Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

It's been established that the Spinal Tap drummer choked on someone else's vomit.

I'm amazed that this long-refuted slander is still being repeated. But that's about par for the course around here. Any slander that comes along is good enough for liberals.

I suspect that many of the formerly pro-war pundits and editorial boards were having second thoughts long before now. The Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal just gave them the excuse they needed to come out of the closet with it.

And the story is always the same: "we were RIGHT about the need for war so we don't have to admit we were DUPED IDIOTS, we just couldn't appreciate how incompetent Bush and his Bushies are."

>It's been established that the Spinal Tap drummer choked on someone else's vomit.
Is this someone satirizing Patrick or is it the real Patrick? The world wants to know. It has long been obvious that Patrick doesn't do metaphors or analogies. Indeed as things continue to detriorate in Iraq he seems to become progressively more out of touch. It's all too much for him. He has become, like, a metaphor, of himself. Hoping to cast doubt on reality by
raising the smallest of details. Thus he has come to occupy an analagous place here that the Bush administration does internationally. A reputation for perversion.

Within the defense community it is still SOP to refer to the invasion of Iraq as the center piece of the war on terrorism, and quote the "We want them in Baghdad not Boston" line from the Bush executive.

We will continue to have a warped defense policy so long as it is run by individuals who are unable to be intellectually honest. The fundamental rule of war is to kill the right people.

I'm pleased that Clark thinks those academic exchanges helped. I remember the first one I was involved in during the 1980s. One of the Soviets we worked with was reputedly a colonel in the KGB. He later became Minister for Ethnic affairs and was put in charge of finding a solution to Chechen-Itza by Gorbachev. Another man, who was our step-and-fetch-it in Moscow later became vice mayor of Moscow and was the man who fingered the people who tried to overthrow Gorbachev in the aborted coup. (He subsequently became a Christian zealot and absconded with I believe $10 million. He is rumoured to have been seen in Santa Monica).

We always thought we were doing the Lord's work in this endeavour. I do economic history, which at the time was part of the core ideology of the Soviet Regime. As a result we came into contact with people much higher in the nomenklatural than we had a right to know. Just listening and cooperating with them in common academic projects did a lot of good. I recall taking them to the airport to catch the Aerflot plane back to Moscow. They were met by real KGB -- those guys were mean and tough, and very athletic. It was scary. Another time the KGB officer opened up to me and told how, as a young man around 1960 he was posted to Magadan, and how he and his compatriots came across a field of skulls. He claims to have become a closet liberal at that point. I think in our little way we did some good, and a lot of litle good sometimes aggregates into a big good.

Clark's essay is outstanding. Kerry should make him VP.

So the USSR collapsed due to something that happened in the 50's that had a long lag time. Not Saint Ronnie's work? Can't be.

>It's been established that the Spinal Tap drummer choked on someone else's vomit.

The circumstances behind Eric "Stumpy Joe" Childs' death are mysterious...Spinal Tap at one point claimed that he actually died of a melanin overdose.

But the so-called liberal media still talks about Stumpy Joe but completely ignores the bizarre gardening "accident" of John "Stumpy" Pepys just five years earlier. Where is the outrage?

Russia's empire didn't collapse. It rotted away. My impression from visits there were that folk were aware of shortages for the peasantry; but not for Communist Officials. Minor thievery of food stuffs and continuing petty corruption was rampant within the populace working in retaurants, food warehouses, butchers, transport. I had one experience where I and my Dad's Godson (a Director of chicken processing facilities) stopped for lunch. The waiter brought the menu, but as we ordered he would interject *we don't have that* referring to the herring in sour cream, or farmers cheese, or etc. The Director/Godson took the waiter into the back room where he told him that he knew of the shipment of Herring that had been delivered within the hour. *You had better produce the herring or the authorities will be called and you will be arrested*. We had our apertizer. The Godson said that it was common to take the products home and sell it on the black market thereby enhancing their meager earnings. The countries behind the Iron Curtain were wideopen for DOLLARS. Another relative who was a Party Official invited us to dinner. We had a great meal. He volunteered that he had connections to get the fine meats. His Russian wife added to his procuratorial abilities. She was a Director in the Meat Enterprise. Corruption was petty, but widespread. TV and cultural exchanges as well as contact with relatives who had emigrated years ago and sent money and gifts certainly showed the paucity in their consumer goods and services. Their experiences in WWII and its aftermath made the draft age males hate conscription and try every ruse to avoid it. War had no appeal to this populace.

Gen. Clark is entitled to his opinion, but his notion is only the tip of the iceberg. The US could have pulled out 50 years ago and I doubt there would have been an attack from the East. We had the nuclear deterrent. We have no need to sit in Europe even today except to visit these *exotic colonies/duty stations* at public expense.

I was posting about this at the time (Clarke and Beers, not Spinal Tap, or Clark for that matter), although I thought it was only three, not four (and now five). The Beers thing was what got me really fuming at the media. They by and large bought, or were happy to peddle without much questioning, the "disgruntled because he was 'demoted' and friend of Kerry campaign worker' line. I could just about cope with die-hard Bushies putting it down to partisanship, but I really couldn't understand how not a single pundit thought it reflected badly that not only Clarke resigned in disgust, but one of his successors resigned in disgust AND JOINED HIS FORMER BOSSES ELECTION CAMPAIGN. To anyone with half a braincell, that should have indicated that something pretty serious was going wrong. I've said it before and I'll say it again. In twenty years time, people will look back on the Bush years and will only be able to explain it by assuming that most of the country was engaged in some sort of mass hallucination.

I was posting about this at the time (Clarke and Beers, not Spinal Tap, or Clark for that matter), although I thought it was only three, not four (and now five). The Beers thing was what got me really fuming at the media. They by and large bought, or were happy to peddle without much questioning, the "disgruntled because he was 'demoted' and friend of Kerry campaign worker' line. I could just about cope with die-hard Bushies putting it down to partisanship, but I really couldn't understand how not a single pundit thought it reflected badly that not only Clarke resigned in disgust, but one of his successors resigned in disgust AND JOINED HIS FORMER BOSS'S ELECTION CAMPAIGN. To anyone with half a braincell, that should have indicated that something pretty serious was going wrong. I've said it before and I'll say it again. In twenty years time, people will look back on the Bush years and will only be able to explain it by assuming that most of the country was engaged in some sort of mass hallucination.

Or rather: Joined the election campaign of his former boss's opponent.

Sorry about the double post, it's four in the morning here. Damn 24 hour shifts.

Yes it was a chain of command failure. And it goes a long way up to the top. But there's also the fact that Ms. England and her fiance, Pvt. Garner, are freepin' wierdos. (He's the one with the restraining order from his ex-wife. Who video-taped her, and creeps her out.) Like many spousal abusers, Garner's probably got a closet of violent kinky fantasies (now shared with the world), while she's likely drawn into ill-fated relationships with controlling men.

Oh, and Lynndie's pregnant (in January!?!) too.

http://www.lnreview.co.uk/links/001790.php

Lynndie England: up the duff without a paddle

She called me in January and said,
‘Mom, something bad has happened,
but don’t worry about it’
- Terrie England

It took four months to come out, but Lynndie knew, back in January, that she was facing trouble over the torture photographs.

Big trouble. So what did she do...? Did she panic? No. Did she give vent to her anxiety by forcing some naked Iraqis prisoners to masturbate each other? Probably. But that’s not all.

Lynndie suspected she was going to face serious charges over her maltreatment of prisoners, so the clever little war criminal took drastic action: she got herself knocked up. By her war criminal fiancé, Charles Graner.

According to the Keyser Mineral Daily News-Tribune:

Along with a case of bronchitis, England is four months pregnant.

Four months? Do the math. She got herself impregnated in January

Lawrence Boyd: I agree. I also noticed a change, only I couldn't put it in these words.

donmaj: Well observed; this is how it was. While your experience focuses on petty theft and embezzlement in the food business, in all other parts of the economy it was exactly the same. One thing to note though is that part of the theft was motivated by insufficient materials allocated to public consumption. In East Germany, if you wanted to do house repairs or an extension, you could not just walk into a store and buy what you need; it was not there in sufficient quantity. Virtually the only way to get at the material was (a) to steal it, (b) purchase it from somebody who stole it, or (c) contract a black-market contractor with materials supplied by him, which is the same as (b), with the addition that the guy is probably also doing the labor during his work hours (and you have to abscond from _your_ work to supervise it). But then others are absconding as well, or you refer the contractor to your boss etc., and everybody is happy in this live-and-let-live scheme.

The good General Clark omitted one of the most significant events in the decline of the Soviet Union—the installation of the Pershing II IRBMs and GLCMs in Europe in 1985. The Kremlin was relying on the European peace movement to prevent the installation-- it couldn’t. The missiles really put the SU in an untenable military position. Pershing IIs could reach their targets in something like 12 minutes; there was no possible defense. This forced the Kremlin to accept something it initially said it would never do—the zero-zero option of the INF treaty. We got a very good deal, the elimination of the SS20 and other Soviet missiles and the right to make on-site inspections. Had we listened to the peaceniks, we would have never deployed the Pershing IIs and lost the leverage. By 1991 the INF treaty eliminated the missiles on both sides, and shortly thereafter the SU fell apart. This was one big nail in the coffin of the Soviet System, but there were others-- in particular Afghanistan (Clark omitted this too).

Andre Amalrik (SU dissident) in his book “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?” predicted the downfall of the SU after a protracted war with China. Replace China with Afghanistan, move the date a little, and he gets it right. According to Amalrik when the SU failure to subdue China (Afghanistan), the government lost its mystique of omnipotence with its subjects. A mystique carefully nurtured by the Party since the October 1917 Putsch that put it in power. Without this mystique the authority and power of the system eroded.

In the end it’s always hard power that really counts.

A. Zarkov: You are right about the military significance of the mid-range missiles stationed in Europe. I doubt, however, that this is what broke the neck of the Eastern bloc. Having lived in that world, I saw how the societies were rotting from inside (although I can only fully appreciate it in hindsight), and the reasons for the downfall were internal, although external pressures may have contributed marginally to the extent that (a) more resources may have been expended on the military than without the European missile bases, accelerating the economic deterioration, and (b) the military weakening may have led to tougher external trade terms as trade partners saw the missile threat and became bolder in the expectation that the SU could no longer blackmail them militarily to the same extent. So it may have been the proverbial straw on the camel's back, but not a leading cause.

Some of that is speculation however; do you think it makes sense?

A. Zarkov: "[T]he government lost its mystique of omnipotence with its subjects."

This strikes me as a good and significant point, although it is hard to quantify.

"In the end it’s always hard power that really counts."

That's true, and there is much less truly "hard" power to go around than most people think. To the largest extent your power and authority (a related but different concept) is what others assign to you in their imagination. Bullshit and bluffing run the risk of being unmasked at some point. The administrations of the US and the whole Western world should take this to heart and chew a while on it.

cm: I fully agree, the Communist world did rot from the inside, and this was the fundamental cause of its demise. It’s a question of timing. How long should it have taken for them to rot to the point of collapse? How come Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea are still around? Aren’t they rotting too? What’s taking so long? Then again didn’t the Hoxia regime (the most Stalinist and closed society of them all with the possible exception of N. Korea) in Albania fold very quickly with the rest?

I disagree with Clark about of Helsinki Accords being “the crucial step in opening the way for the subsequent peaceful democratization of the Soviet bloc.” In my opinion, his statement shows a fundamental lack of understanding about the nature of those regimes. The SU and Eastern European communist regimes couldn’t “democratize,” they had to utterly fall apart. They existed by usurping virtually all power in society (Yugoslavia was perhaps one exception). To put another way, they had to virtually eliminate civil society (everything between the family and the government) because they can’t co-exist with any potential rivals for power. Radical Islam too can’t really co-exist with civil society, it insists on an absolute monopoly of power. Is why the Left won’t take a strong stand against it?

“Bullshit and bluffing run the risk of being unmasked at some point. The administrations of the US and the whole Western world should take this to heart and chew a while on it.”

Yes that’s why we need to pick our fights carefully, using a surrogate if possible to do the actual fighting, and don’t bluff or apologize.

A. Zarkov: "How come Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea are still around?"

Just speculating, neither of them are in Europe. The Central European "Communist" states including East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, but also Romania, Bulgaria, to varying extent the Yugoslav countries and even Russia (not sure about Albania) had modern-style (European-style?) civil societies either in a parliamentary or constitutional-monarchy setting, at least in the major urban centers. And they were otherwise embedded in a connected if not common millenia-old European history, for better and/or worse. The non-European states that you name were geographically and to an extent culturally isolated.

"The SU and Eastern European communist regimes couldn’t “democratize,” they had to utterly fall apart."

The SU - yes perhaps, although the old power structures are still mostly in place, but in most Central European states the pre-WW2 social and historic traditions survived, even if only laying dormant, to a large extent. The bottom-level social relationships and the basic framework of the social institutions is something that endures over several generations. If those relationships and institutions are strong, and being embedded or associated with a religious context can only help, they cannot be taken apart at a whim. The various Christian churches and other religious (e.g. Jewish) communities could not be abolished, and played a powerful role either explicitly, or just by providing cultural context and keeping the cultural heritage alive.

"Radical Islam too can’t really co-exist with civil society, it insists on an absolute monopoly of power."

You could make the same case about any other extremist religious factions, be it of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever coloring. But analogously to Europe, a potential attempt at democratization (or perhaps rather Westernization) of Iraq or other Middle-Eastern countries would meet similar resistances -- these societies are embedded in a common Middle-Eastern/religious (mostly Islamic/Christian) history and social tradition which has even received very powerful stimulus by various external conquest attempts in the past two centuries, and is otherwise even older than the European history. For outsiders the mechanisms holding these societies together are probably very difficult to understand, and attempts at abolishing them will fail. Nation building can only build on existing foundations. These are very strong, you cannot hope to remove them, and neither would this be desirable nor does anybody have a right to attempt it.

cm:

The SU and Eastern European communist regimes couldn’t “democratize,” they had to utterly fall apart."

I put in “Eastern European” by accident; my statement is really confined to the SU and perhaps Albania. You’re quite right civil society (or pieces thereof) were certainly functioning in countries like Poland, and especially Yugoslavia. I think your’re right about the geographical explanation for Cuba and Vietnam.

“You could make the same case about any other extremist religious factions, be it of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever coloring.”

We find Mosques in Italy and Israel, but we don’t find Churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. Indeed in Saudi Arabia any other religion is ruthlessly suppressed. US soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia cannot have any kind of Christmas observance whatsoever, and the US government complies with this (an outrage). Even the most extreme orthodox faction of Judaism does not insist on a monopoly of power. Remember Judaism (including its extreme factions) does not seek converts and considers all gentiles to be righteous (unless specific individuals demonstrate otherwise by their acts). Contrast this with radial Islam who specifically states that Jews are not human. Yes the extreme religious factions in Israel want stores closed on Saturday and no civil marriage, but they would not demand Mosques or Churches be closed. If you have any evidence to the contrary please tell me. I can’t say anything about the Hindus as I have very little knowledge in this area.

If you think that combustion was "spontaneous" then you're more gullible than I thought you were ...

Meanwhile, I tend to be cynical (no really). The US hasn't developed a decent press corps. All that's happened is that the "governing narrative" is in the process of switching to one which is more congenial to your (our) side. In six month's time Patrick Sullivan will be posting agonised denunciations of the quality of American reporting, we will be defending the stories as valid, and everyone will be just as right (or wrong) as ever they were.

A. Zharkov:

Yes, the Bourbons in Saudi Arabia are aligned with the Wahabis. But who exactly is it that supports those Bourbons? And why is it that we should expect that there be synagogues and churches in Saudi Arabia, when those religions have not been present there for a thousand years, if ever? Hardly an "outrage". And it is not the ultra-orthodox Jews who are the most extreme, in the political sense, and thus seeking to monopolize power. And that Judaism does not seek converts,- one of its many admirable characteristics, in my view,- does have the Darwinian effect of consigning it to minority status. So, yes, let us all bow down and pray to the great god Context here.

When was Amalrik's book written? My memory is, about 1970 -- 1984 seemed rather far in the future when I saw the book. What ever happened to him?

I think that one of the most meaningful things the US could do would be to encourage Saudi Arabia to secularize. (Not even democratize or liberalize). Cut off subsidies to Islam and tolerate other religions and irreligion. SA was the source of 9/11 and has been funding that kind of thing indirectly for decades.

I've had it fully explained to me that the Saudis have us over the barrel because of oil. As does China because of trade. So with globalization, the US's international leverage is down to zero. We're reduced to slapping the kid sitting next to the kid who misbehaves all the time, and looking for our billfold where we didn't lose it because the light's better there.

Andrei Amalrik died in a suspiscious one car automobile accident in Spain in 1980. The assumption at the time was that the KGB had a role.

NK and Cuba exist as communist states because they are cut off from most contact with Democratic countries and capitalism, Cuba to a lesser extent than NK. If NK had free trade and travel with SK, the pressure to liberalize the government would be enormous. SK has lots of goods that the NKs would like to have but don't. NK is kept backward because the only citizens that have anything are their political elite and gung ho members of the military. The government controls most media and lack of everything is blamed on SK and the US. NK can remain a totalitarian state, but the price they pay is being backward economically. That is a downward spiral. The worse off they are economically, the more repressive they have to be. The more repressive they are, the worse they are economically. They are riding the tiger. They dare not let go, but they cannot ride forever.

Cuba is liberalizing much more than most would admit. The Cuban government has always been more biased to the poorest citizens. It is the doctors, professionals and people with skills that suffer the most in Cuba. The basic needs of the masses are met. Because of the US trade embargo, Cuba has not been able to develop a class that can accumulate enough wealth to begin to successfully challenge government domination.

None of these conditions existed in Communist Europe or the FSU in the 1980s. Liberalization of trade with capitalist countries put pressure on governments to improve the lot of the masses through liberal trade policies. Do not overlook the computer revolution as a factor in the collapse of communism. The totalitarian states depended on control of information to prevent antagonistic organizations from forming. One of my professors said that he used to get most of his reprint requests from communist countries because people in the US would just photocopy the journal but the people in communist countries did not have access to photocopiers for security reasons.

What is a computer but a modern printing press? How can you have computers and computer networks and still have control over the press and information? The communist countries had a choice of accepting new computer technology and giving up control of the press or not accepting computers and being left in the technological dust. Because the communists were slow to computerize and because they lacked competition, their productivity suffered.

Russia had a fantastic method of building a large industrial capacity from a backward agrarian society in a very short period of time. However, the system lacked a mechanism to continually improve what it built or replace the old technology with the new. It would be like the US having all these dinosaur steel mills and no mini mill competition. The communist countries did not have good pollution control either, because they could not have an environmental movement that was critical of industry because it was all government run. They are still way behind on pollution control and are very polluted countries.

It is my impression that new technology made old tactics of suppressing opinion obsolete and really forced a change in the system. The Soviet military never collapsed. It is still intact from all I have read. What collapsed was their economic system and having the state run all enterprises.

I don't understand the arguments of Zarkov about hard power. As I understand it, the Russians still have Nukes pointed at the US. They still have a huge army but it is bogged down in Chechnya. They still have enough tanks to invade Europe. The US still keeps troops in Germany as a deterrent. The Zarkov argument seems to be that the Russian economy collapsed because of something done militarily by the US and western Europe that was short of war. I don't understand the mechanism?

Doesn't an economic and political collapse usually occur for economic and political reasons, not military reasons? Look at India. The British were driven out because A) they could not afford to run it any longer, B) they lost the political cooperation of the masses and C) they lacked the will or INCENTIVE to use military force because it would have been an economic disaster (the British version of Algeria or French Indochina).

Can you explain why the collapse of the FSU (basically Russia and its colonies) is so different from the collapse of the British empire, colonies in Africa and the Middle East etc.? I would have thought that Russia was able to protect its colonial assets much longer than the other European powers because its geographical proximity made it economically viable. So their empire lasted several decades longer than the British, Dutch and French who had the additional expense of distance. Once economics forced the end of Western European colonialism (with some military uprising), Western European countries had to develop other relationships with their former colonies. The French military fought to keep Vietnam and Algeria, but didn't they give up their other colonies for economic reasons? Did the British and Dutch lose their colonies for military reasons?

I am not a Russia expert, but what I know of history and the facts on the ground point to an economic and political change and not a military change. Is this correct? If this is correct, are not the reasons for the collapse more likely to be economic and political and not military? Isn't our biggest problem in Iraq that we cannot afford to do economically what we need to do to rebuild Iraq and cannot afford to pay for the military needed to stabilize it? It seems to me that economics and politics are bigger obstacles to US goals in Iraq than military limitations. Why was the same not true for the FSU and its collapse?

Calling Prof. DeLong, your children are in need of more adult supervision. The two posts attributed to me are bogus. Typical.

Y'all thought I went and got some smarts, didn't you?

john c. halasz:

The “outrage” is the prohibition of any religious observance whatsoever in any form by American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia-- stationed there in part to protect the Saudis. Moreover, the US requires (or did) female military personnel to wear burkas.
The very same military that would normally scream: “you’re out of uniform soldier! I find this level of America obsequiousness outrageous. The Saudis will arrest a missionary. Who else but a fundamentalist or radical Muslim country would do such a thing? Who are these non-orthodox extremist Jews who seek to monopolize power? And by “power” I mean all power such that civil society is effectively eliminated.

bakho:

Cuba is not really cut off from democratic countries. Canada trades with Cuba. Mexico has had friendly relations with Cuba for decades, to mention but two of many. NK has chosen to isolate itself. BTW Cuba is not liberating. Even long time friend Mexico is now willing to call a spade a spade. To wit:

“On April 15, Mexico voted in favor of a resolution by the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemning Cuba. The resolution passed by one vote, 22-21, and the Cuban representative was so angry he punched a Cuban-American who had lobbied in favor of it.”

You say: “The basic needs of the masses are met.”

Well we can argue about what is “basic” are what are “needs.” But I don’t think so. People have a basic need for some measure of liberty like not being put in a mental asylum for being a homosexual. And not forced to have psychosurgery.

More on “hard power” later.

Bakho writes:
> I am not a Russia expert, but what I know of history and the
> facts on the ground point to an economic and political change
> and not a military change. Is this correct? If this is correct, are
> not the reasons for the collapse more likely to be economic
> and political and not military?

I think that depends on how you view the political change, in particular. I went to the SU with a group of student musicians in the summer of 1984; the timing was...interesting. You didn't have to walk more than a block away from any of the streets that actually appeared on maps to see that the economic situation was pretty horrible. But talking to people, nobody seemed to think it was spectacularly worse than it had been for quite some times. What *was* different was the fact that they were involved in a complete quagmire in Afghanistan, and that it had become obvious to most Russians that casualties were far heavier than anyone was admitting, and success was still elusive. In other words, the vaunted military was *not* rolling over the opponent even though lots of people were getting killed and maimed. I think this was a big contributor to the political crisis. People in the SU could accept some level of deprivation if they were the supreme super power (as they were told), but anything that led them to doubt this was going to be very deadly indeed.

I agree that Cuba is not "liberating". The word I used was "liberalizing", That is in reference to the Cuban economy, not political policy. Cuban political policy is best characterized by a series of crackdowns with less restrictive interludes. Cuba has only recently had another crackdown. That said, US embargo is stupid. Castro has all the resources he needs to maintain power but potential opponents cannot gain resources that are needed to build an opposition because of the embargo. 41 years of failure and counting.

As for the FSU in Afghanistan, they only lost 15,000 and about 55,000 wounded in a decade of fighting. Of course the inability to control diseases that ravaged over half (400,000) of their troops was a bigger problem. The Soviets probably could have stayed in Afghanistan and not suffered any worse losses than 1500 per year. The FSU more or less rolled in and took over in less time it took the US to invade Iraq. By the end of 1983, about the time you were there, Mr. King, the FSU had lost fewer than 7000 troops and the Soviet press only admitted to losing a few soldiers. It was not until Gorbachev that the FSU would have begun printing the true Afghan casualties.

I don't know that the FSU ever lost a battle in Afghanistan, certainly they were not forced out. The lost only 15,000 to over a million Afghans dead and another 5 million fleeing the country. It just became too expensive and unpopular for the FSU to stay. Certainly the US supplying the Afghans made the FSU stay their more miserable, but it did not force them out. Did the Russians question the might of the Soviet army? or become disillusioned with the personal and economic costs of Afghanistan and rethink their policy to their other satellite countries?

The US could probably stay in Iraq for a decade with less than 1,000 dead and maybe 5,000 wounded per year. That is certainly not enough military damage to drive us out. $5 Billion per month is. Especially when that money is needed for domestic programs and it is of limited use for the US to stay in Iraq. It won't be a military defeat that causes the US to leave Iraq. The reasons will be economic and political.

For a history of the FSU in Afghanistan, go here:

http://www.bdg.minsk.by/cegi/N2/Afg/Waraf.htm

Replace FSU with US and Afghanistan with Iraq and... nevermind.

A . Zharhov:

The extremist element would be the militant Israeli settler movement, much of which takes on a semi-orthodox cast, but which is basically religious-nationalist. The main ultra-orthodox groups in Israel were originally non-Zionist and, at least, the Sephardic Shas group takes a centrist position on security matters- I'm not sure of the Lithuanian groups.

As for Saudi Arabia, the monarchy is a sprawling and deeply corrupt regime that maintains itself by an alliance with the puritanical Wahabi sect of Islam. It could explode at any time. As for any "civil society" in Saudi Arabia, it is very difficult to view that society and regime from the outside, but it does consist entirely of Arab Muslims and seems still to maintain a largely tribal structure. Wahabism, however, is basically a minor off-shoot of Sunni Muslim orthodoxy, regarded as extreme and rather primitive by the mainstream centers of learned authority, and owes its prominence to the efforts of the Saudi regime to export it with oil money and on the back of Cold War policies and currents. Yes, mistakes were made.

More generally, my point, since I infer that you are a shyster by trade, is what exactly is the argumentative point of these citations of fact, without consideration of context, proportion and relevant implication?

john c. halasz:

“More generally, my point, since I infer that you are a shyster by trade, is what exactly is the argumentative point of these citations of fact, without consideration of context, proportion and relevant implication?”

First off you might not realize (or perhaps you do) that “shyster” is an extremely pejorative term. It means: An unethical, unscrupulous practitioner, especially of law.

Moreover, it is derivative of the German word “scheisser” which literally means "one who defecates." The rough English equivalent would be “bastard” or “son of a bitch.” I certainly hope that I’m not unethical or unscrupulous; certainly no one has ever called me that. Finally I’m not a lawyer.

The citations of fact serve to back up my prior remark to the effect that today’s radical Islam [and fundamentalist Islam] really can’t tolerate civil society—they seek a monopoly on power in a way only matched by what we saw in North Korea, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Hoxia’s Albania. Orwell described the crushing of civil society in its pure form in his novel “1984.” Saudi Arabia and Iran are examples of Fundamentalist Islamic Republics that suppress normal civil society. Just as Stalin insisted on absolute fealty to the party, fundamentalist Islam insists on rigid observance to the strictures of what they consider Islam. After all the Mullahs in Iran put out a contract on the life of Solomon Rushdie for merely writing his book: “Satanic Verses.”

The Israeli settlers in the West Bank territories hardly resemble the extremists of either Islam or Communism. They do not seek to crush civil society, nor do they want to wield absolute power. Do you think they regard all Muslims as non-human, the way extremist Muslims regard all Jews?

Zarkov- "The good General Clark omitted one of the most significant events in the decline of the Soviet Union—the installation of the Pershing II IRBMs and GLCMs in Europe in 1985"

I still don't see any connection between these particular missiles and the economic and political collapse of the FSU. WTF?

As for NK and Cuba, haven't they faced greater "hard power" relative to their size than the FSU? I don't think your ideas of why the FSU collapsed are very predictive. They certainly don't explain Cuba or NK. I don't even think they explain the collapse of the FSU.

Any industry that is in financial straits, will dump those divisions that are not profitable. A shrewd MBA will unload an unprofitable division and leave it with as much debt as the financial community will allow. Why was the FSU different? They had a bunch of sattelites that were costing them a lot more to keep than they got back. They were in economic difficulty so they unloaded them. Again, where do missiles in Europe fit in this picture? I don't get it.

Zarkov, in the West Bank Jewish settlements are just that, Jews only. In Palestinian West Bank, there are Muslims (mostly) living together with a Christian minority and a few Jews. Christians and Muslims lived peacably in Lebanon for centuries. Christians, Muslims and Jews all lived together in Spain until the Christians kicked out the Jews and the Muslims. Serbs, Croats and Muslims all lived together peacefully in Yugoslavia under Tito. Then the Serbs tried to kick the Muslims out of Kosovo. Muslims and Serbs still live together in Kosovo and Bosina. Muslims and Hindus live together in India, although not always peacefully. Christians live peacefully in mostly Muslim Thailand. The dynamics of intolerance and exclusion are not exclusive to Islam. Other religious groups also practice intolerance.

In its foreign policy, the US has often chosen to back fundamentalist Islam when given a choice between Islam and Communism. We had no problem backing religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan, or Egypt or whereever else it suited the purposes of the US cold war against communism.

Fundamentalism is often invoked to protect a culture against elements of change from the outside. A culture that feels theatened will act in ways that are hostile to other cultures. This is one of the features that preserves cultures over time. If cultures did not resist change, they would morph into a new culture. Cultures that were adapted to life in earlier times, may become maladapted to modern times. This creates a lot of tension and is a catalyst for change. This is the dynamic that we see in much of South Asia. If we can understand it, we can better work with the culture to improve communication and tolerance. Why would American men and women in Saudi Arabia want to act in a way that would annoy their hosts?

As for culture, women sunbathe topless in Rio and much of Europe, but they would not do so on a public US beach. What is the difference between not allowing women to topless sunbathe in the US and not allowing women in public without a burka in Saudi Arabia other than cultural norms? One might say that US culture is intolerant of European or Brazilian culture.

A. Zharkov:

No personal offence was intended, just a common manner of speaking. I live and work honorably among the great unwashed. For us, it is an article of faith that lawyers are called shysters; this is less an matter of ethical reflection than a realistic assessment of power relations. But since you are not a lawyer- my mistake-, the question does not effect you. Thanks for the etymology lesson though.

The question of civil society in Muslim nations is a vexed one, though not there alone. But extremist groups in all societies fail to observe the norms of civil society. And the case in Iran is a frustrating one; there a clear majority has emerged precisely in favor of a development of civil society under Islamic auspices, but has been blocked by a labryinthine constitution and the insistence on holding power by an increasingly corrupted clerical group. However, though I do not know much about Islam, from what I've read, it is very much a civic religion,- (and, in principle, a rather egalitarian one),- which is why the Western notion of a strict separation of church and state, itself a product not just of a distinct modernizing history, but of the structure of Christian religion itself, does not map well onto Islamic societies. However, civil society must always emerge from within the dynamics of the society in question, and I see no reason why struggles to develop civil society can not emerge from within Islamic tradition. That is very much an issue within the Islamic world today, though I don't think our trying to promote it by force of arms is likely to prove appropriate, effective and persuasive, if that is, indeed, our goal. On the other hand, civil society is itself a moral blessing and not a source of intrinsic moral superiority, by which to denounce alien, backward and poorer societies with less fortunate histories.

Mostly Muslim Thailand? Thailand is mostly Buddhist, with the Muslims living predominately in the very south of the country. And not peacably, of late. There was a very recent series of assaults by poorly armed Muslim extremists against Thai Government police stations, repulsed with catastrophic loses among the atackers.

Thanks for the correction Steven. My bad. I should have written Malaysia, not Thailand. You are correct that militant Islam is on the rise in Thailand and that spills over into Malaysia. My point is that other religions have been tolerated under majority Muslim rule for centuries. There is nothing inherent in Islam that makes it more violent than Christianity or other world religions. It is misplaced to put the blame for violence solely on religion. There are other factors important to understanding the causes of violence. Should European imperialism of the recent past be attributed to Christianity? or economic exploitation?

Palestinian Muslims and Christians would have a much easier time in their relationships with the Jews if they were not being forced off their land. It is being forced off the land and loss of rights that they hate, not how Jews worship. Because the policy of forcing Arabs off their land is closely tied to Israel, a Jewish state, the hate gets directed onto the religion as a whole. Directing that hate onto Jews as a group instead of the policy in question is counterproductive. Because of the actions of some radical Muslims, many Jewish settlers hate all Arabs and justify repressive policies toward them. This fuels the cycle of violence in Israel and Palestine. My point is that a key to the Palestine dispute is not that Muslims hate other religions, it is the feeling that being forced off their land is unjust and the lack of legitimate means to seek justice.

bakho:

The Soviet Union was in military competition with the US, and military spending was really putting a strain on them by the 1980s. The military sector always got first priority in that command economy, and that took away much needed investment in other sectors. They spent heavily on things like the SS-20 mobile missile system, and air defenses including radars. Every time the US neutralized one of their systems it caused additional strain. The INF treaty effectively neutralized the whole SS-20 fleet, at a small cost to the US since the Pershing II system was relatively cheap. Moreover, since INF was bilateral it left missile systems owned and operated by the UK and Germany intact and still threatening. The US Stealth Bomber (invented at the Lockheed Skunk Works) with its almost zero radar cross section would render the expensive Soviet radar-based air defensive system obsolete when deployed. Finally the US Strategic Defense System (SDI) really scared them as they thought they would have to match it. In summary these and other aspects of America’s “hard power” strained their economy enormously. As pointed out by Clark our “soft power” too played a role. At the time I didn’t think we would deploy the Pershing II system because of European domestic opposition.
Fortunately my pessimism was misp cand. It got deployed and the rest is history.

Zarkov- I still don't get it. Way back then, both the US and FSU had mutually assured destruction and we both still do. Why should US deployment of a missile have an effect that would cause the FSU to collapse? Senator Lugar showed pictures of some of the nuke weapons the FSU had that would fit in a briefcase. Did the FSU think that SDI would actually work to stop a missile? If they did, it might be more likely the FSU collapsed from stupidity. All the US scientists know that missile defense cannot protect the US population.

Seriously, where are the economic data to show that this missile deployment forced enough new FSU defense spending that they collapsed? If they needed more money, why not tax their satellites, like Poland and Romania, and Bulgaria and Uzbekistan? Could it be that not only did these countries not have any money to donate, but they were a net loss to the FSU to maintain? Giving up domination of these countries would not have solved the so-called FSU missile problem. Are you sure they really had a problem with defense? When the FSU broke apart, it is not like they signed a treaty with the US that OK we will break apart if you remove your missiles we are so scared. WTF Besides, by the time the FSU imploded, the Pershing missiles were already gone. The FSU response to the Pershing was to negotiate its elimination by giving up some of their own missiles. This program elimination would have saved money. That is still no reason for them to break apart.

The FSU seemed to have a few domestic problems, like poor management of nuclear facilities, occasional inability to produce enough food, and inability to produce enough consumer items other than vodka. No doubt their infrastructure sucked and their productivity was uncompetitive. But WTF does that have to do with defense spending and Pershing missiles?

The FSU poor producivity was due to lack of competition in a corrupt crony system. In the US, LTV steel went bankrupt because of poor management, poor productivity and failure to modernize. As far as I know, nuke missiles were not necessary for LTV to go bankrupt. Why do you think that the FSU went bankrupt because of some nuke deployment? Are you sure that the same reasons behind the LTV failure were not behind the FSU failure? (Poor management, poor productivity and failure to modernize) The FSU ran "the lack of information system". How could they compete in the "information age" without changing their structure? The story you are trying to tell here just does not make sense to me.

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