Arms and influence

Sunday cartoon round-up

IN THE NEWS
By odd coincidence, two controversies are raging around cartoons. Normally, when someone gets upset over purely symbolic issues, such as the content of movies, TV shows, art, and the like, the loudest critics are those who already have prickly temperaments. These two cartoon-centric controversies seem to fit that rule.

In the first case, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have swelled and thumped their chests over a cartoon in The Washington Post. The cartoonist, Tom Toles, is simply taking Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld at his own clumsy, mendacious words. Rumsfeld was being typically Rumsfeldian, trying to bury uncomfortable realities with an avalanche of blockheaded diatribes. Rumsfeld's "battle-hardened" comment was part of his counterattack on the Krepinevich report, which warned that the US Army was stretched to the point of breaking in Iraq. However, Rumsfeld and his defenders would rather rhetorically pummel the Post than the people responsible for the real damage done to the Army as an institution and the men and women within it. Here's a quote from the Joint Chiefs' letter to the Post:

While you or some of your readers may not agree with the war or its conduct, we believe you owe the men and women and their families who so selflessly serve our country the decency not to make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices.

Obviously, the cartoon was doing the opposite of "making light" of crippled and maimed soldiers. In fact, it was pointing out that Rumsfeld's "battle-hardened" quip was "making light" of real physical, psychological, and institutional injuries. It's always easier to shoot the messenger than tell your boss the bad news, particularly when your boss stubbornly insists that his Great Experiment in redesigning the US military is doing just fine, as is that pesky war in Iraq where the Great Experiment is being tested.

The other furor over a cartoon is focused on Denmark, where a series of cartoons have depicted Muhammed--not in a bad light, mind you, just depicted him. Of course, Islam's taboo about artistic depictions of the Prophet started because Muhammed himself did not want to see the new faith ossify someday into another cult of icon-worshippers. To remain a living religion that guided the faithful, it needed to stay focused on the everyday lives of Muslims, not some mythic past of the Prophet and his followers.

Some strains of Islam, however, have turned this taboo into a fetish about non-depiction. Muhammed, in their view, was too sacred a being to be depicted, which is why a cartoon is blasphemous to them. Instead of ignoring the cartoons, or politely explaining why Islam has avoided wasting its energies on iconography, some outraged Muslims are happily wasting their energies on calling for the deaths of the cartoonist and his publishers. (By "some Muslims," I clearly mean a fraction of Islam that is no more representative of that faith than Pat Robertson is representative of Christians.)

Josh Marshall has some good thoughts on the topic. It's also worth seeing this controversy in light of the Saudi government's willingness to look the other way while archaeological sites from the time of Muhammed are demolished.

The intensity of vitriol over symbolic issues should be a warning sign that something nasty is afoot. Civilization as we know it depends on our collective refusal to be mau-maued by anyone, including those in military and clerical uniforms demanding our "respect" or "tolerance" when they are willing to grant us neither in return.

History takes a hand

IN THE NEWS
It's beginning to feel that history is taking a hand where individuals are failing. The debate over what really drives events, human beings or forces beyond their control, posits a false choice. Talk to people in positions of power and they'll often tell you how powerless they sometimes feel. On the other hand, there are historical moments that definitely would not have played out the way they did, had not particular people occupied important roles. For example, while Germany was undoubtedly going to make Europe go through some rough times while the Germans elbowed their way to the great power table, there's no doubt that Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler steered Germany in a particular direction that, had someone else been at the helm, it probably would not have taken. Hitler especially symbolizes in the minds of many students of history not only a monstrous evil, but the principle that, at times, extraordinary circumstances give unusual individuals extraordinary opportunities.

Hitler's golden moment was the simultaneous weakening of German politics and the traditional European balance of power. The Weimar Republic failed to capture the allegiance of enough Germans willing to support it through hard times. French and British power proved incapable or unwilling to check German economic and military expansion, and the Soviet Union nearly opted out of Europe altogether. Hitler, whom Sebastian Haffner noted had an eye for the weaknesses of others, understood that much less stood in his way of his ambitions than his enemies and allies believed.

After enjoying the freedom to reshape Germany and unleash a war of choice, not of necessity, Hitler eventually ran aground on the hard, rocky reality of Germany's military limits. Having rapidly defeated his enemies prior to Operation Barbarossa, Hitler assumed that he would have as easy a time defeating the Soviets, who had seemed inept in their brief war with Finland. However, the German blitzkrieg met its match, not just in the Red Army, but in the vast territory of the USSR. Where the blitzkrieg worked well in the more limited confines of France, Norway, Poland, and other Nazi conquests, it could never be effective in completely running the enemy to ground in the Russian and Ukrainian steppes.

While I could discuss other "golden moments" and the extraordinary people, devils and saints alike,  who took advantage of them--Napoleon, the Founding Fathers, Martin Luther King, Augustus--I hope the point is clear. "Golden moments" open different combinations of military, political, and economic possibilities. In some cases, the moment comes to a satisfactory close, when leaders and citizens turn what was once in flux into new, enduring realities, such as American constitutional government after the American War of Independence. At other times, the mistakes made by the very people who once successfully exploited the "golden moment" brings that chapter of history to a cataclysmic finish.

There was a golden moment in 2000. The Cold War had ended, but it was hard to describe what followed as an "international order." Some antipathies--for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--survived the Cold War, and new conflicts, such as the Balkan civil wars, erupted. The United States was the sole superpower, but it was clearly not able to dictate what it wanted to the Chinese, the Saudis, or even its German and French allies.

Meanwhile, inside the United States, the traditional balance between Republicans and Democrats wobbled. Perhaps more importantly, the Democratic Party's leaders seemed baffled by the new, energetic constituencies on the right, such as the Christian fundamentalists, conservative radio and TV opinion-makers, and the sub rosa coalition of financiers like Richard Mellon Scaife and the attack groups they funded. Add an electorate increasingly uninterested and unimpressed by politicians, and the stage was set for George W. Bush.

Bush seized the moment to, among other things, try to grab the Middle East by the throat. If you sweep aside the obviously fallacious arguments for invading and occupying Iraq--the phantom WMDs, the nation-building campaign to be headed by a man who campaigned against nation-building, the fictional link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden--you're left with what the neoconservatives clearly wanted: a chance to both erase the obnoxious Ba'ath Party regime and re-write the regional politics of the Middle East in the process.

However, while the United States did well militarily, first against the Taliban and then against the Iraqi Army, it soon reached the limits of its own military power. The Bush Administration's hopes evaporated in the hot, dusty streets of Baghdad, Karbala, Mosul, Najaf, and other Iraqi cities, where it proved incapable of dealing with a relatively small but exceptionally violent insurgency. The golden moment passed, and now the US government has to operate without the freedom of action it once had. The Bush team itself is under political siege, with increasing pressure not only coming from the usual sources, but now from a growing list of Republican politicians and notables unhappy with the stock answers it receives whenever they ask questions about Iraq.

Some of Bush's allies are also facing harder times. The second intifada flourished because Arafat and Sharon both worked hard to keep any negotiated peace from occurring. Now, the Likud has split, with Sharon defecting to create a centrist party. Since no level of reprisal has stopped suicide bombers from killing Israelis, Sharon knows that his political survival depends on taking steps--or, at least, appearing to take them--that the Likud Party would never tolerate. Most Israelis and Palestinians have known that the political destruction of either side in this conflict was never likely. Now, both sides may be more willing to act as though they believe it.

When "golden moments" pass, events may be less dramatic, and progress slower. However, the end result may be more enduring, since the accumulated work of many hands might do a better job than the hurried efforts of a few decision-makers. Many leaders who seize these "golden moments" find how devious history can be.

Where once they felt themselves masters of the globe, they suddenly face a world much different than the one they tried to engineer. Alexander the Great's empire died with him, leaving behind new "successor" states unlike anything Alexander had conceived. When Napoleon's empire collapsed, the nations of Europe committed themselves to balance of power arrangements designed to stop future Napoleons in their tracks. France itself survived and prospered, even without the French imperium. So, too, might the United States survive and prosper, even if the world in a decade looks very different from the one George W. Bush tried to create.

VP for Strategy

IN THE NEWS
It'll be a strange farewell for Paul Wolfowitz when he leaves his Defense Department post. He must know that the path from his office to the World Bank can be paved with shame, not glory. It's the same road that Robert McNamara took after Lyndon Johnson decided he shouldn't continue being Secretary of Defense, with the weight of the Vietnam War failures grinding him into psychic and moral dust. McNamara's own tear-filled farewell is easy to understand, and depending on what you think of McNamara, signs of a moral heart beating beneath the steely technocratic exterior.

Wolfowitz is no more suited to become head of the World Bank as, say, Condoleeza Rice is of being Secretary of State or John Bolton of sitting as the US Ambassador to the body which he hates with every fiber of his being. It seems like a harmless appointment, though, so it keeps the neocon's neocon out of trouble. (Maybe he'll try to revive the Delian League--who knows?)

The harm, of course, is putting an instrument for aiding countries in deep, deep economic trouble in the hands of someone who has demonstrated little interest in either their economies or their troubles. But the Bush Administration takes care of its own, as long as they stay as slavishly loyal as Wolfowitz has been. In the private sector, when executives outlive their usefulness, they receive bombastic non-titles like VP for Strategy. It's a shame the Bush Administration treats the World Bank the same way.

Rest in peace, President Reagan

IN THE NEWS
I never voted for Reagan, but I did respect his sincerity. Although I didn't much care for his domestic policies, such as his cheap vilification of "welfare queens," he actually turned out to have had a gentler touch in domestic questions than sometimes the rhetoric suggested. He was pragmatic enough to know when raising taxes was unavoidable--as he was pragmatic enough to know that he had to work with a Soviet leader like Gorbachev.

I often found myself more in agreement with Reagan's foreign policies than my friends and colleagues. I was also deeply dusturbed by the long leash he gave to some of his less experienced, scrupulous, or realistic aides--which made the Iran-Contra scandal a shock, but not a surprise.

He was also showing signs of Alzheimer's as he was running for a second term. The condition wasn't yet advanced, but it seemed to be there. I've never been comfortable with the idea of him running again under those conditions.

He did appear to be, as I said, a deeply sincere man. I never felt the "great communicator" magic that others experienced, but I did see someone working hard in the defense of his country.

Rest in peace, President Reagan. And our sympathies to Mrs. Reagan and the family.