Thursday, May 26, 2005

Iraq at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Army Navy Club
Item No.: 42
New Improved Consolidated World Philosophy
05-23-05



Troops round up suspected insurgents
By TOM LASSETER, Knight Ridder Newspapers

Posted on Mon, May. 23, 2005

Much of the early rhetoric by U.S. officials in Iraq about defeating the insurgency has been replaced by the Bush administration's goal of training Iraqi forces to carry on the fight so that U.S. forces can withdraw. Operation Squeeze Play was the largest joint Iraq-American effort in the capital to date.

“Terrorists intended to separate the Iraqi people from their elected government. From what I can tell, they have merely cut themselves off from the majority of the Iraqi people," said Maj. Richard Goldenberg, of the 42nd Infantry Division, which is responsible for a swath of land north of Baghdad that's roughly the size of West Virginia. "The spectacular attacks against civilians or Iraqi police and army forces reinforce what most Iraqis already knew. Terrorists, whether foreign born or formerly Baathist, hold no concern for Iraqi or Islamic lives. They are a common enemy of all Iraqis."


So we have made some progress with our “rhetoric” good!

Of course it is more than rhetoric, it is strategy we are talking about.

What is the strategy?

Today it is the same as the first day. To stand up a new government after removing the old corrupt one. (Hey, could they do the same here at home for us?)

The Major is quite right. The car bombs do not help the terrorists with any conceivable political strategy. They can make the Iraqis miserable, but they will still be miserable free people. Welcome to democracy. The only real advantage is that we can laugh at our rulers wile they screw us over, and then we put a bullet in our own head. Of course, as with the old KGB, we have to pay for the bullet ourselves.

The terrorists have completed the transition to total nihilism. They are the new terrorists. They kill only to kill. Killing is their political program. Think of Pol Pot, killing anyone with glasses. Think of Chechnya. They had autonomy prior to the “Islamic” fundamentalists militancy. Militancy? Killing.

One thing to think about is how peaceable the Islamic world is. Internally. It is young, average age 17. It is expansionist. Coming into contact with the world there is violence at the edges of contact. Yet from the point of view of the fundamentalist radicals the Muslims are too passive. True they have repressive governments but why do they have such governments? Where is the history of turmoil, revolution? Why no Cairo Commune? Consider the sweet pacifism of the people living for generations, a thousand years, under the dictatorial rule of one potentate or another. You hear the car bombs, your attention is drawn to the beheadings, but think of all the others, the billion other Muslims who live every day, as the Shia say, staying on the well worn path.

Being of the West you do not readily appreciate the point. Not studying philosophy you are ignorant of the principles. But you can understand this much: after your ignominious retreat from Iraq after the First Gulf War, 50,000 Shiites were slaughtered by Saddam Hussein. Your front line troops heard the killing. The best of them wept. You, did not listen to my advise and those good people were slaughtered. Note conservatives how your liberal brethren take no responsibility for this. See the empty expressions on their faces. Kerry. Kennedy. Dodd. Clinton. (Either one.) Empty headed souless . . .

Yet, and you may not be able to follow this, the Shia have not rounded up the Sunni. No vengeance murders of the hundreds of thousands. They have talked only of courts, and law, and establishing the state. But you should at least pause a moment and reflect on all you do not understand of the East.

Islam teaches, as do most Eastern religions, submission. It comes as a surprise to most of you that Western philosophy has come to agree with the East. While most of you have been watching the M&A action on Wall Street you will be surprised to learn that Western and Eastern philosophy have decided it is more efficient to merge so there has been a global consolidation. (The seperate brands will continue to be marketed but all future research and development will be carried out jointly sources at the global headquarters said.)

It is instructive to note that though West and East started out from different positions working in seemingly different directions they have arrived at the same place. Many simple minded are vaguely aware of this and have interpreted it as a failing of the “West.” As if we had given up, or surrendered, etc., etc.

Rather you should regard Mr. Alan Watts as a typical English Imperialist who when to the East and plundered its wealth and brought the loot back home. The fact that the riches he stole were freely given ought not slacken your revelry in the spoils.

For, Western philosophy having reasoned itself into an appreciation of the “floating world” decided that it was more efficient to consult with others who had already had some experience in this philosophy. Why reinvent the wheel? The best teachers of the East always explain to their students that there is no reason to give up Judaism or Christianity in their study of what the East has to offer. (Some fundamentalist types will not credit this. ‘How can you be a Buddhist and a Christian?’ they thunder. As if : ‘the ball must be red or it must be a ball, it can not be both!’ The proper Buddhist reply is not to say ‘well you are not a very good Christian,’ rather one should bow and say ‘Ah, yours is such a pure Christianity. Congratulations!’)

Whether this merger will result in a more “passive” West remains to be seen. Japan, China, Singapore, Korea, India, and all the rest seem to be displaying all the dynamism associated with the Nineteenth Century West in their modern economic development. India’s current success has been achieved by throwing off the socialism they learnt from our British cousins.

Islam has been different. The passivity of the people is in a way a provocation to the radicals. Part of what drives the radicals to such stupefying violence is, in their minds, to counterbalance, or goad, the general population into action. In the end, as has been already observed, is violence for violance’s own sake. We have seen this sort of radicalism in the West. President McKinley was killed by one such. This radicalism, who can be most radical, always burns itself out.

The car bombs can not alter the strategic fact that the new Iraqi government is in power. This is our strategic aim.

Now the proof of the superiority of the new consolidated world philosophy:

If you are a typical simple minded conservative, (and here I must pause to apologize to the simple minded conservatives for years I have been tweaking you not realizing just how bad the liberal boobs were until I started monitoring Air America), you might think that military science is an ‘objective’ fact.

Your failure to see the subjective nature of our world has, is, causing much waste in Iraq.

Why are our troops, armed with the most expensive weapons, the best educated in the world, the best paid, the best trained, etc., working on clearing road side bombs?

If you believe in an objective world you say, ‘Because the experts say . . .’ which is not really an answer. I want you to tell me.

Or look at it as a question of market dynamics. The market is so successful in organizing human action just because it takes into account, is the consolidation of, subjective opinions. (Dr. Moynihan: That is what a statistic is, just lots and lots of anecdotes.) Our troops are too expensive to be used in such an unproductive manner. In a market they would not be employed on trivialities no one could afford to use them this way. My father used to say he thought it a good bargain if he could replace one sailor on a ship with eight million dollars worth of machinery. Today the trade off must be in the hundreds of millions.

You must first make a global analysis. Why are we in Iraq? What is the strategic objective? And much more. What is the value of one American life verses the objective? You can not make a risk assessment with out these answers. The idea that your military experts can focus only on the objective military facts is a delusion. Moving on Baghdad is not like the final push on Berlin and that offensive was different than D-Day. The military officer must make a political assessment. You think not, you think that the military officer must never consider the political, only because of your limited “rational” foolish belief in “objectivity” and bureaucracy. There is not objectivity there is only subjectivity.

What if, for example, your experts base their judgments on a draft army? What if they examine all questions as if their army will always be replenished with conscripts? What if this has been their experience? All the battles they have read about? All the prior risk assessments they have made have been based on different “realities?”

What if your experts are as deluded as you, and think that “their” “reality” is “objective?”

How else?

Ask the British? They have a considerable experience with small professional armies. For several hundred years their officers worked quite closely with , . . . ah . . . how to say . . . (times have changed one must be politically correct) . . . indigenous peoples.

Now without listing all the things you did not do up till now let us just look at what you are not doing now.

In making your assessment of what to do you are not saying what HAS to be done to stand up the new government? Nothing else matters. Do not tell me ‘but the experts say’ . . . you have to think for yourself there is no objective standard. Your experts think they have a draft army and everything they do is important.

For example, if a car bomb goes off it is terrible but that is not part of our strategic plan. It does not even enter the discussion. It has nothing to do with us.

Again without going over all the things that should already have been done . . . the Iraqi government must control the terror to show the people it is in charge and can help them. That is the Iraqi government’s objective. But your generals, like you, are still living in a Nineteenth Century Western paradigm of “objectivism.” If the generals tell you ‘we must . . .’ you think, ‘ok, you are the experts, it must be objectively true that we must . . .’ But your generals are as deluded as you. (After MacArthur they fear making personal subjective judgments. They learned the wrong lesson from Mac.)

They too think that they are not allowed to make subjective political judgments. This is how we end up with these SNAFUs. Into the big muddy, or Vi-et-nam. The car bomb goes off and the general thinks, ‘something must be done let’s go men.’ Yes something but by whom? I say the Iraqis. (Now we could talk about transponders on all vehicles, cameras, rolling checkpoints, monitoring of the people’s movements, data bases, even strategic strikes at bomb shops, and terror cells, much can be done, but it is a subjective judgment of whether you go “police” the crime scene or organize police units. Again in market terms where is the most value added?)

Our new consolidated philosophy requires you to think:

“The fight is intractable in part because the U.S. military has used force and not diplomacy, said Abdul Ahmed, a political science analyst at Baghdad University. American officials - who say they won't negotiate with insurgents - have galvanized insurgents and alienated many Iraqis who might have opposed the insurgency, Ahmed said.”

“"It's very easy to use your machine guns ... but it is very difficult to pursue a political solution," he said. "They should take some time to go to Ramadi, to Mosul, to find a peaceful way because violence only pushes the people away from you. ... The United States negotiates with North Korea. Why can't it negotiate with the Iraqi insurgency?"”


Most simple minded conservatives, (the liberals do not think, they only react, this is why we call them knee jerks), will think, ‘who is he to tell us what to do . . .” and you only display again that you have not understood the first thing. Think. Say, ‘Yes, sir, Dr. Ahmed, may the blessings and the peace of the Profit be with you, kind sir, please . . . go ahead, please go to Ramadi and make peace . . .”

Again, our strategic objective is to stand up the government, nothing else is of interest to us. The primacy of our philosophy, now East AND West, is this, first we must make this subjective judgment. It is not objective. We, you and I, we must decide. Think. What is job one? It is not objective we have to do this. Thinking.

I mentioned the British, now let us talk Romans. There was no greater libertarian, no one more committed to human freedom than our dear Ludwig von Mises. Yet even he not only would not disagree with this next point, he said it himself: At the center of the state is the double headed ax. Only the state has the right to kill. But around the state’s ultimate power is a bundle of sticks. (His point was that the market works on an entirely different principle, i.e. voluntary associations of mutual assent.) But it is the state, the law, that makes these other things possible. The Romans delegated the sticks to others. Their concern was to control the ax, from which everything else follows.

In Iraq, the Americans are the double headed ax not the sticks! The sticks, (clearing roadside bombs, visiting Ramadi), these are the sticks, others can do them because they are not vital, the main issue, the central point, the core value, ----- they are not strategic.

They are “not strategic” as an objective “fact”. They are not strategic because I say they are not.

I assert a value judgment.

I do not pretend an objective reality.

I say so.

If I did not say so it would not be “true”. For example:

I say you should not suffer the mentally ill to sleep on the streets. This is not “objective;” it is true because I say so.

I say you should not have allowed the rich to use exclusionary zoning and distort the market. Again not “objective.”

And so on.

The subjective judgment was made in 2002 not to start a “Free Iraq Army.” Even though the Kurds were ready and able. You could have parachuted Mr. Baer into . . . what? Oh, ok, you could have flown him back . . .

Let us not go over what could have been. The Kurds have finally been normalized into the Iraq Army. Finally.

I told you at the time how to control the population and two years later, the transponders, the face scans, (biometric), the data base, the intelligence networks, the prison campuses, the rolling checkpoints, etc. have not been done.

It does not matter because though the new Iraqi government needs to do these things they are not central to our aims.

You have a small professional army dependent on volunteers, you have commanders who are still acting as if they were running a “Nation at War”, or “Total War” army. Note that this is a problem of their subjective judgment about the situational, relative, circumstance they are in.

Think.

Tell your generals to read “Nature, Man, Woman” by Allan Watts.

Do more by doing less.

Listen to the call to prayers. Think of all the Muslims who go to pray, and do not set off car bombs next to children playing in the street, or among women in the market, . . . think of all the rest.

Sit. Watch. Listen. Think.


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