James K. Polk was a noteworthy president, worthy of a better fate than to be forgotten outside of the dozens of middle schools that bear his name. George W. Bush has certainly sampled liberally from the Polk playbook, although that he did so consciously is dubious. That he knows who James K. Polk is, for that matter, is dubious.
After the U.S. annexed Texas in 1845, Mexico was pretty irritated. They had ideas of hanging on to it (and a lot of other territory). Polk was convinced that pre-emptive war with Mexico was necessary to protect the newly-stateified (not a word) Texas from the inevitable Mexican attack. The problem was that he couldn't talk Congress into declaring war, which used to be a prerequisite to the U.S. being in a war. Quaint days, those were.
Here's where Polk got crafty.
He exercised his Commander-in-Chief powers to mobilize a large portion of the Army (under Zachary Taylor) to the U.S.-Mexican border. A funny thing happens when two armies from hostile nations are in close proximity; they start fighting. They progress from trading insults to threats to hot lead. And Polk understood that once a war begins, there's no effective way to stop it without dire consequences. So the first time an angry, sun-stroked Mexican soldier lost control of his itchy trigger finger, the Army said "We were attacked" and responded with both barrels. Lo and behold, Congress declared war shortly thereafter. Start the war first, get approval second. Brilliant. Think about Congress's preferences. 1) No war 2) Win war 3) Lose war. Eliminate #1 and their next highest preference becomes the dominant strategy – even when "victory" is nebulous and undefinable.
The people responsible for starting the war in Iraq understood this (Our Leader not being among that group). While the less intelligent among them believed in their faith-based projections – they'll hail us as their liberators, the fighting will be over in 6 weeks, and all the various factions will get along – but the real architects of the war…..they knew. They knew that all they had to do was start it.
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Start it and, like a rudderless ocean liner that goes nowhere but never stops, it will take on a self-sustaining momentum of its own.
As I listen to the various presidential candidates' positions on the war, something that we've been whispering as a nation since 2004 has become inescapable: there is no endgame. There is no "good" solution. There's not even a solution. No one has a plan. And that was the plan all along. It's a colossal clusterfuck, and leaving makes it worse. The goal was to entangle the military in a terrible situation which could only get worse following a withdrawl.
The reason I do not give two shits about this election is that the candidates all lead to the same outcome – we're in Iraq for four more years, and then four more after that. Repeat an indeterminate, but likely large, number of times. Obama and Clinton might actually believe that they're going to end our involvement. Does anyone else? Sadly I think a lot of people do. They are in for a real disappointment in that case. The hypothetical Democratic presidents will be cowed into staying in order to "look tough" to the Republican and military establishment. Or they'll simply bow to the overwhelming logistical impossibility of leaving.
It breaks my heart to see so many people pouring their hearts and souls into Obama. Not only am I dubious of his odds at this point, but his election will result in far less "change" than his followers are expecting.
I suppose every generation needs that political figure who represents their crushing disillusionment with politics – a McGovern for the present day. Sure, the Democratic candidates will nibble around the edges of our involvement in Iraq, making slow, token withdrawls, treating the troops a little better, and not so blatantly using the conflict as a welfare fund for defense contractors. But there's no escaping our continued involvement.
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Another generation of young voters will learn that the differences are all in the margins; the things that really matter are entirely beyond our control.
Don't truth me, Bro' says:
The art of the whipsaw is displayed in detail in Robert Caro's The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Moses was slimy SOB and would be driving stakes or digging up roads well before he was legally able to do so.
The underlying example set by Moses that the true fount of wealth in America is the tax coffers fits a pattern, in my mind. Caro's Lyndon Johnson bio is an extrapolation of that through the lense of Johnson's career. When the final volume comes out this year, with Caro's dogged research, I predict that he will have found that Johnson knew of Kennedy's assassination in advance, even if he was not culpable in any active sense. The sheer magnitude of expenditure in Viet Nam is the most obvious aspect of it as the blueprint for taking tax dollars from everyone and putting them in the pockets of a select minority while exerting greater and greater control over the general populace.
Media ownership coupled with utility/energy ownership as well as military ownership, and all in the hands of more or less the same people who favor the market while pillaging the govt. dole. Hitler needed 33%. Here we have 1/100th of 1 percent ordering the 1/10th of 1 percent leading the next 10% leading a random smattering of fundamentalist redneck self-loathing projectionists of about 15-20% around by the nose.
Matthew says:
Ah, I love the smell of cynicism in the morning!
JDryden says:
Might not the next president follow the Nixonian example of promising progress, waiting out the first term, and then, when lame-duckedness has made him/her bulletproof, pull out and call it "peace with honor"? Granted, Iraq will be fucked, and much worse off than when we went in, but since our nation is already at a point of "screw 'em–it's them or us, and it ain't gonna be us," won't that be the inevitable decision?
Michael says:
I have to agree. The whole point of this Iraq clusterfuck was perpetual war. There was never any intention to go in and get out. And once it was started, it's nearly impossible to stop. We're stuck.
So is it worse to pull out, let the whole region go to hell in a handbasket, or do we continue to waste money and lives trying to keep things from getting any worse? This fucking blows.
Kreggg says:
VASQUEZ
All right, we can't blow the fuck
out of them…why not roll some
canisters of CN-20 down there.
Nerve gas the whole nest?
HUDSON
Look, man, let's just bug out and
call it even, okay?
RIPLEY
(to Vasquez)
No good. How do we know it'll
effect their biochemistry? I say
we take off and nuke the entire
site from orbit. It's the only
way to be sure.
BURKE
Now hold on a second. I'm not
authorizing that action.
RIPLEY
Why not?
Burke senses the challenge in her tone and backpedals
flawlessly into conciliatory mode.
BURKE
Well, I mean…I know this is an
emotional moment, but let's not
make snap judgments. Let's move
cautiously. First, this physical
installation had a substantial
dollar value attached to it —
Lowering the level of discourse day in and day out.
Kulkuri says:
The thing people need to realize is that the fighting in Iraq will continue whether or not our troops are there. So leaving our troops in Iraq helps how?? Maybe the thing to do is that if they haven't started bringing the troops home, vote out everyone up for election in 2010.