Not With a Bang
How Will the War End?
There is only one of two ways that America’s role in the Iraq war will come to an end. Either Lt. Colonels and Full Colonels in Iraq—who best feel the daily pulse of the battlefield—will report through their superiors to Gen. Petraeus that they cannot stabilize the country, or at least cannot do so at a price in lives and treasure worth the effort. Petraeus, being intellectually honest, would then report that to the President and Congress.
Or, enough moderate Republicans at roughly the same time would fear running on a platform in fall 2008 perceived as supporting the Iraq war, and thus a year in advance (i.e., this fall) would join an anti-war Democratic Party to provide a veto- and filibuster-proof Congress. That coalescence would shut down the funding in the manner of 1974-5. I don’t see the former happening, but am not sure about the latter.
Moral Equivalence to the Nth
I gave a lecture and moderated a panel at a prominent graduate school of business yesterday. It was a reunion of MBA execs now in their 50s and 60s at the pinnacle of their globalized success. I add this experience as well to recent talks with quite wealthy international bankers, insurance people, and general CEOs of all nationalities.
Impressions?
After exchanges with some of the most successful on the panel and some in small talks later on, I was reminded that the ultimate logic of globalized business is simply profit, period—but with a postmodern twist.
From that notion all politically-correct logic follows. Thus came criticism of Israel for having the bomb while Iran didn’t. Criticism for America’s preeminent role in the world as haughty. No sense that perhaps China and others might play hardball in foreign affairs as well. No admission of European culpability in selling Iran and anyone else anything they wished. No worry that the UN’s human rights committees are inhuman. But plenty of worry that we had demonized Islamists.
And the most disturbing thing about all this was that such business realpolitik was cloaked under the therapeutic veneer of “the world is flat” thinking: A disappearance of borders; a new “paradigm” brought on by the radically unifying Internet; a necessary increase in the power of the UN.
Nowhere in these recent encounters with execs, both formal and informal, was there any appreciation of the exceptionalism of the United States Constitution, the inability of the UN or the EU to stand up to real evil in the world, the notion that the greatest violator of international accords were China (patents, copyright, etc), the fumes of the Soviet Union (attacks on dissidents at home and worldwide), Mexico (a policy of sending millions across the border of its neighbor in violation of sovereignty), the Middle East petro-nexus, etc. Instead, I heard Kerryisms ad nauseam: we are arrogant, we are not liked abroad, we must listen to (fill in the large blank), we are doing everything wrong, China will soon pass us (make the necessary adjustments therefore)…
The Rant Goes On…
I could go on–and will. One does not have to embrace Buchananism, to see that a growing challenge in this century will be the smiley international corporation, not in the sense of a handle-bar moustache and black-hat villain stealing third-world resources, but with the face of Birkenstocks, polo shirts, and an I-pod, run by the man who believes in no affiliation other than as an alumnus donor to his business school, has no moral principle, has no knowledge or sense of history, much less the tragedy of history, no real anger, no real enthusiasm other than for a new angle globalized to the nth degree—and who is pledged to nothing other than the notion of profit and the dangers to globalized profit that are posed by those who stand for ideas and values which get in the way of Kumbaya hedge funds and tranbordered consortia.
So the old rapacious Kurtz who sought to exploit the resources of the Heart of Darkness is now to be replaced by the hip, aging yuppie, who sees the gym in a Shanghai luxury hotel, the spa in Barcelona, the veranda on Mykonos, and the board room in London as essentially the same new world culture.
Right-wing, illiberal, and dangerous Kassandras supposedly threaten to overturn this mega-profit world by shrilling warning that Iran would nuke Israel, that Russia might blackmail energy-hungry Europe, that Mexico should not cynically export human capital, that the United States should keep insisting that others follow international agreements. How messy, how untidy, how mean are those who rain on my global parade.
A Pleas for CEOs to Read History
Give these new globe-trotting capitalist hipsters a new more efficient pump and they claim they have reinvented water itself. What comes out of the ground, thanks to their genius, at 1000 gallons a minute surely cannot be the same that used to come out at 10.
I support globalization, and see that at its essence it is Westernization, and that bright people make the world better by allowing an exhange of ideas and life-saving appurtenances. But I want no part of the necessary globalized CEO, who believes in nothing, says nothing, knows nothing other than a sort of adolescent watered-down Gorism. Every MBA program should have one, just one introductory class in Western Civ to introduce to these historically illiterate that the basis for their present globalized system was the West, so that they might not so often preen that it was cobbled together from the Middle East, the Orient, Africa, in some sort of alaphabet soup concoction. And if global warming is a ‘must’ concern, then please, a commensurate class on the carbon footprints of Citations and Gulfstreams.
The Left rails about Enron and Halliburton and Blackwater; but their sins are at least identifiable and thus monitored and correctable. These new avatars of ‘can’t we all get along while I get fabulously rich’ are more insidious and ultimately the real amoralists of this new century. Global warming and not overreacting to somebody with a suicide vest are their Mark and Luke.
With a Whimper
The world as I knew it in southern Fresno County will end not with a bang, but with a smile and a blackberry.
I just love it when a right-wing idiot stumbles upon what he thinks is a great undiscovered truth. You are such a moron, Hanson.
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?! You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, Yen, Rubles, Pounds, and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”
From the movie “Network.” In *1976.*
Excellent rant!!!
Learning the hard way can come very fast, however. It seems a rude wake-up call for these gifted businesspeople will have to take the place of disciplined vigilance and preventive action.
Amazing how material wealth can blight discrimination, isn’t it?
Well said. My bet is that these execs can’t even say what reliable statistics they have on PR China. They are unlikely to know that 92% of the people in the Chinese Communist Party or government in power, the rich, and senior management are from the same 500 families. They are unlikely to know that the poor have their incomes remaining static monetarily from 2001 onwards, and the richest (read: the same 500 families) are up to 14 times richer than the poorest from 10 times richer 10 years ago.
They are also unlikely to know that the Chinese central, provincial, municipality governments have run into deficits for years, and there is a big bubble going on in the mainland stock market that will burst at any minute. They are also unlikely to know that the anger at the Communists in power have been simmering underneath the calm on the Chinese internet forums and blogosphere. In other words, their views of the world are, as you said,built with sheer ignorance.
Moral Equivalence…
The ignorant amorality you describe is frightening, but we do have some counter-movements in this country.
1) The Homeschooling Movement: the majority of homeschool curricula use history (primarily the history of Western Civilization) as an organizing principle. Students move through time from Old Testament history to Egyptian, to Greek, to Roman, to Medieval, to Renaissance and Reformation, Exploration and Early American, Revolutionary, American and European-Colonial 19th Century, to 20th Century, to 9/11….
Science, math, and literature are coordinated, where possible, with the history backbone. Students of multiple ages often are taught as a group, with accommodations made for age and ability. Up until the high school years, it is not difficult to teach everything excepting math in this efficient way. Many secular as well as faith-based curricula follow this path. The result is that homeschool graduates are very aware of the history of Western Civilization, and most of them are also taught about other cultures (at least as well as public schools ever do). Some curricula, such as Sonlight, devote great effort and time to teaching about other cultures and their histories. Further, most homeschool families avoid the use of history textbooks in favor of “living books,” which give students a more direct understanding of what they are studying. When we studied Rome, for instance, we approached it from various points of view. We read Genevieve Foster’s Augustus Caesar’s World, which looks at the entire global picture during the lifetime of Augustus Caesar, including what was happening in India and China. We read (Greenleaf Press) The Famous Men of Rome, The Bronze Bow, the Landmark Book Julius Caesar, Outcast (by Rosemary Sutcliff), and watched the black & white Julius Caesar (with James Mason as Brutus). The story “Pompey and the Pirates,” which told how Pompey rid the Mediterranean of pirates in three months’ time, was especially appealing just after 9/11. We read a book about Hannibal, and we (endlessly) played a board game based upon the travels of St. Paul. We even studied a little bit of Latin. (Child’s age: 11)
2) Conservative Christianity and Judaism: Christians are leaving the big, “mainstream” churches in great numbers, looking for solid faith on which to stand (and raise their children). Christians and Jews are more and more aware of our common world view. We are demonized by the liberal elite. (Question: Why is George Bush, unlike Bill Clinton, despised for his faith? Answer: Everyone believes George Bush’s faith is sincere.) My family is clinging to the ELCA, but it may yet leave us.
3) The Boy Scouts: (full disclosure: I am the mother of a Life Scout who is working toward his Eagle Rank). The Boy Scouts stand for decency and faith—and they specifically work to train boys to be leaders of men. The entire program is based upon leadership. (Is it any wonder that they are under constant and vicious attack?)
Out of these three movements may come a better future than you fear.
Geez, professor, mis-spells of “Buchananism” and “whimper”? Except for that, the usual erudite observations. Whatever are we to do about these wealthy, never-to-grow-up boomers and/or yuppies?
Right on Victor. Thank you for your clarity and words of wisdon. Again you are a hero in this confused world.
I run into a lot of people like the MBA’s and it scares me.
We have a son serving in the Army in Iraq, proud of him, our President and all of the brave military.
Thank you again from southwest Fresno County, Coalinga.
So, do you see no way we end our involvement in Iraq in some sort of “victory”? Defeat is inevitable? I only ask because the only two options you give above for ending the war are commanders admitting defeat or congress surrendering. If that’s truly all there is, let’s get out now and not waste one more life.
I will argue for continuing to fight this thing for as long as is necessary to win, but if there’s no hope for it, then why stay there one more day.
My son is the MBA you describe in your article. Raised in a relatively conservative household in rural Maine he is now the comptroller for a major international firm in New York. My wife and I provide as much reality therapy as possible to him and his family but it is clear that his elevated economic position and professional life outlook along with that of his peers, genteel neighbors and his employer is that the bottom line is the only line. Why are we messing with all these poor people anyway? They are no threat to us or my wallet. I hope they are right. But they aren’t.
My wife and I regret that we didn’t start and enforce a regimen in economic and military history for him throughout all his schooling. Getting him prepared for an engineering degree left other important things in the dust. Maybe engineering and business school leaders will take your advice. Maybe corporate folks will spend the effort to educate their top people in the real affairs of the world.
Thanks for all the spectacular things you write. My wife and I have real all of your books and just about everything you have written for the web.
Those CEOs will need a short list of recommended history books from you although a start can be with this blog and http://www.victorhanson.com.
I saw a recent news story on Rep. Murtha and how he is allegedly violating House rules on appropriations. This guy Murtha has always struck me as a complete nut. And now he turns out to be an unethical nut. (He was also tied up in Abscam, but escaped.)
I compare Murtha with the likes of Gen. Petraeus; Petraeus of the doctorate and twice seriously injured in service to his country.
And then compare Murtha to Lt. Col. John Nagl. Nagl is a West Point graduate and Rhodes scholar. He is also the author of THE book on counterinsurgency tactics which are now be implemented. Lt. Col. Nagl commanded troops in Iraq. Murtha couldn’t command himself out of a wet papersack.
Barack Obama? He was President of the Harvard L. Rev. So what? I was on the Law Review. There’s no leadership there. Obama is completely unqualified to be President; he’s never DONE anything!
Conclusion: We need elected politicians about half as brave and smart as our military if we are going to win this thing.
All of which, Dr. Hanson, makes me so glad to say, that:
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
…the man who believes in no affiliation other than as an alumnus donor to his business school, has no moral principle, has no knowledge or sense of history, much less the tragedy of history, no real anger, no real enthusiasm other than for a new angle globalized to the nth degree…the old rapacious Kurtz who sought to exploit the resources of the Heart of Darkness is now to be replaced by the hip, aging yuppie…Give these new globe-trotting capitalist hipsters a new more efficient pump and they claim they have reinvented water itself. What comes out of the ground, thanks to their genius, at 1000 gallons a minute surely cannot be the same that used to come out at 10.
Preach it!!
I worked for someone who moves in that set. Your statements are consistent with my perceptions.
I support globalization, and see that at its essence it is Westernization, and that bright people make the world better by allowing an exchange of ideas and life-saving appurtenances. But I want no part of the necessary globalized CEO, who believes in nothing, says nothing, knows nothing other than a sort of adolescent watered-down Gorism.
Agreed on both counts. The post deserves in-depth consideration, but here are four offhand reactions:
1. I don’t think that this is what traditional leftist radicals had in mind when they talked about capitalism containing the seeds of its own destruction, but maybe they had a point after all.
2. IMO it would take the barest of rationales, if that, to make these plutocrats acquiesce to squalor and tyranny for their descendants if they themselves were allowed to live out their lifestyles undisturbed.
3. Though I’m not a believer, a New Testament quotation comes to mind. You are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm, and I will spew you from My mouth.
4. Since ecological metaphors are fashionable, I’ll try one. Old-time capitalist malefactors would gouge a profit out of the land and walk away, leaving others to deal with the damage. Similarly, many of today’s new rich are strip-mining our culture and clear-cutting our civilization.
Essential vdh
OK, However as an ex farmer you may not give enough credit to those who grow things, make things and can survive without the super structure of western cultural.
Globalization is western culture, the MBA’s who live in this environment may be the last ones to discover they are dependents, not the real movers, creators or protectors of culture. Deciding that X is greater than Y does not give anyone a very substantial base for anything.
Their unrealized dependency will be evident when the power goes out. They are that superficial. They will learn only when they need to learn what is important to survival or they will not survive.— If they are still Americans and can remember where they came from they will survive.
Current conditions may lead to their “enlightenment” soon enough.
Dr. Hanson, I’m now more frustrated reading about your dismal and dissappointing foray with the business folks. Most of the people I work with are educated, professionals and yet almost all reflect exactly what you just wrote… I can’t even talk with people anymore about current events, i.e., the war, etc… because their immediate thin grasp of history and context muddled with their compleat distrust and tainted view of the west and the US government permiate almost every position and viewpoint expressed.
Thanks for your excellent posts, columns and books. Always a fan.
One of Victor’s most depressing posts. Why? Because it illustrtrates that the class that has the most power and inlfuence in the modern world – the business class – no longer has a liberal education to understand the world they are making thier money in.
Each day is new and ready to be molded for them – they know nothing of the centuries’ old forces that have wrought everything around them. They are fashion-forecasters now – not captains of industry.
I have seen this in higher education for the last 15 years – students who don’t know what happened ten years ago let alone ten centuries ago. Their history is almost entirely delivered through big box-office movies.
Ben Franklin warned the Philadephia woman on the street that we had a republic – if we could keep it. This ignorance indicates we may be losing it.
God help us. We certainly aren’t helping ourselves.
Absolutely brilliant commentary! The old populist in you comes out loud and clear.
Would that I had a father who made me memorize Bryan’s “Cross of Gold”.
It really comes down to:
“We come to speak for this broader class of businessmen. Ah. My friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead—are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country.”
And:
“We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!”…
“The gentleman from Wisconsin has said he fears a Robespierre. My friend, in this land of the free you need fear no tyrant who will spring up from among the people. What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of aggregated wealth.”
Those people you addressed are ignorant.
Thank you for this post in defiance.
Brian J. :
I just love it when a right-wing idiot stumbles upon what he thinks is a great undiscovered truth. You are such a moron, Hanson.
…and here is the superior “Brian J.” to rescue all of us “right-wing morons” from our ignorant folly via a long quote from the movie “Network”. Bravo Brian, you certainly showed us.
Now, the movie was marvelously entertaining in its day, but it is hardly guide for understanding current geo-political realities. What Paddy Chayefsky and you are missing Brian is that guys like Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah care little for the rules of business, they actually believe that a 7th century warlord bequeathed to them the inerrant word of Allah and they will not hesitate to nuke Israel if given the opportunity. Surely a smart guy like you must realize that a nuclear exchange in the Middle East would be catastrophic to the world’s economy.
Or perhaps you are one of those silly people who believe, in the face of a mountain of contrary evidence, that Iran is not actively developing nuclear weapons. And, if they are, so what, Israel has them so why shouldn’t Iran?
Let’s hope you are wiser than that.
Quoting a Hollywood movie at length is a poor response to a thoughtful Victor Davis Hanson column. Perhaps you saw yourself in his description of the ungrounded capitalist hipster? Allow me to recommend spending a weekend alone with “Carnage and Culture,” if you dare.
Wow.
I’m a huge fan, and an avid reader of this blog, but this latest post just blew me away. I was driving through rural North Carolina today and as I looked out over the green sloping fields, I thought how nice it was that Wal-Mart or McDonalds hadn’t yet touched this part of our world. As well, your most recent post walks hand-in-hand with thoughts I’ve had lately about the immoral, unreasonable, and unequal trade policies we have with shady countries like China. I am a supporter of the wars and the West, but find lately that even the most indifferent among us have become scathing anti-Westerners, who hate the very culture that’s given them everything they have. It’s almost become fashionable, like another one of their i-pods or fancy brandnames.
Having MBA studrnts take Western Civ would be a good idea if you, or the other two remaining clear thinkers, teach the course. Given the present state of liberal arts in academia, however, I am afraid the students would turn into mini Soroses.
P.S.
If you are ever in the Sacramento area I would love to have you come to our place in the Shenandoah Valley. I would invite my neighbor and good friend, Angelo Codevilla, over and the two of you could discuss growing grapes. Did you know he has a vinyard here?
Let us rip off the old Stalinst prhase “rootless cosmopolitians”, scrape off its original anti-semetic slime, and use it.
It concisely and vividly defines these people.
John;
inability to project a final win does not justify or mandate withdrawal. The point is, withdrawal is not meaningful, or possible. We are playing with the fundamentals of survival as a society here. It was not optional, except in mode and timing, and will never be.
Amen brother.
I think part of the problem is these aging hipster Boomers will go from the cradle to the grave thinking they were the best and coolest. Why wouldn’t they? Just check out an Ameriprise commercial: you’re not going to retire and play shuffleboard dude, you’re going to be too busy skateboarding, playing rock guitar and protesting (the “graying veterans of the barricades” to quote VDH).
How about a post on the Ameriprise Generation?
The Liberal jet set agree that we have become a pariah, but what these loud-mouths don’t get, the desperate understand; When the truly needy are given the opportunity they choose the USA and come here in greater numbers than they do to any other country and yet the democratic and economic system thrives. Somehow, these people think the UN has the answer.
-Like the kid who curses his mother while she brings him lunch.
VDH – all true, but a very significant fact is omitted. And that is that Republicans are no less complicit in this state of affairs than Democrats. Who has privileged the multinational corporation? Who has made “diplomacy” a shill for promoting trade deals for the benefit of those corporations? Who has decided that the massive exporting of American jobs, and the importation of immigrants from cultures having antithetical values, is a vision for America? Who has subsidized and enabled government by MBA nads who believe “freedom” means unrestricted capital flows? There is no difference between Republicans and Democrats on these policies, because both feed from the same troughs in Washington. The sellout of American workers and American culture, in tandem with the export of a degenerate pop culture destined for oblivion, have formed the core of the policies of each administration from Bush I through Clinton (I?) and Bush II. The immigration bill is the most naked demonstration to date of the utter contempt in which both parties hold the American worker and citizen. Congress has magnanimously decided to throw Americans to the wolves as a broad minded contribution to internationalism. There is a moral and economic vacuum in Washington that is far more powerful than the giant sucking sound that drew most of America’s industrial infrastructure to Mexico and China in the ’90s. The Republicans are bereft of a coherent concept of government, and gambol about the deck shouting one minute that “government is the problem,” in the next minute that “government is the solution,” and harmonizing both by undertaking a war to plant democracy in the most politically barren sands on earth, balanced by using an army deprived of anything close to the required resources in order to “hold the line” on taxes, even if, as a result, we cannot “hold the line” in Iraq. Democrats are convinced that Americans are evil and need to be talked into drinking the kool aid so that the new breed of Reduced-Carbon Diversity Man can replace them. Their ideological rigor, intolerance, and utopianism would have done Lenin proud. Americans are collectively like the passengers on United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11, who went quietly to their deaths, inculcated in the virtues of passivity by fifty years of advice from the “experts.” The two parties are the Twin Towers of America’s doom.
But then, there was United 93 . . . .
There is no way that I, a farm boy from the midwest, a boy scout, military man, a truck driver, a mechanic, a techy, a salesman, a Blogger…can ever compete with the mental gymnastics of this far more formally educated mob of ‘street demonstrators’ online. I have but one thing to add ‘Common Sense’. Watch the 3 DVD set once shown on PBS, ‘The commanding Heights’ (Amazon) After spending six hours assimilating a small portion of History and the economic systems at work, possibly even more intelligent comments will emerge. Thank you Victor. http://daflikkers.blogspot.com/
Having graduated from business school, I must say that everything you have described is right on. I even had a class in “International Business” where we read Thomas Friedman and spent a whole week learning about the Palestinian side of the conflict and even heard from two Palestinian students who were attending an American university while decrying all the sins and horrors of the United States. Yes, the professor talked as if we’d reached the end of history, and how corporations would eventually displace nation-states as the new primary form of human organization.
In fact, I must say that all in all, I really learned essentially nothing. But I don’t think me or most of the other kids there really thought we were getting an education. At least me and my friends kind of considered it a joke. We were there to get that degree so we can put it on our resume and put get our foot in the door. Almost as if it’s a high priced filtration system for human capital.