Rev. Wright: Shut Up; Sen. McCain: Keep Talkin’

In-and-out blogging today so I can get back to my for-pay work–both topics meant to annihilate any lingering doubt that I might not be totally in the tank for Democrats in 2008 (It’s sometimes hard for me to forget that I once said good things about Senator Lugar.)

Reverend Wright
Reverent Wright knows better than I do which path will best serve his flock but here’s my opinion: If he really wants to promote social justice, if he really wants to help black people in American society, then helping Obama get elected is certainly as viable a plan–if not more viable–than him finding more ways to publicize his obviously antagonizing views.

Yes, I understand, he wants to antagonize; he wants to speak The Truth to The People–such is his obligation under the doctrine of his church. But part of being a good leader is understanding that there is a good time and a bad time for all things, a season, if you will…I read that somewhere. I’m not asking that he not say “God damn America,” I’m asking that he not say it right now. Is the second week of November just too far away? Honestly, one gets the feeling (and I am that one) that this is less about spreading the doctrine of black liberation theology and a lot more about collecting speaker’s fees–striking while the iron is hot and whatnot. If the love of God on Earth is made visible through the promotion of social justice then Wright will surely burn one day for flexing his vanity and working against the efforts of the larger movement.

The New DNC Anti-McCain ad:
Some thoughtful people have chimed in on McCain’s repeated admission that he doesn’t care if we stay in Iraq “for a 100 years” or “10,000.” To some, it seems that to continue to rag on McCain for his statements is purely and illegitimately to take them out of context. To others, like TPM’s Josh Marshall, these attackers are fully in the right because they are “using the senator’s own words.” The release of the new DNC ad has reignited this debate.

I had hoped to chime in on this myself before someone else made the proper defense but Marshall did it today. Basically it might be true that most of the attacks, to a very minor degree, take McCain’s statements out of context. He did say that he didn’t care if we were in Iraq for a 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 years. But he did not mean that we would be continuing the Iraq War for that long. What McCain meant was that we would occupy Iraq indefinitely under a similar arrangement as we have with Germany or Japan and boatloads of other nations, which, given the nature and success of those arrangements, is hardly a controversial policy.

The problem, as Marshall correctly points out is that:

…there’s little reason to believe our occupation of Iraq will ever be like that. We tried this in Lebanon; the French tried this in Algeria; the British even tried it in Iraq. Western countries have a very poor history garrisoning Muslim countries in the Middle East. Iraq isn’t like Germany or Japan, not simply because of the history of the country but because both countries accepted decades-long US deployments as a counterweight to threatening neighbors. The relevant point is that McCain believes American troops should stay in Iraq permanently. His pipe dream about Iraq turning into Germany doesn’t change that.

That’s the crux here, Iraq will continue to be a deadly experiment in imperialist overreach for years into the future and will likely never transform into anything else. So the fact that McCain really hopes that our 10,000-year occupation is a peaceful one is completely irrelevant. Marshall and I both love this elegant restatement of the point from the New Yorkers‘ Rick Hertzberg:

McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal–that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we’ll stay.

So regardless of whether or not you believe that McCain meant that we would have a 100-year-long war in Iraq or not, his policy will result in one, and thus this ad and all others that accuse McCain of endorsing a 100-year war in Iraq are 100% justifiably and correct. The fact that he has deluded himself into believing that that is not the case makes him more deadly, not less. This is a case where the context hurts McCain rather than helping him. Out of context he is merely calling for 100 years of war with Iraq presumably in an effort to secure the safety of Americans. In context he’s strategically incompetent and dangerously naive about national security matters; and his incompetence and naivete will result in a 100 year long war. Vote for him at the peril of your sons and grandsons (and their kids, and their kids’ kids…at least.)

Boycott the Olympics? But What About My Dreams?

It is important to note right off the bat that Clinton did not call for a boycott of the Olympics. Much of the boohooing and jeering from the headline-only-reading blogizens is that Clinton is demanding that Bush take the drastic-yet-worthless move of pulling our athletes from the competition ruining their lives for nothing more than a stern fingerpointing at Hu Jintao. Unless I failed to read the story properly (check for yourself here, but when you check please read more than the misleading headline and read [for godssake] the opening sentence) she has merely stated that she thinks the president should boycott the opening ceremonies.

Many would claim that that this is just a symbolic gesture that doesn’t mean anything and will lead nowhere but to offending our growing trade partner, China..and of course ruining the Olympics (woe upon woe!). Sure, a handshake, a cold shoulder, raising your voice when angry, being late to a meeting discussing irrelevant topics are all symbolic gestures but they do indicate a certain amount of satisfaction or dissatisfaction both to the recipient of that symbol and to those who witness it. That is the stuff of diplomacy. Much of diplomacy has always been about showing up to the right parties, having your name next to the right people at the right time, shunning those that attempt to act outside the system. Diplomacy…as a distinct way of convincing people to do what you want them to do without forcing them to through brute force…is an art that pulls its power from psychology and sociology, as well as rational and intellectual appeals. Furthermore this sort of symbolic communication can be timed for the utmost efficacy.

There’s a lot of money in the Olympics. Perhaps more importantly there is a lot of prestige that comes with being granted the Olympics–prestige that is, in part, related to the Olympics mission: promoting transnational brotherhood through the power of sport. And roll your eyes if you must, but the Olympics have repeatedly proven themselves to be an important venue for stating things of importance. And country’s will go extremely far to protect the glittering image that got them awarded the Olympics to start with.

China, for example has spent billions (billions) preparing for the coming tide of visitors from all all over the world. They have tightened several laws and loosened some others.

For another example, look to Mexico in 1968. Not the black-fisted salute, although that image is important not because it happened, or because it happened at a sporting event, but because it happened at the Olympics. I’m talking about the student protests a few months before the summer Olympics games that were thought to be so embarrassing for the Mexican government that the government arranged to have the protesters massacred. A move that, while horrible and dramatic, did significantly quiet the amount of domestic protest in Mexico during the games. I’m not condoning the massacre of dissidents (what a grandly self-destructive move that would be). I’m citing it as an example of the extremes that governments will go through in an attempt to not sully their reputations at Olympic time. Turns out that student massacres are bad way to not have your reputation sullied but that is neither here nor there at the moment.

After admitting that I’m a reader of Daniel Drezner’s blog, it would probably be wrong of me to not credit him for saying first what I’m about to say. Basically Clinton’s proposal is limited in scope, designed to draw attention to China’s extreme violations of human rights (and its clear vision that there are no such things as human rights) without entering into an all-or-nothing pact that would hurt American businesses, American athletes, or our burgeoning relationship with a major world power that over the last 20 years or so has made significant improvements in the human rights area, to say nothing of their increasing importance in American foreign policy interests like the six-party talks with North Korea.

It is possible, even, as Drezner points out, to make this statement even more important by acting in conjunction with the leader’s of Germany, France, and ideally some developing nations as well. Furthermore, it is possible that Bush could use the threat of a boycott to illicit some immediate concessions from China, specifically on the Darfur front, if Bush can convince France and Germany not to go through with their possible and planned boycotts respectively.

The alternative is to do nothing and that seems to be the consensus of many. That, since we won’t change China overnight with a symbolic boycott of the opening ceremonies we might as well do nothing at all, after all, why risk offending a country that holds so much of our debt and has such strategic value as an ally and trading partner? Well, that recommendation denies how much has diplomacy goes on with China every day. China did not wake up one morning and decide to be America’s trading partner. Nor did America simply wake up one morning and decide to be China’s. That series of agreements was the result of a series of diplomatic tits for tats–China agreeing to certain policy constraints to gain access to America’s markets and America promising to, among other things, cool the hot rhetoric we have historically aimed at China. Basically, the threat of an Olympic boycott is exactly the kind of thing we have done with every reluctant ally-in-waiting. Only the effect of such a move today is amplified because of our trade relations and because of the Olympics.

To do nothing with Hu Jintao still listed as one of the top 20 human rights violators is really to condone that activity. There is no two ways about it. That is not to say that a boycott of the opening ceremonies is the only way to make a statement, there are plenty of things that can be done, and likely will be, but an opening ceremony boycott would not be the knife in China’s the back as many would like to paint it…nor would it destroy the dreams of our hard-working athletes or ruin the Olympics. As a matter of fact, I would think that a lot of the athletes participating in this year’s games are just as distraught as some of those recommending a boycott–although conflicting personal and professional interests will keep them from saying so for the moment. An acknowledgment from the president that America will participate in the games in a spirit of brotherhood through sportsmanship but does not condone the ruthlessness of the PRC might help alleviate some of the guilt that they are feeling for participating in such a grand money-making event for the Chinese dictatorship.

Greenwald v Drezner

I was going to write about this story from yesterday’s NY Times which describes the sad fate of the Sabal Palm Audubon Center which, thanks to a completely backward, short-sighted, and ultimately futile public policy will find its way to the other side of the new fence being erected along the US’s southern border. Mostly what I want to point out is that this such a pure case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face that I almost can’t put it into words. What is the fence supposed to do? Stop illegal immigrants. Why? Because illegal immigrants are a drain on our resources and dilute the labor pool thereby lowering wages–the combined effect of which lowers our quality of life. So, to defend against this lowering of living standards it seems reasonable, somehow, to wall Americans away from a gorgeous nature preserve that exists, at least in part, to raise the quality of life of those that live near enough to enjoy it.

Furthermore, America’s inability to halt illegal immigration is falsely believed to be an infringement on its sovereignty. Well, what better way to get a handle on your sovereignty that to essentially cede your country to another country? I mean, after all, if there’s no America to immigrate to, we win! Right?

But instead I want to jump in on a little cross-blogging warfare that cropped up yesterday between two bloggers I respect immensely, Glenn Greenwald at Salon (dot com) and Tufts University professor, Daniel Drezner at his personal blog. I want to jump in not because either Greenwald or Drezner need me to defend them but because I tried to comment on Drezner’s blog yesterday and I got a weird 404 Error and if I don’t tell it to someone I might just combust.

Basically yesterday Greenwald published this where he lists various NEXIS search results that, to him, indicate that the mainstream press is more interested in covering Obama’s bowling record than the fact that John Yoo’s legal “opinion” that the president is king of America and that torture is fine and dandy became effectively US law.

In response, Daniel Drezner wrote this where he critiques Greenwald’s methodology on a variety of points and concludes that

“Greenwald might be a good blogger/columnist, but he’s not that great at social science.”

Ouch.

Apparently Megan McArdle at The Atlantic (dot com) also chimed in but I don’t care because I didn’t read her article and Greenwald (among others) is pretty good at successfully ripping her arguments to tiny little pieces. Those two spawned this response from Greenwald today.

Basically Drezner and Greenwald are talking past one another here. Drezner (rightfully) critiques Greenwald’s methodology while not addressing the more salient point of whether or not the press is overly concerned with Lewinksy rumors and under concerned with vital policy considerations at the national level. Meanwhile Greenwald chalks up Drezner’s critique of methodology as defense for an indefensible press corps.

I’m not a social scientist but I can generally see bad social science when it occurs. And Greenwald’s is clearly flawed, not just for the reasons that Drezner, which are three:

1. the news cycle hasn’t played out for all the stories yet,
2. the press runs more stories when the participants make comments on them and
3. the press (and the country) are more concerned with America’s future not it’s past.

To flush out point 1, Greenwald begins his post with the fact that “in the past two weeks” several very important stories have broken and among them are Mukasey’s slip up that the Bush team failed to listen to a phone call that might have prevented 9/11¹ and the John Yoo memo. He then does a NEXIS search going back thirty days and because “Clinton and Lewinsky” gets 1,079 hits and “Yoo and torture” only gets 102 he determines that the MSM is horrible.

Let’s just start here, the MSM is horrible, but why (why oh why) if these exciting and important stories only date back 14 days, would you search back 30? Should the press have been reporting on the Mukasey/ 9-11 slip up before he made it? So “Obama and Wright” gets thirty days of hits while “Yoo and Fourth Amendment” only gets 14? Of course the numbers aren’t going match up, but they also aren’t going to give you an accurate picture of what’s going on.

And “Clinton and Lewinsky,” is a particularly misleading search² because there are at least three different stories there

1. The famous one starring the ex-president and his intern
2. the new rumors about the ex-president’s wife and the intern and
3. the shenanigans starring the ex-president’s daughter being asked about the intern.

I think that Greenwald does a pretty good job reducing Drezner’s other arguments: 2) That the press reports more on stories that those involved comment on: e.g., Obama did not give a bowling press conference and it still got 1,043 hits³while John Yoo has talked about his role in the White House and the two Yoo searches combined only yielded 118 hits; and 3) that the press is more concerned with the nation’s future and not its past.⁴

A better comparison would chart the daily hits for each story as it played out across their news cycles. The Wright story for example played out over several weeks with peaks when the story broke and again when Obama gave his widely covered speech in response. “Obama and Wright” is turning up at least two stories over the entire 30 days. Furthermore, “Obama and patriotism” (1,607 hits) is likely turning up many of the same stories since the crucial moment of Wright’s sermon was his “God damn, America” line. So the question is, when the press is covering a story to at their fullest, how much did they cover it–not how much did they cover it since some arbitrary date in the past.

In any case, even with better methodology I think Greenwald would still be able to prove his point. The numbers are so far apart that it is fairly clear that if one were to measure them in the way I suggest the petty stories are still going to come out the clear coverage winners. And there is no reason that “Obama and bowling” should be getting over 1,000 hits. It simply doesn’t matter at all. Or, if “Obama and bowling” is going to get over 1000 hits then “Yoo and torture” should be as well. It’s a more important story. And so, while Drezner may be accurate in his charge that Greenwald could have done a better analysis, it does not follow necessarily follow that Greenwald’s conclusion is false.

Greenwald, for his part, is here a victim of the same poor thinking he so often (rightfully) points out in others. He is forever defending his comments from attacks. I honestly couldn’t begin counting the number of times he has felt compelled to add an update or a new post that says something to the effect of “Just because I defended X in this instance doesn’t mean I support X for president or think that X’s party is handling this situation appropriately. I just meant what I said, that X is being reasonable and taking the right approach.”

Drezner is right, at least on point 1, that Greenwald’s methodology was poor. Drezner could have, as I did, point out more ways that Greenwald’s methodology was poor. Even if Drezner’s analysis itself was incorrect on points 2 and 3, a critique of Greewald’s social science does not amount to a defense of the press. It is simply what Drezner said it was, a critique of Greenwald’s approach. And Greenwald should know that.

1. They didn’t; Mukasey is just a liar and a fear-monger

2. And I know Greenwald knows it because he’s mentioned all three of them on his blog

3. “Obama and Wright” to prove Drezner’s point got over 3,000…although I repeat, the counting was unfair. The Wright story is getting two more weeks of NEXIS hits than the bowling story and is arguably more important.

4. Even though the president who wanted that Yoo memo is still in office and the country is poised to elect a guy who is unlikely to roll back the “president is king” part of the opinion even if he rebukes the “torture is good” part.

Absolut Incite

I can only assume that in the marketing department of Pernod Ricard, owners of Absolut Vodka, they figure that no Americans read Quien Magazine where this ad originally appeared.

Honestly, I’m not sure what logic made them think that infuriating what has to be one of their largest markets would be a good idea. What’s even more stupid is that the Right Wing Blogosphere is lit up as each blogger races to lay the blame on “the liberal media” or to associate various Hispanic campaign advisers with the ad concept.

It goes without saying, of course, clearly, obviously, that no candidate for president, past or present has ever advocated reversing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Military and Militarism

William J. Astore’s piece in yesterday’s Salon is nothing more than a full frontal assault on American’s proper moral growth away from militarism veiled as an attack on the intelligentsia’s undemocratic elitism. It is not that everything that Astore says is wrong but his failure to understand the attacks on the institution of militarism causes him to comically defend that which is not attacked, to promote that which no decent person would promote, and to ignore the obvious on multiple occasions. The essay is either a poorly constructed piece of propaganda specifically but ineffectively designed to twist progressives’ ideas in on themselves, or Astore is a kneejerk reactionary bent on defending the institution through which he developed his own identity and in which he is therefore emotionally and psychologically invested. In either case, charges of injudicious elitism should be ignored by those who rightfully wish to eradicate the 19th Century twin specters of militarism and imperialism.

Astore most prominent and basic failure is confusing attacks on militarism with attacks on the military. He says that progressives attack militarism but then in order to defend why they shouldn’t do that or how they might better develop their arguments he defends the military. While the two are often found together they are not identical. The belief that force is the answer to America’s problems, that unilateral military intervention can substitute for diplomacy, and that America’s military supremacy grants the American government a moral obligation or universal right to enforce our will on others are all concepts that are worth fighting against. These concepts form the foundation of militarism and–when exercised–imperialism. In terms of policy, militarism has led the American government to spend more money on its military than any other industrialized nation and, while America’s extreme wealth has allowed for our military costs to remain low as a percentage of GDP, that is quickly changing both from an increase in military spending and a decrease in the nation’s raw output. That money could be better spent and any thinking person knows it. Progressives would like to see that money spent on any number of good causes whose benefits would extend from the very poorest to the very richest. Traditional conservatives would like to see that money returned to private citizens in the form of smaller government and lower taxes.

But attacks on the military are not the same as attacks on militarism and for the most part progressives attack the latter rather than the former. In the cases where there are attacks on the military directly, either from the right or the left, the attacks are not directed at the concept of a military but rather on the unfair, undemocratic, and exploitive way it is run. That is to say that attacks on the military are isolated to the military leadership and not to the enlisted men and women that fight the wars.

Most Americans, even those who were not alive during World Wars I and II look back fondly to a time when our default military position was one of non-intervention, to an era when military force was reserved for those moments when military force improved our nation’s strategic standing and fought against legitimate enemies. I have heard no arguments for dismantling or even substantially decreasing the size of the American armed forces. All reasonable parties understand the necessity of a military.

Astore pretends that progressives do not understand or do not appreciate the wide diversity of people represented in the armed forces when it is quite clear, if his argument is to be believed as representing his actual thoughts, that it is he does not understand the nature of that diversity. It is true, as he states that ethnic and racial minorities seem overrepresented in the enlisted ranks. It is also true, although he fails to mention it, that the group of commissioned officers not only do not reflect this over-representation but reverses it. Commissioned officers are disproportionately white and college educated. He also fails to mention the high degree of nepotism that, despite other reforms, the military has failed to abolish. Critics from within the ranks of the armed forces still talk about not knowing the right people and not having the right parents when it comes to trying to make higher ranks. Even the non-elitist military that Astore champions is still famously elitist when it come to the ones who don’t see the front lines of battle. When you combine the top brass elitism with the overrepresented ethnic and racial minorities on the front lines, you’d have to be an idiot or villain to think that progressive attacks on that system are ill placed. A handful of minority generals and colonels do not remove the stink of the racism and classism that permeates the armed forces. Of the 39 active duty four-ranked officers in the United States armed forces, one of them is black (General William Ward) and all of them are male.

But a charge of systemic disproportion, if it happened naturally, is not a condemnatory charge. The fact of the matter, and we all know it, is that within the system individuals make the choices. College-educated people largely do not sign up for the military. This isn’t because we think it’s inherently stupid. It’s not because we’re effeminate. (Although there are educated people who do think it’s stupid and some that are effeminate.) But, college educated people can choose jobs that pay more and risk less. And the reverse is true too. The military isn’t just recruiting from America’s ghettos and farms because those people are any more willing to die. America’s urban and rural uneducated and poor are willing to work for less and often don’t see any other options for themselves.

It is true, as Astore says, that many people long for the challenge and hardships of military life, even of war–war is, after all, a force that gives us meaning. It is true that many young men and women seek a career, or even a short term job in the military in order to help shape their identities. But it also true that many, the majority of soldiers, do not do this. Astore is an idiot if he thinks we haven’t noticed that, with one exception in the last 60 years, enlistment goes down as the risk of dying goes up. He is an idiot if he thinks we haven’t noticed that the military is lowering its educational standards in order to meet its enlistment needs. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education does limit career options. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education does limit the ability to think critically. Education does not equal intelligence but a lack of education impairs the ability to engage equally with the multi-billion dollar ad campaign that powers the enlistment machine. The military is not just targeting the poor and uneducated because they are more nationalistic; they target them because they are more helpless, both in the larger world, and against the military’s propaganda machine. That is, the poor and uneducated are more vulnerable to exploitation. Astore may accuse rightly accuse liberals of a naturally paternalistic instinct, but it is fair to note, that paternalism in the political sense developed as a reaction to obvious exploitation not the other way around. If people had not be taken advantage of there would not have been a need to protect them.

The military’s ad campaign is buttressed by our entertainment industry. There is no lacking for books, magazine articles, television shows, or movies that glamorize the soldier’s life. Even movies like Full Metal Jacket and Jarhead that offer scathing reproachment of military culture are sufficiently full of depictions of the honor of combat, the meaningfulness of life exposed by proximity to death, and the natural camaraderie of small bands of soldiers to sufficiently inspire people to sign up. But then there are movies like Band of Brothers, the 10-episode mini-series on HBO that are essentially nothing more than advertisements for America’s elite 101st Airborne Division. Astore facetiously claims to be “struck” by how many men he talks to in rural Pennsylvania are moved to enlist after watching all 10 episodes. Despite all the barbarism of war laid out in those specials, Band of Brothers is essentially hour upon hour of stacked indoctrination, teaching the young men that watch it that it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country. Maybe it is, but Astore can hardly be “struck” that young men are inspired to enlist after being having been told that they will be revered and remembered if they sacrifice themselves to patriotic causes. Again, I am not critiquing the claim that it is good to dedicate oneself to a higher cause and to die for it if called upon. I am merely noting Astore’s facetious claim that he was “struck” by it. And I am critiquing Astore’s implication that America’s rural and urban poor are somehow more patriotic simply by virtue of their economic condition and not because of a companion dearth of other opportunities.

It is not that the intelligentsia looks down on the soldiers for being less educated. It is not that the intelligentsia doesn’t appreciate the individuals that enlist with both eyes open. They are criticizing, not the men and women signing on the dotted line, but the manipulative hand that guides their hand. Progressives are out to change the system, to eradicate the militarist regime that needs to find new ways to recruit more vulnerable people to fight and die for illegal and imperialistic wars. A new outlook on how to conduct world affairs means, less wars; less wars means less soldiers; less soldiers means less exploited people.

The lauded “all-volunteer” nature of our army is put into question by the necessities of militarism. Militarism as an institution is cyclical beast. Militarism requires wars and in a world thankfully free of a global government war is not only always possible, but always just a decision away. Societies will never lack for enemies. Someone else is always competing for a valuable but limited commodity; someone else is always strategically where they need to be. So militarism will seek wars where wars are unnecessary. When successful, the military engaged in war has reason to request an increase in its size, its budget, its executive power. When the war is over it can attempt to maintain the size it obtained because it obtained only what was necessary to win the last war; future wars are bound to be harder, fought against bigger enemies with more improved technologies, perhaps even further away.

As if that wasn’t bad enough [and it is] militarism must find troops to fight and die. It is possible that those in power, if they are sufficiently militarist, will find ways to manipulate the governmental and economic systems to create uneducated poor people to fill that requirement. That sentence is not a charge that anybody has ever done that. It is a charge that under a militaristic leadership, someone might. We never know who we might accidentally elect into power. Hitler was elected, you know. Therefore, in order to protect democracy, in order to ensure that justice is provided to all equally, it is necessary to eradicate militaristic tendencies.

Astore’s misplacement of the attack from militarism to the military is, as I said, a shameful rhetorical trick or it is based on his misunderstanding of the nature of those attacks. In either case, that is the larger failure of his article which is peppered with smaller mistakes.

For example, he at one point says that “America tends to trust its military” and he finds the roots of this trust in our knowledge that the “‘have nots’ have access to it.” I doubt that this is the source of this trust. Americans, perhaps shamefully, find little trustworthy in the “have not” culture. What is trustworthy about the military is that they aren’t businessmen or politicians. It is assumed that the leaders of the military are sufficiently aware of the nature of their business that they are restrained in their decision to go to war. Our generals tend to ask for more troops than the politicians provide. The generals tend to ask for strategic considerations that will aid in eventual victory. The generals, it seems, are more inclined to not go to war than the politicians who sit in Washington. And, when generals decide that war is the right decision, it is assumed they make that decision with heavier hearts than a politician coming to the same decision. There are rights and wrongs involved in this decision, but generally we feel that the military is to be trusted in times of war because….that’s what they do and the consequences of failure are far greater for them that might die or be taken prisoner. It has nothing to do with the democratic nature of America’s most undemocratic institution. Or, to put it far more simply, it is not that Americans trust the military, it is that they trust the military more than they trust politicians. That may or may not be the right thing to do or believe, the citizens of Argentina in the 70s and 80s may make a good case for why that’s wrong, but at the very least the military qua military is neither good nor bad but rather is a force without direction. Politicians are good or bad depending on one’s point of view and are therefore inherently untrusted by some section of the population.

Astore also, wrongfully and shamefully says that “For academia and progressives, war is today what sex was to society in the Victorian age, involving as it does emotions nice people don’t feel and acts nice people don’t opt to commit.” This “argument” is embarrassingly superficial and shamefully wrong. If Astore actually believes this I am left with no recourse but to consider him an anti-social madman, probably psychopathic. In case Astore is unaware, there is a substantial difference in the nature, cause, and effects of sex and war, but for purposes of exposing how disgusting this comparison is I will appeal only to the effects of both. Sex, when committed by normal, rational people, no matter immoral and sloppy the act is, results in two very tired bodies and one or two guilty conciousness. Sometimes it results in neither. In very extreme cases sex may result in an injury, and, rarer still, a death. Even rape, which I think is beyond consideration here, while awful results in possibly dozens of indignities, and, if accompanied by murder, a dozen murders.

War, on the other hand–no matter how restrained its execution, no matter how rational the soldiers or generals–results in the deaths of thousands. It results in rape. It results in theft. It result in indignities of every stripe. In extreme cases it results in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; it results in Nanking and Dresden. It results in genocide. It results in the annihilation of cities and cultures.

To say that disparaging war is a relativist cultural artifact of the 20th/21st centuries that will fade away in time is tantamount to wishing for a return to the endless war that epitomized human civilization during the Middle Ages. To simply equate young men’s desire for “taboo breaking” by violating sexual norms and their “taboo breaking” through institutionalized murder is immorally simple as to defy one’s ability to articulate it.

Astore accuses progressives of misunderstanding the fundmental makeup of the military. He talks about the diverse political views (conservative, but not necessarily Republican, he says), the racial and ethnic diversity, the modest gender diversity, and the diversity of motivations for joining. He mentions the educational diversity and the social class diversity. But it becomes increasingly evident that the only “progressives” in his worldvieware also “academics.” He even provides a pathway for his readers to include that all academics are also liberals (and therefore progressives) by stating that of 42 professors at Brown University all of them registered as Democrats (as if Democrats themselves were liberal or progressive, but I suppose I can let that pass.) It would seem that no progressives have made their way out of or exist within the military. It would seem that even he, who is so enlightened to find a place for militarism in the modern world is not a progressive.

He then challenges these academics to force themselves to understand the diverse nature of the enlisted men and women that make up the military because if they fail to do so they will also fail in eradicating militarism.

I guess the first thing that needs to be brought up is that university professors are not the only progressives. For that matter, progressives are not only made up of people with college educations. Astore forgets the populist nature of most progressive policy recommendation. The majority of Americans have at least one “progressive” platform that helps form their overall political ideology. Perhaps they are anti-war, perhaps they are merely anti-Iraq (which is the majority of the population right now–a majority made up of almost every Democrat and over half of all Republicans). Maybe they are pro-union. Most tradesman are pro-union even though they vote Republican. Maybe they’re concerned with global warming or economic sustainability. Whatever it is, progressives are not just a cadre of elite stuffed shirts in universities. The anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle were demanding a progressive global agenda and I doubt that the college professors even made up a sizable percentage of those present.

Also, once again, militarism isn’t found in the enlisted men. Miltiarism is found in the untrusted politicians that make decisions for the military. The upstanding men like Cheney and Rumsfeld that blazed a legal and moral path for contemporary imperialism. Those men (and women) came up through America’s middle and upper classes, largely from white, Protestant families. In the one extremely notable example of a black, female militarist, she rose up through the academic system that is under attack in this paper. I don’t think that, in order to eradicate militarism, it is at all necessary to understand that 20% of today’s enlisted men and women are there wholly by choice–because the more important factor at work in militarism are the desires of a hungry political elite.

In one final flub, Astore claims that women find their gender identity only in biological rites of passage: menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause. Men, have no biological rites of passage, there gender identity is “arguably less secure” he says. Male gender identity is found in “the gaze of other men” and therefore men seek out military life in order to fulfill biosocial destinies. This is such a clear example of a person overreaching his discipline that I probably need to do no more than mention this argument, as I did above, to reveal it for its impropriety. Even if he is broadly correct and I don’t have the expertise to know, I think it is safe to point out a few things. First of all, even if broadly correct it is more precisely wrong. Women find their gender identity in the gaze of other women. And men, surprising, go through puberty–an event …or series of events…that provides a variety of biological milestones celebrated as elements of manhood. If Astore does not know that from his own experiences, I pity him.

More importantly the implication of the argument is two-fold, that man must appeal to his animalistic nature or deny himself. In response to these bio-social demands men join the military to prove their manhood to other men. I suppose there is no denying that this is the case. Not only do armed services commercials make it clear that the military will form boys into men other men seem to abide by, support and reinforce that claim through their actions. However, the extreme argument here is that men must be allowed to kill other men in order to fulfill his destiny, a claim that is patently absurd.

He then says, “The challenge for progressives is to recognize this and then work to create viable alternatives to military service in which masculinity and patriotism can be demonstrated in non-lethal settings.” First of all, I would bet if any group of people in the world recognize the deep normative structures of cultural and biological rites of passage and the roles of identity formation and gender it would be the “academics” that Astore thinks are all “progressive.” Second, how the heck is it the job of progressives, or any other single group to provide alternative rites of passage. Third, where did that “patriotism” bit come from? If we agree that the military does provide such an outlet where both patriotism and masculinity can be expressed at once, on what level is that necessary? Do !kung bushman express patriotism along with their rites of passage? Are men who are clearly masculine, like masons, unproved in their masculinity unless they build walls and houses “for America.” Fourth, what is the female equivalent? Must women menstruate American flags? Do they not require the interplay of femininity and patriotism? Fifth, who says that this whole gender-typing thing is desirable? I’m not saying it is or it isn’t but I don’t think that “butch” women are any less human than girly ones and I certainly don’t favor macho guys to effeminate ones. Sixth, why can’t there be separate activities that allow one to express masculinity on the one hand and patriotism with the other? Seventh, there is a de facto elimination of femininity from the military here isn’t there? Why is that? The clear reasoning here is that militaries are by definition masculine. Women joining the military makes the women masculine and not the military feminine. Which is a clearly circular argument and supports a sexual discrimination currently illegal under American law.

I think I could list problems with this all day and never explore all of them. So I’ll let the first answer to Astore’s challenge be Astore’s own words. What is the non-lethal rite of passage that can simultaneously allow a boy to express his masculinity and his patriotism? Recreate New Deal-esque organizations like the Civilian Conservation Corp. I’m fine with that, but I’m a tax and spend liberal. Of course, if its between paying guys to play chess outside their barracks in South Korea or paying guys to plant trees in recently strip-mined West Virginia, I suppose I’d like the latter. But more importantly, the best alternative to men joining the military, is… men joining the military. Astore has wrongfully assumed, again, that because progressives are against militarism they are against having a military. Maybe it’s not manly to join the Army and not kill anyone but I think that might be the price worth paying. I mean, nobody kills anybody (on purpose) planting trees either and that seems to be OK by Astore’s standards. I’d be perfectly happy with a large and well-armed military that never has to be used.

It is one thing to defend the military, but since the military is not under attack such a paper would be totally unwarranted. It is quite another to defend militarism. In reality progressives are justly attacking militarism and Astore defends the military. The effect of his confusion is that he wrote a paper that reads as a defense of the indefensible and it causes him to make embarrassing analogies and make unjust charges. Progressives do not have to rethink their stance against militarism just because a racially, economically, and politically mixed group of boys and girls sign up to join it. Disliking militarism does not expose progressives and intellectual elites who are denying the democratic nature of the army. Not only is the military itself as undemocratic an institution as can be imagined, the target of progressive attacks is not the military or its constituent parts. It is the philosophy of militarism–which is also different that a basic realist recognition of the necessity of the armed forces–that is under attack.

= American

In the real world we talk about “nations” as political entities. We talk about nationalities and we talk about “nation building.” There’s the United Nations, which is a collection of countries (mostly), we talk about “nationalities” and when we do we almost always mean “what country those people are from?”. If someone asks most of my friends, “What nationality are you?” most of them will respond “American,” not because they’ve given any thought to the concept, but because it’s the easiest answer, and, for the most part, they’d be right because the American government have been notorious experts in the realm of “nationalizing.” What the rest of the world calls “nations” political scientists call “states.” Nations are, and I’m over-simplifying a bit, self-identifying units. The word signifies a group of people that feel they share a living history with other people. Those they share that living history with are fellow members of their nation. States, on the other hand, are identified by law and by recognition of others.

“Israel” for example is a state to most of the world, the United Nations and its members accept its borders as the borders of an entity known as “Israel” and they recognize that the leaders of this “Israel” have the jurisdiction to make decisions on behalf of and to be imposed on only the people that exist within those boundaries. Palestine however is not only not a state (because so few recognize its sovereignty) its people do not accept that the political borders of Israel compose a state known as Israel. As far as Palestinians are concerned, the idea of “Israeli” only applies to the people that called themselves (self-identify) as Israelis and it only includes Jews. Muslims living within the (unrecognized) borders of Israel are actually Palestinians. The artificial political boundaries of Israel are not strong enough to impose an identifiable characteristic.

We talk about the “nation-state.” The idea of the nation-state first started cropping up with force during the Renaissance. It really began to take hold during the 18th Century. Most of the wars that were fought at the time were fought over the idea of how a group of people within an area should think about themselves. After 1648 it was determined by international agreement, that forcing the people of another region to accept the religion of another nation was unacceptable. After that, wars were fought over the shared histories of people. World Wars I and II were largely fought over this very issue. Was the Rhineland French or German? Was southern France French or Italian? Who in Spain was Spanish? Weren’t Polish once Prussian which meant German, or did it mean Russian? Europe was famously carved up during and just after these wars, cementing the idea of the nation-state in the public conciousness. But ultimately the “nation-state” as a concept remained as artificial as the “state.”

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union the various national differences began to re-expose themselves across eastern Europe. Fifty years of forced Russian identity, the people of Poland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, etc was not long enough to erase the various national myths and shared identities of those people. Across the area known as “the Balkans” various people’s movements fought against the concepts of enforced state identities in favor of national identities. Their efforts to create areas of national homogeny lead to “ethnic cleansing” or, more accurately, genocide. All genocides (or at least all the famous ones) have been related to this idea of creating ethnically pure zones of influences, to bring about a real, perceivable unity between self-identifying nations and artificially imposed states. Since “states” are artificial concepts the “nation-state” as it was conceived is just as artificial. To create a real nation-state something artificial had to happen. Sometimes artifice thrust upon the world is an act of beauty, like a good film. Sometimes an act of artifice constitutes the worst tragedies. There is nothing as violent, brutal, and tragic as man in the service of his politics.

Modern Americans are beneficiaries of the most solidly constructed nation-state in existence. The Native American genocide was not simply an economic movement based on snatching valuable real estate and raw materials from the “savages.” It was an “ethnic cleansing” to create a nation out of the burgeoning state. The British and French colonists did not start a genocide; they were battling for land as an occupying force. The American government began the nationalizing campaign of “the Indian Wars.” The American government enacted the genocide. The result was that the Germans, Dutch, Scottish, Irish, and English that made up America could identify as not-Indian and therefore “Americans.” The genocide brought us together. That’s what we mean when we say “nationalizing.” An immigrant does not “become a citizen” of the United States. They are “nationalized” by living here for awhile, becoming a productive member of our legitimate society (i.e. not our criminal society), and they learn our histories. They learn who are founding fathers are.

As above in the Israel/Palestine problem, when countries have failed to fully unite their national identity with their state identity there arise inevitable problems. Iraq is a state. The Kurds are a nation. The United States of America is a state. The Cherokee (famously) are a nation. What constitutes that living history mentioned earlier is different for each nation. It can include language, religion, norms, beliefs, values, rituals. It is easier to identify the ties that bind people together in some nations than in others. Many nations, for example, share a religion. It is not the only thing they share, but they do share it. But “nations” are often very hard to describe. Like many groups, there are members that are wholly of a group and there are members at the periphery, about to fall into a different group. During World War II for example it was hard for “Americans” to figure out which of two opposing groups Japanese-Americans should be identified with. As citizens of a state, everybody was “American.” As members of a nationality…? Who knew?

Part of the reason lies in concepts of group identity. Groups tend to identify themselves most starkly in times of conflict. During World War II, for example, “Americans” were those people that joined the war effort, either as soldiers or as home front practitioners that willingly and proudly made the extra sacrifices that ensured victory abroad. They participated in scrap metal drives. They planted victory gardens in their yards and in highway medians. They sewed parachutes out of old nylon stockings. Through no fault of their own, the Japanese and Germans that were imprisoned in internment camps, were not “Americans.” The other Americans made sure of that.

After World War II, “Americans” were “not Communists” and “Communists” were “not Americans” and that was all knew on Earth and all we needed to know. Of course, what made one person a Communist was up for grabs and consequently what made one an American as well. It left us wildly in the dark, for example, how to pigeonhole people like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow who used that bastion of Americanism “the free press” to demonize crazed Communist-hunters like Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis).

If nothing else, the idea of a nation relies on the national myth. It relies on the belief in the greatness of common ancestors. In our nation George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine are the root source of our national identity. To a lesser extent (not in reality, but in the common perception) James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Paul Revere and a handful of others share in that reverence. It is a common feature of our political debates that even the most uneducated of us rely on arguments to history. In terms of formal argument, that is, in an argument that weighs the pros and cons of a policy decision based on its logic and effects, an appeal to history holds very little weight. Appeals to history are, at their core, emotional appeals.

The ethnocentric self-identifying “Americans” among us now, in their efforts to marginalize and reject Latino immigrants, in part, rely on the clearly isolationist, xenophobic, attitudes of our shared forebears. To them America is defined by the external characteristics of the rich, white men, of northern Virginia. They spoke English. They were protestant. Their rallying cry at one crucial moment was “The British are Coming!” To these ethnocentrists “Americans” in part were “not British.” They extend that attitude to today, “Americans,” they say “are not Mexicans.” Mexicans speak Spanish. Mexicans are Catholic. Mexicans are short and brown (and for that matter share many external characteristics with victims of our last genocidal efforts).

It is evidence of our American nationality that those who are pro-immigrant also make appeals to our shared forbears. To the pro-immigrant, Washington et. al. themselves were immigrants. They embodied an entrepreneurial spirit recognizable in today’s Latino immigrants. They shared a belief in the equality of men across time and place which encourages the acceptance of modern immigrants as equals on (God’s) Earth, equally worth sharing and contributing to our national greatness.

Are Americans white, European protestants or do Americans embody a “melting pot” of various cultures that come to express similar ideas of what the nation should be; to share a founding myth? The question of immigration…the “problem” of immigration is of fundamental concern to American identity as we have come to understand it. The problem, if there is one, is that the state/nation/country/powerful elite/academics/common man all have different concepts of what constitutes an “American” and if Latinos have a place here. The “problem” of immigration is a problem of identity.

National identities change over time. Americans used to be not-British, then they were not-Indian, then they were not-German/Japanese, then they were not-Communist.But then British people became Americans when British people won the war of Independence. Then there were no Indians to not be. Then we became comfortable with the Germans and Japanese. (And of course, there have been dozens of other things that Americans were not until they were: Black, Catholic, Jewish, Italian, Vietnamese.) Soon we will be comfortable with the Latinos. For the moment we face the tumultuous sea change. We won’t even recognize that our national identity has changed until we are faced with a newer, more important threat to our national identity.