The capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s Number 2 man, is, undoubtedly, good news for the Obama administration in its attempts to fend off claims of being soft on terror and the like. But, as per his usual adroitness, Juan Cole has a good post up pointing out why the capture might not be the good news for US efforts in Afghanistan that proponents might like to make it out as. What I took to be the most important snippet,

There are four groups typically but inaccurately referred to as Taliban among Pashtun dissidents. They include Mulla Umar’s original Taliban; the Haqqani Network founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, based in North Waziristan, which is now led by his son Siraj; the Islamic Party or Hizb-i Islami of Gulbaddin Hikmatyar based in Eastern Afghanistan; and the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, whose leader, Hakimullah Mahsud, was reported recently killed by a US drone strike). For Mullah Omar’s organization, based in Karachi and Quetta, to suffer a severe setback would probably not have a huge impact on the other three, which operate relatively independently. None of the others is actually Taliban in the sense of seminary students or graduates of madrasahs among the Afghan Pashtun refugees in Pakistan.

This news is certainly bad news for, as Cole calls them, the “Old Taliban”, but the situation in Afghanistan remains greatly more complicated and challenging than much of American foreign policy discourse at home let’s on. By and large, it seems that US foreign policy remains under Obama, as it certainly has under all preceeding presidents, to be the continutation of Cold War mentality by other means. Which is to say that the realities of fourth generation warfare continue to seem largely opaque to the US strategic focus and there persists this idea that if specific bad guys, be they Al Qaeda or the Taliban, are beaten then the rest of the chips will inevitably fall into place, or something to that effect. But as the National Security Archive notes, even “the bad guys” have caught on to the folly of this thinking,

The December 1998 Embassy cable mentioned above notes that Omar “maintains an idiosyncratic, almost obscurantist, leadership style,” making policy decisions, “but generally leav[ing] the day-to-day matters to his key lieutenants.” In order to ensure his deputies remain “off balance” and do “not grow overly comfortable in their positions, Omar also rotates Taliban officials from post-to-post, apparently at a whim.”

I mean, call me crazy, but I find it hard to believe that Mullah Omar and other top “Old Taliban” officials haven’t contemplated the possibility of a capture of this magnitude and factored a needed exit plan itno their already much more decentralized organizational structure. Part of the shift in fourth generational warfare, as I understand it, is to recognize that the battle ceases only to operate in an exclusive military theatre and stretches out across a far broader spectrum of foray. It is this realization that I continue failing to hear in most overtly militaristic US foreign policy articulations and a big part of what informs my skepticism about the eventual outcomes.

Which is not to say that military means don’t play any role in dealing with groups like the “Old Taliban” and the others with which US and other NATO forces are dealing in Afghanistan and elsewhere and it certainly isn’t to suggest that I have a nice, clean alternative to the overwhelming challenges in dealing with the myriads of groups intent on doing harm to what amounts to a way of life. Nor is it to say that I’m inclined to dismiss the importance of the potential shift in Pakistani willingness to work in a more coordinated and proactive fashion with American and NATO forces. But is to say that I’ll continue not jumping for joy over new like the capture of Baradar so long as it is apparent, as far as western foreign policy goes, war remains the primary continuation of politics by other means.

Continuing in the theme of the soldier’s dilemma, we have the Bhagavad-Gita, an excerpt from the Indian epic poem the Mahabharata. It is often read alone however; partly because the Mahabharata is so long (about one hundred thousand verses, or thirty times the length of Paradise Lost by one count), and partly because the Bhagavad-Gita is such a concise introduction to some of the key ideas of Hinduism. Like the Iliad, it centers on an epic war that could be based in historical fact.

Actually, the main story is a quite reminiscent of the Iliad; it’s also the tale of a great warrior who balks at fighting in an epic battle. The story begins with the warrior Arjuna, son of Pandu, on the night before a battle between his army, the Pandavas, and their cousins, the Kauravas, sons of Dhritarashtra. The kingdom has been divided following the retirement and death of Pandu and the Kauravas won a 13 year guardianship of the Pandavas’ half in a gambling match. Time’s up and they won’t return the territory to their cousins. The Pandavas hope to win back their kingdom and their honor. Arjuna has come to survey the battlefield with his charioteer Krishna. He is not sure he wants to join the battle.

It strikes me that the reservations Achilles has about fighting are primarily self-centered, while those of Arjuna are actually pretty reasonable. He objects that the war will require him to kill fathers, teachers, grandfathers, brothers; not to mention killing his own kin and former instructors: he sees no glory in this. Moreover, war shatters social stability. Arjuna: “When unrighteous disorder prevails, the women sin and are impure; and when women are not pure, Krishna, there is disorder of castes, social confusion.” Certainly, he’s not the first soldier to worry about adultery at home! His larger point is that war does not forge a new order, but represents the collapse of all order. Unleashing war can do more harm than can be undone; Arjuna wants to know how we can tell that the alternative wouldn’t have been better. Of course, we want to win; how to be sure that things would actually be better under our rule, and enough so to justify rupturing the social order? In true neoconservative style, Krishna doesn’t really address these concerns at first, instead implying that Arjuna is a coward! [Read more →]

Reading this Will Wilkinson piece (which is a follow-up to pieces by Megan McArdle, Tyler Cowen, and Michael Cannon – all of whom you should also read on this subject) has gotten me thinking once again about health insurance reform, and especially about the way we think about entitlements in this country.  More specifically I’ve been thinking about the ways we can begin to move away from entitlements and start thinking about the government as a provider of safety nets instead.

For instance, one time between jobs my family was left without insurance and without any income.  The fact that we had been living paycheck to paycheck did not help matters, making COBRA impossible to afford.  We had a baby on the way and were left without any means to pay the bills.  So we applied for Medicaid, and were accepted – which was a very good thing, since my wife was also pregnant and since the delivery was fraught with complications that I’m sure would have bankrupt us had we not had any insurance.

Soon thereafter I was once again privately insured and we were no longer were covered by Medicaid.  It functioned as a safety-net just when we needed it most.  My wife and I had, prior to having children, gone quite a long time with no insurance at all.  We were “young invincibles” without a real pressing need for insurance, and we consumed very little healthcare. I’m very grateful that there was some safety net for us to fall back on, but I also realize that Medicaid itself is far from perfect or sustainable (which is to say nothing of its big brother, Medicare).

A few thoughts on Medicaid:

• It is a very tedious process to become enrolled.  It is time-consuming and there is a great deal of paperwork.  I imagine this dissuades a number of people who need it the most from signing up.
• Many low income people do not use Medicaid as a safety net, but rather as a primary means of insurance.  They renew it every year, and have little incentive to become insured via employment or via private insurers.
• Many providers do not accept Medicaid and many more are not paid (or not paid enough) if they do accept Medicaid.

While Medicaid as a safety net against catastrophic medical costs makes sense, Medicaid as an entitlement for the poor does not.  I’ve heard of people who take lower paying jobs or who choose to only have one spouse work simply because the higher paying or second job would disqualify them from receiving Medicaid benefits.  This is quite obviously a perverse incentive.  Furthermore, the care available to Medicaid enrollees is subpar, extending the class divide ever deeper and creating a class of citizens who are increasingly dependent on the state. 

Scott has a thoughtful follow-up to my anti-pettiness screed.  I want to point out, however, that far more than the problems with populism, I was writing about the problems with elites manipulating it for their own purposes – which, in a sense, is the problem with populism.  It is not so much that the huddled masses are wrong, or not to be trusted, or any of that.  It is that they are all busy people.  They have kids.  They work for a living.  They don’t have as much time, money, or education as the elites do.  They don’t have the connections or the wherewithal or the behind-the-scenes knowledge of the political system. They’re not as connected to government or the media.  This doesn’t make them foolish or ignorant or bad.  Quite the contrary. 

In many ways the people out there opposing the Iraq war or the tea-partiers out there opposing big government or any of these grassroots groups are good people, honorable people doing good and important work.  Scott is involved in some activist efforts up in Canada, and if people didn’t get involved at the grassroots level or with politics in general, we’d be in much worse shape than we are now.  I am not against this sort of popular politics.  Indeed, we have a Democratic Republic so that we can elect representatives to do our will, to some degree, and in order for them to really understand our will a little bit of populism is necessary and vital to the health of our democracy.

But it can be misused and abused by the very people who so often populist anger ought to be directed.  And right now I believe we’re seeing a Republican leadership that is disingenuously manipulating populist sentiment against the president and the Democrats.  (I would argue that Obama has done much the same thing by running a very populist campaign and then following it up with a very insider-oriented administration.  He’s simply more charming than his Republican rivals.)  They are stooping to petty rhetoric and exaggeration and sometimes outright lies to rile up the base against a president who they describe as “radical” and worse. 

Now, I have no problem with opposition.  I think the Republicans should oppose Obama in many ways.  They are well within their rights and indeed within their obligations to do so.  It’s the pettiness and the dishonesty of their methods which rub me the wrong way, and I believe they stoop to these methods in order to gain populist support.  And populists are vulnerable to these elite leaders because the elites have everything the populists don’t have – high podiums, connections, funding, and so forth.  It’s a dysfunctional relationship, and one played out time and again throughout history.

So when I see Newt Gingrich on the Daily Show calling Obama a radical because we read a terrorist his rights on American soil, I just cringe.  It sounds ludicrous to me, because it is ludicrous.  We’re not talking about reading some enemy combatant over in Iraq or Afghanistan their rights after we capture them.  We’re talking about a guy we caught in a plane landing in Detroit.  There is a difference.  And of course, there is precedent with the Shoe Bomber, just as there is precedent with trying terrorists in non-military courts as George W. Bush did over five hundred times during his presidency.  Gingrich and other ostensibly smart people should know better than to dress this up as some “radical” anti-American and dangerous practice. But they do it because they believe it stokes the fires of angry populist sentiment in America, and because they want to be in charge of the narrative however absurd and petty that narrative may become.

Has it always been thus?  I suppose it has, to one degree or another.  Nor are the dividing lines so easy to define.  Some elitism is just as necessary as some populism.  Indeed, we can’t really do away with any of it can we?  The point is, however, that we can do away with some of the pettiness, some of the dishonesty, and shoot for more reason and integrity.  We don’t have to be nice or amicable either.  We don’t have to ditch partisanship in favor of some mythical bipartisan Utopia.  We can be partisan and honest at the same time.  We can be partisan and still not so petty.

h/t to my boy Drew Raley for dropping this knowledge on me.

I’m a sucker for rhythmic minimalism:

Perhaps inappropriately, Mister Kain’s recent post about populist conservatism comes to mind because I’m reading Hesiod, who I’ve heard called a “conservative” more than a few times now. It’s a cringe-inducing term and terribly anachronistic; not only is Hesiod not a conservative politically, but he doesn’t really hope to “conserve” much of his society. He distrusts the polis. And yet there might be some similarities of thought between Hesiod’s worldview and a sort of organic conservatism, typical of small agrarian communities of the sort that are often spoken for by populists; but a worldview that has never translated very well into political movements.

Instead, I’d describe Hesiod as an old curmudgeon. He’s cynical, provincial, garrulous, grouchy, none too fond of women or lazy people, and actually not too fond of most people. It’s hard to read him without hearing the voice of Archie Bunker or your miserable grandfather. But, like your miserable grandfather, he also has some good advice, once you get past a bit of ugliness. [Read more →]

You might have noticed that I’m on a bit of a hiatus right now. Maybe not, either way is fine. I’ve left the League in the capable hands of my fellow contributors to focus more of my time and attention on various other projects, links for which will be forthcoming as early as Monday.

Today; however, is a bit slow, so I thought I’d drop a quick note in response to Erik’s post of yesterday on the pettiness of current conservative politics, the effort and sincerity of which I appreciated greatly.

In that post, Erik wrote,

Populism, after all, is just a nice word for “mob”. If ever there was a thing that conservatives were meant to protect us against it is the rule of the mob. Conservatives were never supposed to be the mob, were never meant to be its advocates.

In so writing, I think that Erik has succinctly summed up why he, despite twists and turns, ducks, bobs, and weaves, and, ultimately, come what may, is a conservative at heart while at the same time articulating a (if not “the”) pressing Conservative dilemma: Erik and most other conservatives don’t trust people.

I don’t say that to be derisive or condemning, it is a perfectly acceptable position to take given the vagaries of common modern life. But this strikes me as one of the fundamental planks of conservative ideology, when the chips are down, people are not to be trusted. And so we must find ways of protecting ourselves from those that cannot be trusted, namely: everyone — excepting maybe family and close friends, and even then…

I note this primarily because one of the projects in which I am currently engaged is an exercise and exploration into precisely the opposite perspective: given the opportunity, people will, more often than not, demonstrate not only that they are trustworthy, but that they are quite capable of not just meeting, but exceeding your expectations. There are no golden rules here, of course. People cannot 100% of the time either be trusted or not trusted. But I am coming around to the idea that people can be trusted often enough that I find myself increasingly averse to precisely the terms that Erik choose to employ: mob or, in other popular lexicon, the masses.

My projects aside, I think this fundamental lack of trust presents, as I mentioned, a real dilemma for conservatives. Conservatives are supposed to be the advocates of liberty and the watchdogs of tyranny, they rail against the excesses and intrusions of government in all it’s myriad forms. And yet, articulations like Erik’s often break down into beliefs like: keep the government out of my life, except when it comes to those people, if government is supposed to do anything it is to keep me safe from those people! And, of course, the number of ways in which the actions of those people, the mob, the masses, intrude on one’s life are never ending, so the number of ways in which government must be utilized as the means by which the untrustworthiness of those people is mitigated grows in a proportional fashion.

Such is the way that — and believe the legislative trajectory of conservatism bears this out — advocates of liberty and limited government wind up constantly finding new ways to use government as a means of guarding against the excesses and dangers of the mob and, presto change-o, government continues unfathomably to grow under their direction. Call it subtle governmentalism, conservatives claim to be thoroughly averse to government excess and speaking loudly and courageously against it in public, but in private enable a justifyng cognitive dissonance to grow it, time and time again.

At least liberals are upfront about their belief that government is a useful means of providing the needed measures for society, sometimes for the mob/masses and sometimes guarding against. Not so for conservatives who are locked into this sort mistrust-limited government finger trap that seems inevitably to render the majority of their rhetorical flourish empty when the rubber hits the road.

Again, I’m not condemning here, we all have our catch-22s with which to deal. But if this isn’t the major roadblock for conservatives and conservatism in contemporary political practice, it strikes me as a fairly significant one.

Every First Lady is obliged to tackle some trendy and media-inflated crisis.  For Hillary Clinton it was healthcare.  Laurah Bush focused on literacy.  Michelle Obama wants to end the dread childhood obesity “epidemic”.  Perhaps because the federal government has shown such skill in combating similar issues – such as our nation’s failing public schools – Mrs. Obama believes that it is the best institution to tackle our expanding waistlines.  That the federal government cannot tighten its own belt is beside the point.

Despite the fact that Mrs. Obama took personal responsibility for her own children’s near-miss with childhood obesity, the First Lady believes that the vast majority of Americans could use the beneficent hand of the state to drag their own children back from the brink.  To do this she proposes that the federal government does what it does best: spend lots and lots of money.  And to do that, President Obama has proposed that the government form a task force to see which spending project will sound the most appealing to voters. 

A few of the ideas floated include:

• Working with the the American Academy of Pediatrics to encourage its 60,000 members to check the severely out-dated Body Mass Index at each child’s visit, and give out “kid-friendly prescriptions” for healthy, active lifestyles.  Kids will fill this prescription by convincing their parents that “outside” is dangerous and that what the family really needs to stay healthy is a Wii.

• $400 million in tax credits drawn from the current budget surplus will go to grocery stores to form state-sponsored monopolies in “food deserts” – areas of the country where there is no easy access to grocery stores.  This is deemed much more efficient than scaling back zoning laws and allowing Wal*Mart to set up shop in said “food deserts” because Wal*Mart’s prices are simply much too low and of course because people who write these laws really don’t like shopping there.

• A new foundation will be created “made up of existing foundations and groups to monitor the campaign”.  Think of it as a super-foundation (or a super-healthy-foundation).  Perhaps we should form a second committee first, however, just in case the first committee isn’t quite up to the task.

• $10 billion over 10 years for the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, which would basically reward the most well-connected health food industry lobbyists around the country to provide healthy, free and reduced-priced school meals for kids.  Because again, allowing private companies to run school cafeterias would be far, far too efficient.

• Another $25 million would go to schools in the cleverest legislators’ districts to help renovate school kitchens and replace deep fryers with free range community gardens.

Now, you might be wondering how these steps will end childhood obesity in a mere twenty years as Mrs. Obama has ambitiously stated as her plan’s goal – a time frame which also conveniently sits outside her tenure as First Lady.  You might also wonder how healthier school food will trim down our children if they continue to eat bags of potato chips at home while lounging for hours in front of the television.  Perhaps the lady doth protest too much, given the shaky evidence that there is any such childhood obesity “epidemic” to begin with.

I’ve been trying to get at the heart of what bothers me so much about contemporary conservative politics & discourse these days. The closest I can come to an answer is that conservatives have fallen into the trap of modern politics – which is to say, they’ve become petty.  Extraordinarily petty. The endless lament over the liberal menace; the incessant ballyhoo over anything and everything the president does or says; the irksome victimhood – it all boils down to a propensity toward pettiness.  It becomes a cacophony of empty gestures and equally vapid posturing.  (The other side does this as well, of course, but you know what they say about two wrongs.)

The reason for all this pettiness?  I think it goes beyond merely scoring political points.  I think it has much more to do with cheap populism.  And nothing is more damaging or antithetical to conservatism than populism, even the rightwing variety.

Populism, after all, is just a nice word for “mob”.  If ever there was a thing that conservatives were meant to protect us against it is the rule of the mob.  Conservatives were never supposed to be the mob, were never meant to be its advocates. 

The first problem with the rule of the mob is the sort of leaders it produces.  Every mob needs a despot.  That’s why we have a Democratic Republic in the first place as opposed to a more free-wheeling Democracy.  Pure, unadulterated democracy is too close to mob rule, places too much political power into the hands of the majority. All too quickly such democracy leads to tyranny of one variety or another.

Populism can also turn a nation’s spiritual efforts into political efforts.  If one goal of conservatism is to preserve the spiritual buoyancy of a nation or a civilization, then conservatives should avoid the evangelist populism dominating so-called “social conservatism” at all costs.  Subverting faith or religious culture to the narrow and corrupting goals of politics can only backfire in unintended and perfidious ways.  Certainly the divisive culture-wars that this religious populist movement has used have only led to more of a spiritually muddled nation, and a population more resistant than ever to organized religion.  Political-evangelical Christianity is just as vulnerable as any other populist movement to the temptations of despotism, the need for charismatic and extremist leaders, and the shoring up of ever more power in order to achieve ever more ambitious goals.

In other words, populism is anything but limited, and political populism cannot lead to limited government.  That is the great problem with the tea party movement.  Liberty & order are precarious cousins, and populism is not the way to balance the one against the other.  Yet the modern conservative movement has abandoned the “politics of prudence” in favor of the politics of pettiness.  And it will be a while before reasonable people can right the ship.  Populism is the sword of revolution and radical change.  It is the predecessor of the guillotine and the gulags.  It is not conservative in any historical sense, whether or not it manifests itself in the right-wing.

Urbanophile has posted some thoughts on preserving buildings from the mid-20th century:

“Mid-century modern architecture is now in the same danger zone chronologically that late 19th-century buildings were in during the urban renewal period. These buildings are old enough to be considered dated, but not old enough to be considered ‘historic.’ The exact same was true of all those buildings that got torn down in the 60’s and are now are so lamented.”

Modernist buildings are not in the same danger now that 19th-century buildings were in 1950 because there is now an active preservationist movement in the United States, and while many preservationists may not care about modernist structures, the ones that do at least have the resources now to put up a fight when one is threatened. Nonetheless, the point is well taken. Many not-particularly-famous modernist buildings are minor masterpieces, such as this abandoned bus station in Baltimore, sufficiently obscure that I couldn’t find any photos of it online, but despite their aesthetic value the taste of the general public finds them banal at best. If a developer wanted to tear down that bus station and construct a highrise, it seems unlikely that protests would be general or vociferous. And this station is an example of Streamline Moderne, a relatively charismatic species of 20th-century architecture. Pity the Bauhaus-inflected fire station in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood (once again, no photos online), which probably reminds most passers-by of everything they hated about the 1970s.

And yet, even for those of us who find these buildings aesthetically thrilling, there is a real difference between modernist and late-19th-century structures that militates against preserving the former. Modernist styles, especially Modernism with a capital ‘M’ as incarnated in the International Style, are hostile to urban life. Modernist architects rejected the age-old practices that shaped 19th-century neighborhoods: they rejected the concept of the pedestrian-oriented streetfront, the idea of the vertical setback to let the sun shine onto the street, the idea of the small city block, the idea of non-standard floorplans, and the idea of the street as a public place. Where urban architecture prior to the mid-20th-century believed in the ideal of a city full of small shops and offices, citizens walking from place to place and occasionally encountering one another in the street, modernist design principles proposed instead a city of highways and rectilinear skyscrapers. This vision captured hearts and minds, as they say, and the rest is history. Daniel at Discovering Urbanism wrote a great post illustrating the contrast between the 19th- and 20th-century visions as it plays out in Albany. He posts photographs of the modernist Empire State Plaza and a historic street nearby:

There’s no doubt that the plaza is superior as a work of art. Among its many admirable qualities, perhaps the most skillful is how it rebuffs attempts to grasp its scale. The buildings on the right are not really all that tall (about twenty floors, it looks like, or 300 ft), but the strong vertical lines and the relative absence of lines telling you where the floors are, plus the vaguely geological extrusions, make the buildings appear as if they could be any size. They could be a mile tall and a mile away or they could be 300 ft tall and 300 ft away. The result is a kind of desituation, an ambiguity about physical location, which is of course part of the philosophical articulation of the International Style. But you’d never want to go looking in that plaza for a cafe to stumble into by chance.

Not all modernist structures are so miserably anti-urban (Mies van der Rohe’s complex of federal buildings in Chicago is a notable, if qualified exception), but as a rule they present hostile faces to the street and slow the reemergence of non-pathological street life in American cities. No one is threatening to tear down the Empire State Plaza, but if the wreckers came for the fire station in Cincinnati, despite my appreciation of its aesthetic merits, I can’t say that I would object.

Long before they were recorded, the Homeric legends were the material of traveling oral bards who composed as they chanted, making use of certain stock formulas: the battle, the speech, the ritual, proper descriptions for the goods, etc, and reciting stories that lasted hours, or even days. In a time of regional decline and stagnation, the epics recalled the greatness of the Mycenaean culture, while creating a common literature for the coming Archaic Greek revival; they stood, in a sense, between the palace and the polis. Eventually, two such epics were written down and attributed to the poet Homer, probably about 750 BC. I believe their worth is still easily recognized. The poet is adept at blending action-packed battle scenes with psychologically-penetrating drama. Characteristic are the imaginative metaphors drawing from nature/agriculture: i.e.

“As the south wind wraps a mist around the mountaintops- trouble for the shepherd but better than night for the thief, and a man can see no farther than he can throw a stone- so dense a cloud of dust arose from their marching feet as they advanced at speed across the plain.”

The “Homeric voice” actually reminds me of Stanley Kubrick: in both cases, there is emotional force and operatic intensity and action, but presented in a way that is all-seeing and dispassionate. Their characters speak for themselves, while the narration remains objective. There is the same creative range and all-encompassing quality; their works seem to be about everything. And with both men, one of their works seems equivalent to ten works by anyone else.

With both Kubrick and Homer, we remember a surfeit of great scenes. I have noted my love of the scene with Helen and the old men, one of the great images of feminine beauty in literature. Here are five more favorites: [Read more →]