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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 8-Jan-07
Sunday news talk shows exhibit craziness and politics

Web Log - January, 2007

Sunday news talk shows exhibit craziness and politics

Will the U.S. come as close to anarchy as Israel is?

As you read this article, remember this: There is no solution to the Iraqi situation. Iraq is increasingly a theatre of war for the larger war between Iran and al-Qaeda, thanks mainly to the Israeli/Palestinian situation, and that's not going to change.

Brent Scowcroft on This Week With George Stephanopoulos (Source: ABC)

Brent Scowcroft on This Week With George Stephanopoulos (Source: ABC)

Most of the interviews and discussion on yesterday's Sunday morning news talk shows were blathering political nonsense. The only interview that I saw that had any substance was the one with Brent Scowcroft on This Week With George Stephanopoulos.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on Thursday, Scowcroft recommends solving the Palestinian/Israeli problem, and then the Iraqi problem will fall into place. "Most of the elements of a settlement are already agreed as a result of the negotiations of 2000 and the 'road map' of [2003]," he wrote. "What is required is to summon the will of Arab and Israeli leaders, led by a determined American president, to forge the various elements into a conclusion that all parties have already publicly accepted in principle."

Stephanopoulos asked:

"The heart of your argument is that the US has to get re-engaged in the overall process for Arab-Israeli peace, as a way to decrease tension thruout the mideast. But even if Israel gave back the West Bank tomorrow, even if the Palestinians promised to disarm and recognize israel, how would that stop Sunnis and Shiites from killing each other in Baghdad."

Now, we've been here before. Stephanopoulos does not have a clue about what's going on in the Mideast, or the effect of the Palestinian issue on the entire region. George Stephanopoulos looked like an idiot in November because Jordan's King Abdullah had to tell him five times of the importance of the Israeli/Palestine situation, but he was still clueless. This is an incredible situation, but it's the result of Boomers not being able to think in any terms other than ideology.

Brent Scowcroft replied:

"That's the obvious question. What it would do is change the psychological climate of the region. What we have is a number of different issues coming together, and the region is in great turmoil. and there's a great sense in the region of historical injustice on the part of the Muslims. This would change that. This would see us as participating and helping in a problem which is central to the region, which has been a gnawing sore for Muslims for 50 years. It would give the Arabs the incentive to do what is in their interest to do and that is help deal with the issue of Iran. Because this is their neighborhood - they want to help. They helped us in the first Gulf War, enormously, with troops, with money. They're sitting on their hands now. Why? Because it's dangerous to be seen helping the U.S. now. This would change all that."

Stephanopoulos:

"You talk about the turmoil in the region. Part of that turmoil now inside the Palestinian territoris is Palestinians fighting each other, Hamas and Fatah, basically on the verge of civil war. Don't the Palestinians have to make peace with themselves for Israel to make peace with them?"

Scowcroft:

"Yes of course they do, and that's a major part of dealing with the peace process. I think it can be done. It can be done if we can get the Egyptians, the Saudis, thoroughly engaged in dealing with the Palestinian sectarian problem, between Hamas and Fatah. It won't be easy but I think it is doable.

And the other [problematical] aspect of this [is that we treat Iraq nonchalantly]. If we get it ok, then fine; if we don't then we'll just leave. It's not that easy. We will be seen as abandoning the region, abandoning our friends, abandoning the people who have put our faith in us. And the results will be a dreadful region."

Except for one tiny thing, Scowcroft's reasoning is absolutely correct. If we're perceived to be abandoning Iraq by any means -- withdrawal, redeploying, whatever -- we'd be universally condemned by your friends and allies, and our enemies would humiliate us unmercifully.

(Incidentally, we're in same situation with other countries with whom we have defense treaties, including Israel, Japan, South Korea. If we're perceived to abandon any of them, it would cause an international crisis. That's because we're policemen of the world, because of the Truman doctrine.)

So Scowcroft's reasoning is right, except for one tiny thing: There isn't a snowflake's chance in hell of any peace process working. As you can see from yesterday's item, the Palestinians are getting closer to an all-out crisis, and the Israeli government is close to anarchy. Like almost everyone in Washington, Scowcroft is living in the past, and has no idea of the effect of generational changes.

Stephanopoulos continued:

"At what point do you say though that we've done all that we can, that there's no more good that can be done. We can't be held hostage to the decisions that the Iraqis make."

Scowcroft:

"We're not being held hostage to it. But we have a responsibility now to the region. Because, like it or not, the region is much more unsettled, much more in turmoil. The Iranians are on the offensive - they're stimulating Hizbollah, they're stimulating Hamas. The Sunnis are afraid of a Shia crescent, and so on and so forth. Six or seven years ago they weren't. That is a result of US actions. We have to try to produce stability in the region. What I'm suggesting is the moves toward the Palestinian peace process would help both in Iraq and stabilizing."

This is a very peculiar statement. What's he talking about? The Sunnis weren't afraid of the Shias six or seven years ago, and they are now because of the Iraq war? One hardly knows where to start. The Sunni vs Shia wars have been going on for 1½ millennia. The 1980s Iran/Iraq war was a major historical event in Arab/Persian and Sunni/Shia relations. Iran was caught relatively unprepared by Saddam's invasion in the 1980s, and they were particularly unprepared for Saddam's use of weapons of mass destruction -- and that's the reason why Iran today is absolutely determined to develop nuclear weapons.

Finally, the Iraq war didn't begin in 2003; the Iraq war began in 1991, and escalated sharply in 1999 with almost daily bombing of no-fly zones. The 2003 ground war was another escalation, but if we hadn't done it, we'd still be bombing no-fly zones, and that would infuriate the jihadists just as much. Furthermore, if Saddam were still in power, we (and Iran) still wouldn't know whether or not Saddam had WMDs, and the tension between Iran and Iraq would be enormous, and might be as destabilizing an issue in the Mideast as the Palestinian/Israeli issue is.

Stephanopoulos and Scowcroft believe two completely different things, both wrong. Stephanopoulos believes that Iraq is on a separate island, completely unconnected to the Israeli/Palestinian problem, and so there's no point in focusing on that problem. Scowcroft sees the connection, but believes that we can solve that problem, even though a number of Admistrations have failed to do so. Neither Stephanopoulos nor Scowcroft has any concept about the generational changes taking place, or even realizes that the Gaza strip, which is densely populated with a median age of 15.8, is being run by children who couldn't care less about any peace plan whatsoever.

At least that segment had some substance. Pretty much all other segments on the Sunday news talk shows were filled with political nonsense, mostly by Boomer politicians who claimed to be speaking "for the people," but who had no idea what people of any generation other than Boomers were thinking.

According to the speculation, the Administration is planning to propose a "surge" of 20,000-40,000 addition forces into Baghdad, accompanied by a $1 billion "jobs program" in Baghdad to give the young jihadists jobs.

Most of the discussion began with this letter from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to the President on Friday:

"Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq. ...

Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement . . In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq."

This letter is straight out of the Vietnam era, with a couple of names changed. Pelosi is calling for a Vietnam-style withdrawal from Iraq and a Vietnam-style military defeat.

However, even Boomers remember that a huge genocidal war followed the American withdrawal from Vietnam, with millions of people killed in Vietnam and then in the "killing fields" of Cambodia. A big question in Washington these days is whether a withdrawal from Iraq will cause a similar cataclysmic war in the Mideast.

There's a little black humor in this situation. Ideologues are continuing to insist that the war in Iraq is a "civil war," even though it's clearly not, for reasons I've given many times. But the interesting thing now is that the use of the "civil war" phrase has moved from the left to the right. In the past, leftists used it to attack Bush's performance in Iraq. Now, people on the right are using it to attack the Democrats' withdrawal plans, with words like this: "If we withdraw from Iraq, then we'll have a full-scale civil war that will affect the entire region, so we can't withdraw from Iraq." What goes around comes around.

Nancy Pelosi on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer (Source: CBS)

Nancy Pelosi on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer (Source: CBS)

On Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer interviewed Nancy Pelosi and tried repeatedly to pin down Pelosi on her strategy for Iraq.

However, no matter how many times Schieffer tried, Pelosi kept evading the question. Q: Won't a withdrawal cause chaos? A: It's chaos now. Q: Won't American interests be harmed? A: They're being harmed now. Q: What would be your plan? A: Bush has no plan. Q: Are you going to cut off funding for the war? A: We'll continue to support the troops. Schieffer tried over and over again to get Pelosi to provide some substance, but nothing ever came out of Pelosi's mouth but political crap.

So what are the Democrats going to do? There were numerous discussions of that question, but only one answer: The Democrats will "provide oversight" of the war, will hold hearings questioning every decision, past and present, and will be looking for misjudgments and scandals. In other words, they're just acting like Boomers, with no skills whatsoever except to brawl. Every single politician I saw on Sunday did the same thing Pelosi did: Emit political crap.

A year ago, I pointed out that the Congressional calendar was just 97 days for all of 2006, because the Congress was going to do nothing.

The only person who was actually doing something was Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was born in 1932, and is from the Silent generation, a generation of people who actually have skills besides arguing. Rumsfeld has been restructuring the armed forces to prepare the country for the coming Crisis. He was replaced by former CIA director Robert M. Gates, a bureaucratic Boomer. We have yet to see whether Gates is able to actually do anything to help the country.

It's for certain that the Boomer Democrats elected to Congress won't. They don't even claim to have any plans except to brawl with the President. They don't even claim to be making a positive contribution. I listened to all of them on Sunday, and they never claimed to have anything but a "f--k you" attitude toward any attempt to govern. There was nothing else from any of them.

My question is whether America is going to get as bad off as the Palestinians and Israelis. As I described a couple of days ago, the Palestinians are so paralyzed that they're close to civil war, and the Israelis are so paralyzed that they're close to anarchy.

Right now, it looks like the results of the November election will be to bring the country as close to anarchy as the Israeli government.

I'll mention two things that some politicians mentioned in terms of a possible improvement.

A couple of Democratic politicians pointed out that the Social Security reform that happened in the 1980s took place in an environment of divided government (Republican President, Democratic Congress). They said that, for that reason alone, the new divided goverment may be able to get things done. We'll see.

A couple of Republican politicians pointed out that "the President is not doing the popular thing, and he's not doing the easy thing; there's only one possibility left: he's trying to do the right thing." It's certainly true that the proposal to surge troops into Baghdad is neither easy nor popular. It may or may not be right, but historians probably won't know for sure for ten years or so.

But at least President Bush is still attempting to govern. At times like this we can appreciate the fact that we don't have a Parliamentary form of government because, if we did, then Bush would immediately be replaced by someone of the same party as the election winner, and we'd be totally paralyzed, like Israel.

This situation will not last long.

William Strauss and Neil Howe, the founders of generational theory, analyzed these political cycles in their 1997 book, The Fourth Turning. When a country is in a Crisis era, as we are now, the political bickering becomes almost unbearable, as it is now. This certainly happened prior to Pearl Harbor in Franklin Roosevelt's administration, which was riddled with scandal from top to bottom. But once Pearl Harbor was bombed, and once the country suffered the disastrous loss in the Philippines and the Bataan death march (February-April, 1942), the country was unified and the political brawling mostly stopped. Strauss and Howe call this time the "regeneracy," because national unity is regenerated after decades of degenerating.

What we're waiting for is an event similar to Pearl Harbor to unify the country and cause a "regeneracy" today. It might be a terrorist attack or a big military loss overseas. Strauss and Howe describe what happens as follows:

"Collective action is now seen as vital to solving the society's most fundamental problems. ... A Crisis mood does not guarantee that the new governing policies will be well designed or will work as intended. To the contrary: Crisis eras are studded with faulty leadership and inept management -- from President Lincoln's poor record of choosing generals to President Roosevelt's collossal blunders with such alphabet soup agencies as the AAA, NRA and WPA. What makes a Crisis special is the public's willingness to let leaders lead even when they falter and to let authorities be authoritative even when they make mistakes. Amid this civic solidarity, mediocre leaders can gain immense popular following; bad policies can be made to work (or, at least, be perceived as working); and, as at Pearl Harbor, even a spectacular failure does not undermine public support. Good policy choices pay off quickly. (In an Awakening, by contrast, even the best leaders and plans can fail, and one misstep can destroy public confidence.)" [The Fourth Turning, pp 257-258]

It's impossible to predict exactly what kind of event will trigger this "regeneracy" of public unity today, but we'll know it when we see it, because it will be as disastrous as the Bataan Death March in WW II or the Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War. And it will unify the country behind George Bush (or whoever takes office in 2009), just as those events unified the country behind Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

I'll close this article with one moment of levity in the Sunday News Shows.

Hysterical laughter on This Week With George Stephanopoulos (Source: ABC)

Hysterical laughter on This Week With George Stephanopoulos (Source: ABC)

On the pundit panel portion of This Week With George Stephanopoulos, the guest pundit was Harold Ford Jr., former Democratic congressman from Tennessee.

Stephanopolous asked him a question about taxes, the point of which was that the new Congress cannot possibly fulfill all the contradictory promises that they've made. Ford immediately began: "The thing is that they're off to a different start, a new direction."

This response was so ridiculous that Cokie Roberts and George Will, both of whom have been around Washington for many decades, broke out into hysterical laughter, while Ford did his best to keep a straight face. But one shouldn't single out Ford; every politician's response on Sunday was equally ridiculous. (8-Jan-07) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 8-Jan-07 Sunday news talk shows exhibit craziness and politics

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 8-Jan-07
Sunday news talk shows exhibit craziness and politics