Nemesis

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to: Beyond “The Ad”:Getting Back to Substance in the Petraeus Controversy, by Steven Clemons in the Washington Note, September 20, 2007

The MoveOn org’s ad General Petraeus Or General Betray Us in the New York Times has sparked a great controversy and debate, as it naturally was expected to do, forcing the Democrats to repudiate it and the majority of them to vote against it in Congress thus engendering a serious split between them and their anti-war constituency. It also forced some liberal gurus to stealthily detach themselves from the ad without damaging their connection with the anti-war crowd. Clemons, the liberal scholar and blogger of the Washington Note, apparently with admiration quotes Chris Matthews’ wiseacre, “the ad didn’t kill anybody” as being Solomonic wisdom, as well as for the purpose of sopping up and appeasing the “MoveOnes”. The ad certainly didn’t physically kill anybody. But it certainly attempted to kill the spirit, the dedication, and the moral fortitude of all American soldiers in Iraq who consider and applaud General Petraeus as being a superb commander, and are honored and proud to serve under his command.

It was a shameful attack upon the military front line US forces and the soldier-savants, like David Petraeus, who are the real and only defenders of America against this onslaught of fanatic barbarians. In the chronicles of this war the “ad” will be written with the obloquy it deserves. As by betraying the beliefs of the troops about their military commander, the ad by implication betrayed the interests of the nation at this critical juncture of its history that the deadly challenge of Islamofascism poses.

As a consequence of the above reply the following discussion took place on the Washington Note.

Carroll said…

May I ask if you have any military combat experience? Or any military experience?
I don’t, but my older brother was a three purple hearts, two bronze stars and one silver star Marine Lt. in Vietnam.

And he says that Petraeus is a prime example of the “political” generals in the military,..he called them total “suck ups” and “desk managers”.

Kotzabasis said…

Yes I do Carrol! I have the “experience” of 160,000 American soldiers presently serving in Iraq who are winning purple hearts, bronze stars, and silver stars galore with their heroic stand against the stealthy murderous insurgents, and who consider, I repeat, General Petraeus to be a superb commander (not a “suck up”)and are honored and proud to serve under his leadership.

So if you follow with intellectual rigor your own logic, 160,000 experienced soldiers who think differently from your brother about the subject Petraeus, surely and decisively trump the “experience” of your brother. So by your own logic you too must accept the appraisal, of all those star-laden soldiers, of General Petraeus. And hence come to the same conclusion, like myself, that the MoveOn ad was a betrayal of the troops serving in Iraq, and by implication a betrayal of America.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Since the elevation of Kevin Rudd to the leadership of the Labor Party his polls have shot up to the stars and continue to rise unabated into the electoral “stratosphere” of the country. And this is going on beyond the normal honeymoon period most new leaders enjoy with the electorate. Taking also into consideration that the “animal spirits” of the electorate were, and are, not ferociously hostile against the Howard government, one is nonplussed therefore at the rapid and high rise of Rudd’s polls that refuse even to reach a plateau and least of all to fall. It’s the reverse of the simile of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. While Howard has been politically “debauch less” and “sinless” his picture or portrait is becoming aged and uglier as if displaying his political debauchery and sins that his record does not have. On the contrary he and his government have impeccable economic credentials as good managers of the economy and prosperity of the country during their long tenure in office, as all serious commentators acknowledge.

Moreover one would expect that something that goes up must also come down. But the strength of Rudd’s polls is of such magnitude that defies even Newton’s law of gravitation. What explanation can one give to this phenomenon that prevents even the apple of Newton from falling? And is unprecedented in the experience of pollsters and challenges the professional knowledge of the latter to give a plausible answer to this conundrum?

Some pollsters and commentators have offered the explanation that the Industrial Relations legislation and global warming are the two major issues that are throttling the Coalition and the reasons why the electorate has lost its trust of the Howard government. But these two issues were around during the time of Rudd’s predecessor Kim Beazley and did not contribute even a tad of rise to the polls of the latter. Nor was ever registered by any pollsters any noticeable huge ire of the electorate on these issues against the government. Others offer as an explanation the youthfulness and apparent dynamism of Rudd against the aged Howard. While this might have some effect upon some people it’s not of such great substance that would deliver a sledgehammer blow to the foundation of Howard’s leadership as it seems to have done. The peer pollster Sol Lebovitz puts forward a shrewder explanation. He says that often the electorate has a propensity to have one-night-stands with an Opposition party until close to the day of the election. I think this is a more plausible explanation and I would only express this proposition in different terms, i.e., when it comes to the question whether the electorate should take the “slut” to the ballot box and marry her. It’s precisely at this point when voters approach the “aisle” of the ballot box that they will decide whether to jilt or marry the Labor bride.

But I would suggest and risk a bolder explanation to this ceaseless rise of Kevin Rudd’s polls. It’s the perception of the unstoppable momentum of the polls favoring the leader of the Opposition that prevents many of those who are called by the pollsters from expressing their real feelings about the two opposing parties. Most people love going along with the strong current of a stream especially when such an enjoyment seems to be the fashion of the day, and would be discomfited to be seen going against it. Hence individual members of the electorate when they are asked by pollsters which of the two leaders or parties they favor, they chose the ones who have this momentum behind them. And the corollary of this is that this choice continues to reinforce the momentum of the polls that favor Rudd and hence the ceaseless momentum that feeds on itself.

The members of the electorate therefore who provide the statistics for the pollsters are like surfies. Who enjoy riding a high wave of the sea, in this case the “victorious wave” of Kevin Rudd, and get a great frisson, a great thrill, from sliding from the heights of the wave. But until the penultimate slide that will bring them close to the ballot box and to the ebb of the wave. Once the voters enter the secrecy of the ballot box it’s at that moment that they will express, unhindered by the fashionably designed momentum, their “secret longings”. And in my opinion the latter will favor John Howard for his mature solid leadership that will continue to secure, as his long tenure exemplified, the long term interests of Australia, and will reject the uncertain, callow, and risky leadership of Kevin Rudd.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Suffered all the chances and changes of war Thucydides

Frank Rich, the theatre, film, and television critic turned political analyst since the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, in his latest op-ed on August 5, 2007, in the New York Times titled, Patriots who Love the Troops to Death, uses emotive words and language, as the title of his piece indicates, to make his “sober” and cool analysis of the war and its supporters or “credulous enablers”, to quote him, from both sides of the political spectrum. In a stream of lava pouring down from his theatrical volcanic eruptions he repeats the time-worn accusations of “Whitehouse lying and cover-ups have been not just in the service of political thuggery but to gin up a gratuitous war without end”. Rich sombrely states that “both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and both liberals and conservatives in the news media were credulous enablers of the Iraq fiasco”. He quotes with exhilaration, as if one held in view a peacenik four star general performing on the stage his No to War stand, the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen, saying that “no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference” in Iraq if there is no functioning Iraqi government. And he lets fly his flaming arrows on Michael O’ Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, two political analysts and war experts of the Brookings Institution, accusing them of “blatant careerism” for their optimistic views of Iraq, “on the backs of the additional troops they ask to be sacrificed to the doomed mission of providing security for an Iraqi government that is both on vacation and on the verge of collapse”. Lastly, to clinch the seriousness of his argument he even places the name of the “ogre” Rupert Murdoch on the top of the bill of his vaudevillian performance.

It’s by such “blood-stained” dramatic statements that our former art critic forges his political analysis of the war and by which he impugns the Bush administration and its sundry credulous enablers of all political doctrines and persuasions. But in his rush to cast his thespian thunderbolts upon the administration and the supporters of the war, he is missing the fact that he is casting his bolts in an already dawning blue sky that is emerging over Iraq. Rich misses, or maybe he is dazzled by the shining fact that the surge is working, under the generalship of the able and imaginative David Petraeus, and slowly but methodically is achieving some of its strategic goals. Such as isolating al Qaeda from the mainstream of the Iraqi insurgency and winning over to the American side some Sunni leaders and their militias who are prepared to fight and are fighting al Qaeda.

Also, the new American tactics on the ground, such as operation Phantom Strike under the command of General Rick Lynch, is attacking al Qaeda and other insurgents in the middle of the night killing or capturing them and flashing them out of their safe havens. The insurgents to escape these devastating blows of the Americans are fleeing the towns around Baghdad abandoning their road bombs, rocket launchers and even in some cases their personal armaments, and moving further to the south for safety in an area of the Tigris river known as the Samarrah jungle. Tracked by intel the insurgents are presently highly vulnerable to the operations of Phantom Strike and in some cases are “sitting ducks”. Whereas before the surge they were the attackers and pursuers they are now the defenders and the pursued. If this new counterinsurgency strategy of general Petraeus does not lose its momentum and continues to be successful against the insurgency, it will decisively deprive the insurgents of all initiative in the fields of their operations and lead them inexorably to their defeat. As the continuation and success of any insurgency rests on two tenets: (a) The insurgents are masters in the initiation of their own actions and (b) continue to have some support among the local population. Once their position slips from these two tenets and they are forced to find safety in jungles, as in this case, they will inevitably be prey to the latter’s environment and their strength and viability will be “devoured” both by the conditions of their survival in the jungle and by the “intel preying” of the American tiger.

In other words, the American military locomotive is finally moving forward on the rails of success. It’s precisely this success that critics like Rich are dubbing as a hopeless task and moreover hoping to derail. After investing so much of their grey matter to convince the American people of a pointless, futile, and unjust war, and making their “blatant” careers as celebrity pundits around the orbits of the media stars, now that the war shows the slow rise of a dawning success they are trying to find an escape in their state of denial. But they fully realize that the latter will be a noose around their necks if general Petraeus defeats the insurgency. And whose corollary is that from its ashes will rise the Phoenix of a solid democratic government in Iraq. Such an outcome will fully justify Bush’s invasion of Iraq while simultaneously tearing to pieces the professional reputations of all the pundits, academics and politicians who with such unprecedented intellectual shallowness and lack of moral resolve “cashiered” an American victory in Iraq.

After the brutal and ill-omened attack of 9/11 when “there was no room left for moral hesitation: the choice lay between salvation or destruction”, to quote Alexis de Tocqueville, all the effete nation’s disablers gathered together at the first signs of the difficulties of the war, as if ever war was easy, to passionately and vehemently criticize the Administration’s invasion of Iraq. While such a critique would be totally justifiable if it was focused and highlighted the initial and blatant mistakes of the Administration’s implementation of its strategy in Iraq and make suggestions how to correct them, the critics chose instead to condemn in toto Bush’s strategy against global terror.

But the conundrum for this ill-fated critique of the liberal professional establishment is why when there are visible and tangible improvements in the war against the insurgents and al Qaeda with the new strategy of the surge the critics of the war continue apparently to be unconvinced of the improvements and refuse even to admit the possibility that they might be wrong. Instead, like rolling stones they even crash people of their own liberal strand who assert that this war might be winnable, like they did with Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. To have expressed a modicum of doubt about their position would have been the reasonable thing to do before the rudimentary favorable signs in Iraq. But it’s obvious that the critics of the Bush administration, like Frank Rich, are more concerned about their professional status than their intellectual integrity. That is why their main concern is to convince the American electorate and Congress for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and use the vitriol of their tongues and pens for this purpose. It’s by such means that they can save their reputations from being everlastingly tarnished if the war happened to be won. They are patriots who have lost their love for America for the love that dares not speak its name, the love of their careers.