The RINO Party

When Colin Powell endorsed Barrack Obama, Rush Limbaugh had a convenient explanation, shouted into the microphone: “It was all about race.” Of course, the whole point of a program like Rush's is to provide his listeners with sound bites so that they won't have to think; thinking is hard and it is simply more efficient to farm the task out to people like Limbaugh. It's a division of labor sort of thing. But others proposed another explanation, namely that Powell was a Republican In Name Only (RINO) and so his endorsement was hardly a surprise.

The RINO argument, though more coherent, breaks down in the face of the slew of defections from the entire spectrum of the Republican Party. Christopher Buckley, Ken Adelman, Christopher Hitchens, Scott McClellan, Bill Ruckelshaus, William Weld, Lilibet Hagel (wife of Senator Chuck Hagel), Jeffrey Hart, C.C. Goldwater, and a host of other life-long Republicans have switched sides, calling the RINO argument into question. Even Bruce Bartlett has called for conservatives to “reach out to Obama.”

Only part of the problem can be laid at the feet of the McCain-Palin ticket. True, McCain continues the Cheney-Bush policies of replacing taxes with borrowing, expanding the federal government and especially the powers of the executive (the so-called “unitary executive” theory), foreign adventurism, and a slew of other policies that cannot be reconciled with the traditional Republican stance. Even on social issues, McCain is unreliable. As Tom Piatak points out in Chonicles Magazine:

Even on abortion, McCain is unreliable. On February 3, The Washington Post reported McCain's statement that 'it's not the social issues [that] I care about.' And on August 19, 1999, McCain told The San Francisco Chronicle, '[C]ertainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support the repeal of Roe v. Wade which would then force X number of women in America to undergo illegal and dangerous operations.' I the same interview, McCain stated he would not have a 'litmus test' for judicial nominees. McCain's former senate colleague, Rick Santorum, an indefatigable champion of the unborn, has stated that McCain did his best behind the scenes to prevent pro-life legislation from coming to a vote on the floor. Robert Novak has reported that McCain has described Justice Samuel Alito as 'too conservative.' Novak has also reminded his readers that, back when Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords became an independent and began to caucus with the Democrats, McCain was in negotiations with the Senate Democrats to do the same thing. There is also McCain's support for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR), which cannot be squared with principled belief in the pro-life cause. Indeed, McCain has recently launched an ad touting his support for more federal funding of stem-cell research, and his campaign spokesman, Brian Rogers, has stated that the ad, which does not distinguish between ESCR and other types of stem-cell research, is intended to reiterate McCain's support for ESCR.

If the problem is not that the defectors are RINO, nor entirely with ambiguous nature of McCain's policies and campaign, what is the problem? Let me suggest that the Republican Party itself that is Republican in Name Only. The Party long ago abandoned its core principles. The problem began early in the Reagan administration, when the tax cuts did not lead to a smaller government; indeed, Reagan merely substituted borrowing for taxing. But borrowing is taxing; it is merely a tax shifted from the current generation onto the next; it is taxing our children for benefits that we enjoy, a kind of inter-generational theft that is counter to everything a pro-family party ought to do.

The government did not shrink under Reagan, and under Bush “(even excluding post-9/11 “homeland security spending) [domestic spending] has grown faster than during the previous two decades of divided government, and the incidence of pork-barrel projects has reached an all time high,” according to Christopher DeMuth of The American Enterprise Institute.

In abandoning its conservative principles, the Republican Party did not really become more Liberal. What it has become is more Corporate. That is, the Party has become captive of Corporate America, and it is run more and more for their convenience and profit, a profit they do not share with the rest of the nation, and are, indeed, even unwilling to pay for. As James Galbraith points out, the political world has become...

...divided into two groups. There are those who praise the free market because to do so gives cover to themselves and their friends in raiding the public trough. These people call themselves “conservatives,” and one of the truly galling things for real conservatives is that they have both usurped the label and spoiled the reputation of the real thing.

At this point we can ask, “What does the Republican Party need to do to change, to recover its principles?” And the answer is clear: It needs to lose, and to lose big-time. A marginal loss won't be enough to force a self-examination. Only a clear and crushing defeat will allow the Party to begin the process of recovering the Party's principles. Alas, it often happens that only pain leads to self-examination, and only confession leads to healing. If the Republican Party is really to become an alternative to Democratic statism, rather than just a substitute for it, it needs time out of power to re-focus on principles and practical responses to real problems, qualities which have been in short supply for the Party for the last 20 years.

The first thing the Party needs to do is to send the former Trotskyites who call themselves “neocons” back to the liberal darkness from whence they came. The next thing the Party needs is to convert the anti-abortion movement into a true “Pro-life, Pro-Family” movement (See “Pro-Life or Just Anti-Abortion?”).

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I am adding my name to the list of defectors. To the chagrin of many of my conservative, Catholic friends, I am voting—have already voted—for Barrack Obama. Since in the current crises, the Republican Party has little to offer the country, voting for Obama can do little harm, and may do much good. At least he seems to recognize a point that has escaped the Republicans, namely that our economic problems require the healing of the “real” economy, the economy of making things. In this, he can do no worse and may do much better. Indeed, conservatism should be more concerned with the real economy than the merely financial one, and currently the Republicans don't seem to know the difference.

But I am also voting Democrat for the good of the Republican Party. Unless it loses—and loses big—it will not change. And if it doesn't change, conservatives will have no real home in American politics.

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McCain to Democracy: "Drop Dead"

Can't get the Congress to agree to the bailout? No problem, say John McCain, just have the treasure do it anyway, without congressional approval. Here is a video of him making this statement not once, but three times yesterday:



McCain seems to think that the Presidency is a dictatorship that may dispose of a Trillion dollars of the public's money without any public input or authorization. One wonders why this story hasn't gotten more play in the press.

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Obama: The Black Kerry?

It is a bedrock belief in certain circles that the higher the incentives, the better the results. So for example, if you want more business growth, cut the taxes on capital gains and so increase the incentive to invest. Or, if you want more oil, give the oil companies higher and higher incentives by cutting their taxes, giving away valuable leases for free, granting generous depletion allowances, etc. Of course, there are excellent arguments for cutting capital gains taxes. The problem is that they are exactly the same arguments for cutting income and payroll taxes. This is not what the holders of large amounts of capital want. They want preferential treatment and the shifting of more of the tax burden to labor. Apparently, incentives stop at the assembly line.

The arguments for the view that more incentives lead to more production would seem to be intuitive. A glance at any supply/demand chart shows that the supply of any commodity increases with an increase in the price (its “incentive.”) However, things are never that simple. It turns out that there is an equally intuitive law called The Law of Diminishing Returns which works in the opposite direction; this law means, simply stated, that there is a limit to the effectiveness of incentives, or any other number in economics. “Diminishing returns” simply means that you can only throw so many “inputs” at a problem before the output starts to level off and then actually decline.

Because of the law of diminishing returns, all supply/demand curves are “backward bending,” although one never sees them drawn that way in the textbooks. In other words, that at some point, a higher price will actually bring forth less production, not more. At that point, the higher price becomes a “perverse incentive.” A perverse incentive is an inducement to “do the wrong thing.”

The sub-prime mess is a prime example of how perverse incentives work. Banks used to make their money lending money to borrowers who they felt could repay the loans. But they discovered that they could make even more money in a market composed of naïve borrowers by merely “originating” the loans, jacking up the loan fees, and selling the loans to investors. The virtuous incentives to be careful with the depositors money became a perverse incentive to be as reckless as possible. Then, as the market collapsed and the investors would no longer buy the suspect loans, the government, in an effort to “save” the housing market, shoved Fannie Mae into the gap. I never saw “moral hazard” work so fast. The mortgage companies kept on writing—and still write—the same bad loans that caused this mess. Now Fannie Mae needs to be bailed out, and the taxpayer will foot the bill. No one has a clue as to how big that bill will be. The bad loan practices continue to this day. Nothing has changed, except that the suckers buying these loans are now the taxpayers.

Another example of a perverse incentive is unfolding in the debate over off-shore drilling. The debate has a certain air of unreality to it because the oil companies already have leases on 34 billion barrels of oil and they could drill tomorrow, without so much as a nod to congress or anybody else. That is more oil than the leases under debate (about 18 billion barrels.)

So why the big push to get the leases in place before Cheney and Bush leave office? And why not punch a hole in the ground and take the oil out right now? Because the high price for oil is a perverse incentive not to drill, so long as they can be assured that they control the leases so that nobody else can drill either. $120/barrel oil is an example of the backward-bending supply curve. So long as they can be assured that some wildcatter or start-up outfit won't start sucking the oil out of the ground before big oil is ready to, there is no reason to drill now. With profits this high, punching more holes in the ground would only raise the supply and lower the price. Why do that? The oil is not going anywhere, and they can drill it as their present fields begin to run out, thereby keeping the prices sky-high for the foreseeable future. Since alternative energy sources won't be significant for at least a decade, if then, there is simply no reason to reduce their own return to investment by drilling more wells.

And the returns are impressive. Oil costs maybe $10-20/barrel to bring to the surface, but sells for more than $100. The oil companies advertise widely that they are only making 9%, but that is a highly deceptive number; in fact, if it were true, they could not get anybody to invest in the oil business. The truth is, their drilling operations earn closer to 50% return on investment, and even that is likely understated. If they can control all the leases, they can keep this up for years to come.

The same perverse incentives hold true in the refining business. The oil companies have not built a new refinery since the Ford administration. They like to claim that this is because of “regulations,” but that claim doesn't pass the smell test, for two reasons. One, most dangerous chemical plants operate under similarly strict regulations, but they have managed to keep up with demand for the past 30 years. And two, Big oil has actually bought out the smaller companies and closed their refineries. That's how perverse incentives work.

It is clear in this election that on this issue and many others, McCain is holding a pair of deuces against Obama's full house. Yet, McCain may be able to bluff his way into the White House. Obama is turning out to be a black Kerry, unable to respond to even the crudest charges. Kerry, a decorated veteran, was unable to respond to the scurrilous charges of a draft-dodger. Barrack seems similarly unable to respond to an empty but aggressive campaign. Obama is getting himself into a position where he will have to say that he voted against off-shore drilling before he voted for it. We already know how well that line of argument works.

Of course, the response is easy. Just tell the McCain-oil conglomerate that they can have a lease anywhere they like. But the lease has an expiration date. They must start sucking the oil out in five years, or the lease is automatically canceled and all lease payments forfeited. Further, the same rules apply to the leases they already have. Use 'em or lose 'em! Not only will there not be one single bid, but McCain will be instructed to quietly drop the whole issue, lest he endanger their control on the 34 billion barrels they already have but don't use. The Democrats have every natural advantage in this election, but that itself can be a perverse incentive to lose it. And so far, they are doing their best to do just that.

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Eyes on the Prize

It is, of course, the silly season, or rather the silly year. That is, leap year, when the presidential campaigns make the year seem longer than the one extra day might otherwise indicate. It is a year when candidates try to display their care and concern for whatever concerns the public at that particular moment. They advance “ideas” (I use the term advisedly) whose purpose is not so much to be serious policy proposals as to be markers for their empathy with the voters. Most of these “ideas” do not survive until inauguration day, and that's probably for the best, at least in most cases. The “ideas” were only campaign ploys and most do not—and should not—survive the campaign. Since the major concern du jour is gas prices, candidates have to come up with something that indicates their solidarity with the suffering public, even if the idea makes no sense. Certainly, Obama's support of ethanol falls in this category, although it also has to do with his pandering to corn state voters. McCain's “gas tax holiday” is a bit of silliness designed mainly to use a few billion dollars of public money to buy votes, with no discernible benefit to the public.

But occasionally, candidates come up with something that actually could be a good idea and do touch on real issues. This is probably accidental, nevertheless, we take good ideas where we find them. And McCain's proposal for a $300 million prize for a new auto-battery could be a good idea, depending on what McCain actually means. Now, it is likely that the candidate has no idea of what he means; it was likely just a publicity stunt to begin with. In its present undefined form it is somewhat useless. Whoever comes up with such a battery will get a patent that will be worth a lot of money, maybe even $300M. In that case, the “prize” is of no effect whatever, and will just be an additional payment for what somebody was going to do anyway. There is a tremendous amount of research in this area, and pretty soon someone will break the code and find the answer, regardless of what the govmint does.

However, if McCain means that the government will buy the patent for the new battery in behalf of the people of the United States, this could be a very good idea indeed. The whole idea of a patent is to ensure that those who come up with new ideas will reap an economic reward. The theory is that this will both encourage and fund new research, to the betterment of all. The problem with patents, however, is that they create monopolies and spread economic inefficiency throughout the economy. Further, they are not necessary for funding new inventions. They could easily be replaced with licenses. Inventors could be required to license their ideas to however can pay the license fee and meet the manufacturing standards required for the product. This means that the inventor will receive a proper revenue stream to fund new discoveries, while providing multiple firms the right to make the product and thereby eliminate monopoly pricing while encouraging competition.

We see the effects of monopoly pricing most prominently in drug prices, where products that cost a few cents to manufacture cost $10's, or $100's, or even $1000's per dosage, depending on what the market will bear. Big pharma claims they need these high prices to pay the costs of research, but the claim is dubious. Actually the high prices mostly fund high marketing expenses. A good portion of our health care problems can be traced to the current system of patents. But the problem is not just with drugs; patents spread monopoly pricing throughout the economy in many areas. Wherever you see a product with a patent, you are probably looking at at least some economic inefficiency in the pricing of that product.

Now, if McCain wants to buy the patent and license it to firms making both the battery and the car on American soil with American workers, this could be a very good idea, and $300M would be a small price to pay. If he merely means to give an additional wad of taxpayer money to a monopolist, then it is just a publicity stunt, and an extra expense for the taxpayers. We will just have to see what McCain means. Most likely, McCain will have to see what McCain means. I suspect he has not thought this thing through and hasn't the faintest idea of the relationship between patents and monopolies. It is not one of the things he seems to think much about. But I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see how this plays out.

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Physics Envy

Recently we have all witnessed the odd spectacle of civilian employment falling for three straight months—and overall employment falling for two months—while, at the same time, the unemployment rate actually improved. Now, it would seem rather odd that both employment and unemployment could both fall at the same time. Yet in the alchemy that is economics, this is precisely what happens: employment can get worse and unemployment better. Clearly, economist do not mean by their numbers the same things that the uninitiated might mean.

Economists like to think of themselves as pure scientists dealing with pure numbers. As one wag put it, they suffer from physics envy. As one of the founders of modern economics, W. S. Jevons put it, the lack of a “perfect system of statistics … is the only … obstacle in the way of making economics an exact science”; once the statistics have been gathered, the generalization of laws from them “will render economics a science as exact as many of the physical sciences.” Well, it has been more than a century since Jevons' day, and we have been gathering “statistics” in excruciating detail, yet economics seems no more “scientific” now than it was then. Indeed, the best minds in the “science” seem to miss the most obvious events. For example, we were told that the sub-prime mortgages would be a boon to the economy, and when they began to fail, we were told that the damage would be contained, and then we were told that they would not lead to a recession, and now we are told that the recession, if it comes, will be mild. It would seem that such a “science” has little value for either predictive or for policy purposes.

Economists do deal with numbers, but the question is, “Do the numbers mean anything?” The problem is illustrated by the history of the unemployment numbers. Where did they begin, and what do they mean? Let us begin at the beginning. David Leonhardt recounts the story in the New York Times:

In 1878, Carroll D. Wright set out to do something that nobody in the United States had apparently ever done before. He tried to count the number of unemployed.

As is the case today, the 1870s were a time of economic anxiety, with a financial crisis — the panic of 1873 — having spread into the broader economy. But Wright, then the chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor, thought there weren’t nearly as many people out of work as commonly believed. He lamented the “industrial hypochondria” then making the rounds, and to combat it, he created the first survey of unemployment.

The survey asked town assessors to estimate the number of local people out of work. Wright, however, added a crucial qualification. He wanted the assessors to count only adult men who “really want employment,” according to the historian Alexander Keyssar. By doing this, Wright said he understood that he was excluding a large number of men who would have liked to work if they could have found a job that paid as much as they had been earning before.

Just as Wright hoped, his results were encouraging. Officially, there were only 22,000 unemployed in Massachusetts, less than one-tenth as many as one widely circulated (and patently wrong) guess had suggested. Wright announced that his “intelligent canvas” had proven the “croakers” wrong.

From Massachusetts, he went to Washington, where he served as the inaugural director of the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics and later as the head of the United States Census. His method for counting — and not counting — the unemployed became the basis for Census tallies of the jobless and, eventually, for the monthly employment report put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wright is the father of the modern unemployment rate.

In other words, from the very beginning, the “numbers” served a political purpose, and the inventor of these numbers received a political reward. What the “unemployment” rate really represents is the government's judgment of the number of people who “want” a job but don't have one. The government bases its judgment on whether an unemployed person has applied for a job in the last four weeks. Alas, I have some experience of this. Back when the telecommunications companies where deregulated and were frantically downsizing, I was laid off from my job, and remained unemployed for two years. At no time did I not want a job, but after the first 300 or so resumes, there was little more to be done. There were periods when I could not find another place to apply, and hence was judged to be not in the workforce. Dr. Wright—and Dr. Greenspan—would not have counted me; in the eyes of the govmint, my unemployment did not count.

The govmint's numbers also misrepresent underemployment:workers who have been moved from, say, good-paying manufacturing jobs to serving sandwiches and fries at Chick-fil-a. The Clueless John McCain has actually proposed this as the solution to Ohio's unemployment problem: have the community college retrain the outsourced factory workers as fast-food workers.

Of course, economics cannot have numbers in the same way the physics has. This is because economics is not a physical science, but an humane one. Numbers in physics represent the measurement of a phenomena against some law of nature, such as the law of gravity. The “law” serves as a rule or measure of forces that move all physical objects, and move them in strict concord with the rules. But men are not moved in this way; humans have the ability to move themselves to ends they themselves select. It is not so much that numbers are not useful, but they cannot mean, in the humane sciences, precisely what they mean in the physical sciences. In the humane sciences, numbers will always represent a set of judgments. For example, in measuring unemployment, the economist must…

…first start by making the decision that it needs theoretical explanation and second [he] must define what unemployment is, both of which are blatantly value-laden (and political) activities. Furthermore, the choice of what methods to use to investigate this phenomenon also involves value judgments, as does selection of the critical criteria about what will be accepted as the “final term” in the analysis, the bases of what arguments will or will not be accepted. However, values and value judgments enter into theory construction on the ground floor by giving the theorist the “vision” of the reality s(he) is attempting to explain. This “vision” is pre-analytical in the sense that it exists before theoretical activity takes place. (Charles M. A. Clark)

In other words, numbers in economics cannot mean what they mean in physics. By trying to root itself in the physical sciences, economists cut themselves off from the only source that could make their discipline “scientific.” Instead of a science, what we actually get is a series of contending ideologies with little relation to the real world, and of little value for the purposes of business, government, or even of the understanding of human relations. Indeed, by trying to look like astronomers, they look more and more like astrologers. Recall that astrologers take precise measurements, use precise numbers, and draw bewilderingly complex charts, just as economists do. But they cannot be real scientists, because their starting premise, that the stars control all our actions, is not rooted in any higher science; it is a free-standing assumption, neither provable nor falsifiable. In the same way, economists make assumptions about human action not rooted in psychology, assumptions about human society not rooted in sociology, and assumptions about justice not rooted in any rational philosophy or theology. Without rooting themselves in the higher humane sciences, they cannot—ever—be scientific.

The administration is taking credit for lowering the unemployment rate. And the Cheney/Bush administration deserves the "credit." But all this means is that they have made jobs so scarce or so unrewarding, that fewer people want them. This is a dubious accomplishment.

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The 100 Years War

Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are,
Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war.

--Wm. Shakespeare, Troilus & Cressida

John McCain has recently tied success in his presidential bid to the success of the surge in Iraq. It took him about two milliseconds for him to realize his mistake, and he attempted to take it back. But whether he takes it back or no, it is likely to be at least partially true. Success in the surge may not be enough to carry him to the White House, but failure in Iraq is likely to defeat him all by itself; as one of Cheney's strongest allies in this war, McCain's fortunes are tied to Iraq, and he has said that he is willing for the United States to stay 100 years if that is what it takes to “win” (whatever “win” means in a place like Iraq.)

Right now, the War Party is in somewhat of an “I-told-you-so” mood over the “success” of the surge. The grounds for this claim of success is that there are fewer bodies bleeding on the ground. This cannot be denied. But the reasons for it are not good reasons, and began before the surge. Long before the surge, the Sunnis found friends against the American-backed government (or for what passes for government in Iraq) among Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda gave them arms against the government or rather against the Shiites, which is largely the same thing. But shortly before the surge, they found better friends with better arms: The Americans. Just as once we backed the Taliban against a foreign-backed government in Afghanistan, so now we are backing “The Awakening” against another foreign-backed government in Iraq. The difference is that this time, we are the foreigners backing the government. For all the stupidity of the Soviets in Afghanistan, they were never quite stupid enough to back their own assassins. Our government, such as it is, is fond of blaming Al Qaeda for arming the Sunnis and Iran for arming the Shiites. We have driven them both out of business by arming Sunni and Shia against each other, leaving little room (or need) for the competition. And it is not look before we will unite them in the only cause that can unite them: driving out the Americans, along with their puppet government in the Green Zone. As for the puppet government itself, it really doesn't care; its only care is to loot the American aid as long as the money lasts, and then make their way out of that God-forsaken country.

On such a cause, John McCain has staked his cause, and wants the rest of us to stake him to the presidency, even if it means a hundred-years war. Senator McCain would do well to pick up the latest issue of Rolling Stone and read Nir Rosen's account of The Myth of the Surge . Rosen is qualified to write this because he actually speaks Arabic; that is to say, he can actually do what the American commanders cannot do: listen directly to the people. Some quotes from his article:

"We are essentially supporting a quasi-feudal devolution of authority to armed enclaves, which exist at the expense of central government authority," says Chas Freeman, who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. "Those we are arming and training are arming and training themselves not to facilitate our objectives but to pursue their own objectives vis-a-vis other Iraqis. It means that the sectarian and ethnic conflicts that are now suppressed are likely to burst out with even greater ferocity in the future."

“Osama [an Awakening commander] himself makes no secret of his hatred for the Shiite government and its security forces. As we walk by a checkpoint manned by the Iraqi National Police, which is comprised almost entirely of Shiites, Osama looks at the uniformed officers in disgust. "I want to kill them," he tells me, "but the Americans make us work together."

“Most Shiites I speak with believe that the same Sunnis who have been slaughtering Shiites throughout Iraq are now being empowered and legitimized by the Americans as members of the ISVs. On one raid with U.S. troops, I see children chasing after the soldiers, asking them for candy. But when they learn I speak Arabic, they tell me how much they like the Mahdi Army and Muqtada al-Sadr. "The Americans are donkeys," one boy says. "When they are here we say, 'I love you,' but when they leave we say, 'Fuck you.'"

“Gottlieb had recently conducted an inventory of the weapons assigned to the 172 INP — short for 1st Battalion, 7th Brigade, 2nd Division. There were 550 weapons missing, including pistols, rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. "Guys take weapons when they go AWOL," he says. The police were also reporting fake engagements and then transferring to Shiite militias the ammunition they had supposedly fired. "It was funny how they always expended 400 rounds of ammunition," Gottlieb says.”

“With American forces now arming both sides in the civil war, the violence in Iraq has once again started to escalate. In January, some 100 members of the new Sunni militias — whom the Americans have now taken to calling "the Sons of Iraq" — were assassinated in Baghdad and other urban areas. In one attack, a teenage bomber blew himself up at a meeting of Awakening leaders in Anbar Province, killing several members of the group. Most of the attacks came from Al Qaeda and other Sunni factions, some of whom are fighting for positions of power in the new militias.”

The saddest comment comes from Captain Arkan Hashim Ali, a member of the Iraqi National Police:

"Before the war, it was just one party," Arkan tells me. "Now we have 100,000 parties. I have Sunni officer friends, but nobody lets them get back into service. First they take money, then they ask if you are Sunni or Shiite. If you are Shiite, good." He dreams of returning to the days when the Iraqi army served the entire country. "In Saddam's time, nobody knew what is Sunni and what is Shiite," he says. The Bush administration based its strategy in Iraq on the mistaken notion that, under Saddam, the Sunni minority ruled the Shiite majority. In fact, Iraq had no history of serious sectarian violence or civil war between the two groups until the Americans invaded. Most Iraqis viewed themselves as Iraqis first, with their religious sects having only personal importance. Intermarriage was widespread, and many Iraqi tribes included both Sunnis and Shiites. Under Saddam, both the ruling Baath Party and the Iraqi army were majority Shiite."

"Arkan knows that the U.S. "surge" has succeeded only in exacerbating the tension among Iraq's warring parties and bickering politicians. The Iraqi government is still nonexistent outside the Green Zone. While U.S.-built walls have sealed off neighborhoods in Baghdad, Shiite militias are battling one another in the south over oil and control of the lucrative pilgrimage industry. Anbar Province is in the hands of Sunni militias who battle each other, and the north is the scene of a nascent civil war between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.”

Personally, I have a great deal of respect for Senator McCain, but in all honesty I must say that he scares me. Like too many veterans of my generation, he wants to re-fight the Vietnam War; he is convinced that we lost that war through a failure of will and resolve. We lost it because of Jane Fonda, or the New York Times, or the liberals, or whatever. But in fact, the American public stayed with their government and displayed remarkable patience. The war lasted from 1959 to 1975 and cost 55,000 American lives, not to mention uncounted Vietnamese lives and vast amounts of treasure. We even imposed an income-tax surcharge on ourselves to pay for the war (can you imagine either Cheney or McCain doing that?) It was not a failure of will, but a failure of arms. And arms will always fail in such a war, where the population does not support us. But we had great support among the Vietnamese compared to the support that we now have among Sunni and Shiite alike. In such circumstances, there is no way to win. And frankly, no real reason to “win.” When we have “won,” what precisely is it that will have gained? Stopping Al Qaeda? That is an organization we created in Afghanistan and the Iraqis really want no part in it; they were just temporary allies against the Americans. A Democracy in the Middle East? And that will get us what exactly? Securing our oil supplies? Both sides in the civil war want nothing more than to sell us oil. We can get out of Iraq precisely the same thing we would have gotten out of a “victory” in Vietnam: nothing.

1959-1975 is only 16 years, not quite McCain's 100-year war. But the Middle East is a larger place and a tougher problem. And it is not really our problem. Those concerned will have to work things out for themselves; the American were not appointed by God to be either their judge or their rulers. Those who would have us rule in the East do well to tell us that it will be a 100-years war. Oh well. Five years down already; only 95 to go.

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