You better fuckin' believe it, baby

Nice guys actually do finish first, Harvard study suggests

And for the cynics, I've got two words for you: Warren Buffet.

Which reminds me. Have you ever seen Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence? It is brilliant. And gorgeous. Not one sex scene in that movie. And, yet, it is scorching hot. The passion in that movie. Holy shit. Powerful. That's the kind of love I want. Wow.

Check it out when you get a chance. Make it a date movie. And then go spend some quality time afterwards.

What to do with Iraq

The Economist has an excellent review of the situation in Iraq and what the prospective Presidential candidates might do about it.

Iraq five years on

They subtly point to an important matter for Democrats to attend to. Whether they know it or not, they are vulnerable on this issue, right now.

Americans do want to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible. Of course. Who doesn't. But what Americans are loathe to do more than seeing their friends and family dying is seeing their friends and family die in vain because we did not offer them an opportunity to make this situation right.

The greatest tragedy of this war is not that we engaged in it. The greatest tragedy of this war is that we did it in the name of liberal democracy, all the while ignoring our strongest liberal values. It must look like absurdity to the Iraqis and many people watching this effort around the world. The greatest tragedy of this war is that we have engaged such a high-stakes, life and death effort and we cannot have an honest debate and discussion about it and what we should do about it, the self-righteous posturing, pressuring, leveraging, and otherwise illiberal practices have so overwhelmed our more liberal commitments.

And, as a consequence, everyone gets wrapped up in their own bullshit. It's really the only alternative to the absence of an honest and open liberal democratic discussion and debate. Instead, what you have is partisans that swim in their own waters, reinforce their own prejudices and shortsighted notions of the war and world, and distort the more honest debate and discussion, leveraging and bullying their way through the discussion in lieu of honest, humble thought and discussion.

As a consequence, partisans and all of us lose track of peoples' more honest feelings and thoughts on the matter.

Five years ago, when this war was started, it was conventional wisdom that opposing a sitting President in this war was political suicide, since it meant opposing the large majorities of people who supported the President. It was such political suicide that very few members of the House or Senate who might have had private reservations about the matter were willing to voice them or slow or halt the drumbeat of war so that a fuller, more open, honest debate and discussion could occur about the war. Senator Hillary Clinton was one of those Senators who remained quiet for fear of rousing that electorate.

That was five years ago.

Within the last year or two, that tide has changed. Now the conventional wisdom is that the war was a mistake and that pullout should occur as soon as possible to avoid anymore unnecessary tragedy. The pendulum has swung. And will swing many more times before our lifetimes and, likely, the lifetimes of all people who have the opportunity to live on this earth, have ended. People have grown war-weary, liberal news outlets warn us. We need to end this ill-conceived war.

But, like the previous conventional wisdom and every conventional wisdom before and after that, it does not reveal deeper truths about peoples' aspirations and how they feel about this war.

Americans do not want to see more soldiers die, that is true. But neither do they want to see Iraqis slaughtered to wipe our consciences. Some will rationalize that way. But it will not be honest. We know that we have a choice in the matter. And we are responsible for that choice, no matter which way we turn with this decision, more or less tragic, which is all we can hope for, at this point.

And reality always has a way of bumping into our conventional wisdom and giving it a spin in another direction.

The reality in Iraq that the current round of distractions in our democratic conversation about this mess is avoiding is that the Iraqi government is not ready, yet, to handle it's own security. And it faces several formidable foes, all of whom could overwhelm its capacity, even if just for some time, and cause the deaths of many, many Shias and Sunnis, primarily, but also Kurds and others who stand in their way.

The Iraqi government, military, law enforcement and other brave people trying to bring some safety and security to the lives of average Iraqis, and the representatives in parliament and of the warring groups who are trying to negotiate a democratic peace and governing arrangement for the country, will tell the United States when they do not need the help from American troops.

The Iraqis are not children. They are a fledgling democracy of people trying to create a self-determining future for themselves. But the challenges they are facing are overwhelming. They are overwhelming for us, and we live thousands of miles away in relative safety. We can only imagine how challenging they are for Iraqis.

They need our help. If there are Americans or others who do not want to offer help, I think it would be wise policy to let them step down, honorably and with no guilt or pressure or other kinds of manipulation to make them stay. And, perhaps, it is time for people like me to take more seriously the idea of stepping up and pitching in. I'm trying to figure out how that might best fit into commitments I have already made in my life, at this point. I've made a commitment to this school and these kids I work with and I feel a sense of responsibility to them. To be honest, I'm a little nervous about committing myself to a war that so many people are treating like a lost cause, at this point, and I do not want to lose my life in vain, either. But maybe it is something I need to give more serious thought to, at this point, given that I believe in the cause.

Iraqis need the help of our military, right now. I wish they didn't. It would mean a lot fewer of our men and women dying in that effort. But they do. And when they don't, they will say so. Because the last thing that any Iraqis want, right now, is for Americans to determine their fates or to have boots on their soil unnecessarily. That really is the trick for everyone. How to get Americans home safely without unnecessarily sacrificing the lives of thousands of Iraqis, who have clearly borne the greatest sacrifices and greatest number of sacrifices in this effort.

If people don't want to help or do not see it as worthwhile, I understand that. But the Iraqis need our help, someone's help, right now. And those who want to pitch in need to be able to do it. And the American military, as an institution, along with diplomatic efforts where they will be useful, of course, is the best situated to offer the hand up they need.

Imposing democracy on Iraqis has not worked. Pressuring the Iraqis to come to an agreement has clearly not worked. Pressuring for a pullout has not and will not work. Pressuring their neighbor, Iran, to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons has not worked. The whole mess has been so clearly counterproductive to anyone not defending it that it is hard for me to believe that grown ups are responsible for that policy except that my experience is that those who engage in it, first and foremost, do not want to take responsibility for its failure or any failure that they think might jeopardize their power.

It is the logic of power. If power is the key to my goals, many people reason and have always reasoned, I must have that power above and beyond the responsibility that gives that power legitimacy because taking such responsibility means jeapordizing the power that I need to accomplish my goals, even if that power is unproductive or counterproductive in achieving those goals. And this war has been one long object lesson in why liberal democracy, as a form of governance, is so important to counter and check that logic.

We should thank Baron de Montesquiue for that. And Voltaire. And John Stuart Mill. And Lord Acton. And George Orwell. And James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. And John Locke and Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau and the whole lot, of course. But the greatest tragedy of the 21st century is that all of these people worked so hard to make liberal democracy available to us, only to watch us take its values and institutions for granted and rationalize our illiberal impulses in the name of that liberal democracy. And, all the while, fighting a war in the name of liberal and democratic values that we persistently denigrate as too soft and weak for us to take them seriously. It is the strangest, as well as ugliest and stupidest, spectacle for anyone in the world to bear witness to.

And the irony is that Democrats who are sure that they were right about this war, at the outset, many of whom were right that danger lurked ahead and that cooler heads should have debated, discussed, and planned out, better, how they were going to engage this war, if they were going to engage it at all, are watching that advantage slip away as they rally their troops for a pullout that most Americans are not convinced, as much as they would like to see the troops come home, can occur without serious consequences. And after such an event might occur, all of us will watch and have to live with the consequences that this war has to offer.

The truth is that doing the right thing really is the best option. That doesn't mean that we don't take the worse options, now and again. It just means that the best option is the one that generally brings the best consequences for our lives. We are all of us, with no exception, subject to taking the worse options, now and again. It's foolish, to be sure. And it has consequences we don't always like. But it just is. It's a function of being a human being with limited wisdom who doesn't always know what is best. And the best option is always the more honest one, within reason.

And the right thing, in this situation, is to honor our commitment to Iraqis and the newly democratic Iraqi government whom didn't ask for this war and need our help until they can handle the situation on their own.

I think we can handle that. And I need to figure out how to put my money where my mouth is on this one. My grandmother, a long-time Republican, and a father of a friend of mine, a Vietnam war vet, and many friends dissuaded me from signing up earlier in this war. Perhaps that was a mistake. All I know is that the Iraqis need our help.

And Democrats need to get figured out that this impulse, and not their more cynical political advantage and strategizing, is the real impulse that animates the American people. The beautiful thing about a liberal democracy is that when you have adopted a poor idea or policy or course of action, noone else has to follow you down that road if you're not going to listen to their concerns. We still behave more illiberal than our truer motivations betray. And we still have doubts about how good of people we really want to be, often, I think.

But, at the bottom of all of that, noone will feel good if American soldiers come home and Iraq erupts into a bloodbath because of that. We can try to rationalize it with all of the sanctimony that followed Vietnam. But it will be bullshit. And, this time, we will know better.

Because then there will be Sudan. And Lebanon. And Gaza. And Kenya. And Myanmar. And Tibet. And Taiwan. And Kosovo. And Mozambique. And a million other places in the world where we will be presented with the choice about how we might deal with a claim of freedom or self-determination or a totalitarian regime oppressing or killing or mass-murdering its civilians or some violent threat that we cannot sit idly by and watch terrorize a population without some kind of effective response.

What do we do with Iraq? That question is bigger than just this immediate war. It will offer us insight into what to do in a million future situations. Which is why it deserves an honest debate and discussion, and not just sanctimonious leveraging for advantage in the moment. This is not the last war we will fight. If there is any lesson to be learned from Vietnam, that is the one. And we need an honest debate and discussion to sort these questions out and to offer us some lessons and answers and some good faith to work with one another during this war and in all of our efforts after the fact.

It's not our military power or our political muscle or our economic largess that make America great. That's got it backwards. What makes America great is our capacity work together with one another, honestly, in common cause. And that is what makes our military power and our political muscle and our economic largess available when we need them.

And that is what America needs, right now. It needs for us to remember that working together with one another in common cause, and having the freedom to step away from that commitment, if we you so choose, is what makes us great. And what makes people great, when they so choose. That's what made America and the world great during World War II. It was the fact that we fought in common cause, and we did so for freedom, not for the right to impose our will on the world. Had we fought for that cause, we most assuredly would have lost. Because that was the cause that our enemy fought for, and he most assuredly lost that war.

What do we do with Iraq? I would suggest that the answer to that question is found a little deeper than we have been searching, thus far. A little deeper is where we find what is better in us, what is best in us. And that is where we will find the answer to this question.

And we will do it, better, with a little honest debate and discussion about the matter. Liberal values and liberal democracy really do offer us a better route. If only we will find the courage to take them seriously.

Holy shit (reflections on international policy in 21st century)

Stephen Colbert is the fuckin' man.



C is for Clinton, that's good enough for me. Classic.

Samantha Power's vision of international policy in the 21st century does not impress me, by the way. I do understand to be realistic about what goals are attainable. But I'd rather have a cowboy with big vision than an intellectual who has given up on big changes any day of the fuckin' week.

The Founding Fathers did not risk their lives so that we can intellectualize our resignation. The question is not are we willing to use force to intervene in places like Iraq, Sudan, Bosnia, and the like. The question is what strategy is likely to be most successful. If I thought invading North Korea would yield a democratic society that North Koreans could live with, I'd be all for it. I just don't think that is feasible. I think we would likely face a very similar situation that we are facing with Iraq, with fewer recognizable public opponents to Kim Jong Il's reign. That doesn't mean I wouldn't consider an invasion. It means that my judgment, at this point, is that an invasion would be a mistake.

Samantha is emphasizing a side of democratic change that I very much agree with: a focus on diplomacy for damage control and a focus on slow, nurturing of liberal democratic values, norms, and institutions, often with diplomacy, but with many more tools for that purpose, really, including schools, newspapers, non-profits and non-governmental organizations, Peace Corps-like efforts, churches, businesses, social enterprise efforts like the Grameen Bank, and any other opportunities for nurturing that kind of change.

I very much agree with Samantha that, as much as possible, we should use diplomacy and less aggressive means of encouraging and nurturing change, since it encourages grassroots, indigenous, and, hence, more real and sustainable liberal democratic commitments, over time. Paul Wolfowitz actually articulated this view on Afghanistan and the Middle East shortly after it became clear that Iraq was not going to be a "slam dunk." To his credit and the credit of Condoleeza Rice, the thinkers in that cabinet were some of the first to figure out that military force was not as clean or as bloodless a way of creating such change as they had imagined, and Paul talked about the need to support schools in places like Afghanistan with more of a liberal education focus rather than the often fundamentalist Islamic madrassas that educate many, if not most, of the kids in the Islamic World. I very much agree with both Samantha and Paul on this point and that this should be our primary focus and the most likely to create sustainable liberal democratic commitments, and, more importantly, commitments that the people in those countries are prepared to take up that determine their own destinies, as long as such self-determination does not mean threats to the lives of Americans or other peoples around the world.

Having said that, I am more than willing to consider military force when people are either in position of self-defense or oppressed in a way that they cannot sufficiently fight of their own accord and U.S. or other military help might be necessary.

My issue in Iraq was not that a war might not likely have needed to take place. I'm actually pretty convinced of the argument, at this point, that Saddam Hussein would have been very difficult to remove in another other way, if at all, had he not been removed by warfare.

My issues were:

1) Not enough substantial and engaged public discussion and debate on the war had taken place before we invaded that accounted for the concerns, that eventually played out, that much of the international policy community, and myself and many others as well, in the U.S. and around the world had about such an adventure would lead to much unnecessary tragedy. Much unnecessary tragedy occurred, indeed, I believe, because not enough thought was given to how to avoid such tragedy had the invasion been given more consideration. I do believe, and agree with Peter Tatchell, that an invasion that covertly worked with our contacts among the Iraqi opposition groups, and their alligned militias, ahead of the invasion, that had allowed those groups to lead the effort and that the American military backed up with military force - the essential ingredient to an indigenous Iraqi democratic revolution that was not present absent a U.S. invasion; those groups would have been slaughtered without U.S. help and that is why we invaded - would have undercut the political oxygen for an insurgency and made it much more difficult to claim U.S. occupation when that was never really our intention, I believe. Leaders listen to their critics and account for their concerns. Cowards avoid the debate.

2) Not enough consideration was given before the war, during the war, or in working with the Iraqi parliament to respect the right of Iraqis to determine their own destinies and affairs - when that was the whole point of the invasion; if it was not, we had no business being there, and I don't care what fuckin' excuse or rationalization for power anyone might give for that invasion if we are/were not genuinely concerned with the Iraqis determining their own fates - to work with them as genuine partners who give support when needed but who allow the Iraqis to make the important decisions without our direction, pressure, leverage, oversight, or otherwise power-mongering in affairs that are primarily the affairs of the Iraqis and not our own. If Americans can't learn this lesson, they really should stay home and never take their toys outside their own borders except in self-defense, because we aren't grown-ups enough to play democratic games if we can't respect democratic principles like self-determination (George Will be damned on that, by the way; I just read Will mocking Woodrow Wilson's commitment to self-determination in a column, today, which is ironic because it was American self-determination that led Republicans to vote down the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles, and if Will doesn't like self-determination as a democratic principle, he might find another governing philosophy to commit himself to because self-determination comes with the liberal democratic package, unfortunately).

3) Anytime we adopt a policy, it should be after an honest, thoughtful, and far-reaching debate and discussion. When peoples' lives are on the line, that goes double. That didn't happen here. A lot of lying took place before this war, generally on the principle that is pretty popular in political circles that any lie that one believes had good intentions is a noble lie. It's bullshit, of course, and has created a booming economy in political lies that animate serious political debates and discussions. We should always have an honest debate and discussion. But that is especially true when we are asking people to put their lives on the line. That did not happen here. And the sense of betrayal that soldiers and Iraqi civilians should and can feel about such a situation is legitimate and understandable. It's also in the past. The question is: what will we expect from our political leaders and ourselves in the future. I know my answer. Do you know yours?

Military force is sometimes the risky but best option. We should keep it open. What we must be careful of doing is not rationalizing it for any purpose, as the President and many Republicans have done with Iran. Doing so, and seriously and arrogantly manipulating the democratic discussion in such a way can only spell ruin for trust in American efforts and power in the future. And perhaps we will deserve it. And perhaps that will be good for us. Until we can learn to play honestly with others.

Samantha is wrong to rule out big fixes when the job is feasible. She is playing her cards too conservatively, ironically, when the circumstances warrant another option. That is the reason, by the way, for my theoretical work. The design of the principles of least possible necessary aggression is to give us as much flexibility as we might need but to create a presumption against the use of aggression and abuse of power by governments like the American goverment and any authority or power figure, really, by limiting our idea of what the legitimate use of power for liberal democratic purposes might look like. Least possible necessary aggression creates a liberal democratic presumption into the use of military force and all forms of power, soft and hard variety, so that liberal values are not circumscribed in the name of the use of power, as has occurred during this period, by both liberal and conservative ideologues.

Lord Acton was right. It doesn't matter who has power. They will abuse it. It's a guarantee. Me, too, unfortunately. There are many places where I think liberal values should be taken more seriously than I am able to offer as a teacher at my school, and, often, I have very little choice. In other situations, I just screw up and try to take responsibility for my screwing up as quickly as possible. It's a function of a democratic power structure, like a public school. Which is much of the reason that I am so committed to a more genuinely liberal democratic system of education built on a more genuine and equitable democratic market of education which more genuinely respects liberal values. But that's a whole other democratic question.

The point is that power is always subject to abuse. That is the reason why liberal democratic values and commitments and ideas were developed in the first place. And a presumption against the use of power - soft, hard, and all varieties meant to manipulate for one's own purposes - is the only one that takes liberal values seriously, meaning takes liberty seriously, since liberty can only be present when power is not, or rather when it is limited to its most serious extent. Liberal democracies are welcome to take power more seriously than liberty. They are not, however, welcome to call such a governing philosophy "liberal" or "progressive," by any honest use of those terms. And the principles of least possible necessary aggression account for that tendency by all people who have power to rationalize its use for whatever purposes they see fit, liberal democratic or not.

Samantha Power's vision of what is possible in international affairs is not wholly unrealistic. It is just unnecessarily limiting. And the last thing any liberal democracy should do is not explore all its options. It just shouldn't rationalize options for self-interest at the expense of others, especially the use of power, and pretend like such a move is liberal or democratic. It is neither. And it will be called out as such, take that to the bank. And the real power of such a liberal democracy will diminish, guaranteed, as America's power is diminishing today, until it commits itself to more honest liberal democratic principles. And those who doubt that always face the music, eventually, whether they like it or not. Not sure about that? Go talk with Hitler's ghost. Or Stalin's. Both of them and the regimes they created collapsed just as surely as the weak, frail, foolish governing philosophies of force that animated them.

Liberal democracies really are stronger. We just need to get some balls and acknowledge just how strong we are when we take liberal values seriously and how weak we and everyone is when we do not.

Stephen Colbert is a motherfucker who takes liberal values seriously.

Thanks, Stephen, for humbling the political class. They need it.