Rubes Versus City Slickers

A few years ago the US military started hiring cultural anthropologists and embedding them in combat units in Afghanistan.  The idea was a better appreciation of cultural mores would make for more sensitive and effective use of combat power--that we could avoid the negative consequences of door kicking and mosque invading which had produced a wave of backlash in much of Iraq.  This notion was a good one and did have some real benefits for US effectiveness.

But, it was too limited.

In Afghanistan as in Iraq before as well as in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, even Turkey and Syria today, there is a much larger problem involving the anthropology of culture.  It is a dynamic with which we Americans are--or should be--quite familiar.  In our own history this particular dynamic was in large part responsible for such events as Prohibition.  It is also responsible to some degree for the more recent "culture wars" which have been so much a feature of our politics.

The phenomenon is the divide which separates folks who live in urban environments and those who dwell in remote, often rugged, always sparsely populated, and usually relatively impoverished areas.  In Afghanistan or Pakistan, it is the gulf separating the hill people from the urbanites.  In Libya, it is the distinction between the ethnics of the western mountains and the coast dwellers.  Elsewhere, it is the age old tension between subsistence and marginal farmers on the one hand and those who have migrated to the cities for the opportunities which are believed to exist there and only there.

Throughout the developing world, in all continents, in countries as far removed in geography, culture, and governmental styles as China and Mexico, Russia and Indonesia, the same dynamic is at work.  Often, the work is destructive of social and, more importantly, political harmony.

There is a set of characteristics by which the hill people, the subsistence peasants, the "exiles" of remote and rugged regions define themselves in opposition to those of their fellow citizens who live in the cities.  We Americans have seen the same definitions of self and opponent in our own recent past.  There is nothing different with the far away folks in Afghanistan and the host of other countries where the destructive tension scars the social, cultural, and political landscape.

At the risk of some over simplification, the people who live far from the seductive attractions and entrancing visions of wealth existing in the cities see themselves as more moral, more honest, more honorable, more truly human than their opposites in the city.  The rubes understand themselves to be the last vestige of honor, honesty, integrity, and religious morality.  They also see themselves as being under constant, unremitting attack by the corrupt, immoral, irreligious forces of urban life.

The rubes see the cities as vast moral swamps.  They understand the goal of urbanites to be that of attracting and perverting the sons--and more particularly, the daughters--of rural purity.  The rubes fear the appeal of the cities, the seductions of wealth, bright lights, loud music, open sexuality.

For their part, the urban dwellers, whether a century or more ago in the US or today throughout the developing world, view the rubes with disdain.  The hill people, the peasants, are all seen as rude, uneducated, unsophisticated, backward looking, fear ridden, clingers of the past, chained by religious superstition.  The rubes are dismissed as the last of a deservedly dying breed.

The two groups stare at each other through prisms of distortion--or the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.  Each distrusts the other.  Each views the other as irredeemable.  The city slickers are convinced that the rubes are hopelessly outdated, ignorant, superstitious, hung up on irrelevant concepts such as personal honor.  For their part, the rubes are certain that all city slickers are pervasively corrupt, purveyors of moral degradation, apostles of apostasy, and generally as exploitative, manipulative people given to enriching themselves at the expense of their moral betters.

As a general rule, over time the rubes are willing to strike a bargain with the city slickers.  The basis of the tacit agreement is simple: You city types just leave us alone and in return we will do the same for you.

Rarely do the rubes seek to replace the city slickers as the source of collective government.  Rarely do the rubes seek to impose their social and cultural mores on the urban population by either politics or force of arms.  To this extent the American experience of Prohibition or the more recent political activities of conservative, predominantly rural origin Christians constitute exceptions to the general experience.

In a similar way the emergence of violent political Islam is also an exception to the historical norm of "you leave us alone and we will leave you alone."  The primary appeal of violent political Islam has been to threatened rubes.  The threat may be as direct as an attempt by the urban based central government to extend its sway over the remote regions or it may be the more indirect but pernicious one of inducing the young of Rubeland to emigrate to the cities.

The hill dwelling tribesmen of Afghanistan or Pakistan's FATA are not necessarily more violent by inherent nature than others of their nationality.  Rather, they see and have seen themselves as under threat from the dishonorable, corrupt, irreligious people of Kabul or Islamabad.

The situation was not different in the US a couple of centuries ago.  The Scotch-Irish who moved to the rugged and remote frontier of the eastern mountains did so not because they were inherently of a greater man-against-nature mentality than Americans who lived in the flatlands of the coastal regions.  Nor did they and their descendants remain in the far distant hollows because they were inherently antisocial.  Neither did their more recent exemplars violently resist the incursions of mine owners, state governments, or federal "revenoors" due to some inbuilt streak of cussedness.  No.  They wanted to be left alone.

To the well intentioned outsiders of urban America, the hill dwellers of Appalachia may have appeared to be hopelessly backward, trapped in endless generations of poverty and deprivation, "clinging to their guns and Bibles" (to use the formulation of a noted and successful presidential candidate) due to personal fear of progress and change.  And, to some small extent, the impressions--at least those of poverty and deprivation--might have been true.  But, far more important was the self-belief of moral purity, the upholding of time honored traditions and values.

The folks of Appalachia were quite willing to accept some of the benefits offered by larger American society such as electricity, better medical care, economic opportunity, better housing, better nutrition.  But they were not willing to take the benefits if these were offset by participating in systems both tangible and otherwise which were antithetical to basic beliefs and values.  It took American social engineers generations to find the right approach, the proper mix, the best way to include the hill people without destroying with unacceptable rapidity the values and norms which had long sustained these people.

This is also the challenge in Afghanistan, the FATA, and other parts of Pakistan.  It is the same in the other countries currently facing collapse and failure.  Put simply, the trick is that of extending the good things of modern life to the rubes without pulling the rug of tradition, traditional values, norms, and mechanisms from under their feet.  Change is acceptable as long as it is neither too fast nor too shattering in extent.

It is the rock of time upon which the grand ship of nation building must flounder.  This is the case in Afghanistan.  This is the case in Pakistan.  Insisting on a rapid and complete penetration of the land and life of the rubes by the city slickers and their foreign supporters can only promote resistance--violent resistance.  The insistence upon extending the "corrupt" and "irreligious" systems of the city into the mountain heartlands of the rubes can only result in a more ardent embrace of those ideas--in particular the religious--which make armed opposition legitimate.

The most basic war being waged in the vast arc of countries from Afghanistan to Tunisia is not between Islam and infidel.  Nor is it between the adherents of violent political Islam and those of a more secular persuasion.  It is not even a conflict between modernity and the warm certainty of the past.  Rather it is the war between the traditionally oriented "exiles" of the hills and the city slickers.

In this war of culture, the city slicker (which includes the US government)is  its own worst enemy.  A prime characteristic of the city slicker is impatience.  For the city slicker, particularly the American, the cliche, "Time is money," constitutes an imperative.  But, to the rube, time is eternal.  Time is something the rube possesses in great quantities.

The key to success in an insurgency is contained in a simple historical reality.  The side which can afford time and accept casualties will win over the side which must save both time and lives.

What this confluence means is both easy to understand and bitter to accept.  From Afghanistan to Tunisia and at all points in between, the city slickers of the West are doomed to lose.  For the insurgent rubes, powered by the force of both the past and the ideology of religion, a line from an old Rolling Stones song applies, "Time is on my side."

Change Leads To Fear--And Fear Leads To Jihad

Any number of scholarly commentators have noted that religious fundamentalists be they Jewish, Christian, or Muslim are united in motivation.  The consensus is all fundamentalists, particularly those willing to employ violence in pursuit of their political or social goals, are driven by a pervasive fear of change.  The unifying desire is to reclaim the stability of the past.

There is much value in this understanding, providing it is used with caution.  It may well be that many, perhaps even most, adherents of the hazy world called "fundamentalism" are uncomfortable with both the pace and degree of change in their lives.  This does not mean that most of these people are irrational or so unhinged by fear of inexplicable and seemingly unnecessary change in the political, social, and cultural environment where they live.  Indeed, the fundamentalist response is rational in its origins even when the ultimate expression is violent.

It is critical to understand that most humans for most of their history have lived in static environments.  Change in the basic characteristics of political organization, social structures, economic institutions, cultural norms, and ethical values typically has been very slow or even nonexistent.  We forget today in the US where rapid change is not only normative but widely celebrated that the defining American experience for most of our ancestors right down to World War II has been the changeless rhythm of the seasons, the cycle of days in which every one was nearly identical to its predecessor and its successor.

Change of rapid and pervasive nature is of recent vintage in the US.  Changes in the basic fabric of society, politics, economics, culture have been normative only for the past fifty years.  True, the rapidity of change in American society and culture over the past half century has been remarkable--and quite dislocative.  As recently as the Seventies, the words of a Springsteen tune were totally applicable not only in our rural areas but in the largest of our cities, "They bring you up to do just what your daddy did."  In a major way life was cyclical, an endless wheel of generations with only marginal changes like the height of tail fins on the new model car.

Few, if any, Americans in 1970 would have accepted the proposition that before the end of the century the vast industrial infrastructure of this country would have become an endless belt of abandoned, rusting mills and factories.  Few, if any, Americans in 1985 would have believed you if you said, "In five years the Cold War will be over and the Soviet Union will be no more--without a war."

The rapidity and universality of basic change in the US has made more than a few very uncomfortable.  The pace and extent of change has resulted in a sense of rootlessness, a feeling of alienation, of being a stranger in a strange land.  It is rational for a person under assault by change to seek stability, to need points of unchanging certainty, to demand that change be slowed.

Members of the American hoi ollogoi may be quite unconcerned by systemic change as they are insulated from ill effects or even the anxiety about the unknowable consequences of change by wealth, status, position or power, but not all Americans are so protected.  Thus it is possible for a member of the "elite" such as Barack Obama to characterize Americans from the second, unprotected category as "clingers," holding on to symbols of the past such as Bibles, guns, and Republicans.  It is possible for the elite to see the unprotected and apprehensive majority as irrationally fear ridden regardless of how divorced from reality this smug view might be.

American religious fundamentalists, be they Protestant or Catholic, may be apprehensive regarding the pace and extent of change.  They may find some of the changes totally unacceptable and impossible to justify.  They may "cling" to facets of the past both religious and secular which they believe to be desirable, beneficial, or down right necessary.  None of this makes their motives irrational.  None make their goal of conserving the best of the past while adapting and adopting desirable aspects of the new somehow unworthy of respect or meriting condemnation as fear driven clinging.

Chew over this a bit.  If, here in the US where buildings may be torn down almost before the cement on the cornerstone has dried, change can be disturbing to well educated, established citizens of a mature democracy with a well ordered economic base and a long tradition of embracing the new, what is the effect of change on a traditional society with a unresponsive government and a history of stasis?

Changes of many sorts and degrees have assaulted traditional societies, inflexible polities, and rudimentary economic structures with a series of megaton blows over the past fifty years.   The awesome footprint of the West has hit the very static Arab and Muslim world repeatedly.  It is no shock that many resident where the great Western boot has landed have reacted with fear and loathing.

The West, and the US, by their very existence in effect have demanded that traditional societies and polities throughout the Arab and Muslim world toss out each and every feature which have defined and conditioned life for centuries and replace these instantly with virtually incomprehensible foreign implants.  In essence the Western challenge has been, "You must not only do as we do, you must be as we are if you are to survive let alone prosper in the world we Westerners have created."

Consider just a couple of consequences of this Western challenge.

It has been necessary,  we Westerners believe, that the traditional patterns of social and political relations which have provided a very satisfactory life for most Arabs and Muslims for centuries be discarded.  This has meant that the old reliance on family, tribe, locality, relations which were personal and up close must be replaced by impersonal mechanisms of the market and the bureaucracy.  This has meant the replacement of customary laws and traditions of the responsibility of local or tribal leaders with remotely imposed and enforced written codes of law.  It has, in short, ripped out the face to face features of traditional societies and polities with the faceless one-size-fits-all approach of the West.  (A faceless way of governing which has fried off any number of us who have lived under it all of our lives.)

The Western creature, the "Market," has no resemblance to the up close and personal bazaar.  The Market has no human face, no human sensibility beyond getting the highest possible bottom line.  It rips the human heart out of commercial intercourse offering presumed efficiency in place of person-to-person search for advantage, even mutual advantage.

We in the West have fought long, hard, and bloody wars over the basic questions of the relation of state and community of faith.  We have done the same with respect to the establishment and expansion of "human rights."  It has taken us centuries to get answers in these areas which are even rough approximations of "right."  The same is true regarding democracy,  The same applies to transparency of government and business.  It is applicable as well to matters of social, political, and economic equity and justice.  And, even after centuries of effort, no one can honestly say that the job has been finished.

Yet the Western challenge has demanded that the Muslim majority societies do the same instantly and without the bloodshed which has marked Western changes over the past thousand years and more.  Even if a plausible case can be made for the superiority of the Western paradigm (which the Geek thinks can be made) the demand that the Muslim majority societies do the same in a matter of mere years is both unreasonable and quite contrary to the inertia filled nature of humans and their social or political constructs.

Faced with the Western challenge and its collateral imperatives, it is small wonder that a percentage of Muslims have reacted with fear and loathing which now expresses itself as violent political Islam rooted in an austere interpretation of the religion based on the foundations of the faith.  Any other response would be nearly impossible.

The Muslim, particularly the Muslim man, has been faced repeatedly with a severe challenge to all aspects of his identity as well as his world view.  Quite literally, he has been cut off from his roots by the impact of the changes demanded by the Western challenge.  With this degree of internal alienation in play, the appeal of political Islam, including that of the armed sort, has grown high and fast.

It is quite easy for the Muslim man to conclude that only by seizing power, by bringing Islam to power, can he regain control of his environment, of his life.  Even if he does not personally pull a trigger or push the clicker on a bomb, it is to be expected that many Muslim men will support and agree with those who do wage the good war against not simply infidels or apostates but on change itself.  Better to die on ones own terms than to survive on the terms dictated by another.

As the global Muslim insurgency grows, the new task for Western decision makers, well, really for all of us in the West, is to create ways in which the Muslim guy in a traditional society can effectively accept and assimilate necessary change.  This implies that we in the West have to lighten up on our demands that the Muslim in Afghanistan or Yemen or North Africa become just like us in his views and attitudes.  This is necessary but not sufficient in and of itself to counter the Muslim insurgency effectively.

We cannot do even this minimal task unless and until we understand the relation between the changes demanded by the Western challenge and the fear it produces.  Ultimately, the enemy facing both us and the Muslims we are fighting is the same--the fierce engine of change.  Change may be both desirable and necessary, but it can also be our worse enemy.

Well, no one ever said life was easy.

Yo! Muslims! You Had Best Read History--Yours And Ours

Islamic societies have never been big on history.  They tend to be worse in consulting the past than even Americans.  Islam qua Islam argues against the study of history alleging that there was nothing worth knowing of the past before the arrival of the Prophet and that, since the revelations, nothing is worth knowing other than the lives of exemplary Muslims who merit study due to their living lives of faith, virtue, and conquest.

In a major way this absence of any pervasive understanding of the past, the history of Muslim societies and polities as well as that of the West, is pivotal in the rise of fear driven violent political Islam.  Muslims have felt with great accuracy for many years that people in the West have mocked and derided them and their faith, have presented one dimensional stereotypes, have trivialized, marginalized, and patronized Muslims generally and Arab Muslims in particular.

The pervasive feeling of deprecation and the sense the West has ridden roughshod over the desires, needs, aspirations, and, most importantly, dignity of Muslims and Muslim majority states has fueled the fear which has propelled violent political Islam to its status today--the greatest single threat confronting not only the West but the globe.  Even though most of the insults have been both unintended and inadvertent--such as the portrayal of Arabs as lascivious sheiks on horseback carrying off beautiful (presumably) Christian maidens to their harems--or the more recent all Arabs are dark, sinister terrorists--the effect upon even Westernized, multilingual European and American educated Muslims has been hurtful.  Hurt breeds fear.

Fear inevitably expresses itself in attempts to coerce respect from the disrespectful, acceptance from those who have been disdainful, or at least anxiety on the part of the contemptuous.  None of this, none of the dynamic which has resulted in the current global insurgency mounted by those whose antidote to fear is the espousal of violent political Islam would have been necessary had only Muslims understood their own history and possessed some knowledge of that of the West including the Great Satan, the US.

There is an old cliche to the effect that those who do not learn from history are condemned to relearn the lessons of history from their own mistakes.  Like all cliches this one contains a sizable grain of truth.  Had Muslims taken a look at the sorry blood soaked record of the Christian West in which the people of the word took recurrent counsel of their fears with the result that war became the normative condition of life for centuries, they might have concluded that regardless of the positive effects ultimately created from the windrows of corpses, there was no need for Muslims to repeat the process.

Had Muslims coupled the study of the European record with an examination of the long years of the Ottoman Empire, they might well have concluded, with accuracy it should be added, that their religion had given a base for a period of remarkable peace, noteworthy internal tolerance, and an environment of tranquility which may not have resulted in the technological and organizational advances of Europe and the US during the same time but did provide an acceptable quality of life for the vast majority of Muslims living under Ottoman sway.  The history of the Ottoman Empire as well as the lands and people on its periphery provide a powerful argument in favor of the contention that Islam was superior to Christianity as practiced in the West.

As the flames of Muslim conquest faded to cool ashes and stability under an admittedly ramshackle empire, the main feature of life that ensued was the preeminence of the mystical,  inward looking, liturgy rich Sufi school with its emphasis on inner peace being reflected in interpersonal harmony, charity, compassion, and empathy.  The "wordless" approach of the Sufis brought interpersonal peace quite unlike the "wordy" Christian understanding with recurrent wars over the precise words, doctrine, and dogma which defined a particular group.

If the primary goal of any religion is the assurance of a better state of inner and outer peace, a community exhibiting compassion, empathy, and charity as well as the feeling on the part of the believer that the will of the deity is being followed, the Islam of the long centuries between the end of the Western crusades and the encroachment of the West less than two centuries ago passes the test by any standard.  If the same standards are applied to the Christian West, the assessment must be that Christianity failed.

It is true that the West drove technological development, mastered new forms of governmental process, invented the essentials of modern economics, created entirely new forms of social, political, and economic organization while the Muslims were static in all these areas.  But, it deserves noting that stasis or a very slow pace of change are normative across the entire sweep of human history to the extent that the Western explosion following the Seventeenth Century is without precedent or equal.

It is true that wherever and whenever the West has placed its heavy foot on a traditional society, the results have been severely disruptive particularly so when the traditional society reacts by attempting a forced draft emulation of the West.  On occasion--think Japan and China--the arrival of the West and the response to that arrival has been bloody and destructive.

The wise Muslim might benefit from examining the history of the consequences of the encounters with the West experienced by both Japan and China as well as the immediate aftermath of the encounters.  Then this hypothetical wise Muslim might ask if he wanted his people, his society, to go the same route or is there a better way, a way which takes the best from Muslim history in a way which allows features of Western origin to be absorbed and employed with greatest benefit.

In considering the history of the relations between Japan and the West following the mid-Nineteenth Century, it is important for our hypothetical Muslim student to consider the history of the US, in particular how the US embodies in concentrated form the predominant feature of the Christian West, a feature which was the necessary product of centuries of war, wars of religion and nation.  That feature is simply a capacity for what can be best called "absolutism."

In the real world of history, the term "absolutism" means that the US, to an extent which may surpass the standard set in Europe, pursues victory in war with an intensity which almost surpasses description.  As the war in the Pacific demonstrates clearly, the American people once roused, will fight with a degree of ferocity and resolve which is either most admirable or most despicable depending on one's point of view.  We showed in the Pacific war a willingness to dehumanize the enemy of the highest sort.  This tendency to absolutism not only rests close to the surface of the American public, it is what gave US troops the capacity to win against what normally would be considered unbeatable odds.

When the absolutist button is pushed, the Americans and Europeans (particularly the British) have demonstrated time after time a willingness to use virtually all means necessary to win.  Our hypothetical Muslim student might wonder at what point the button marked "absolutism" will be pushed in today's conflict with the practitioners of armed political Islam.  He might wonder if the redress of fear will be worth the ultimate butchers' bill if the Americans are pushed too far.

History also shows that the American public is slow to reach the absolutist point, but it always gets there, if pushed long and hard enough, particularly by people whose behavior is inexplicable to most Americans.  This was evident in the war with Japan.  Before that it was part and parcel of the centuries of war against the Native Americans.  A close reading of the record of these wars should convince any observer that the Americans have a limit which cannot be crossed without great and negative consequences.

The historically literate Muslim would have a unique vantage point.  From this point he can easily see the greatness of his own faith over a long sweep of time.  He can see as well the potentials of seeking to out do the West using only the tools of the West.  He can understand the risks being taken by the adherents of violent political Islam, risks which will be widely distributed on Muslims generally.  He can (or should be) see the potential benefits of combining the inner directed faith of the Sufi understanding with desirable features of Western provenance such as democracy, an independent judiciary, the concept of the King's Peace, an open press and so forth.

In short, the historically aware Muslim would be in a perfect position to meld the best of his faith tradition with the most worthy of Western products for the good of all both Muslim and non-Muslim.  But none of this is  possible for those Muslims whose awareness of the past is limited to fear producing Western insults and slights no matter how unintended.  The historically blind are condemned to undercut the interests of their own people and empower the most implacable enemies of Islam in the West.

It is far better to hit the books and get smart than it is to build a bomb and get dead.  Words to the wise.

Too Good For Our Own Good

Over the past century or so the primary characteristic of American foreign policy has been the tension between realism and ideology. While there has been some seesawing back and forth between the extremes of realpolitik and idealism run rampant, the overall trend has been toward the ideological pole.

Ideals have a very real place in the making and executing of foreign policy. Even ideology in and of itself is not necessarily bad. When, however, the dictates of ideology--any ideology--suppress a careful calculation of the realities resident in a situation, the consequences are most likely going to be poor, even disastrous.

In this context it is utterly essential to remember that governments are not moral beings like individual humans. Governments are impersonal constructs which function as agents on behalf of the nation, the society, or, more properly, that component of society which functions as the polity. It is the polity which sets the pace. The polity determines the nature of national interest. The government functions as the agency which seeks to advance or protect the national interest.

Government is to polity as a lawyer is to the client. That analogy is not precise but it is close enough to the reality of global life to serve as a quick guide.

National interest is composed of concerns or values widely shared within the polity. Some of these are long-lived, virtually permanent features on the national landscape. Others are evanescent, driven into existence by a high profile event, acted upon and then flicker out as new events, new concerns flash across the horizon of the polity's awareness. Still others, arguably the most filled with potential disaster, are the result of a specific ideology.

Stepping back in time a bit, for the first century and more of its existence, the US had little in the way of foreign relations. The men who founded this country were practical politicians and realists. Their view was simply that the US had only one true, compelling national interest--survival. They realized that this new nation was a very small fish in a large ocean populated by sharks with long, sharp teeth.

Despite some horrid miscalculations early in the Nineteenth century, which included almost getting into simultaneous wars with both England and France, the US played a cautious, highly conservative, and ideologically flat role in the world through and beyond the War Between the States. Even our advance into the colonial adventure at the bitter end of the Mauve Decade was justified as conservative--a defensive action needed to assure that our long standing national interest of open, free maritime commerce and access to foreign markets remained intact in the Pacific and Asia.

The first real excursion into an ideologically driven policy came at the bitter end of the Nineteenth century when John Hay announced the famed "Open Door" policy with respect to China. This policy was of the declaratory sort which meant it had neither legal standing nor an inbuilt capacity for enforcement. It is doubtful that any country among the collection of raptors who regarded China with appraising eyes saw any need to heed the new US policy--including the US itself.

On occasion, declaratory policy is harmless, a kind of feel-good move in keeping with the prevalent opinion within an influential segment of the polity. The Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact is one example. No one took this measure seriously beyond a few really sincere peace advocates. Others such as the Open Door policy or the Monroe Doctrine come to be enshrined as national interests worthy of implementing unilaterally if necessary--by force of arms if that is required.

We got away with the Monroe Doctrine in largest measure because the British saw no profit in challenging it. We did not escape unscathed from the Open Door because the Japanese saw great profit in challenging it. So embedded had the Open Door become that the US had no wiggle room for negotiation when the Japanese started to close the door--firmly and permanently. The result was in all the media a few years back. It was called World War II in the Pacific.

Ideology went front and center in both the definition of national interest and the conduct of foreign relations during the years of Woodrow Wilson. President Wilson was a Christian man, a very Christian one, who had strong views on international morality. He saw nations as being bound by the same moral codes as operated on individual people. And, just as a person who violates the moral code may be subject to either punishment or some other form of correction, so should a state which he saw as a bad actor.

Acting on a moral base and totally overlooking the reality that governments are agents not principles, Wilson sought to "teach the Mexicans to elect good men," using Marines and, later, the Army as instructors. Horrified at the submarine's necessary sneakiness and apparently believing that the presence of an American civilian on a British ship (even one which was legally a warship) rendered that boat immune from attack, Wilson worked with vigor and effect to guide the US into war only months after he had been re-elected on a "he kept us out of war" platform.

It is always important to keep in mind that the US had no national interest, nothing which directly, substantially, and materially affected its status in the world, its prosperity, its security in issue on the battlefields of the war. Further, at the time Wilson was spinning his moral distaste with the submarine and the Kaiser for whom they sailed into a full-bore crusade to "make the world safe for democracy," and to wage a "war to end wars," the belligerents on both sides of No Mans Land were on the ropes, approaching collapse economically and psychologically.

A peace of exhaustion was in the offing. This peace would have come even allowing for the Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent offensive on the Western Front. The German offensive ran out of human steam well short of a meaningful end. It was not a war-winner let alone an attack defeated by the efforts and losses of the recently arriving American "doughboys."

Had the US stayed on the sidelines, the war would have ended in mutual exhaustion. Arguably the peace would have proven both more equitable and much longer lasting than did the one hammered out (to the accompaniment of the disillusionment of Wilsonian ideals) at Versailles.

Wilson's ideals--including the League of Nations--were ideologically driven pure and simple. While they were momentarily popular with the common folk of Europe, they foundered not only on the cynicism of European leaders, but more importantly, on the bedrock of nationalism throughout the continent--and in the US. The outcome of the ideologically predicated, completely unnecessary American involvement in WW I and the peace process was highly negative to all parties. Its effects linger on even today to the continued vexation of US interests in the Mideast.

In a rational world, the lessons of the Wilson misadventure would have resounded loudly down through the years. This world being marked by an absence of rationality, they did not.

The aftermath of WW II which was called into existence by the unintended by well neigh onto certain merging of the effects of the Open Door and the Versailles Treaty was marked by another burst of idealism and ideology.

The UN was FDR's genuflection before the alter of Wilson. The systemic flaw--that the architects of the UN deemed any and all "nations" to be fully functional "nation-states" in which the large and the small, the mature and the juvenile, the democracies and the autocracies were all seen as equal--constituted a fatal flaw. This flaw was joined by a second. The misplaced belief that the US and the USSR possessed a broad spectrum of coinciding national interests regardless of the vast gulf of history, values, and sense of security which existed between them.

Then there was the Cold War and the concomitant militarization of the doctrine of containment. The Soviet Union represented a massive political threat to Western Europe, particularly France and Italy in the closing years of the Forties, but it was no military threat. Nor would it become one for many, many years--if ever. The US in particular mis-read the blustering rhetoric of the Stalin regime and constructed a bogeyman of gargantuan proportions.

The false image of Soviet military expansion linked with the rise of domestic anti-Communism to create an atmosphere in which the ideology of opposing Communism, assumed to be a global conspiracy of super-human brilliance and persistence became the defining American foreign policy force. This, in turn, produced NSC-68 and the resulting arms race which was, unsurprisingly, mirror imaged in the Soviet Union.

There is not sufficient space here to trace the several historical trajectories and political agendas which resulted in this ideological dynamic. But, you can trust the Geek; he is a doctor. Suffice it to say, the Soviet Union was a hostile entity; it held no brief for the US; it would seek political advantage anywhere in the world where it could do so without running any real risk of a direct, military confrontation with the US which it (correctly) saw as technologically, economically, and culturally superior to itself.

But, rather than playing the Game of Nations as it was, rather than defining our national interests realistically and narrowly, we chose to play the game as our defining ideology feared it might be. This meant that we had to involve ourselves directly and substantially in the affairs of countries in which we had no genuine national interest in play. It also meant we fought a long, and, finally, lost war which was neither necessary nor in our interests.

While the game which we played during the Cold War had some good outcomes such as the success of Apollo in 1969, overall the consequences were far from beneficial to our longer term interests. One of those fields which suffered during the Cold War with results which still detain us at length is found in the incorporation of ideologically derived features into the overall definition of national interest.

Consider democracy. Consider the infinitely amorphous area termed, "human rights." Both have become permanent, central features whenever US policy and national interests are discussed. Such was not the case in past years, way back in the distant decade of the Seventies, remember them? Disco, gas shortages, stagflation, Jimmy Carter? Yeah that was the Decade From Hell.

It is also the decade when the US discovered support of democracy, and focusing on human rights to be central to our national interests. Before the epiphany of that time the US had mouthed much on democracy and done little. We had been content to cozy up with any dictator even the most unseemly if that regime gave the appearance of short-term order (which we cheerfully and quite improperly interpreted to be the equivalent of long-term stability) so as to keep the commies out.

Similarly we were remarkably indifferent to human rights (whatever the term might mean in any given context.) This unengaged attitude applied not only to the actions of "our" dictators but operated with respect to Moscow or Beijing as well. We were silent to all but the most egregious Soviet acts unless there was immediate propaganda hay to be made as in the case of the Berlin Wall, the crushing of the Hungarians in 1956, or the Prague "Spring" eleven years later.

All this changed when the tsunami comprised by Watergate, the debacle in Vietnam, the revelations of the Church and Pike committees, and the revulsion over the Pinochet coup in Chile rolled over the domestic political landscape. Politicians as dissimilar as Scoop Jackson (the senator from Boeing) and Jimmy Carter waved the banner of "human rights" as the Europeans held a mighty convention which gave forth a document on human rights signed by all, including the Soviets, which promised a new day for humanity not unlike the Soviet Constitution of 1937--and was equally a dead letter before the ink was dry.

The Reagan administration raised high the battle flag of democracy--at least rhetorically and joined in the human rights hymn. So well was the imagery of democracy and human rights portrayed that almost no one questioned the relevance of either to the requirements of American national interest. After all, who could be against either?

Both are good in principle, in the abstract. But, neither necessarily protects or advances our national interests such as global stability, open commerce, an absence of war, or economic success. And, each brought with it the potential for ideologically driven interference in venues both remote and tangential to national interests. Further, both carry with them automatically the potential for expansiveness of application which violates the constraints of realism.

The fact that democracy in and of itself brings no guarantee of either stability or peace is seen in the blunt fact that Hitler came to power via an election which met the tests of transparency, fairness, and inclusiveness used even today by Jimmy Carter and others of the election-fairness community. The reality that democracy does not bring leaders agreeable to American national interests is seen right now in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. The reality that democracy does not lead to the sort of stability best for the US is dramatically apparent in Iraq.

Basing any aspect of foreign policy on human rights is to base it on the most slippery of slopes. There may be a Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed by all the member countries of the UN, but there is no one universally accepted protocol for defining, let alone enforcing this international version of declaratory policy. There is no practical mechanism for holding each and every country to a single standard in any area of human rights. That is self-evident in the differing fashions in which women are treated in Muslim as compared with non-Muslim countries or the vast gulf in the free exchange of ideas between China on the one hand and the US on the other or the exploitation of children in both industry and warfare.

Human rights and democracy are matters of aesthetics or sensibilities; they are not national interests. The same may be said regarding "humanitarian crises."

Consider Somalia in December 1992. Starvation was real, widespread in that geographical expression. International food aid through either the UN or the plethora of non-governmental organizations concerned with such matters was impeded or stolen by assorted gangs of thugs, various gunslinging bands of diverse warlords. It was not getting to the starving people clustered in camps.

This was disturbing to say the least. It made for images of compelling anguish on the TV screens of the developed world. It was a macabre spectacle of the best sort. But, was it a matter of such compelling US national interest that it merited the deployment of American troops?

George H.W. Bush thought so. For whatsoever constellation of reasons the recently defeated president sent the Marines ashore. He assured We the People the mission would be short, successful and, above all, the right-thing-to-do. Of course, it was longer, bloody, unsuccessful and set the stage for both the emboldenment of al-Qaeda and the concomitant hesitant policy of the Clinton administration in meeting the jihadist challenge.

Overall, the Somalia deployment was a bad thing for American national interests. But, it was neither the last nor the worst conflation of the ideological or the idealistic with the realistic requirements of American national interest.

That point came with George W. Bush. Flagrant idealism caused the mission leap in Afghanistan from a punitive expedition clearly in American national interest to the goal of "nation-building"--a clear impossibility given the history, demographics, and culture of that place. Worse, pure, unadulterated ideology aiming at the chimera of planting democracy in the Arab Mideast caused the invasion of Iraq. This action above all others taken by the US in the past quarter century if not more was the most harmful to US national interests both in the region and around the world which can be seen in the historical record. It was as if Dick Cheney took his famed shotgun and blasted the face clean off Uncle Sam.

Now, as has been noted in many, many posts, the post-modern, multi-cultural, community organizing on a grand scale ideology of President Obama is with us. So far the results have been as can be expected from history--a failure harmful to the real world interests of the US. Once again events are proving that when realpolitik is kicked aside in the interests of ideology, only disaster can be expected.

The question is this. Will the disaster be on the scale of Bush in Somalia or Woodrow Wilson in and after World War I? Well, bucko, only time will tell.

Google (And GoDaddy) Are Fighting Our Fight

GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registration company has become the first new public enlistee in the stand-up-to-Beijing campaign launched by Google. It is to be sincerely hoped that more, many more, US and Western enterprises will join as well. Soon.

Up until now, until finally Google called, "Enough!" all too many businesses in the US and elsewhere have shamelessly kowtowed to the dictates of the Trolls of Beijing. Blinded by the prospects of profits to be made in the Land of A Billion Chinese, companies and the people who run them have been willing not only to ignore the multitude of unpleasant practices engaged in by the Trolls but, in essence, trade with and strengthen an enemy of the United States.

A decade and more ago when Congress was fired up to deny China most-favored-nation status due to its wholesale, recurrent abuses of human rights, the US Chamber of Commerce carried Beijing's water on the Hill, lobbying overtime to prevent the action. The Chamber and its members, all card carrying members of the League of Global Capitalism, made mighty moans about how stripping China of most-favored-nation position would cost American jobs beyond count, plunge the US into recession without end, and be generally icky-poo in the extreme.

Congress maintained its tradition of heeding those who pay and backed down. The Trolls kept on repressing and grinning all the way to the bank.

As had been the case since the days when a man of no brains named McKinley occupied the Oval, American businessmen have deluded themselves with the myth of the China market--the notion of selling widgets beyond counting to hundreds of millions of Chinese. When not chasing the hallucinatory sales of widgets, the capitalists of this and other countries have dreamed of loaning dollars in shipload quantities to China and building projects dwarfing the Great Wall in both size and expense.

American administrations of both parties have acted to facilitate these chimera chases and snipe hunts. From the Open Door policy which held China to be open to all exploiters equally right on to the "opening" of China during the days of Clinton, American leaders have assured themselves and We the People that the only consequences would be beneficial: good for China, great for the American worker and consumer, and, generally, wonderful for the world.

Throughout all, American administrations and businesses have acted as if they were the stereotyped "city slicker" and the Chinese the equally one dimensional rube, a hick ripe for fleecing. In so doing we have overlooked that in story and song alike the rube always outsmarted the slicky boy at the end.

Life has imitated art. China has won. The US and others in the West have lost. We have lost jobs. We have lost money. We have lost global status and influence. We have even lost our values, our principles, our views of what is right.

Insofar as we have lost, the Trolls of Beijing have won. They have won because they understood a basic which seemingly has eluded our political masters.

And, you ask, what might that be, Geek?

Well, bucko, the fundamental reality which has governed our economic relations with China and, all that flows from that relationship is simply this: A corporation has only one responsibility--maximize return on equity to investors. That's it. Nothing else matters unless it is specifically prohibited or required by law.

Ship American jobs offshore? Sure. It's legal. And, profitable. Gut the US manufacturing sector? Sure, why not? Heck, making things is horse and buggy thinking. What about human rights, human costs, even the long term consequences to the US, its security, its national interests? Hell, boy, that ain't in our job description! And, it isn't in the interests of our investors.

Well, what about assuring a hostile government has the ways and means to build a formidable military capacity? Hey, Geek, that isn't in our job description either. That's for the Washington crowd, not us to worry about.

The same can and is said, at least tacitly, implicitly, when the subjects of Chinese espionage or Chinese opposition to foreign policy demarches of the US are raised. Business leaders point out that this sort of matter exists in the bailiwick of government, not private enterprise.

Of course the hyper-focus of business on profits, return on equity, is both proper and justified. It is all that is required. It is what Lenin recognized when he famously said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." It is what the Trolls of Beijing have recognized as well.

The only difference between Lenin (and his successors) and the Trolls of the past twenty or so years is that the Trolls have done an infinitely better job of inveigling our capitalists (and administrations) into selling the rope with which we are being hung. Everything has gone in the best possible way from Beijing's perspective.

They cozened us, played the right sort of mood music as long as they needed more dollars, more investment, more "co-production," more access to our markets. As the need for dollars, for investment, for access decreased as it has over the past few years, so also has the playing of soft music and the saying of happy words. Now the Trolls demand, they yell, "Cold War thinking," when our government calls them out on a particularly egregious offense; they obstruct our foreign policy initiatives.

Until now, no one has stood up to the Trolls.

Google has good, very good--and more then simply sufficient--reason to tell the Trolls, "You have finally overplayed your hand." Google stands to lose a great deal of money by having taken a principled stand against the Trolls' censorship, hacking, and cyberespionage. Google has taken the very real risk that its competitors (including Microsoft which has the corporate ethics of the Mafia at best) will now have an open field in the very lucrative China market.

It is to be hoped (and, the Geek, being a historian, knows full well how faint this hope is) that Google's and, now, GoDaddy's decisions will shame other IT companies into following the new trail of defiance to the Trolls. It may even be hoped (an even fainter hope) that non-IT companies will be similarly embarrassed if they do not tell the Trolls that their conduct is unacceptable to a business possessing even the slightest hint of ethics. Embarrassment might just lead to action--the right sort of action.

While it is not at all in the realm of rationality to expect the Obama administration to back Google's play in the furtherance of our own national security and strategic interests, it is not quite so far over the edge to think that there is some possibility that Google's action will inspire some of us in We the People to do our small bit in slowing the Chinese juggernaut. It is not enough, not by a long way, for We the People to recognize that China is a real and growing threat to our global status as has been indicated in recent opinion polls.

The need is not for mere recognition. The need is for action. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, inaction. The inaction which is necessary is that of not buying any product of Chinese manufacture regardless of the brand and, far more importantly, price. China has seduced us, mulcted us and the businesses which service us, by the flood of cheap priced products.

That's right, bucko, it is time for us to tell Walmart and all the other purveyors of Chinese origin goods, "We aren't buying those any more." To put it bluntly, to use what the Trolls would brand as "Cold War rhetoric," it is time for us to stop trading with the enemy.

The Decline And Fall Of The US

Reports of the death of the US at least on the international stage have littered the landscape of the past four decades. They have lurched back to the surface in recent months most recently in a piece by British historian Niall Ferguson in Foreign Affairs.

As Mark Twain famously remarked, "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

The US and its global influence were declared dead during the Seventies in the wake of the Vietnam debacle and the hype-ridden aftermath of the Watergate break-in, the impeachment proceedings against Richard M. Nixon. However, much to the dismay of both the domestic blame-America-first and all those Yankee hating members of the European hoi oligoi, the US came back from the morgue to which it had been prematurely assigned.

During the Eighties following the Reagan recession which ended the decade of stagflation and ushered in the de-industrialization of the US, the pundits and prophets both here and abroad solemnly announced that the American Century had come to an end. The US was being replaced both economically and diplomatically by Japan, Incorporated. All things Japanese were lauded to the edge of deep space while all things American were deprecated.

Once again Uncle Sam refused to recline for the post-mortem. Japan entered a long age of deflation and the US cruised to new levels of prosperity. The Cold War ended with the US being the last man standing. And, in a display of coalition building the US led the effort to toss Iraq from Kuwait.

The theme of American decline reemerged during the Clinton administration. This recrudescence was minor compared to the earlier death notices, but was put to rest when the US economy showed new robustness after a (very) short hiatus and the Clinton team of lawyers put aside their unease with untidiness long enough for the Bosnian intervention.

Now the prognosticators of America's imminent demise have come back, bigger and seemingly more justified than ever. Making the current predictions of the decline and fall of "the American Empire" more believable than before is the simple fact that roughly half of We the People share the belief.

Leaving aside the sheer nonsense of using the term "Empire" to describe the relationship of the US with the rest of the world, the fact remains that the US is under severe pressure from a number of interlocking factors which does seem to justify a guarded prognosis at best. Even more reinforcement for the view that the US is on the skids is found in that most of the constellation of enervating problems are of our own political making.

To put the matter bluntly: The decline of both the structural integrity of the American economy and the perceived legitimacy of the Federal government are homemade. They are both self-inflicted wounds.

The tsunami of national debt which could go to many times the total GDP in coming years as well as the dependence upon foreign funding of this debt are the creation of the Federal government. Responsibility for this wound resides with both Republicans and Democrats, both the Executive and Congress. The existence of the debt and the concomitant reliance upon China and other less-than-friendly governments to underwrite it did not just happen. The sorry and weakening state of affairs was created by a succession of agendas pursued vigorously by politicians of both parties. It is the result of belief (and the power of special interests) held deeply by both the neocon ninnies of the Bush/Cheney years and the Progressive ninnies of more recent vintage.

This judgement requires a follow-on evaluation. The ultimate responsibility for the perhaps fatal weakening of the American economy and faith in the governmental institutions of the US finally resides with We the People. We have both allowed and encouraged the fiscal hemorrhaging. We allowed, encouraged, demanded the access to cheaper foreign made products, the loss of a manufacturing base, the shrinkage of domestic savings base. We have demanded more, ever more from Washington without any regard as to how the money would be found.

In short We the People have proved that de Tocqueville was right nearly two centuries ago when he predicted that the ultimate failure of American democracy would come when We the People discovered we could vote ourselves goodies from government. We, whether as individuals or as corporate fictions, not only allowed but required that the Federal government do more for us, give us more goodies, make life today somehow better while saying, "Screw the future, we don't live there."

At the same time a trajectory launched in the Thirties by FDR during the First and Second New Deals and boosted by the "Judicial Revolution" of 1937 gave us the ever larger, ever more remote administrative state comprising bureaucracies beyond count, one-size-fits-all regulations beyond comprehension, and bureaucrats without faces. The distant and impersonal administrators and functionaries chipped away at the belief that government was both responsible and responsive to the citizenry.

In the past year both the negative financial situation and the loss of perceived legitimacy of the Federal government have accelerated. Regardless of the reasons adduced by the proponents of both the "transformational agenda" put forth by the Obama administration and the Progressive Caucus in Congress, the results have been uniformly negative for the longer term status of the US on the global stage.

Foreign observers take a dekko at the current stasis in Washington which has the health care overhaul as its center and conclude (as does the Obama administration) that the Federal government, indeed the political process, is irreparably broken. This is a valid view albeit a superficial one. It sees the stasis but not the idiocy underlying it.

It should be noted here that the word "idiot" and its variants such as "idiocy" have a Greek root, idiotes. In the original language the word denoted a person who did not meaningfully engage in the political life of his nation.

Until very recently too many of We the People have been idiots in this way-back-when meaning. We have not meaningfully engaged in political life. We have been too quick and too eager to practice the politics of what's-in-it-for-me? rather than what is best for us as a collective nation.

Making us even more idiotic has been the siren song of the politics of victimization. Compounding our status as idiots has been the blind following of ideological flags. No matter how one spins reality, the "neo liberal" approaches of Bill Clinton with globalization and opening trade to China as well as the "neocon" policies of George W. Bush were intellectually blinkered by True Belief in ideologies rather than reality based attempts to advance American national interests.

True Belief results in failed policies more often than not. It is not surprising that we are living in the midst of failure today.

If the predictions of the decline and near-term fall of the US as the major global force are to be proven wrong it will be the result of We the People accepting, demanding really, a 180 degree change of course.

It will be necessary for We the People to demand less from both the Federal government and the market.

It will be necessary for We the People to do the impossible--vote away the goodies, the promises of security and safety offered by the central government.

It will be necessary for We the People to turn away from the Federal government and turn toward the local or state governments or, perish the thought, to ourselves, for comfort, safety, security, and the other better things of life.

It will be necessary for We the People to do the unthinkable. Demand of ourselves a fair degree of sacrifice as individuals for the better future of our nation.

It will be necessary for We the People to demand that our government stop trying to project a presence everywhere in the world in order that our core national and strategic interests can be both protected and advanced.

Unless We the People are willing and able to abandon our comfortable idiocy, we will shortly be living in a world where China is the preeminent power. A world where Islamist jihadists are a fact of everyday life. A world in which the values we once espoused, fought and died for are far more endangered than the spotted owl.

Unless We the People abandon our comfortable idiocy, we will be citizens of an irrelevant country, a country which can be ignored with impunity by any and every other country, large or small.

Shoveling dirt in Uncle Sam's face may be the perfect dream for many in the hoi oligoi, but it would not be good for the hoi polloi of the world--or the US. While one (unnamed) member of the Obama administration was reported to have said, "We were elected to preside over the graceful decline of the US," this low ambition can be thwarted by We the People. But, only if we stop being idiotes.

History Is Bunk!

So said one-time industrial icon Henry Ford. Most Americans at the time and today agree with this succinct sentiment. At least implicitly.

The problem comes in that history is very, very real to people in other countries. President Obama found this out again when assorted and sundry LatAm leaders berated him regarding the historical wrongs committed against their countries and people by the United States. Hugo Chavez, of course, upstaged all the others when he presented a Spanish language copy of Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by the very able Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano.

President Obama responded to the ever-so-predictable historical diatribe of Daniel Ortega by remarking that it was nice that the Nicaraguan jefe refrained from blaming him (Obama) for purported wrongs committed by the US when he (Obama) was still wearing three cornered pants. Mr Obama had no comeback quip for the "present" from Chavez who had earlier bluntly stated that the new American president was an "ignoramus" regarding Latin American history. Apparently Obama didn't notice that the bulk of Galeano's monograph dealt with events that occurred before the US came into existence.

Perhaps that oversight came from the fact that for President Obama as for most Americans it matters not if something happened five, or fifty or five hundred years ago. It's all history. It's all the long-dead and thus completely irrelevant past.

This self-defeating rejection of the importance of the past is to be expected in a country where the teaching of history is relegated to a very low priority. All too often high school history is an added duty assigned to one coach or another. In the university, history is typically the captive of the agenda driven mavins of the politically correct who subscribe with few exceptions to the blame-America-first or all-bad-things-come-from-dead-white-guys schools of interpretation.

When such asininity rides supreme it is scarcely remarkable that We the People and the policy makers who allegedly represent us either ignore or discount the trajectories of history which produce contemporary events. The paradox in this understanding arises from the long standing American belief that history is something which happened to other people in other countries but not to us.

This distinctive American view of history as some sort of external force which operates on other societies, other polities but not our own brings with it a very dangerous corollary. We are prompted by this piece of absurd faith to conclude that when the US puts its collective will to the task, its policies will succeed regardless of how history has affected the target society (or, victim country, if you are of the Left.)

With sincerity oozing from every pore, we Americans take the position that given sufficient material inducements the recipient of our generosity will alter its policies or behaviors to meet our requirements. With similar protestations of excellent intentions we hector other countries to emulate us, to be like us, to embrace something called "progress" and leave their past in the dusty bin which is the proper natural habitat of that most impractical and non-utilitarian of creatures--the historian.

When the blandishments of "progress" or material inducements fail to persuade, we tend to chalk the rejection of our efforts to the sheer obstinacy of foreign leaders or the sinister effects of some hostile ideology. We fail to admit that there is even the slightest possibility that history has a very real presence, and an equally genuine power in the minds of the society whose leaders have spurned our good intentions and accompanying rewards.

As we decry the presence and power of history as an intellectual and cultural determinant in other societies, so also do we deny its existence within our own. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, we cherry pick our understandings of history so as to maximise the potency of the most desirable aspects of our past while kicking aside all the deficiencies and difficulties which have been met and overcome during our two plus centuries of corporate existence.

For example, we hawk "democracy" to the world as an instant, semi-magical anodyne for all human ills. By so doing we seem to believe that "democracy" is some sort of political commodity which can be air dropped on a target nation and instantly take effect.

We overlook just how long and hard we Americans have worked to bring democracy and all of the necessary accessories to their present, imperfect state of development. We fail to see and appreciate that democracy grows best when it grows slowly, adapting to the unique requirements of the local soil and climate.

Nearly a century ago President Woodrow Wilson played the role of school teacher to the Mexicans. With a determination to, as he put it, "teach the Mexicans to elect good men," this apostle of peace landed the Marines at Vera Cruz. The resulting several months of American military government did not--could not--teach the Mexicans to elect good men. It did teach a lesson which echoes down to right now: The gringos are interventionist imperialists who are behind everything bad which happens to poor Mexico, the country "so far from God; so close to the United States."

The power of the historical myth built over generations by the Mexican society both elite and hoi polloi along with the longer standing and even more distorted myth of American imperialism in the Mexican War soldiers on today to inhibit effective collaboration for mutual benefit between these two countries fated to be tied by geography as they are separated by disjunctive understandings of common history.

It may be true that the US as portrayed by Cleveland's SecState Richard Olney in a Note to Her Majesty's Government over a century ago "is practically sovereign over this hemisphere." It is certainly true that upon occasion the US has acted as hegemon. From Theodore Roosevelt to H.W. Bush we have intervened at will in Central and South America as well as the Caribbean.

These interventions, whether as overt as landing the Marines or as semi-covert as the support for the "Contras," have been high and spiky mountains dotting a vast and arid plain. Most of the history of US relations with LatAm is one of total American indifference and non-involvement. With the exception of a very few US corporations such as ITT and Anaconda Copper, the US has been so low on the list of countries opening the veins of Latin America as to almost fly below Galeano's radar screen.

Of course, it is the high and spiky hills which attract the eye of historians--and the creators of historical myth. Thus the interventions of all sorts occupy the political landscape to the exclusion of the real history. The history of American disengagement with the Lands to the South.

This reality is precisely why the Obama administration should move rapidly--even without sufficient political cover--to reverse the half-century of the US imposed policy of Cuban isolation. Not only has it failed (which ought to be sufficient reason for its ending) but it feeds the myth of Yankee Imperialism which is the staff of life for Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and their ilk.

There is a larger (and no doubt quite unintended) lesson from the History Teachers of The Summit of the Americas. History is alive and well as a day-to-day presence throughout the world. No matter how much the chattering folk of American academe and other fans of multi-culturalism may wish it otherwise, history and the mythic distortions based on history are part of the air breathed every day in every part of the world outside our borders.

Get a grip on this: It is impossible to formulate and execute effective policy without a well-founded understanding of the actual history as well as the operative historically derived myths at work in other countries.

One cannot, for example, address the conundrums presented by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, the Mideast without a full appreciation of history and its myths in these regions. The (by Americans) dead hand of history rests very, very heavily upon the shoulder of today in each and every one of these nations.

One cannot, for example, address the threats presented by Islamism and its armed expression, jihadism, without a full and accurate appraisal of the Muslim experience over the past thousand years. Islamism and the conflicts it spawns both internecine and external cannot be countered by ripping it from the historical context which has produced it.

At the same time American policy to be effective must take into account the unique nature of American history and the defining mythology which it has produced. While there may well be no such critter as "American exceptionalism," there is American uniqueness. The uniqueness of our history, which means simply that no American institution can be uprooted and transplanted intact to foreign soil.

The brilliance of George Kennan's Containment Policy resided in its highly insightful understanding not only of Russian history but also that of the United States. It was this accurate foundation which allowed--no, insured--the success of Containment despite its perversion by the overly muscular military focus provided by Kennan's successors. Kennan knew something which has eluded the majority of Americans back then or today--history matters. It matters more than atomic bombs, troops in the field or any other facet of military calculus. It is the ultimate determinate of behavior as it is perceptions.

What is to be done?

Well, we might start by remembering a line from a World War II popular ditty. "We did it before. We can do it again."

To President Obama and the rest of his administration the Geek can only add from the words of the Wandering Sage and Healer, Jesus. "You who have two good ears better listen."

Let 'Em In Or Keep 'Em Out?

Two matters loom very, very large in the relations between the US and Mexico. One, as has been noted in several earlier posts, is trafficking in illegal drugs and its attendant violence. The other is (as the Mexican government puts it) migration or (as many? most? Americans see it) illegal immigration.

The two are joined at the head (diplomacy) and hip (law enforcement.) In addition both problems are easily distorted by emotion, particularly fear. Yes, and both have a complex history the effects of which continue to be played out today.

The powerful motivations for unrestricted immigration are most obvious when examining the American experience of the Nineteenth Century, particularly the years following the Mexican War and Gold Rush. To put it bluntly without (hopefully) oversimplifying: The American economy desperately needed cheap, warm, expendable bodies if it was to expand.

Thanks to a fungus and British governmental inefficiency and indifference, Irish fugitives from the Famine were available in great numbers just as industrialization based on steam power was getting up and running.

(In this context it deserves mentioning that Southern slave owners would not risk their valuable property in dangerous jobs such as feeding the boilers on river steamboats. That was left up to Irishmen whose deaths cost no one anything.)

The Irish of the 1840s, '50s and beyond were plentiful, hard working, hard drinking and Catholic. Therein resided the rub.

The Irish were culturally different from those who saw themselves as "native" Americans. The old breed was Protestant, and at least pretended they were not hard drinking. The stereotypes of the Irish both revealed the antipathy felt toward the newcomers and the resentment that reality dictated the necessity of their presence.

The American antipathy was predicated on fear. A fear that the newcomers would somehow change the identity of the American nation. This fear was a manifestation of the seemingly never-ending American identity crisis.

This crisis is understandable. The US is unique in being a totally artificial country and nation based not on geography, nor on language per se, nor long standing historical forces organic to the society.

The American identity was based on myths of (at that time) recent origin, a theory of government which was still underdeveloped and a handful of ideas and values the implications of which were only vaguely apparent. Arguably there was not even a genuine national identity yet, but rather a collection of regional identities in search of a common center.

Catholicism per se was widely viewed as a threat to the tenuous national identity. True to the heritage of the Reformation in its more extreme expressions, Americans were deeply, darkly suspicious of the Church hierarchy, to say nothing of its rituals and liturgies, its institutions such as monasteries, convents and parochial schools.

(A flourishing literary sub-genre of the mid-1800s was the (at the least) semi-pornographic portrayal of sexual misconduct behind convent walls or in the sacristies of Catholic Churches. The sexual content was always carefully mixed with a presumed Catholic affection for what were quaintly called, "ardent spirits." This matched the public perception that Irishmen loved whiskey to an outrageous extent.)

American industrial prosperity was built on the bodies of the Irish, and the Central Europeans--Poles, Czechs, Bohemians. (Note the racial epithet "honky" is itself a derivation from the late Nineteenth Century term of derision "hunky" meaning anyone from Central Europe but drawn from the word, "Bohemian.") Later sacrifices to the industrial alter were largely Italian.

It is important to understand that a very large percentage of the later waves of immigrants from Central and Southern Europe were, like the Irish, Catholic. It is equally important to recall that the single greatest reason the US took only the underpopulated northern fringe of Mexico following the Mexican War was fear that the US could not survive swallowing the large number of Spanish speaking Catholics such a move would entail.

The wave of immigration restrictions seen in the first half of the Twentieth Century was driven quite explicitly by the identity crisis. Americans of the early decades of the last century demanded a time out regardless of any consequences to the economy. The demand was typically put in terms of "racial" (meaning ethnic) purity. The fear of a presumed slackening of "Anglo-Saxon" vitality was expressed by religious, political and academic leaders alike.

Congress responded with a series of measures which ramped down the number of immigrants from Central, Southern and Eastern Europe allowed into the US. This practice was not even waived in the face of documented genocide directed against Jews before and during World War II. It did not modify until the mid-1960s.

From that time to the present all measures of immigration reform have been couched in terms of High Minded humanitarianism. Under the rhetoric of Lofty Thinking, the reality has been the squalid needs of the American economy. Even a post-industrial economy needs legions of low priced and relatively expendable labor. The immigrant fills that role.

Sectors caught in a cost-price squeeze such as construction and agriculture need cheap workers. In recent years this has meant illegal Mexicans and Central Americans. It has also meant Chinese and other Asians. In some places such as Boston, it has meant skilled Irish nurses.

It is critical to keep in mind that while the debate the past couple of years has focused on Mexicans since they represent the largest component of the illegal workforce, people of many other nationalities are involved as well. Whatever policy helps or hurts Mexicans will help or hurt the others as well be they from Europe, Africa, Asia or Latin America.

Mexico, the Central American countries as well as some South American nations all rely on the US as a sort of escape valve. The Colossus of the North is the Latin American version of the old frontier--a place where fortunes can be sought, or at least money might be made.

Most illegal workers from Mexico and the other Latin American countries have no intention of residing in the US permanently or even for a significant length of time. Their goal is to make money. Make money and send it back home. Make money and go back home to buy a better life for self and family.

This remittance based approach to temporary immigration is not new in the American experience. At many times in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century nearly as many people returned to their countries of origin as arrived in the US from those countries. Over the years only sixty percent of Italians decided to stay in the US. The rest took their savings and went back to the old country with a sizable grubstake. The same was true with Poles particularly when Poland re-emerged after World War I.

In short, a good case can be made for the contention that immigrants mulct the American economy almost as well as American industry has exploited the immigrants.

At this point the Geek would, if he were the High Minded sort, launch into a hymn of praise for the immigrant contribution to the evolving American identity. He won't. Two reasons: It would betray the three-eighths of his genome which comes courtesy of the Hot Springs Apache. It is unnecessary being self-evident that, at the very least, the American identity has survived the onslaught of Catholics, Jews, Buddhists and may very well survive the coming of the Muslims.

The reality is simple and easy to get a grip on. The economy needs cheap, temporary workers. Immigrants whether legal or not are willing and able to work for cheap. Some of those "temporary" workers will become permanent. Some will not.

A rational avenue must be available for those who choose (or are forced for whatsoever reason) to stay here permanently to assimilate, regularise their status and join as full members in the collective American identity.

This proposition has some very unpleasant implications and ramifications as the Geek would be the first to acknowledge. It has the merit of being a realistic acceptance of past and present dynamics which show no sign of having changed in nearly two centuries. Nor is there any indication that alteration is probable in the near to mid-term.

At the same time the US should not--must not--pursue an Open Borders policy. It is quite impossible for the American economy to absorb any and all comers. Further, it frees the governments and affiliated elites in Mexico and elsewhere from the obligation to take effective measures which will provide a genuine stimulus for folks to stay in the land of their birth. Closing the safety valve is actually an act of international "tough love."

What Mexico (and other countries) needs is not an "Office of Migration" as is the case currently but an "Office of Migration Control." This means that the government and its supporting elite must finally realise that it is not possible to reverse the result of the Mexican War by some sort of population infiltration scheme. The government has to put its resources where its people are not simply where the graft sticks.

Migration control means dropping the fraudulent front of "nationalism." It means allowing, inviting foreign direct investment in the new offshore oilfields as well as in the process of repairing and upgrading the decayed infrastructure of Pemex generally. It means realising that the decades of internal war ended nearly a century ago and the expropriations which might have been appropriate then are counterproductive today and positively fatal to Mexican national interest in the near-term.

Unless and until the Mexican government institutes an Office of Migration Control the US will be justified in building Great Walls of the South, sending the ICEmen into the workplace in armed raids, and other supposedly (according to Nancy Pelosi) "unamerican actions.") Unless and until the Mexican government allows and invites American talent, technology and investment to head South of the Border, we are relieved of an affirmative obligation to serve as the Big Frontier of the North.

One Nation? Under God

Back when the Geek was a professor he put what he thought was a properly high emphasis on the role of religion, specifically Protestant Christianity, in American history. His co-workers in the history department were scandalized by this effrontery. In the unforgettable (to the Geek at least) words of one, "Of course you're right, but do you really have to make a point of it?"

The Geek realised long before that memorable encounter at the department mail boxes that he was out of step with the elite of his generation. They had almost without exception replaced the long standing American zeal for religious belief with one which celebrated secularism and the absolute separation of the communities of faith from the dialogue(s) in the public square. While being one with the famed aphorism of Laplace two hundred years ago and being a strong advocate of the "liberty of conscience" enshrined in the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses, the Geek was (and is) unwilling to distort history, least of all the history of his own country.

America was founded on religious passion. It must be recalled that the Puritans came to the wilderness of New England not in search of religious tolerance but in order to freely practice religious intolerance. As the legal history of the Massachusetts Colony shows clearly the theocrats of the Bay cheerfully instituted a regime based on religious precepts which was so narrow minded, intolerant, coercive and rigid that the most intense Taliban adherent could not improve upon it in the slightest.

Throughout the colonies religion was the kingdom and Christ was King. Laws looked both to the English common law and the bible for their justification. Community solidarity depended upon conformity of behaviour based on conformity of belief. The dissenters were neither welcomed or tolerated. Even Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the (semi-mythic) icons of religious tolerance and inclusion were actually thin-skinned, insecure strongholds of fanatics.

The need for a "liberty of conscience"clause in the basic laws of the several colonies was recognised even before the first shots of the War of Independence were fired. The Virginia Statute on Religious Liberties authored by Thomas Jefferson was a firm sign pointing in the required direction.

Unless carefully constrained the religious enthusiasm and zeal of competing sects would rip the political and social fabric of the new republic apart. Unless citizens felt themselves both protected in their individual rights of conscience, the tyranny of a religious majority would crack a sharp whip on the backs of nonconformists. Thus the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses were at the top of the post-Constitution "must do" list along with liberty of speech and the press.

Religion was not bared from the public square. That was not the intent of those who wrote and approved the clauses in question. The purpose was one of civilizing and controlling the passions so easily stirred by matters of faith. A republic, the founding generation correctly saw, demanded restraint, control and civility in the public square, and they realized that these were readily destroyed by the passions of religious belief. They also correctly saw that the minorities, the dissenters, the nonconformists, were at risk in their individual holdings and persons once the genie of belief driven zeal was released from the bottle.

Religion stayed alive, well, potent and pervasive throughout the Nineteenth Century. It, or to err on the side of accuracy, one Protestant sect, became the virtual "state religion" in the states of the Confederacy both before and after the War Between the States. Ironically, this "state religion" was a sub-set of the Baptists. The irony springs from the fact that the Baptists of the late Seventeenth Century had been the strongest proponents of a wall of separation between state and church.

Religion featured heavily not simply in the internal crisis of the War Between the States, in the fight between abolitionist and slaveowner, it was just as important in the American identity crisis which developed with increasing speed between the late 1840s and the end of the century.

Identity crisis?

You bettcha! The American people have undergone several bouts of intense anxiety over just who-are-we? and how-do-we-know-we're-us? over the past two hundred years. This is completely understandable. The US is an artificial nation. It grew around a set of ideas. These ideals coupled with the very real possibility of material betterment in a vast and underdeveloped country served as a people magnet without equal.

People from different lands, cultures, languages and--ta-da! religions came in ever increasing numbers to the US. The most critical problem through much of the Nineteenth Century was the arrival of Roman Catholics. To put it bluntly, Catholics, particularly those from Ireland and later southern Europe, were not easily or warmly accepted by the Protestant majority.

Absent the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses, the conflicts between native Protestant and new arrival Catholic would have been more violent and extensive then they were. At the national level the "civilizing" effect of the twin clauses showed itself by repeated Congressional rejection of anti-Catholic measures. Ultimately the clauses provided the breathing space and time necessary for the multiple American nations to sign a series of separate peaces over differences of religious belief and agree that we could all be Americans--what ever that might mean.

It is true that the public square seems to have become ever more secular during the first three quarters of the Twentieth Century, but that is more a matter of appearance than reality. It is more that obvious passions faded along with the identity crisis during the opening years of the century. Sure, there were moments of conflict such as the Biblical Literalists opening shots in the anti-Darwin campaign eighty and more years ago.

But, in the main, Americans were content to put the fires of belief on hold and concentrate on matters at hand. Matters like the Great Depression, World War II and ultimately the Cold War. Indeed, the American people reinforced their sense of national self by reducing the apparent differences between religions. It was Americans who invented the unhistorical notion of the "Judeo-Christian tradition," and sought to meld the differing--even conflicting--theologies of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism into a sort of bland, one-size-fits-all civic religion which defined America and its ideals vis a vis Communism.

It was the need for a Cold War appropriate way to differentiate the US from the Soviet Union which gave rise to the sudden insertion of the words, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance where it sits to this day as an indigestible lump to those of us who first learned the Pledge in grade school in the dark days before God was invoked. This brings up another delicious piece of irony.

Ironically, in view of the past few years, the US was the only non-Islamic country which differentiated itself from the Soviets on the basis of the latter being "godless" and the former "godly." The notion of godliness took such firm root in the US during the Cold War period that for a while at least it was open season on any person who was not a full, seemingly eager participant in one or another of the several flavors resident within the "Judeo-Christian tradition."

During the last decades of the past century, faith driven political ideologies re-emerged from the shadows. With the same sort of Wahhibist dedication and zeal that had typified the Puritans, the resurgent Christian "Conservatives" sought to enlist the political process in their particular (and often peculiar) view of biblically based morality. The flames of True Belief flared high, bright and hot, particularly among those who drew their nourishment from the the "state religion" of the Old Confederacy--the Southern Baptist Convention--and others from the same theological (not to say theocratic) model.

Not surprisingly the opposition reacted by elevating the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses to a level never before seen. The intelligentsia, particularly those born in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, demanded a total removal of religion not only from the public square but from American history as well.

The result has been that the elite, the opinion molders, the academics, the journalists and even many of the political class, are dedicated True Believers in the secular agenda.

The other result has been that many, even most, of the rest of the American public remains faithful to the several communities of faith which co-exist in more or less harmony throughout the US.

The purpose and intent of the twin clauses barring establishment and assuring free exercise was to civilize and restrain passions. Without this moderating influence the fires of belief--whether religious or secularist--would imperil the still very delicate balance of the republic.

Get a grip on it. The American republic has charted a narrow and twisting course through the rocks, shoals and reefs of religious zeal. We still are. Even with more than two centuries experience we don't have it right yet.

But, we do have a tradition of separating the political sphere to a substantial extent from that of religious practice and belief. This is all that separates us from the countries of Islam.

The challenge is for us to understand not only how intertwined religion and state are in the Islamic countries and what that implies. We must also understand just how delicately we are balanced on the razor's edge of too much religion and too little. Both the Christian "Conservatives" and the secular intelligentsia must curb their passions.

Both must recognise that the Founders were right--passion destroys and civility creates. Otherwise God (or something) help us all.

We Know We're Fighting--

But, do we know what we are fighting for? Or, even, what we are fighting against?

Americans have been in combat, fighting and dying for the best part of seven years now. The outgoing president committed the blunder of declaring that the US and other countries were waging a global war on terrorism. Anyone with so much as a glimmer of intelligence knew back then that the notion of a "Global War on Terrorism" was not merely a malapropism but an affront against reality.

Now, seven years and over five thousand American lives later, the war against an unnamed enemy for an undefined goal continues. It is long past time for a change. It is long past time that the US government and We the People take a firm grip on just who or what the enemy is and for what better state of peace the war is being fought.

It is long past time for us to return to the basics. In order for a war to be waged to a successful outcome two minimal requirements must be met.

The first is seemingly self-evident (although it appears to have eluded not only the Deep Thinkers of the outgoing administration but the denizens of the chattering classes generally.) There has to be an enemy.

That means a real enemy. Not a tactic of war which is what terrorism constitutes. A war cannot be waged against a tactic as many have observed. Imagine how silly it would have been had FDR demanded on 8 December 1941 that the US declare war on "unexpected sea-launched air attacks not preceded by a declaration of war or ultimatum" rather than on the Japanese Empire.

Had the outgoing administration possessed even the rudiments of realpolitik it would have announced that the US would wage retaliatory war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan which harbored it. That would have been a legitimate and realistic appraisal of the nature of the enemy.

The neocon ninnies of the Bush Administration failed to properly define the enemy.

This initial failure assured that a second would quickly follow. Keep in mind that wars are waged in the expectation that a better state of peace will follow. Had the enemy been narrowly and properly defined seven years ago, then the task of characterising a better state of peace would have been simple and straightforward.

A better state of peace (from our perspective at least) would come about as soon as al-Qaeda and Taliban were removed as potential threats to American national security. Period. The simple removal of these two entities--including by implication at least their leadership cadres-would make the world a better and safer place.

There would have been no need nor impetus for the disastrous mission lurch in Afghanistan which has resulted in the progressive destabilizing of that country but of Pakistan as well. There would have been neither need for nor impetus to the brainless High Minded cant concerning the building of a secular, pluralistic democracy in Afghanistan.

The failure (or unwillingness) of the outgoing administration to realistically and narrowly define the enemy and the desired better state of peace before launching the attacks on Afghanistan left the door wide open for the single most disastrous blunder in US foreign policy--the invasion of Iraq.

Our participation in Iraq may be winding down and the outgoing president may have admitted that possibly democracy as we Americans know it will not take firm root in Iraq, but there has been no redefinition of the enemy, no reassessment as to the nature of the better state of peace hoped to ensue when (and if) the guns and bombs are silenced.

To this day neither the government nor the military services of the United States are willing to say just who or what the enemy in the current "long war" might be. Worse, there is ample evidence that both the civilian and military command echelons have been totally resistant to appreciating let alone studying the sources of our enemy's conduct and identity.

Not to put too fine a point on the dagger of reality, the enemy over the past seven years has been Islam. To err on the side of total accuracy, the enemy is those Muslims who seize upon and exploit features of Islam which have served for centuries to make that religion the faith of warriors, the belief system of conquerors.

Make no mistake about it. Islam and nothing but Islam in the mouths of charismatic leaders propelled a scruffy amphyctony from the sands of Arabia to the South of France and later transformed another bunch of scurvy nomads into the Great Turkish Threat whose waves lapped at the walls of Vienna before finally receding to the harems of Istanbul.

Not even the Christianity of the First Crusade could begin to match Islam as the most sublime Warrior Faith. As several noted Egyptian clerics have commented lately on TV as they sought to encourage martyrs for Gaza, the Muslims of the past loved death more than the crusaders and others loved life.

Not even the distorted Shintoism of the Japanese Empire before and during World War II could make that statement.

At an ever accelerating rate over the past fifty years, the sleeping Warrior Faith has been awakened by politically ambitious and ever-more-potent clerics and others to motivate Muslims to die (and kill) in pursuit Islamic Revival. That means revival not as a religion per se but as a political force on the global stage.

There is the enemy. Not terrorism. Not "asymmetrical warfare." Not even one specific group such as al-Qaeda. Not even a specific country such as Iran.

The enemy is the Warrior Faith of Islam enlisted in pursuit of power on the world historical stage.

This enemy is implacable. This enemy is not one with which compromise is possible--even thinkable. This enemy is potentially far more threatening, far more potent than were the secular enemies of Nazism or Communism. This enemy may have been quiescent for centuries, caught in the backwater eddies of human experience, but it is alive, active and growing stronger by the day.

To defeat this enemy, this combination of a warrior faith without peer and expansionist ideology, we must study it, dispassionately and closely. We do not serve ourselves or our future well by pretending that political Islam is either a "misunderstanding"of the Quran and Hadith or that it is some sort of passing perversion caused by economic grievance or political marginalization.

We must read and parse both the sacred literature and the history of Islam as once we did the history of Russia and the writings of Marx, Lenin and Mao. We must know the sources of our enemy's conduct and goals.

But, understanding our enemy is not enough. On its own, the understanding of the enemy will not allow us to bring about a better state of peace no matter how long the war continues.

We must understand what we are fighting for. This task is, if anything, harder than identifying and knowing the enemy.

The fact that knowing ourselves, understanding what we are fighting for, what would constitute a better state of peace, is ironic.

Why? You ask.

The irony comes from our own history. It comes from the internal divisions which mark the landscape of the United States today. Not simply the division between elite and hoi polloi. More it depends upon the split, the deep fissure of more than one hundred and fifty years standing, which caused the surface split between those who think of themselves as members of the elite and those who don't.

More of that in the next post.