah, that must be it: the key to victory, then, is to send people without consciences to grieving parents' doors! Surely there must be someone in Washington devoid enough of human feeling to carry out this critical act of belatedly justifying an open-ended invasion to the nation. Why didn't GWS think of that?

Kaplan makes an attempt to return to realism, drawing a distinction between a war with 500 combat deaths as opposed to a war with 4,000+ combat deaths, but GWS has to assume Kaplan was on deadline because no serious-minded individual would ever say something like this. Is there something important about the 8-to-1 ratio Kaplan invokes? Is there something trivial about 500 sets of grieving parents? Would 1,000 sets of parents warrant a moment of reflection from policy-makers, or would those 1,000 parents do well to find 3,000 other families with whom they can unionize? More to the point, Mr. Kaplan, weren't you just asking us to ground our foreign policy analysis in something other than "the realm of inhuman abstractions?"

Wouldn't it have just been easier to say, "On the single greatest foreign policy issue of my time, I was dead wrong"? History's going to say it for you eventually, so why not beat it to the punch?

I could get paid for this?

GWS is as surprised as you are...

Your favorite snarketeer might be off to the horribly low-paying world of professional blogging. Details to follow.

The last throes of a few dead-enders?

By now, we've all heard Rep. Michelle Bachmann's comments about Barack Obama and the Congress's crypto-anti-Americanism.

One of the under-appreciated casualties of the War on Terror is some really fun verbiage, as a certain governatrix might put it. Take "last throes" or "a few dead-enders." GWS thinks that, put together, the two might have some serious heft. As in:

Representative Bachmann's wholesale questioning of her Congressional colleagues' personal motivations evoked troubling echoes of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Her attempts to dissociate herself from her statements are not only deeply cynical but also intellectually incoherent. Her views on government---as expressed in her interview with Mr. Matthews and in her time in Washington---are both wrongheaded and potentially destructive; her insular worldview seems to have fed an irrational paranoia the likes of which this country has not taken seriously since the 1960s. It is my sincere hope that Ms. Bachmann's comments lead to her own and like-minded colleagues' electoral defeat this November because that will allow Americans to confidently and correctly claim that Miss Bachmann's naked attempt to smear Sen. Obama was proven to be nothing more than the last throes of a few dead-enders.

Not bad, right?

GWS grew up near Bachmann's Sixth District in Minnesota, so he hopes with all his snarky little heart that the good people of Woodbury, Blaine, Andover, and St. Cloud come to their senses and show Bachmann the door. Besides, GWS can't believe he'd be the only one who'd snicker every time Congressman Elwyn Tinklenberg's name gets mentioned, and everyone could use a good larf.

Tonight we dine in hell

Jon Lester. Game 7. Getcha popcorn ready.

If Francona can get it through his head that he needs to put up four fingers every time Bossman Junior Upton comes to the plate, we just might pull this off.

SOX WIN, SOX WIN!

God I love you, Nancy.

Now THAT's the Tampa bullpen GWS remembers...

The curious syntax of Chip Caray

The TBS broadcast team this postseason has been a bit harsh on the ears. A quick list:

-"Fisted" Anything hit on the inside half of the plate is described by Chip Caray as "fisted." Not only does this improperly describe most situations, but it's just unspeakably awkward when you're a) watching the game in mixed company, and/or b) halfway through a 12-pack of Newcastle.

-"David OR-teez" Buck Martinez insists on mangling the struggling Red Sox slugger's apellido. If he's going for a faux-Spanish accent, shouldn't it be "Dah-VEED OR-teez"?

-"There's a drive" Nine times out of ten, when Chip Caray says the hitter's just hit "a drive," he has either lifted a lazy fly to center or hit a single to his pull-side. GWS is left to conclude that Caray would make an awful outfielder because he clearly can't read the ball off the bat.

-FrankTV Insufferable. Not part of the broadcast team, but stilll...

-"Caballito, the little pony" As Boston Sports Media Watch has pointed out, both Martinez and Caray seem to think that Dustin Pedroia is known as "the little pony" to locals.

-Ron Darling sounding like he's out of breath Darling has a way of sounding like he's pushing out air at the ends of words. It leads to a halting rhythm and emphasizing the wrong syllables.

-"Probably dreamed of, playing wiffleball a couple times, hittin' one over the Green Monster!" Ron Darling just said this about Rocco Baldelli's 8th inning backbreaker. Objection: hearsay and conjecture. Sustained.

Breaking medical news!

Bill...he has good days, and he has bad days...

GWS is sad to report that New York Times token neo-con William Kristol is suffering from Alzheimer's. Though GWS does not have access to Kristol's medical record, the evidence is overwhelming.

It's always bittersweet to see someone lose grasp of their analytical faculties. GWS is forced to conclude that Bill just didn't remember writing "The Wright Stuff" a week before he wrote "Fire the Campaign," because there's just no way he could possibly believe what he wrote in both articles.

I mean, how could anyone be so slimy as to advocate "taking off the gloves" one week, and then only seven days later turn on his heels and say John McCain should stop all negative campaigning and run a high-minded race from now until November? They couldn't, which is why GWS is so terribly saddened that we're losing one of the right's (purported) intellectual giants.

Maureen Dowd is insufferable

Maureen Dowd's op-ed in today's Times makes GWS want to vomit.

Running half your article in Latin...brilliant, Maureen, brilliant. Blogger Ablative Absolute thinks this is a good thing and offers "credit where it's due" because he thinks Dowd wrote the Latin. GWS is puzzled, because Dowd explicitly says that Gary Farney of Rutgers was responsible for the translation, but Ablative Absolute is to be commended for at least trying to translate Dowd's work.

Take a look at Ablative Absolute's translation---there are some spots where GWS thinks he's missing Dowd's or Farney's intent. But more importantly, the Dowd-produced content is vapid. GWS thinks his love-hate relationship with Dowd might have just tipped permanently toward hate.

"You got the wrong guy"

GWS just got back from canvassing for That One outside Derry, NH. It was a beautiful day, with the treetops exploding into reds, yellows, and oranges and not a cloud in the sky, but GWS was struck by some of the conversations he had with undecided voters.

Derry is a somewhat conservative part of the state, a fact made obvious by the number and size of McCain-Palin yard signs. While a good number of voters didn't want to be bothered by politics on an otherwise lovely Saturday, many undecideds and even people leaning one way or another seemed eager to speak with GWS and his fellow campaigners. The McCain backers, however, were uniformly uninterested in talking---not noteworthy in itself, but the uniformity of their responses struck this canvasser.

TIme after time, McCain backers would only respond, "You've got the wrong guy," and go back to whatever they were doing. That was all. No "I'm voting for McCain." We were merely told that we had the wrong guy and from that, we were to deduce that the person intended to vote for McCain.

GWS will leave it to his reader(s) to decide what this means. GWS has his own theories---lack of intellectual openness, resignation to an Obama victory in November, maybe GWS and his fellow canvassers smelled funny---but it's worth pointing out that the great mass of voters seemed willing to speak about public policy and the challenges facing this country while McCain's backers seemed content merely to keep to themselves.

So we're going to bomb Laos again?

History hasn't been too kind to Richard Milhous Nixon. Then again, why should it be? Nixon's administrations now get their due respect in the realm of foreign affairs, but when it came to contempt for one's fellow citizens, Nixon reigned supreme.

But he did get something of a bum rap from the press in 1968: he never explicitly said that he has a secret plan to win Vietnam, he merely said that he couldn't reveal his plan because it would complicate peace talks in Paris. Moreover, the talk of a "secret plan" originated not with Nixon himself but rather with a voter at a New Hampshire campaign stop, but that didn't mean that Nixon didn't want us or the North Vietnamese to think he didn't have a plan (historical note: unless you're counting Operation Duck Hook, Nixon did not, in fact, have a plan for American victory in Vietnam). Tricky Dick just liked to play things close to the vest, and we can all agree that he really didn't appreciate people asking him nosy questions like, "How are you going to successfully prosecute a war thousands of miles from home in the face of domestic political dissent?"

John McCain---the mavericky gambler who's not afraid to take on tired, failed ideas in Washington---saw Nixon's coy refusal and raised him. In last night's debate, McCain said the following:

I'll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I'll get him. I know how to get him. I'll get him no matter what. And I know how to do it. But I'm not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Senator Obama did.

Well thank goodness someone knows how to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. And thank goodness that person was a maverick like John McCain. In fact, he's such a maverick that he never told anyone else in either party how to get bin Laden, even when you might think that was his job as a U.S. Senator! Brilliant! The Metternich of our time...

Sen. Obama said he would kill bin Laden in Pakistan if he had the opportunity. Sen. McCain considers that "telegraphing" one's punches, an argument that asssumes bin Laden is thick-skulled enough to think that the U.S. cares where it finds his dead body. GWS can't believe people still consider McCain knowledgable in international relations, because the last time a president insisted he had a secret plan for victory in a stupid, ill-conceived, unnecessary war, we ended up bombing Cambodia and Laos and inadvertently restricting Henry Kissinger's travel options for the rest of his life.

Forget "that one." McCain's worst moment last night was when he looked back in history and said to himself, "Y'know what? If it worked for Dick Nixon, it might work for me too."

The End of History? Once again, no.

Francis Fukuyama has written a piece for the latest issue of Newsweek, and GWS can't figure out why he's still a respected thinker. It's been sixteen years since Fukuyama argued in The End of History that liberal democracy will be "the final form of human government," so GWS was a little shocked to read this in the Newsweek article: "The American brand is being sorely tested at a time when other models---whether China's or Russia's---are looking more attractive."

Whatchew talkin bout Francis? Didn't you make most of your money by arguing that since the Soviet Union crumbled, nothing could be more attractive than liberal democracy?

Fukuyama goes on to insist (aphoristically) that "Reaganism (or, in its British form, Thatcherism) was right for its time," because red-tape had inhibited growth so much that we just couldn't take all that financial stability. He trots out the old whipping boy, the Soviet Union's anemic growth in its final 15 years, as proof that Reagan's policies were smart. See? We won the Cold War. U-S-A, U-S-A! Why are you asking so many questions about why the USSR fell? Clearly, it was our willingness to cut taxes while spending absurd amounts of money on SDI that directly led to Soviet production shortages and capital illiquidity. QED.

Remind me again why this guy has tenure at Johns Hopkins?

Forget for a moment that Fukuyama has no problem with Reagan's cognitive dissonance about the size of government. Forget also the details over which Fukuyama glosses. Doesn't the fact that he's been asked to write this article negate the thesis of his best-known book? Four pages in, he remarks "Globally, the United States will not enjoy the hegemonic position it has occupied until now." The move from a unipolar to a multipolar world is old news, but GWS is simply blown away by Fukuyama's ability to write that the U.S. is no longer the sole superpower without mentioning the powers with whom we'll share global responsibility. Of course, two of those likely powers (Russia and China) operate under systems that, while occasionally difficult to classify and understand, are certainly not liberal democracies. It's clear we're not witnessing the end of history, but hopefully we're seeing the end of the relevance of that myopic book.

So the take-away here is simple, a fact obvious to anyone with a calendar: history is not over, Francis, and liberal democracy is by no means guaranteed to remain a force in this world. GWS does commend your ability to make obscene amounts of money off such a sophomoric idea, but please, Frank, shut the hell up already.

Sarah Palin speaks in complete sentences, manages not to choke on her tongue

That's a victory then, right? Right?

Sen. Biden & Gov. Palin squared off last night in one of the more anti-climactic debates in this blogger's memory. GWS wanted blood, but Biden played nice. As for Palin...what do you expect? As she said, she's only been at this for, like, five weeks.

Punching One's Weight

DBMIVFK has been struggling through the Dark Ages this week as GWS searches for a new computer. Apologies, faithful readers.

Tonight promises the VP debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. GWS has just one thing to say about this debate: boxing has weight classes for a reason. Biden is Muhammad Ali, sauntering up to Palin playing Oscar De la Hoya (y'know, the boxer whose image was always a little better than his record). Biden must smell blood, and GWS hopes to see a quick knockout.

Down goes Palin! Down goes Palin!