Transterrestrial Musings

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Lileks has been on a roll lately, with a great piece last week too. "The Bleat" is better when he does serious subjects.

Posted by Joshua Chamberlain at September 18, 2003 09:10 AM

The unreasonable debate "should".
The reasonable debate "can".

He's right that this is going to take time. Which means winning in Iraq in 2003 is pyrrhic if the U. S. economy collapses due to a bond run sparked by an exploded war-and-tax-cut related deficit a decade from now.

And then it get really hard to fight terrorists.

War in Iraq or long term tax cuts - pick one.

Posted by Duncan Young at September 18, 2003 10:09 AM

That's a straw man, as it's clearly not either/or. Why not attack out-of-control bureaucracy and various subsidies/entitlements as a way of eliminating the deficit?

Posted by Hermit Dave at September 18, 2003 11:02 AM

> Why not attack out-of-control bureaucracy and
> various subsidies/entitlements as a way of
> eliminating the deficit?

Apparently it is not *that* simple since the GOP now controls the White House as well as both chambers of Congress, yet the problem persists?

MARCU$

Posted by Marcus Lindroos at September 18, 2003 11:18 AM

Apparently it is not *that* simple since the GOP now controls the White House as well as both chambers of Congress

Not really. They have a nominal one-vote majority in the Senate, but there are about five Senators who vote with the Democrats on most issues other than leadership ones. They can't really implement anything resembling a Republican agenda until they can get enough reliable votes (sixty) to overcome filibusters. The minority rules in the Senate, for now.

Also, it's not clear that the Republicans (or at least the conservative Republicans) control the White House, either. On many issues (and not just defense), Bush has showed himself to be a big spender.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 11:24 AM

What Mr. Simberg said ...

Also, I find it curious that my comment would be taken as shilling for the GOP.

The point was that the SPENDING should be the issue in regard to the deficit as opposed to the tax cuts.

This is essentially an apolitical point.

Posted by Hermit Dave at September 18, 2003 11:29 AM

>But there?s a difference between criticizing the particulars of the Normandy invasion, and insisting that Hitler can be contained with bauxite sanctions.

I've had it with these WWII comparisons.

Saddam may have had Hitler's mindset, but he didn't (as we now know) have Hitler's military strength, and he didn't (as even George Bush now admits) have anything to do with 9/11. Attacking Saddam in the name of fighting terror is not analogous to going after Hitler, or even Italy, it is more like going after China. It was the wrong thing to do not because we shouldn't be going after terrorists, but because it was STUPID. It was counterproductive. (And it was pretty clear that it was going to be stupid and counterproductive before we did it.) To cling to the idea now that we know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and did not have WOMD that it was not stupid and counterproductive requires a truly astonishing capacity for self-delusion (like asserting that Iraq and Saudi Arabia are allies).

OK, now that I've got that off my chest I'll put the gloves back on for a moment.

The idea that we attacked Iraq not for any legitimate reason but because it was militarily low-risk, and because W. had an oily (or filial) chip on his shoulder is at least as tenable as the idea that it was an effective step in the war on terrorism. Questioning the patriotism or the willingness of those who oppose attacking Iraq on those grounds to step up to the plate to fight terrorism or despotism is offensive. Support the war if you must, but please stop doing it by insulting those of us who hold a different view with a two-bit straw-man argument. Your space writing consistently adheres to a much high standard of reason than that.

Posted by Ron Garret at September 18, 2003 11:45 AM

> The minority rules in the Senate, for now.

Right. That's why the Bush tax cut is still stalled in the Senate.

Oh, wait...

Posted by Ron Garret at September 18, 2003 11:47 AM

Actually, I think farm subsidies are a goddam waste, bad for the environment, bad for family farmers, and are going to kill far more people than bin Laden over the long term.
We got rid of all our subsidies and tariffs in New Zealand and now we have the most competitive farmers in the world.
The drug benefit is a dubious pander - if it includes brand name drugs it is a f'ing distater.
I would love them gone.
There are some problems though.
The Iowa caucaus.
The Senate.
The Electoral Collage.

And the fact that you could cut all that stuff (which is generally aluded to but curiously seldom specified by small government types) and you are still going to run a deficit with current tax law in 2015-2020 due to Social Security (in the absence of another stock bubble). The only Republican proposal for Trust "reform" would require the injection of more than a trillion dollars.
Persumably from the tooth fairy.

Posted by Duncan Young at September 18, 2003 11:49 AM

Sorry, but it's not.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 11:49 AM

I agree with you on farm subsidies, but there's no relationship between Social Security and the official deficit. In order for there to be, the Democrats would have to give up their fantasy that it's an insurance/pension program, and admit that it's just a welfare/income-transfer Ponzi scheme, which would repudiate their lies about it ever since the New Deal.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 11:53 AM

Lets see:
The Iraq War
For Ron:
Militarily low risk (cf. any other part of the Middle East) - check

Percived need to beat the cr*p out of some camel-jockeys-see LGF

Oil-check

Oil guy in chief-check

Strong potential for hot tempered son to develop weird Oedipal complex concerning battleaxe mother and failed president father-to paraphrase Dick Cheney "We just don't know".

For Rand:
WMD-nada (where is that Kay report, anyway...)

Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 - as confirmed by the president just yesterday, nope.

Posted by Duncan Young at September 18, 2003 12:03 PM

Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 - as confirmed by the president just yesterday, nope.

Of course, no one has ever claimed he did--that was always a strawman.

This simply illustrates Lileks' point--that many people have no idea at whom we're at war, or why.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 12:05 PM

The problem with the sound arguments FOR the invasion of Iraq is that they are complex, while at the same time it is very easy to snipe in soundbites (It's all about the OIIIIIIIL). This makes arguing the point in a comments section counterproductive.

Better just to point people in the direction of an essayist like Den Beste and hope that they eventually get it.

Posted by Hermit Dave at September 18, 2003 12:09 PM

...and admit that it's just a welfare/income-transfer Ponzi scheme

Was never under the impression it was otherwise. Although the Ponzi bit doest really work - the elderly have the electoral and legal power to enforce payment.

What it has done is by removing the incentive to save is create the comsumer powered, empty bank account economy we all know and love.

And, of course, sharply reduce the number of starving old people.

Now if you want to tell people that they should not get what they specifically payed for in their FICA taxes, and tell the bond market that several trillion dollars worth of bonds should be canceled - be my guest.

Posted by Duncan Young at September 18, 2003 12:19 PM

Was never under the impression it was otherwise.

That's because you haven't been bombarded by Democrat propaganda on the subject for the past seventy years. You know it's an unfunded liability, and I know it's an unfunded liability, but they'll never admit it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 12:28 PM

I plead guilty to throwing up strawmen. But that is what is going to happen when one reverts to the "complex arguments" position.

In a democracy, you can have all kinds of theories for general strategy, but you better have clear, simple reasons to actually go to war. And if those reasons dont pan out - you better be prepared to be held accountable.

Complex thesis dont tend to survive contact with the enemy.

I have read Den Beste
and read...
and read...

yaknowwahtImean...
(I disagree with Whittle too, but at least the mofo has style to go with his verbosity)

and it really boils down to a version of Anne Coutler's infamous post 911 line:

"We should invade them, kill their leaders, and convert them all to the Western liberal tradition!"

Posted by Duncan Young at September 18, 2003 12:38 PM

"We should invade them, kill their leaders, and convert them all to the Western liberal tradition!"

Well, if that's what it ultimately comes to, it beats getting our cities nuked (and I suspect that most of the residents in those countries would agree, once they'd had a taste of it).

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 12:42 PM

> This simply illustrates Lileks' point--that
> many people have no idea at whom we're at war,
> or why.

And whose fault is that?? Heck, even many pro-war supporters admit the Administration has done a poor job explaining to U.S. voters and the world why invading Iraq was so important. For example, the claims about WMDs and the supposedly grave and immediate military threat Saddam represented. Followed by Wolfowitz' later casual remark that, "for bureaucratic reasons", they decided to focus on the WMD argument simply because that was the only thing everyone seemed to agree on!
---
My favorite bogus war argument was the President's speech in New York one year ago, when he said the enforcement of U.N. resolutions was a sufficient reason for war 'or else the United Nations will become as irrelevant as the League of Nations'. So here we have a Republican President saying, with a straight face, the war must be waged to strengthen the United Nations as author and enforcer of international norms of behavior!

MARCU$

Posted by Marcus Lindroos at September 18, 2003 12:43 PM

"We should invade them, kill their leaders, and convert them all to the Western liberal tradition!"

Well, if that's what it ultimately comes to, it beats getting our cities nuked (and I suspect that most of the residents in those countries would agree, once they'd had a taste of it).

You are making the presumption that democracies wont try to develop nuclear weapons. I will bid an Israel and raise you an India.

You also presume that democracies in defeated countries have guaranteed long term survival. Lemme toss a Wiemar Germany on the pile.

Posted by Duncan Young at September 18, 2003 12:55 PM

You are making the presumption that democracies wont try to develop nuclear weapons.

You are making the presumption that I think that democracies having nuclear weapons is an intrinsically bad thing.

You also presume that democracies in defeated countries have guaranteed long term survival.

I presume only that as long as they last, they're better than west-hating dictatorships. If they don't last, then one deals with that problem at the time.

The perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Oh, also, for "democracy" here, read "liberal democracy." I'm not actually that big a fan of unalloyed democracy, particularly when a populace is uneducated. I prefer constitutional republics, with strict limits on governmental powers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 01:10 PM

"Complex theses don't tend to survive contact with the enemy"

While I believe this to be a correct statement in terms of battle planning, I disagree strongly in the context of long-term strategy. This is because one is inevitably forced into a complex position even by simple statements of purpose. Take the statement:

We need to defend ourselves from radical Islam.

Not only is this a "clear, simple reason to actually go to war", this is a statement pretty much EVERYONE, regardless of ideology, would be likely to agree with (except for the radical Muslims themselves, of course). Once you get into HOW you actually go about achieving that goal, however, the situation becomes very complex.

If you disagree with the Iraq war, that means that you either think that there was a better target to attack, or that we should be in an isolationist defensive posture (or that you think that the UN could actually do anything, which to me is so laughable as to be not worth arguing). Both the "attack another target" and "defensive" approaches require just as complex an argument as that for the attack on Iraq.

Being essentially libertarian, I have a natural tendency to prefer the isolationist "defensive" approach. However, in the context of longer-term cost and security against this type of enemy, I don't think the argument for this approach holds up.

While any essayist can be longwinded (nature of the game, etc.), I stand by my statement that the situation is far to complex to be argued in soundbites.

Posted by Hermit Dave at September 18, 2003 01:11 PM

And this is why democracies almost inevitably wind up in the position of England in 1940, if not France in 1940.

Let us imagine, a la Rand, that Churchill had succeeded in 1938 in dissuading Chamberlain from his policy of appeasement.

War breaks out, Germany is beaten, or "worse," a coterie of German generals take over in Germany.

What would we have heard from the contemporary counterparts that Lileks decries?

That the nascent democracy of Germany, however flawed, had been destroyed by British and French aggression.

That Anglo-French preemption had opened the door to greater Bolshevik terror, as the relatively anti-Communist regime of Hitler (who, it must be noted, was at least relatively popular among the German people, unlike those generals) had been removed.

That no case was really made that a war was necessary, especially since German rearmament, in 1938, was barely half-complete.

That German cheating on Versailles was irrelevant, since it turned out that the Generalstab had no intentions of going further than securing rightful German claims (and let's face it, the Sudeten Germans probably were getting nasty deals from the Czechs, and why are we fighting on behalf of these people anyway?).

Because, let it not be forgotten, in 1938, THERE WERE NO DEATH CAMPS! No Treblinka, no Auschwitz. Yes, there were labor camps at Dachau and places like that, but the mass killings hadn't happened yet. (And, if we wanted to draw the analogy, why is this the biz of Britain and France, who were engaged in economic dealings there anyway?)

Democracies, clearly, cannot follow the paths of Churchill. Or Dubya. Because if they succeed, then they're aggressors.

That, at least, would be my conclusion from the likes of some of the arguments made here....

Posted by Dean at September 18, 2003 01:13 PM

Well, I can see why Lileks doesn't have a comments section... ;-)

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 01:37 PM

Let us imagine, a la Rand, that Churchill had succeeded in 1938 in dissuading Chamberlain from his policy of appeasement.

And thirty years later, World War III rains nukes on an unstable, multipolar world as Germany under Reichmaster Kissenger tries for third time lucky.

Because if they succeed, then they're aggressors.

And if they fail (politically or militarily), they are f**ked. Which has been my argument.

Posted by Duncan Young at September 18, 2003 01:45 PM

> Sorry, but it's not.

Well, there's some rock-solid reasoning. Gosh, if only I could think that clearly.

> many people have no idea at whom we're at war, or why.

Yes, that's precisely the problem. No one knows why we're at war -- including George Bush. No one knows what we're supposed to be accomplishing, or how what we're doing is supposed to be productive towards those ends. It is, ironically, exactly the same problem that has the space program so fucked up! Maybe some kind sould could explain it to me? (I know you tried, Rand, but when you got to the part where Iraq and Saudi Arabia were allies I just found myself unable to focus because I was laughing uncontrollably.)

Posted by Ron Garret at September 18, 2003 04:05 PM

Yes, that's precisely the problem. No one knows why we're at war -- including George Bush.

Don't confuse the fact that he hasn't laid out the case clearly (for good reasons) with the notion that he doesn't know. If you think that we had problems in the UN before, just wait until we announce that we're eventually going to war on dictatorships everywhere, and going to be "cultural imperialists" (i.e., make the Arab and Persian kleptocrats stop oppressing their own people and funding terror worldwide).

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 04:12 PM

>Don't confuse the fact that he hasn't laid out the case clearly (for good reasons) with the notion that he doesn't know.

Ah, I see. All this confusion is just part of the plan. That Bush appears to be stupid is proof that he's really smart.

Austin Powers would be proud.

Doesn't it strike you as the teensiest bit incongruous that you make your living bashing NASA, and then turn around and ask people to trust, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the government knows what it's doing in Iraq?

Posted by Ron Garret at September 18, 2003 09:26 PM

Ah, I see. All this confusion is just part of the plan. That Bush appears to be stupid is proof that he's really smart.

No. I would have thought you were smart enough to comprehend what I said. Instead, you disappoint me.

Doesn't it strike you as the teensiest bit incongruous that you make your living bashing NASA...

I'm fascinated to learn that I make my living bashing NASA. Can you tell me where they've been hiding the paychecks? I could really use some of them right now.

...and then turn around and ask people to trust, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the government knows what it's doing in Iraq?

National security, unlike space, is important.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 18, 2003 09:33 PM

> Don't confuse the fact that he hasn't laid out
> the case clearly (for good reasons) with the
> notion that he doesn't know.

In other words, you admit the President is being dishonest about the true reason for invading Iraq?

MARCU$

Posted by Marcus Lindroos at September 19, 2003 09:41 AM

In other words, you admit the President is being dishonest about the true reason for invading Iraq?

No, just that he hasn't laid out all the reasons (and no, one of the reasons, let alone the only reason, is not so that he and Cheney can enrich their oil buddies).

If you want to call that dishonest, then so be it. There are good diplomatic and strategic reasons not to be explicit about all of them. The reasons stated were sufficient to get the political support he needed, and they were valid.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 19, 2003 10:22 AM

> where they've been hiding the paychecks?

Sorry. I was under the impression that you were a professional writer, but I see now that you are a consultant. My mistake.

Still, you put a lot of effort into bashing NASA (and rightly so I might add).

> National security, unlike space, is important.

I'm rather surprised to hear you say that space is unimportant. But that's neither here nor there. Are you saying that the government's capacity for screwing things up is limited only to things that are not important? (And if so, do you consider health care important?)

Posted by Ron Garret at September 19, 2003 04:26 PM

I'm rather surprised to hear you say that space is unimportant.

Well, it's important to me, but it's not important to the government.

Are you saying that the government's capacity for screwing things up is limited only to things that are not important?

No, but in a democracy (or republic) it's at least somewhat less likely that they'll screw things up that are important (where "important" is defined as things that can cost you elections).

(And if so, do you consider health care important?)

I don't personally consider government health care programs important. Whether or not they're electorally important remains to be seen.

Posted by Rand Simberg at September 19, 2003 05:22 PM

No one knows why we're at war -- including George Bush. No one knows what we're supposed to be accomplishing, or how what we're doing is supposed to be productive towards those ends.

Odd... I know why we're at war, and what we're trying to accomplish -- as did (apparently) the majority of Congress when they granted Bush approval to do it, back a year ago. Steven Den Beste and Bill Whittle, among many others, have written at length on it. But you obviously know this.

I personally think you refuse to understand the reason, just as you refuse to recognize that Saddam and the Sauds might well gang up against what they perceive as an enemy of both -- remember, after all, that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were allies in WWII... and there was much pressure on Truman to obliterate the Soviets immediately upon the end of the war.

Posted by Troy at September 19, 2003 10:08 PM

> I personally think you refuse to understand the reason

I can't accept any of the reasons that have been given because they all require a level of suspension of disbelief that I find myself unable to muster outside of a movie theatre. Case in point:

> Saddam and the Sauds might well gang up against what they perceive as an enemy of both

Yes, Saddam is still out there, so I suppose they might. I'll give you long odds against it though. (And I would have given you long odds against it before the war too.)

Posted by Ron Garret at September 19, 2003 10:34 PM

Well, then, "Ron", I'll just say I'm damned glad that you're not in a position to influence the course of this war... and that people who are more insightful are actually running things. ;)

Posted by Troy at September 20, 2003 10:07 AM

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