I was finishing up my undergraduate career during the run-up to the war and initially, more or less reflexively, opposed it; I really do think it was the oppressive anti-war sentiment on campus, in which every student and faculty leftist interest group put forth their own incoherent vision of the world side by side against the war, that convinced me to give the Bush foreign policy a more serious look, which eventually 'flipped' me as the war began. I had been revising and rethinking my political beliefs already, of course, but seeing this apotheosis of the post-Marxist, post-Seattle left in action was the last straw for me (and for many other 9/10 Democrats) and today's left. put me in the camp of the 'nuanced' Bush supporters - it's a bold strategy and bound to be messy or worse in its execution, but if we are minimally successful it will be an important step in changing the status quo in a region that was completely resistant to change under the 9/10 foreign policy framework. in fact, it could serve American strategic interests in a number of ways, and like a good executive, Bush understands that when planning with limited resources and great uncertainty (i.e. as a human being), it's important to limit yourself to a few strategic objectives that can each help achieve a variety of policy goals. today's political environment makes decisive action difficult and policy reform even more difficult, and if nothing else Bush has been impressive in achieving this. very best wishes to your son - as I'm sure he is aware, he is doing important work, and I think (hope!) that history will indeed look back and see the worth, and the historical truth, of this mess.

So ok. A few important qualifiers. First, that piece just puts aside for a moment my other objections to the Bush Administration, which are many and deep-seated and any of them reason enough to vote for almost any other candidate.

Second, I'd argue very strongly for not confusing Kerry and his advisors with the more incoherent lineages of anti-war protest, for two reasons. First, because their actual statements on paper and the actual genealogies of the individuals involved in the campaign distinguish them strongly from that particular slice of the anti-war movement--they're literally not the same, and share little in common with them. Second, because I think *any* administration is going to have to follow to some extent where Bush has led, in several respects. Nobody's pulling out of Iraq quickly now. I think Iraq was a terrible, predictably terrible, idea, but it's a done deal. Neither President Kerry nor President Bush is going to be able to cut-and-run, and if I had to pick someone who might, it would be Bush, not Kerry, because of Bush's demonstrated tendencies to amoral instrumentalism. I think this retroactively is true for the Gore Presidency that didn't happen, in some ways. I think *any* President after 9/11 was going to do what we ended up doing in Afghanistan. Some possible Presidents might have actually stayed focused on Afghanistan, in fact, producing better long-term results.

So I still hate Bush, profoundly. I think he's been a disaster. I think he could be worse than a disaster if he wins in November. I think Kerry would be better, though I'm hardly his biggest fan. I'm just trying to stay rational about it, and make sure that we keep intact what ought to be kept intact, and try to salvage from the ruins of partisanship what can be salvaged.

Hi John and Timothy,

It's interesting to read your comments together since they provide the exact contrast that seems most relevant to me. While John is repulsed by what seems an incoherent and rage filled vision Timothy is comfortable expressing hatred and attempts to maintain rationality with intellectual discipline.

I'm as incompetent at hating as I am at believing, tend to sidle away from both haters and believers, and would never willingly give power to either. They seem like two sides of the same bent coin to me though I realize that this is as much a cultural quirk of my life circumstances as a defensible philosophical stance. Hate weakens you and makes you do rash things that can get you hurt as well as hurting others. It's a sort of Gary Cooper thing, an aesthetic more than a philosophy and resonates with other notable far eastern and warrior traditions that couple the ability to take decisive and lethal action but only when required and only with the greatest reluctance.

Given that, I tend to see more worth in John's reluctant support for Bush than in Timothy's obdurate opposition. I long for that decent left I spoke of and think that such a party would be dominant in US politics. I suspect this will require the passing of the boomers and fellow travelers in the media and chattering classes still animated by the failed protest culture of last century. It doesn't seem immanent.

Let me put it this way. Would you say you hate mainstream environmentalism? Someone who read your writing inattentively might think so. Even someone who reads it carefully might agree that you have a deep-seated, persistent, interwoven philosophical and empirical opposition to mainstream environmental science and to its activist proponents.

I would accept it if you said that wasn't hatred. You can call it whatever you like. Whatever you call it, that's how I feel about the Bush Adminstration. Just as you try to be attentive to the specific flaws of each specific instance of bad environmental science, I would like to confront each instance of bad policy or political philosophy out of the Administration as it comes to me. But just as I think you have come to have an understanding that the individual flaws of particular policies, scientific findings and activist demands are interconnected in such a way that you have a good predictive model of how mainstream environmentalism is likely to go wrong, I think I have a good model of what is generally wrong with the Bush Administration.

If I use the word hatred, it is for two reasons. First, what I take to be the unique conjunctural urgency of the current situation. Under normal conditions, frankly, I think a US Presidential Administration cannot do enormous ill or enormous good; there is usually tremendous structural inertia and long-term dynamics underlying a given political moment. But this is a different moment. The future is taking shape now, and it has many different possible shapes. That we have leaders who understand a few important things so very well and do not understand so many other important things at all angers me enormously, because at moments of conjuncture, there are many good possibilities and many bad possibilities and when the moment passes, we'll be locked into one or the other. So much of what has not gone well in the past three years has been by my judgement non-necessary. Since I am repelled by the non-necessary destruction of Zimbabwe by its own leadership--as I know Norm Geras is as well--I am equally repelled by non-necessary errors of judgement elsewhere.

What tops this off for me is my reading of the source of these errors. It is not "blood for oil", or the simple capitalist-conspiracy logics of Michael Moore. It is both worse and better. It is an incurious leader surrounded by a mix of turf-war bureaucrats and abstract social-science experimentalism of the most hubristic sort. Rumsfeld is the former; Wolfowitz the latter. The former is a banal kind of problem, but a strong leader at the center of power can put it in check if he/she is so inclined. Bush has not been. The latter is a different kind of mess. I don't doubt the sincerity of Wolfowitz (Perle is another matter: I think he's an average cronyist), but I do doubt his ethical compass. What is especially frustrating here is that the experimentalists have been allowed to conduct grand geopolitical ventures simply to test abstract (and terribly flawed on paper and in practice) ideas about how liberalism and democracy come about in the world. As a historian, this really does infuriate me, because we should have learned our lesson on this particular issue out of Vietnam: experts who are given too much free rein can commandeer the apparatus of national policy to no good end.

This, it seems to me, is a lesson you ought to be receptive to, given your perceptive understanding of the horrible dangers and abuses of expertise in other realms. Why you are as attentive to it in one domain but not another is a mystery to me. To see it in one place is to understand that the "expert" as a modern global figure has a deeply structural relation to the apparatus of national power, and in all cases, that relation must never permit too close an access. Expertise is valuable, but only if it is solicited from a pluralistic range of sources and only if policy is constructed heterogenously and skeptically in relation to such expertise. By permitting people like Wolfowitz to dominate policy-making based on extremely speculative and highly dangerous understandings of global processes of transformation, Bush has abdicated one of the key guardianships that I think modern liberal democracy demands from its leaders.

" Would you say you hate mainstream environmentalism? Someone who read your writing inattentively might think so."

No. I'd be ashamed of myself for hating. It's an admission of impotent defeat in my aesthetic system, an indication that I have ceased to think far short of useful comprehension. It would be a self inflicted wound.

I maintain friendly and admiring back channel correspondence with some of what I think are the best mainstream environmentalists, playing a sort of undeclared glass bead game with their posts, comparing, contrasting extending, revealing and polishing the faces of a multi-faceted subject. Any good hearted main stream environmentalist can see this immediately, and several have done so and initiated contact with me, busting me so to speak when they realized what I was doing and applauding the effort. They sometimes get wound up when I goose one of their sacred cows, but it's not just empty animosity since I always make sure to provide a way to see the situation that promotes environmental care and concern. It has the intended goal of being inclusive, of taking the partisan and simplistic advocates to task for their blunders which harm the environment, and so making a place for both skeptics and advocates in a very large tent full of those who care about the environment.

"Even someone who reads it carefully might agree that you have a deep-seated, persistent, interwoven philosophical and empirical opposition to mainstream environmental science and to its activist proponents."

I oppose activism because it is harmful to the environment. That is stated repeatedly. Abusing the environment by using it as a wedge issue in petty political battles is harmful to the environment. Those who care more about the environment than political boosterism grasp this too. It was a huge blunder when Gaylord Nelson politicized the environment in 1962 in an attempt to boost Kennedy's prospects. Several posts deal explicitly with these events, elucidating how this has impeded environmentalism.

What I think you may not fully grasp is that obdurate environmental skeptics get just as exercised about my posts as the obdurate politicized environmentalists. I offend nearly everyone to some extent and drive extremists on both sides to distraction. The more thoughtful on both sides have found things they like and give me a shout out now and then but neither embrace me or approve of the whole package and sometimes return fire. I think this will be apparent if you think about any things I've said that you find to be correct and useful since you know that others disagree.

...big snip, read and understood ....

"This, it seems to me, is a lesson you ought to be receptive to, given your perceptive understanding of the horrible dangers and abuses of expertise in other realms. Why you are as attentive to it in one domain but not another is a mystery to me."

Limited education, intelligence, knowledge and interest are certainly part of my problem in this as in everything else. But it isn't that I don't see the things you note or that I approve of them, it is that I don't see the Democrats as being better at this time. It isn't enough to criticize, alternative formulations must be proposed and the Democrats seem to be at sea, unable to even conduct an effective election campaign much less govern a major nation. Talk about incompetence!

In a way it's as with environmental issues. The politicized environmental movement has been destructive. They accomplished little besides getting their teams elected and a bit of "preservation and remediation on paper" that doesn't bear scrutiny in the field. The environment would be in better shape if they had never existed. The now politicized opposition has offered little by way of positive alternatives until recently, they just criticized and debunked. A pox on both their houses would be justifiable but not helpful since doing nothing is not enough. There are real problems that require our attention. So, I try to identify a useful course and chivy both somewhat repellent groups when they go too far afield from what I judge to be good practice as well as applauding their smart moves. I don't care which side is in power so long as they do good works.

I listen to your views and think about them. I even solicit them with back channel pokes and prods when you go silent, and appreciate the time and effort you give to public speech. What I haven't yet heard is the positive part, a reason to think that the politicians you favor have a grasp of the issues, the will to govern effectively, or a team that wouldn't be crippled by a combination of incompetence, bureaucratic inertia and internecine power struggles as they have been in the past and seem to be at present. I'd vote for you in a heart beat, but you ain't running.

Kerry is not my philosopher-king, that much for sure. But I'd pick Kerensky over Lenin, let me put it that way--a less harmful mediocrity over an actively destructive revolutionary. All I want now is a holding action. It is possible to do worse than Bush but I see no reason to think Kerry is that precisely because the bar has been set so low, and the dangers that Bush poses in my view are so extreme. It might be that against the tide of a transformative moment, a Kerensky is always doomed, but that's the choice that sober-minded and reasonable people face in the middle of a revolution. And I do think that is potentially what we're staring in the face: a highly disjunctive transformation of all the norms of political decency by a coalition of instrumentally unprincipled men and mad-social-scientist policy wonks.

Juan Cole has a nice analysis of the overall picture up, at http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109487993311862124

I'd be curious to see what you make of it. I think Cole is very careful in it to demonstrate why the Iraq War in particular is a misstep while underscoring the importance of a resolute and intelligent strategy overall.

to my mind, admittedly twisted by 'mad-social-scientists' ('mad' in its conventional sense as 'crazy,' I'm guessing, not in the sense that I myself am 'mad social'), Cole's usual thorough and thoroughly one-sided analysis actually lends credence to my belief that the war in Iraq was, and certainly remains, a crucial moment in a sensibly farsighted War on Terror. the ideology of pan-Islamism that has gained so much momentum in recent decades (the last four years especially, of course) must ultimately be opposed by the model of the nation-state, and examples of successful Arab states are... well, hard to come by.

and, until about a year and a half ago, only getting harder. while Iraq is certainly still pretty messy one year on (compared to what?), it is unquestionably the world's best hope for a functional and prosperous Arab state with a representative government, which is probably a precondition for producing the hoped-for sea change in thinking in the Arab world (and, to a lesser extent, the wider Muslim world) that will focus the hopes (and frustrations) of Arab youth on their own governments rather than on racialist/religionist mirages.

I do not mean to imply that the US should use military force to topple regimes whenever and wherever we think reform is necessary, but in this case, when the regime to be changed consistently defied the peace terms set by the US and UN at the end of the Gulf War, including but certainly not limited to the WMD inspection programs, when the regime was clearly increasing its ties to the Islamist movement (in both actual contacts with Al-Qaeda, in Saddam's rhetoric, in the flag, &c), and when the regime ran one of the largest and most terrifying police states on the planet (and orchestrated truly sickening and unsurpassed environmental crimes), I'm willing to make an exception. especially when the geopolitical framework in the Middle East so clearly needs major change, both for the US's security and the long-suffering people of that region.

the counterargument is of course that there is no (and was never any) hope of turning Iraq into a functional and prosperous state with a representative government. Cole exceeds at this argument because he is indeed so well 'informed' about the numerous pathologies of the Arab world. while I would never challenge his scholarship on The Problem, I feel that his expertise in this area has made him a bit myopic as to possible Solutions. all this reminds me a bit of the debates about free trade (neo-liberalism is after all a close cousin of neo-conservativism) in Asia in the '90s, where a very similar coalition of leftist activists, academics, and authoritarian governments argued that Asian Values precluded the success of 'Western' ideas about individualist conceptions about economics and human rights. some years later, while the influence of 'Asian Values' (let's just call it 'History') persists, the explosive growth of highly successful, cosmopolitan and individualist ('Western') middle classes in China, India, et al has largely proved the doubters wrong. call it what you will, but the desire of humans to do, say, buy, and sell what they want is widespread (I'd go as far as to say 'universal', but that's a hard word to use), and the way of Being that accompanies these freedoms possesses its own dynamic, it is a movement that can (and often does) triumph over illiberal cultural currents (as we've seen in our own history).

which brings me to one last point, which applies to Reagan's Cold War, the aforementioned debate about 'Asian Values', and now this war: the ideals of liberal politics ('democracy') and law ('freedom') are in each case given top billing in these ideological battles, but the real strength is the third pillar of liberalism - liberal economics. The freedom to produce and consume (especially information!) allowed the US to spend the Soviets into oblivion, created the most explosive and widespread economic growth Asia has ever seen in modern times, and has been one of the few unquestionable and largely unsung successes of Operation Iraqi Freedom. freedom and democracy will hopefully come to Iraq and the larger Middle East - and of course to some degree they are inseparable from the progress of economic liberalism - but prosperous, healthy, and relatively liberal economies will lead the way.

so, as I understand it, the historic wager (or, as Tim calls it, the 'abstract social science experiment' - as if foreign policy has ever been a concrete science!) made by this administration boils down to a bet that the manifest benefits of living in a liberal society, even an embryonic, security-challenged one, will be obvious enough to cut through the racialist and religionist ideologies of the past and give Iraqis a substantial enough interest in preserving their gains to win over nationalist Iraqis that don't like America but want to live well and forcefully overcome the hard core resistance elements (who have no such interest in the Iraqis' well-being). I still think it's a bet we can win, and winning that bet is absolutely the most important item on the agenda.

and while I too have been less than satisfied with the Bush administration's tactics and ideological flexibility, there are always disagreements about these kinds of things during a war, especially one as incredibly complicated as this one. the first prerequisites for success in war, however, do not include tactical brilliance: what is required first is a proper conception of the Enemy, and what is required second is the 'iron' will of the general to overcome inevitable friction (to borrow from Clausewitz). for all of Bush's weaknesses, he has a clear idea of the Enemy (al-Qaeda, properly understood not just as those that commit terrorist acts - the proverbial foam on the top of the wave - but the entire dysfunctional system, the wave itself), he understands the importance of Iraq in the war on terror, and he seems truly committed to seeing it through. I don't believe Kerry gets it and his political history seems to indicate that his instinct, when the going gets tough, is to get going.

sorry about the length and any redundancies!

oh, one more thing - re: pluralism, heterogeneity, and skepticism in formulating foreign policy vs. environmental/science policy. foreign policy, most especially during a time of war, requires different, even radically different intellectual frameworks.

in fact, I'd almost go as far as to say they require opposite skill sets, especially if we assume our gracious host's perspective: environment and science policy should be as objective and scientific as possible, and they generally suffer from attempts to politicize and centralize their subject. foreign policy, on the other hand, is quintessentially, inescapably Political with a capital P - distinguishing political Enemies is the central and most vital task of our government, and must be made decisively, centrally, and, ultimately, subjectively. which is not to say decisions of Friend and Enemy, War and Peace must be completely undemocratic - in this case, we only went to war after it had been approved by our elected representatives, which is as it should be. but unlike environment/science policy debates that can and should be revised and revisited, the decision to go to war is a fateful one that must be Made. period.

further, because the 'objects' of foreign policy are in fact Political subjects themselves (unlike in environment/science policy, where the objects really are objects, unless you subscribe to the Gaia hypothesis or similar mystical beliefs), there is no straight line connecting scientifically (e.g. pluralistically, heterogeneously, skeptically) formulated and expressed policies and *successful* policies. in fact, it's often, even usually, more important - especially in times of war - to formulate policies, and enact them, as decisively and univocally as possible.

Hi Timothy,

I didn't find Cole's piece useful. The trope of likening some current situation to the distant past, in this case a WWII analogy but also your Weimar analogy for the US (the HNN post), disappoints because it imposes a false framework that conceals more than it reveals. It reveals something about history, and may be useful to teach history, but it conceals the present and assumes knowledge not in evidence. It is so abstract that all the cats are grey.

It also falls short of usefulness because it employs antique mental tools. We know that cybernetic views of societies are as false as such views of ecologies. The whole notion of targeted intervention and predictable results works fine for steam engines and thermostats, but once outside the clockwork world of steam age thinking - or an echo chamber with an open bar - more complex and robust tools are needed.

One specific defect of the piece is the idea of knowing another person's mind and even the "mind" of a diverse and diffuse group that spans cultures and continents. Saying "From al-Qaeda's point of view..." is too simplistic.

I was also a bit amused by Cole's notions about war.

The US cleverly outfoxed al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, using air power and local Afghan allies (the Northern Alliance) to destroy the Taliban without many American boots on the ground.

Ironically, however, the Bush administration then went on to invade Iraq for no good reason, where Americans faced the kind of wearing guerrilla war they had avoided in Afghanistan.

Outfoxed? This was a continuation of the old US Afghan strategy used against the Soviets, supplemented with daisy-cutters. The US always allied with the Muj. It's the only sensible way to do mountain warfare. It was exactly what I expected, exactly what everyone I know who is familiar with the region and its history expected. It would have been a surprise to do otherwise.

The good reason for invading Iraq escapes Cole the same way that the Afghan strategy surprised him; he hasn't a clue how to do war. Everybody who pays attention to that region knew that there was a big red bullseye on the map located over Baghdad that had been there for over a decade. Baghdad fell the day the planes hit the towers.

The issue isn't some fussy minuet about just wars that varies depending on whether it's Kabul or Baghdad in the crosshairs, the issue is the utility of war in response to terrorism. Does it help or not?

I said not on 9/12/2001 because we don't have the stones to do such war quickly and completely, and half measures would only half work, which is to say not at all since the weeds just regrow. We'd spend blood and treasure to achieve no significant change.

You said: "I support American forces killing or capturing al-Qaeda leaders wherever and whenever they can, even if that involves using Special Forces or cruise missiles within the territory of other nations who have not assented to those operations. I support the general proposition that the highest matter of principle in US foreign policy should not be a respect for sovereignty, but a defense of national and global liberty. Discretion and good judgment is still important, but the use of US military and economic power wherever and whenever it produces good results is critically important."

You are in essence advocating fighting fire with fire, terrorism with terrorism. This seems a much better approach than war though it clearly involves bullets, bombs and bucks just as wars do. The problem is that it isn't politically possible, and it would have provided a template for universal, continuous terrorism everywhere, like an early MacLeod novel.

This is my problem. I don't see a way to fight terrorism. Neither war nor state terrorism would work. The root causes crowd are root clueless. My best guess at this point follows Holling's Panarchy ideas. The world is having growing pains. There's no cure. The wise doctor offers simple symptomatic relief and and counsels patience. It's a bitch, it hurts, it makes us crazy, but it isn't a disease - it's part of growing up. What a mess. Every priggish martinet on the planet is livid.

History happened. Is that history anything like the one Cole sees? "... across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished more of its goals than the US has of its." I think this is a remarkably foolish statement that assumes knowledge of the objectives of two parties to a conflict, something that isn't possible, when there are many more than two parties and they are all playing it by ear.

The question now is what to do on 9/13/2004. Myth making such as Cole is engaged in is traditional, a round-about way to do politics, but it isn't at all useful for policy since it is mythical. Those involved are checking their OODA loops and are many, many steps ahead of the pundits. All we can do is decide whether to change the commander in chief and that decision, I think, should be based solely on expectations of future performance.

Hi John,

Do not fear length. The editor will tighten this all up before we go to print;-)

"With all due respect to the president, has he turned on the evening news lately? Does he read the newspapers?" Kerry said. "Does he really know what's happening? Is he talking about the same war that the rest of us are talking about?"

I think this is what worries thoughtful people about Kerry and what makes political spin like Cole's seem quaint. They don't seem to grasp that reality isn't what you hear on the evening news or read in newspapers and it can't be used to formulate policy. Cole, a historian, well used to considering documents such as news stories as primary historical sources, can perhaps be excused for having some difficulty with this concept but it seems a grave failing in someone who wants to be commander in chief.

Even those who have primary responsibility for knowing and have the combined resources of all intelligence gathering and policy making organizations lack perfect knowledge. Those of us so far removed by location, time and access have far less chance of useful second guessing. The decision we are asked to make is to choose a commander in chief, not formulate policy, and it's hard to take a candidate seriously who demonstrates such confusion.