Bag O' Books: "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War" by Andrew Bacevich

I'm trying to imagine what the world would look like if Andrew Bacevich ran the United States.

Every couple of years, Bacevich -- a retired Army colonel who is now a history professor at Boston U -- releases a new book that goes something like this: America is overextended and entirely too militarized. We need to live within our means, bring the troops home and start practicing a citizenship where all of us (and not just the one-half of one percent of us) serve as citizen soldiers, devoted to the common defense of our nation instead of power projection around the world. "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War" is another one of these books; Bacevich is a bit of a one-note Johnny -- but it's an interesting, angry, erudite note, and so I keep returning to him.

Instead of rooting him on, though, it might be good to ponder how things change if anybody in power took Bacevich's views seriously.

So what does the world look like if America took Bacevich's advice? Different. There would've been no Iraq War, nor a Vietnam War, nor Korea. (Bacevich is a Vietnam veteran.) We wouldn't have troops in Europe or the Middle East or Asia. I'm guessing that Hawaii and Alaska might not even have statehood status. We wouldn't be importing oil -- our standard of living, as a result, would look quite a bit different -- and we might not be enmeshed in Afghanistan right now, in part, because America's meddling in the rest of the world wouldn't have invited the "blowback" of 9/11.

We'd look a lot more like Switzerland, in other words.

All well and good, I suppose. But there's more than that. In Bacevich's world, maybe the United States doesn't get involved in World War I. That doesn't seem like such a bad deal -- what did Americans get out of that war, exactly? -- but maybe we wouldn't have entered World War II either. Or if we had, we wouldn't have kept troops in Europe during the Cold War, and maybe we would've left Communism ascendant in places that were relatively free during the postwar period.

Much of this is conjecture on my part. But Bacevich's basic idea is that the United States shouldn't be trying to dominate and shape the rest of the world to its liking -- that we should be looking inward, trying to create and perfect our own democracy as an example to the world, rather than a model that we try to push. We should be trying to fix Cleveland and Detroit, he repeatedly says, instead of Baghdad or Kabul.

This sounds isolationist, though Bacevich swears it isn't. And though it's a challenge to the worldview put forward by the Bill Kristol wing of the GOP -- which, in foreign affairs, is actually the only wing that matters -- it also strikes me as profoundly conservative. (Bacevich, despite the Amy Goodman blurb on this book, seems to identify as a conservative of the Ron Paulish variety; he has written for National Review and remains a contributor to American Conservative magazine.)

Conservatives have one pretty nifty insight: That government can't control all the outcomes of its actions, and so the bigger it gets and the more it does, the more problems it is likely to make -- and the more likely it is to infringe on the liberty of people to make their own way in the world. I don't completely buy into the argument, which at its most extreme would eliminate a safety net for many Americans, but I can't disregard it. The problem is that -- for many conservatives -- that insight ends at the shoreline. Many of the folks who root on the Tea Party marchers would say it's not up to the federal government to fix Cleveland or Detroit; somehow, though, many of them are sold on the ability of that same government to fix -- or, at least, repair to a reasonable enough state -- Kabul or Baghdad. They would fly the Gadsden Flag at home, but the American flag over foreign capitals. It's not just inconsistent; it's incomprehensible. At least Americans understand the language and culture and religion and politics of Detroit. We've made a lot of mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan because we didn't know the landscape like we should.

So what does America look like if Bacevich runs it? We're a smaller, probably less-rich place. (America's economic might being both the result and the foundation of our power projection around the world.) We're still rife with conflict -- because, hey, that's what happens in democracies. But maybe we're more civic-minded, more bonded to our neighbors -- and, maybe, a bit less vulnerable to the horrors of the world beyond. (How often to terrorists try to attack Switzerland, after all?) There's something simple and pure, and thus seductive, about this vision. And maybe we'll find out what it looks like in reality sooner than later. We can't afford to be the world's policeman anymore. It would be nicer if we could choose, wisely, that sort of future for ourselves. It looks like we'll have to bankrupt ourselves to it, instead. The result is likely to be unpleasant and wrenching. The good old days are probably over.

Afghanistan Quagmire Alert

Here's a couple of contrasting quotes for you:


Gen. Stanley McChrystal, 8-30-09, in the memo that laid the foundation for President Obama's surge of American forces in Afghanistan.

The people of Afghanistan represent many things in this conflict -- an audience, an actor, and a source of leverage - but above all, they are the objective. The population can also be a source of strength and intelligence and provide resistance to the insurgency. Alternatively, they can often change sides and provide tacit or real support to the insurgents. Communities make deliberate choices to resist, support, or allow insurgent influence. The reasons for these choices must be better understood.

GIRoA and ISAF have both failed to focus on this objective. The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government. These problems have alienated large segments of the Afghan population. They do not trust GIRoA to provide their essential needs, such as security, justice, and basic services. This crisis of confidence, coupled with a distinct lack of economic and educational opportunity, has created fertile ground for the insurgency.

...eventual success requires capable Afghan governance capabilities and security forces. While these institutions are still developing, ISAF and the international community must provide substantial assistance to Afghanistan until the Afghan people make the decision to support their government and are capable of providing for their own security.

Today's Washington Post:

U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan are developing a strategy that would tolerate some corruption in the country but target the most corrosive abuses by more tightly regulating U.S. contracting procedures, according to senior defense officials.

American officials here have not spoken publicly about countenancing potentially corrupt local power brokers. Such a stance would run somewhat against the grain of a counterinsurgency doctrine that preaches the importance of building competent governance.

But military officials have concluded that the Taliban insurgency is the most pressing threat to stability in Afghanistan and that a sweeping effort to drive out corruption would create chaos and a governance vacuum that the Taliban could exploit.

So: The Taliban is winning because the Afghanistan government is corrupt.

And: The Taliban is winning, so we can't do anything about the Afghanistan government being corrupt. In fact, we'll find ways to facilitate it!

Friends: That smells like quagmire to me.

Livin' It Up at the Hotel Pennsylvania

Me outside the Empire State Building
(on the right!) on the trip in question.

The first time I stayed at the Hotel Pennsylvania was in the fall of 2004. I had turned 30 a year previously, and had recently concluded it was time for me to be done waiting. I had spent the bulk of my adult life waiting for a mate -- somebody to make me complete, an actual grownup. It was only then, I thought, that I could embark on grownup adventures like trips to New York. Who would ever do such a thing on their own?

There was an obstacle, however: Money. I wasn’t poor, exactly, but I was a journalist, and of course had little money saved. But the idea of a New York trip -- centered around the annual New Yorker Festival -- had taken hold of me.

So I resolved to be profligate -- I would use a credit card -- but not too profligate. I would stay at the cheapest non-scary hotel I could find in Manhattan. A search at Hotels.com gave me just one plausible answer. For less than $200 a night, I could stay at the Hotel Pennsylvania.

What the website didn’t tell me, I would glean soon enough: That once upon a time, the Hotel Pennsylvania had been a thriving New York City hotspot; that Glenn Miller and his band had played there; that Miller’s famous song, “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” took its name from the hotel’s phone number. All I really knew was that in photographs on the Internet, pictures of the rooms looked clean. That was all I needed.

And when I arrived at the hotel, fresh off a plane from Kansas, I was initially dazzled. The lobby was beautiful! You had to show your key to a doorman to get on the elevator! The elevator had a TV! What kind of luxury was this?

My perspective changed when the elevator doors opened on the 14th floor. The hallway was ominous: Threadbare carpeting and dim light, lined by a row of room doors that -- in their size and bulk -- looked like they belonged on meat lockers, or in a morgue.

This is my main memory of the room: A huge, blotchy stain on the carpet that very much appeared to be the result of somebody bleeding to death about 30 years prior. The furnishings, with the exception of the television, seemed to have gone unchanged since the 1970s.

I kind of loved it. No Disneyfied Giuliani New York for me! I was staying in an honest-to-goodness fleabag hotel! This, I felt, revealed something important and flattering about my character.

The Hotel Pennsylvania thus became my New York City lodestar. I spent the next few days walking as far as my legs could carry me around Manhattan. Down the Avenue of the Americas, eventually to Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park, where I was challenged to a chess game. Up through Times Square, to Central Park. One night, I stumbled back to my room -- tipsy on free wine -- up a darkened section of Broadway, returning from a New Yorker event. Another late night, I found myself with a handful of fishnetted thigh -- I’m still not certain how -- as a Greek hooker offered me her services not far from the Ed Sullivan Theater. By the end of my stay, my feet were covered with blisters. Every night, though, they carried me back to the Hotel Pennsylvania.

So I was a little sad to find out the hotel is not long for this world. Sometime in the next few years, it will be demolished to make way for a giant new skyscraper they say will rival the nearby Empire State Building on the New York skyline.

That makes me wistful, because the Hotel Pennsylvania is still where I start my New York experience. The BoltBus from Philadelphia -- where I live now -- drops its passengers at nearby Penn Station. When I visit, I always walk to the hotel to get my bearings, then stroll down 33rd Street for breakfast and the New York Post at Times Square Bagel and Deli, which is nowhere near Times Square. After that, I can begin my business in the city.

It is likely, however, that I have contributed in a small way to the hotel’s demise. Two years after that first stay, I returned to New York -- on a honeymoon. I’d finally grown up. It seemed unwise and unromantic, however, to subject my new wife to bloodstains and a rickety bed. We stayed at a Holiday Inn.

Charles Krauthammer, Barack Obama and the Vagaries of History

Toward the end of his column urging President Obama to embrace being a wartime president, Charles Krauthammer makes a really perplexing statement:

Some presidents may not like being wartime leaders. But they don’t get to decide. History does.

It's a bizarre statement. History is not a force that moves on its own; it's made by people. And presidents, more than most people, have a say about its direction. We went to war in Iraq because one man, President George W. Bush, decided it was in the national interest. If he hadn't wanted the war there, we wouldn't have had it.

We did learn in Iraq that the president's vision and acts aren't the only one that matter. But that's because other people also made decisions. "History" wasn't acting independently of human agency.

Similarly, we're ramping up our involvement in Afghanistan not because "history" demands we do so, but because President Obama, having examined his options, decided it was in the national interest. I happen to disagree with that decision, but it wasn't inevitable.

I suspect that Krauthammer's formulation was just a bit of lazy columnist shorthand, a means of wrapping up an 800-word column with something pithy. It just doesn't stand up scrutiny. People make choices, presidents make choices, and those choices constitute the stuff of history. The problem isn't that President Obama isn't heeding the call of history. It's that he is making choices Krauthammer doesn't like. That's different.

Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and America's Lost Honor

Glenn Beck has "honor" and "being honored" confused.

Has America lost its honor? That's the topic of my latest Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk -- inspired by Glenn Beck's "Restoring America's Honor" rally last weekend. My take:

Has America lost its honor? Absolutely. The campaigns against Muslim mosques in New York City and Murfreesboro, Tenn., represent a profound betrayal of this country's traditional values of religious tolerance.

We Americans should repent the ugliness directed at our Muslim fellow citizens.

What? Wait. You mean that's not the "lost honor" Glenn Beck was talking about? Of course not. Whatever you think of America's honor, one thing is certain: Double standards are alive and well in this country. When liberals point out how America falls short of its ideals, they're often accused of "hating America." When conservatives do the same thing, they're treated like prophetic voices calling citizens back to their roots.

Why is that? Possibly because when liberals call on the country to be true to its ideals, they're asking us to do hard things. Like letting Nazis or the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church march in public. Like providing a process where terrorism suspects can prove their innocence. Like ending torture. These aren't easy tasks, but they're required of a country that enshrines freedom and the rule of law as its founding ideals.

But when conservatives like Beck and Sarah Palin talk about "restoring America's honor," they seem to mean: "Let's feel good about America without worrying about how we sometimes fall short of our ideals."

Just listen to Beck at last weekend's rally: "This country has spent far too long worrying about scars and thinking about scars and concentrating on scars. Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished and the things that we can do tomorrow."

Real honor is duty tempered by humility. It is a devotion to responsibility in the face of opposition and easier ways out. Beck and Palin's version of "honor" isn't the real thing. It's comforting happy talk.

Ben's no Beck fan, I think, but he still differs from me. Read the whole thing for his take.

Walter Phillips Wants Philly Courts To Violate The Constitution

Philly's court system is a mess. Lots of people get charged, but not so many ever make to a plea or a trial: They go underground instead. In today's Philadelphia Inquirer, former prosecutor Walter Phillips provides the solution: Trials in absentia!

One way the city's Common Pleas judges could address this problem - without any expense - would be to take the unified stance that trials will go on even in the absence of such defendants.

The trouble is that many Philadelphia judges just won't call the bluff of absent defendants and follow the law that allows trials to go forward in their absence. A variety of reasons have been advanced for their timid stance: fear of reversal, the awkwardness of forcing defense attorneys to make fundamental decisions without consulting their clients, and just plain lethargy.

This would seem to violate Constitutional guarantees that a defendant can confront the evidence and witnesses against them. But Phillips waves those concerns away, suggesting that there's plenty of Supreme Court precedents suggesting such trials can take place anyway.

And sure, the topic has been addressed by the Supreme Court, but the takeaway is that conducting a trial without the defendant present can take place only in limited circumstances: If a defendant is disruptive during the proceedings, for example, or skips town after the trial has begun.

But widespread, systemic absentia trials for tens of thousands of people? No. Here's why: Those rules allow for the trial to proceed only if a defendant is present at the very beginning of a trial.

There are, I'm sure, exceptions to what I'm about to say. But the problem with absentee defendants in Philly isn't that they show up for the first day -- or first hour -- of their trial, then flee the scene. It's that they don't show up at all.

Philly courts are a real mess, yes. And nobody likes to see justice delayed or denied because some two-bit punk hit the road. But violating the Constitution -- despite Walter Phillips' protestations -- isn't really the way to proceed.

Islamophobia, Park51 and Stu Bykofsky's Collective Guilt For Thee, But Not For Me

Oh, Stu.

Stu Bykofsky's at it again. He's in the Daily News today, taking on the "Ground Zero mosque" issue by decrying the intolerance and insensitivity ... of the left.

No really.

I don't oppose building Cordoba House or Park51, or whatever it's called this week, near Ground Zero, but I understand why many dislike the location.

They are assaulted by the Hard Left as un-American, Islamophobic bigots. Is that fair? Is there no other possible explanation for their opposition?

The Hard Left demands, rightfully, that we not judge all Muslims by the acts of a few, but then judges all conservatives by the acts or remarks of a few.

It's disheartening that the same progressives who condemned Sen. Joe McCarthy's guilt-by-association tactics find it so easy to smear their opponents.

I'm not quite sure who all Stu is lumping into the "hard left" here, but I get the feeling it includes a lot of people who are merely, you know, liberal. And vigorous about defending First Amendment freedoms.

The problem here is that Stu gives the game away with is appraisal of the project.

Two-thirds of Americans agree that Muslims have a right to build it, yet think the location is unhelpful. They may be letting emotion trump reason, but are they Islamophobes?

If you despise - as I do - the Westboro Baptist Church for holding up "God Hates Fags" signs and desecrating soldiers' funerals, are you anti-Christian?

Well, Stu, no. But if you oppose the presence of, say, Lutherans or Catholics or Methodists at military funerals because they're Christians and Fred Phelps is a Christian, then yes: you're anti-Christian. You'd be burdening an entire religion with collective guilt from the actions of a few jerks. And that would be irrational, unthinking and unconcerned with the facts. More than that: It would be wrong.

That's more or less what's happening with the "Ground Zero mosque." (Which, as has been pointed out many times, isn't actually at Ground Zero.)

So what Stu is really saying here is: Collective guilt for thee, but not for me. It's understandable that all Muslims be painted as terrorists-in-waiting, but oh so unfair to paint all critics as Islamophobes! Stu's complaint breaks down under the weight of its own contradictions.

It also breaks down under the weight of, you know, the facts: Plenty of liberals have praised Sen. Orrin Hatch -- a conservative's conservative -- for defending the First Amendment rights of the Park51 leaders. Lots of them have linked to columns by former Bush aides Michael Gerson and Mark McKinnon mounting a similar defense. So we're not calling all conservatives "Islamophobes." Just the Islamophobic ones.