Brilliance at work

This is why Frederick Kagan remains, bar-none, the strongest correspondent and commentator on the war, at this point.

Reconcilable Differences

Winning One Battle, Fighting the Next

What We've Accomplished

It is writing like this that makes me want to pursue military history rather than policy as a field of work. Brilliant.

I am a terrible spectator. I must study that field in grad school and write in it, at some point, with adequate expertise. I am just too impressed with the writing of Frederick Kagan, Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan, James McPherson, and David McCullough (Victor Davis Hanson writes well, but his understanding of the political context for warfare needs serious improvement) not to give it a shot.

These articles give you an idea of how a military history and military studies background makes for excellent political coverage of warfare and military activities.

The real meaning of liberalism

Conservatives and Detention

Andrew Sullivan reminds us that the future of liberal democratic values holds steady in a genuinely liberal direction:

"Every time I'm told that my concern for individual liberty makes me a leftist, it helps to check in with the Tories in Britain. On so many issues - climate change, civil partnerships, and civil liberties - they help reassure me that the conservatism I have long loved is not dead. It has just been eclipsed by the authoritarian tendencies in the new GOP."

Andrew's comments are a good cue to us that it is America whose future as a lone superpower is in doubt, not the future of liberal democratic values. It is America whose commitment to liberal values is being tested, right now. I cannot say that she is passing that test admirably, at this point. But I can say that liberal democrats internationally are who will keep her honest. And she needs to be kept honest.

Why?

Why is so much of democratic life about demeaning those who engage in self-sacrifice and public service?

Why is politics and too much of the market perpetually driven by the lowest common denominator and the basest, dumbest popular thinking, even when we know or sometimes when we don't know how bad it is for us?

Why is this world so consistently one that rewards vice and punishes virtue and people celebrate that like it is an legitimate organizing principle of society and life?

Why are people constantly reifying ugly realities as inevitable and therefore unchangeable even if life would clearly be better, fairer, more decent if they were and if people were to make a concerted effort to do so?

Why are people such unapologetic shitheads celebrating that fact as if being self-reflective and self-critical would just be so much more work than shitting on their neighbor and reinforcing cynical realities?

Why are good people so regularly treated badly that we can't even tell the difference, anymore, because we've taken to treating everyone badly no matter who they are? And how in the world can we pretend like that is some kind of more noble governing or personal philosophy enlightening the world with its pressure and arm-twisting?

How does an entire culture behave this way and call it good?

Why?

I think those are questions that any reasonable person should be able to ask in America, today, and expect some kind of reasonable answer other than "Because you can't do anything about it anyway."

I am disgusted with my country, these days. Because it just can't get honest about what an ugly place it has become to live as long as it behaves like this.

Love,
Ben

Making peace

I have a paper to do this weekend. It is not a paper of my choice. It's a fine paper about developing a special education program. But there are better ways that I might spend my time. I don't hate the paper. I hate the fact that I have to do it as part of a licensing requirement for my job despite the fact that it has marginal utility to my job.

All weekend, I have been dealing with a central and most serious feeling in my life which this paper has been symbolic of in my life: my hatred for being coerced to do things against my will and against my better judgment.

It's taken me awhile, this weekend, to finally settle down, face the feeling, and recognize that this is what I've been honestly dealing with and why I've resisted this paper as long as I have.

I really like the professor. And I enjoyed the class quite a bit, too.

I just really, really hate having my arm twisted to do things that I don't want to do when I can think of better ways to spend my time.

I don't think I'm unusual in this sense. I just think I've been fighting this much longer than it has rationally served me in the least. That's how much I hate being compelled to do things beyond my will. I really hate it. Because I work so so hard to do good in the world out of my free will, because it's the right thing to do, and not because anyone forced my hand otherwise. I've done plenty of bad, in my life. But it has always been my conscience and not the threat of sanction that has brought me around. To the contrary. The threat of punishment has, generally, added an element of excitement to doing bad that, as it does for most people, gives it an attraction that would otherwise be missing without the threat and an excitement that only finally wears off when I stop being afraid of sanction and when it is not imminent.

And tonight, I'm making peace with the fact that there are things in life that I will have to do, laws I will have to follow, rules I will have to obey, even if I am not afraid of sanction and even if the rules and laws in question, while petty, are reasonable, even if they are the result of one faction or another muscling them into the lawbooks and making my life all that more difficult for no good reason.

I do think I'm genuinely making peace with this as much as I will never, ever make peace with anyone forcing my hand to do anything that does not line up with my conscience and my judgment. I just don't want to live my life in futile and senseless rebellion against something that I cannot defeat except by writing and talking and persuading folks that we should only coerce one another when danger is imminent and we have no other option. But that world - a world where most people take that seriously - may and probably will not likely exist in my lifetime. We will get closer. I am confident of that. But we will move slowly. And there is a lot of coercion I will have to make peace with in the meantime.

I hate being bullied, is the truth. And being bullied for a good cause is no different. Especially since much if not most of politics is people bullying for what they believe to be good causes or in opposition what they are convinced are the evil designs and causes of their opponents. It is everything that I want to change in politics and in democratic life. So you can imagine that it has not been the easiest thing for me to make peace with in my own life. But my sanity and peace of heart and mind needs for me to make this peace. So I do.

I'll finish this paper. And deal with the lingering feeling of defeat and resentment in my heart. And then I'll go on with my life.

But how much nicer would it be if I and everyone could live in the confidence that others would only make them feel this way when they were a true danger to others or themselves enough to warrant some form of force or aggression to remove the danger they pose.

Almost literally every other discussion in democratic politics centers around this matter and how much people welcome or resist the various impositions that their neighbors, friends, and family would impose on them.

I don't know. Maybe it's me. Maybe I just need to make this peace and accept that this unresolved feeling in my heart is what most people call good when it comes to matters of the heart. I don't think I can call it good. But I do think I'm tired of fruitless fighting and rebellion against having my arm twisted.

I have a paper to finish. And a heart to tend to that still needs feels a little uneasy. I just hope I won't feel this uneasiness as a regular fact of my life, as a rule rather than as an exception.

Who knows what life has to bring. More peace I hope.

Love,
Ben

Thomas Friedman has a new idea

Pressure Iran.

Channeling Dick Cheney

No really. He says this is a new idea.

Our problem in Iran, says Friedman: we haven't used Dick Cheney enough to leverage.

Whew. That explains four years of a failed policy of pressuring Iran to give up nukes.

I tell ya. Sometimes I wonder why Thomas Friedman is paid the big bucks. And then I read that little nugget of brilliance and I remember why: he knows how to sing with a chorus, even when the chorus is so clearly off-key.

Friedman sounds like one of the many guys I've worked with at the convenience store, the warehouse, the lawnmowing job, or any number of the variously intellectually stimulating jobs I've had in my life.

"Hey Bubba, what do we do about this problem we've been fuckin' up for 4 years?"

"Same goddamn thing.

"But that's what we did."

"Do it more."

"Thanks, Bubba."

Thanks, Tom. But given that Mohamed ElBaradei and the IAEA have delivered and your strategy has not, I think I'll defer to those who get results. Thanks anyway.

Getting too invested in the fight

I'm realizing after a weekend of reflection about Brandi, about the sad and polarized state of American and international politics, right now, about other problems in my own life, that the central problem - bigger than any of the particular problems we face - is the persistent and counterproductive and foolish fighting we engage in which generally undermines both solutions to our problems and the relationships that make those solutions possible.

It takes me back to Brandi and I in the fall of 2001, when it was perfectly clear to both of us that the problem was the constant fighting rather than any particular thing we fought about. It was the fact that we just kept fighting instead of discussing solutions calmly or making peace with reasonable compromises. We wore our passion on our sleeves as a pride that we cared so much about one another and about the things we gave our energies to, in life. Which was true. But perhaps too much passion by half.

Because when all was said and done, we took down that relationship. We don't even talk today. And really, which one of those fights was worth all that? I can't think of one.

Most of the fights we have in politics and the world, these days, are about the fights, rather than an effort to understand and discuss problems and their solutions more fully. Most of the issues around peoples' behavior and having people behave better are a function of fights that people have with the society at large and fights that the society at large has with making people conform to various norms.

Most of our problems are functions more of the fighting and the refusal to cut it out and to work more collaboratively than around particular issues and challenges we face.

We can stop. We choose not to. And the world is a serious mess, today, because of it.

I really have no clue where human beings got the notion that aggression would solve more of their problems than it would. I suppose it's about being an aggressive animal, too often getting our way through aggression - though we know it is contrary to our values that we need to earn others' trust rather than forcing their hand - and learning to be responsible for that freely rather than being restrained externally, which really feels natural to noone, if they're honest about it. Usually people feel much more comfortable restraining someone else than with being restrained. We just play bullshit semantic games to pretend otherwise.

I'll never forget those waning days in our apartment in Kansas City when Brandi and I knew - and fought, ironically and sadly, about the fact - that it was the fighting that was our most serious problem and none of the particular issues we fought about. It's all so foolish and sad, in retrospect. But we just keep fighting, despite knowing that this was the problem. And within a month, Brandi had signed a lease on a new apartment on her own.

It's so sad and foolish. This sport of fighting that people play with one another that is constantly interrupting the more important priorities we face.

But I suppose what we are learning to be responsible for is what to do with all that aggression that we, generally, have not thought nearly enough about. And that we alternately suppress, avoid, engage needlessly, and otherwise handle poorly while we figure out what to do next.

It's all so foolish and needlessly tragic. But I suppose that it is the lesson we have to learn until we've got it more figured out.

So maybe that is the purpose of the current period. Maybe that was the purpose of Brandi's and my relationship imploding. So that we could learn the lesson better. So at least I could learn the lesson better.

I've got a paper to finish up. And many fights in my life that I need to give up. And many fights that we all need to give up if we're to be the self-governing, free, democratic people that we have the promise and the need to be. And maybe just so we can get some stuff done and get home to our family and kids and learn to treat one another with respect and not like pets or servants or handmaidens or slaves. Or friends or family to be taken for granted until we wisen up.

Maybe we just need to learn to treat each other decent.

Love,
Ben