DEMOCRACY WISDOM

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust. (Demosthenes)

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
(Franklin)

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. (Franklin)

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty. (Franklin)

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. (Franklin)

. . . a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles . . . is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and keep a government free. (Franklin)

This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize [their] rights . . . cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins. (Franklin)

The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within. (Gandhi)

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular. (Gandhi)

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. (Goering)

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. (Hutchins)

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. (Mencken),1920

A good politician under democracy is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. (Mencken)

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. (Thompson)

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. (Voltaire)

Democracy is the Tinkerbell of political systems. If you do not believe in her, she cannot exist. (Zacharia)

LAW WISDOM

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.(Adams)

The defendant wants to hide the truth because he's generally guilty. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the jury does not arrive at that truth. (Dershowitz)

I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." (U.S. Grant)

In law it is a good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot. (Lincoln)

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket: and the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to the professors than the justice of it. (Macklin)

Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice. (McIlvanney)

Law students are trained in the case method, and to the lawyer everything in life looks like a case. (Packard)

Law is experience developed by reason and applied continually to further experience. (R. Pound)

If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order. (Szasz)

The law is like the killy-loo bird, a creature that insisted on flying backward because it didn't care where it was going but was mightily interested in where it had been. (Rodell)

". . . in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction. . ." "If the law supposes that, the law is a ass- a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience- by experience." (Mr. Bumble)

The Law is not Justice. The definition of Justice varies by the time, place, situation and culture. The Law should be a best effort process that is most likely to result in Justice based on experience, the known past and the foreseeable future. (Zacharia)

Authority is a transient honor lent by consensus to those deemed worthy. It is a volatile privilege the burden of which is continual revalidation. (Zacharia)

G.W. BUSH HASN'T A CLUE

G. W. Bush remains a font of misconception. He likens the Iraq adventure to our revolutionary war and quotes Washington: "My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom." Again, he misconstrues a principled patriot who was commending the tricolor flag presented to him by the French foreign minister after their revolution. The real G.W.’s words clearly imply empathy, non-interference and observation, not participation.

Our first President lived self-determination. Democracy (the "Tinkerbell" of political systems) requires an understanding of the rule of law that comes from within and can’t be imposed on a culture not yet ready. Comprehension of Washington’s Farewell Address would have prevented the foreseeable debacle in Iraq, to wit:

". . . the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it . . . the will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of goverment, are inauspicious to liberty . . . ." "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world . . . ." "In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe . . . duty and interest to take, a neutral position." "Having taken it, I determined, as far as should depend upon me, to maintain it, with moderation, perseverance, and firmness . . . to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism . . . to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations . . . ."

People live with what they will until they have the gumption to change it. The real G.W. understood that you cannot win someone else’s civil war for them. Would that "Dubya" respected the real George’s philosophy and acted accordingly.

WHAT'S IN A WORD

Over the years it has become more and more popular to use the word “war” for just about any policy undertaking that addresses any vexing problem. There are economic wars (local and international trade), endless wars (poverty, drugs, disease) and most recently, a war on a tactic of war – the war on terrorism. The war on terror has justified an ideological and geographically off-point policy that is devoid of a cogent knowledge of culture and history. It has taken us into a hopeless military adventure fraught with the “unintended consequences” that always plague the dogmatic ideologue who gets his way. Notwithstanding the fact that it is irrational to make war on war, we have let bellicose hyperbole and the loose use of a formidable word that has grave implications has inured us to its power and has degenerated to a level that threatens our way of life.

The recent exclamations of Attorney General Gonzales emphasize the fragile nature of the rights and privileges we enjoy in our Republic. In his interaction with Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that there “. . . is no express grant to habeas corpus in the Constitution.” Strictly speaking he is correct in that it is not among the enumerated rights in the Constitution and is mentioned solely as a privilege. In Article I, Section 9 of our Constitution it states that “The privilege of the writ of the habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” In this context without quibbling over the similar denotations, there is a connotative difference between “rights” and “privileges” and it is expensive and dangerous to blur the distinction. A right is generally considered intrinsic and is withdrawn only in the most dire (real, not perceived) circumstances, a privilege is earned and granted by an authority and is properly more easily withdrawn. To be perfectly clear, according to our Constitution, a writ of Habeas Corpus is a privilege not a right.

Picture liberty as a bucket containing “rights” and “privileges” that have been hard-won in the evolution of the rule of law. The bucket sits on the three-legged government stool that represents our checks and balances. When war is invoked, the bucket is tipped by fearful leadership. “Privileges,” which are lighter flow out first. The more fear generated, the more intensely are privileges and then rights spilled out. For this reason, the evolution of Western political structure has formalized, clarified and restricted the basis and use of the word war. One must not use the word lightly, since in essentially all modern political systems, war is the one thing that surely tips the bucket.

Students of history realize that war is a powerful provocateur that can and has destroyed rational political structures. Hence its regular use by demagogues to tip the bucket and control individuals and a societies. This has drawn evolved cultures toward stricter definitions of war as a conflict between defined geopolitical entities or between parties within a nation (civil war). In our Constitution, the Executive gets to wage it, but the congress gets to declare it. Broken down further, the House of Representatives has to fund it and the Senate, although not explicit, needs to go along, usually considered as an extension of its role in treaties – advice and consent. Regardless, there must be general agreement of the Executive and the Congress for a war to proceed – and even this was insufficient to prevent subornation of war by a President and his cronies.

If the insurgents displace the former government, in a civil war, it becomes a revolutionary war (in retrospect), otherwise it becomes an insurrection footnote. By the way, does anyone remember if it was the English or the French who won our Civil War? If you answered neither, you win. No nation can win another nation’s civil war for them. Ground level involvement in someone else’s civil war has the same result as trying to separate fighting canines. The “peacemaker” more often than not ends up significantly wounded. Civil wars end when all factions save one are vanquished or the combatants get tired of fighting and dying – and are forced resort to compromise.

The Greek philosopher Demosthenes said “There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.” This was placed in a different context by the Irishman John Philpot Curran in 1790 and is generally paraphrased as “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” The essence of this vigilance is not over outside invaders so much as over those who govern who would tip the bucket of liberty for absolute ideology or to subjugate. The strategy is to dominate and to avert the gaze of the vigilant, the usual tactic is fear. Words do have meaning and the hyperbolic use of powerful words is the regular tool of the demagogue on a mission. War is not a word to be trivialized and we must remain vigilant in the classical sense. The three-legged stool that upholds liberty in our Constitution is easily tipped by imprudent use of this simple three-letter word. It is foolhardy, if not unconscionable to use this word loosely and without a firm understanding of the consequences of its use. Remember, a sword is just a sword . . . unless it’s Excaliber.

"G.H.W." (Bush I) v. "Dubya" (Bush II)

The Project for the New American Century (founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan) found a synergistic home in the neoconservative movement that included Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle. The Republican party, and in particular, its Christian right wing found particular comfort in much of the PNAC dogma.

Based on the following hypothetical situation, George H.W. Bush (Bush I) could be a courageous American who gave up a second term, in part because of economic conditions oft sited, but also because of his understanding of realpolitik. He made a difficult policy decision, similar to that made by Truman with regard to using a nuclear weapon to end the Pacific War (an interesting “doublespeak” juxtaposition).

The Setting: It’s the end of the Gulf War, the economy is not doing well and Bush I sits in the Oval Office fully aware that if he doesn’t go after Saddam Hussein, a pumped up citizenry might not view him as having “finished the job.” He and his advisers do not think he can win a second term without something drastic. Enter the Neocons with a proposition: take out Saddam Hussein.

Bush I: “Can we do that?”
Neocons: “Of course. We’re there and we know where he is and it is written in the new Bible of our think tank that we can remove a weak dictator who doesn’t listen to us like we want, impose our own puppet pseudo-democracy and stabilize a large supply of oil for ourselves. The resulting war will be big enough to justify more military funding and thus help our campaign contributors, especially since our international support may dissolve and we may have to go it alone. But the economy will improve because it always does in a war.

"The big prizes are the side effects: You get elected to a second term. Regardless of the mess, Americans are a loyal lot and will not change horses in the middle of a war – and war there will be. The Christian righteous will love it; convert the gentiles. Even better, when we vanquish those primitive Arabs ‘with shock and awe,’ they’ll want to give us the oil just for liberating them.
Bush I: “Well let me check the feasibility with the military.”
Neocons: “Oh, you needn’t bother, act like the Commander-in-Chief that you are!”
Bush I: “I’ll give it some real thought, boys.”

The Neocons leave and he immediately calls in the Joint Chief leadership (Schwarzkopf, Powell et al) and asks “Can we get Saddam?”
Generals: “Sir yes sir” which is what you always say to your “Commander in Chief."
Bush I: “Well, should we do it?”
Generals: “May we speak freely sir?”
Bush I: “Of course, I need all the real information I can get [unlike another member of the Bush family].
Generals: “Mr. President, this action would run contrary to the American principle of self-determination. We’ve run these scenarios out at the military war colleges for years, and it's always a lose-lose situation. What do you know about Iraq, sir?”
Bush I: “A fair bit, guys. Remember I have traveled and directed the CIA. I kind of fancy myself a realpolitik guy. I seem to remember that there are multiple ethnicities forced to live as a nation at the end of the British Raj. Their culture depends more on tribal and family ties than on evolved political philosophical principles. There are many groups and more than one kind of Muslim and lots of special interest countries surrounding them.”
Generals: “That’s right sir and when you cut the head off this chicken there’s no telling how it will run around in the barnyard, if not out of the barnyard. Even worse, when the civil war comes, we’ll be right in the middle of it, and you know what happens to the person who tries to break up a dog fight, sir.”
Bush I: “But can you take him out?”
Generals: “ Sir, yes sir, we know exactly where he is. But what will you do after we get him, especially when your tenuous international coalition dissolves?”
Bush I: “Don’t you guys have a plan for such a contingency?”
Generals: “No, sir. We would have to project power half way around the world for at least 20 to 40 years to maybe have a good effect. Look how long the British Raj stayed around with mixed results – a modicum in Eastern cultures and nothing good in Western (Muslim) cultures. Try as we might, all of our projections end in civil war and even more regional instability. You just don’t want to be there, sir. By the way, sir, who won the American Civil War, the British or the French?”
Bush I: “Come on, guys, that’s a trick question, you know that you can benefit from someone else’s civil war, but you can’t win it. They have to do that for themselves. Ultimately its always a ‘self-determination’ thing.”
Generals: “That’s right sir, there is no good exit strategy. That Saddam’s a bad actor, but he’s their bad actor. People live with what they will till they have the gumption to change it. That’s what self-determination is all about, sir. What’s worse, we will leave with our tails between our legs just like we did in Vietnam – and without the oil. If you break it sir, you own it. Do you have some strong ideological reason to do this, sir? Because if we go, we will have to commit as if we want to annex the place. That’s the only scenario that has a chance. Do you want to mire us in another Vietnam?”
Bush I: “So you’re saying ‘There's no way out?’”
Generals; “Sir, yes sir. Best to leave while the leaving’s good.”

Contrast this with George W. Bush (Bush II, henceforth), he with the confirmed addictive personality. The modus operandi of an addictive personality is the comfortable simplicity of absolutism – either I have my drug or I don’t. The successes of various sundry “12 step-programs” are with the most “suggestible among the latter. The programs rely on “substitution therapy,” i.e. the replacement of a socially unacceptable addiction with one that is acceptable, usually religion (“the opiate of the masses”).

Contrary to popular belief, oil was not Bush II's primal cause. Always an advocate of the simplistic solution to solve a complex problem, he fell under the spell of the certainty of PNAC ideology. Right wing Christianity and PNAC ideology were clear ideological paths for Bush II. He easily embraced the “one true solution fallacy” and did everything he could to get us into a war and solidify a two-term Republican presidency (the only Bush II “failure” that he was sure to reverse).

Oil was the “red herring.” Our country has subjected itself to the leadership of a President without historical or cultural perspective and without a thoughtful ethos. It was ideology, not oil, and the best part is that the coward didn’t have to fight his own battle, he and the other old men could send our children to die in it. Addicts always “stay the course,” and a confused and limited misunderstanding of loyalty became his mantra.

After “Dubya,” with the help of his Neocon dialecticians, trumped up a way to spin the terrorism issue into an Iraq invasion, “Dubya” and his father didn’t talk much. Bush I laid low. "Dubya" wasn’t “finishing the job for his father, he and PNAC cronies were waiting for any reason to get into a war to “shake things up in the stagnant cold war that is the Middle East.” It wasn’t long before the Taliban and Al Qaida gave it to them.

Fast-forward to the present. Can you imagine Bush II’s phone call to his father after the recent elections:
Bush I: “Hello, who is this.”
Bush II: “It’s Georgy, Dad.”
Bush I: “Haven’t heard from you in a while. What do you want this time?”
Bush II: I (tears heard dripping over the phone): “Daddy, I really screwed the pooch this time. Can you get me out of this? You saved me back when I almost had to go to Vietnam. I don’t think the people love me anymore. You gotta help me, I’m your son!”
Bush I: “I told you not to do it. I told you to play the evangelical right, not become one. I told you not to listen to those PNAC simpletons. Again, you were sure you were right and flipped me off.”
Bush II (plaintive voice): “But I hired the same guys you did , Cheney, Rumsfeld – they were in your administration too.”
Bush I: “Not all – and when their advice didn’t pass the straight face test, I didn’t listen to them. I told you that Truman was right and the ‘buck stops' at the President’s desk. Are you ready to listen this time?”
Bush II (begging): “You gotta save me dad, its all going down the tubes.” I think I really did it this time and I don’t know how to get out of it.”
Bush I: “Are you ready to listen?”
Bush II: “Yes, anything.”

Bush I: “First, dump that idiot Rumsfeld. Hire some of the right people from my administration – make sure you hire the ones that are still alive. I’ll give you a list of the best ones to ‘spin’ you out of it. Then reinvent yourself and suck up to the Democrats. Stop with the ‘stay the course’ crap’ and get that woman to negotiate with the Koreans.

"Its OK to listen to the religious right, just don’t act on their recommendations. You've got to shine 'em like Reagan did. I’m not saying you can really be saved except in terms of your religious claptrap. And stop worrying about your evangelical base. They'll forgive almost anything if you just act 'misled,' and 'fess up" to having the same weaknesses 'from which we all suffer.' It's worked for you before. The more you display incompetence up front, the grander the prayer meeting and the forgiveness. If you're lucky, you might even be able to blame it on the inabilities of your so-called Iraqi leadership and the Democrats themselves -- for forcing you into premature evacuation. After you finish, call me back if they don't wise up and develop the spine to impeach you.”

IRAQ: DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

It would appear that the conventional wisdom has come around considerably here in the U.S. and recognizes the disastrous legacy that will be G.W. Bush (Bush II). Last year, my nephew Ryan graduated from Cornell and like others had received some of my annual epistles. For whatever reason, he was interested in any of my old writings concerning the Middle East. In going through old computer files, I found a letter in DOS Wordperfect that I wrote to none other than Henry Kissenger in 1993 after he spoke at a lecture. In the Q&A, I disagreed with his criticism of G. H, W. Bush (Bush II) among other things and he was dismissive, but I respectfully followed up with a letter. Not to worry, current versions of Wordperfect for windows translate the old DOS version. The following is an excerpt from that 4/93 letter:

Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of listening to your lecture on various international topics at the Peninsula Speakers series here in San Mateo. I was able to ask one question, that concerning your opinion of the “premature ending” of the Gulf military action. I believe it will be good and necessary to leave Hussein in power. The alternative will lead to grave unanticipated consequences. It was good to reminisce about the Buskashi match we attended with you in Kabul in 1974.

There is a natural enmity between the Persians and the Arabs that goes back to a time before Islam. The Persians are a more cohesive geopolitical entity with a proud political and religious philosophical tradition before Islam. It would be another bonehead travesty to confuse them with the Arabs and Arab countries more or less thrown together by the declining British Raj. There is no dismissing the effect of the British Raj, good and bad, all over the world, but it always cost plenty when not associated with lengthy in-depth occupation until the recipient culture had developed a viable middle class – and it never worked in a country mired in a western religious political system. All cultural descendants of the British have a well-intentioned penchant for imposing an evolved cultural ethos on others. Add to this a dose of evangelical proselytism and you get the Iraq debacle.