Is there a Difference between Democrats and Republicans?

I saw an interview of Nancy Pelosi last night. Ms. Pelosi was discussing the Iraqi War. She stated that the Bush administration should not defend the elected Iraqi government and instead limit the military to fighting terrorism. It is difficult for me to understand Ms. Pelosi's point. There is a fine line between fighting terrorism and supporting the Iraqi government. While Ms. Pelosi claims that her position is a major departure from President Bush's, the difference seems vacuous.

Is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? In the late 18th and 19th centuries there was a debate between federalists and anti-federalists. The federalists, led by Hamilton, were elitist. They believed in central banking, supported the interests of the wealthy and believed in limiting democracy. In contrast, the anti-federalists, led by Jefferson, opposed a central bank (what today is the Federal Reserve Bank), believed in maximizing democracy and believed in supporting the common man, who was a farmer. The Jeffersonian anti-federalists were often more racist than the federalists. Ultimately, the Jeffersonians were allied with early labor unions (and the Workingmen's Parties) but also with the southern "slave power".

Through their successors, the Whigs and then the Republicans, the federalists allied business and northern religious interests, northern farmers and abolitionists. The anti-federalists, through the Democrats, allied labor interests, the white working class of big northern cities like New York, southern interests and the "slave power".

Today, it would seem that the federalists have won a complete victory for two reasons. First of all, central banking is no longer debated, although it ought to be. The public has accepted the Keynesian monetary project.

Second, the New Deal reinvigorated the federalist concept that an elite was necessary for the US economy to work. In the progressives' view, the elite is comprised of university-trained experts. But the knowledge that enables such experts to make decisions has never been specified. The reason is that it does not exist. Business schools have multiplied in number, but competence to manage the New York City subways, for example, has eluded both Democrats and Republicans for seven decades.

What struck me about Ms. Pelosi was that she evinced no indication of the slightest grasp of military strategy or anything else relevant to the War in Iraq, but she is entirely convinced that she is expert concerning it. Is Ms. Pelosi's arrogance peculiar to the Democrats, or do both the Republicans and the Democrats implicitly favor Pelosian elitism? Are both parties alternative versions of neo-federalism?

Both favor inflationary Federal Reserve policies. More than $10 trillion have gone gone into circulation around the globe, with less than $2 trillion in circulation here in the US. We are sitting on an inflationary time bomb. With demand for stocks inelastic because of loose credit, companies have followed easy, low-risk cost strategies of moving jobs overseas to to nudge up stock prices, inflating executive compensation but leaving average Americans feeling alienated. Jefferson would turn in his grave.

Both parties favor regulation. The Democrats say they do, the Republicans say they don't, but after three Republican presidents and a decade and a half of a Republican Congress there is as much regulation now as there was under Jimmy Carter. Since 1980, government has markedly expanded in cost and scope.

The difference is that the Democrats would have unemployed American workers dependent on them for welfare, while the Republicans would have underemployed American workers working for Wendy's. Both are willing to support policies that encourage home buyers to borrow five times their annual incomes to purchase homes; both oppose policies that would permit Americans to keep their paychecks to pay cash for their homes.

It is difficult for me to see the difference.

The Need for Counter-4GW

In 2003, William S. Lind argued that the US invasion of Iraq would face debilitating trouble from insurgency and terrorism, also known as fourth generation warfare, or 4GW. Col. Thomas Hammes also ably discusses this concept in his book The Sling and the Stone. Lind's view of second generation warfare is that it involves use of artillery followed by occupation of troops, or "putting steel on target." Third generation warfare follows the German Blitzkrieg in focusing on the situation and on surprise. Fourth generation war, though, involves fighting non-state opponents. It involves a conflict of belief systems or cultures. In it, "invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army." "At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation War on their soil."

Lind and Hammes are implicitly suggesting that just as generations one and two of warfare reflected industrialization, the telegraph and railroad, while the third generation reflected the advent of the automobile, truck and radio, the fourth generation is associated with the mass media and information technology. War becomes increasingly a matter of propaganda, mass information and attitudes rather than mere organized violence or, as Clausewitz defined it (On War, chapter 1) "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will." With a Ph.D. in labor relations, I would term 4GW the triumph of Saul Alinsky. The methods that Alinsky discusses in his book Rules for Radicals are very, very similar to the concepts of 4GW.

The transition from the second to the fourth generation of warfare parallels how management has changed from the days of the Ford assembly line to the days of self-directed teams, computer aided design, flexible management, just-in-time inventory systems and modular organizations. Rather than use artillery and then occupy an opponent's terrain, an entirely different set of issues becomes paramount: integration into the enemy's community; the interpersonal conduct of forces in the community after battle; cultural intelligence; reliance on intelligent special operations operatives; and emphasis on public relations. Lind argues that "(o)ne key to success in 4GW may be 'losing to win.'" Maintenance of state systems, which we failed to do in Iraq is also important, as is the observation that "many different entities, not just governments of states, will wage war."

If Lind, Hammes and other advocates of 4GW are right, it seems to me that the response will not come from the state, which is bound by special interest groups. Rather, it needs to come from private individuals who respond to the terrorists' 4GW with counter-4GW. This would involve standing up to the media and our leaders who are motivated by personal interest in responding to special interest group pressure rather than the national welfare.

The chief source of informaton is of course the media. A second is academia. If insurgents and terrorists have used information to their advantage, then those who wish to respond need to work on exposing the rot in these institutions.

Earlier I watched The New York Times's Thomas Friedman on CBS News. Friedman was being interviewed as an expert on Iraqi policy. He made a few imbecilic points, each of which contradicted the other but had only one theme: attack President Bush. On the one hand, he argued that if the War in Iraq is like World War II, we have too few troops and we shouldn't have low taxes. On the other, he argued that America used to be in the business of exporting hope, but now it is in the business of exporting fear. I mean, which is it? Increase the number of troops, bring them home or what? The fact is that Friedman was unable to articulate a coherent alternative strategy for Iraq because he hasn't given it a moment's thought. Is Friedman the sort of person who should be viewed as an expert to be interviewed on national television? Or is he and the Times a joke?

It has become increasingly urgent for citizens to educate themselves about military strategy through books because the mainstream media, including some of my favorite sources like the Economist have not provided the public with a coherent framework for thinking about current events. Yet, Lind and Hammes provide one that is readily available.

The Failure of American Public Debate

The New York Sun reports that various politicians and pundits have been offering pessimistic assessments about the Iraqi conflict. Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy expert from the 1970s and 1980s who did not predict the important emergence of Islamic terrorism in the millenium, advises us that the war in Iraq is not winnable. The same Sun article quotes John McCain as saying that "there's only one thing worse (than deploying more troops), and that is defeat." Today, the Sun quotes Senator Obama of Illinois as saying that "a substantial number of American troops ought to be withdrawn" from Iraq. Thomas Friedman of the Times (Paid access, November 8) insists that the Bush team arrived in Iraq with too few troops (ignoring that, like Friedman, the Bush team was mostly in the United States and that it relied on the US military, specifically Tommy Franks, to project troop strength). Friedman, bombastic and ill-informed as always, suggests either reshaping Iraq into a federation (bad) or leaving Iraq by a fixed date (worse).

What is fascinating about all of these analyses is the willingness to make strong or absolute assertions without the benefit of a falsifiable theory or a body of empirical evidence that would point to the viability of one theory over another. Rather, pundits like Friedman and Kissinger and politicians like Obama and McCain (with whom I viscerally agree) pretend to know what they are talking about.

What is revealing about the discussion about Iraq is not just the failure of US intelligence and strategic planners (on both the intelligence and military sides) to anticipate and devise an updated strategy that would anticipate the diverse tribal and religious differences in the Arab world and methods for effectively handling terrorism, but the degree to which the politicians, press and media continue to remain uninformed. The arguments being made in the public press suggest a failure of American public debate and an unwillingness to learn.

In particular, Kissinger, McCain, Friedman, Obama and their ilk have had many years to conceptualize an intelligent response to terrorism and to develop a method of proactively responding to strikes like 9/11. Yet, no ideas are forthcoming. Instead, given their assessment that the American military has failed to respond competently (a point concerning which they offer no information and are apparently utterly uninformed), the "pundits" and politicians carp critically but offer no body of falsifiable theory nor any empirical evidence for their endless complaints and criticisms. Those of us who have other occupations (I work in the human resource management field) are forced to spend our valuable time reading about Iraq because those who are paid to do so have done such an incoherent and, plainly put, stupid job.

For example, consider Kissinger's claim that the war in Iraq is not winnable. This is obviously false. We can win any war by redefining it as a total war and killing the entire country of Iraq. I am not suggesting this as an option. However, the use of our moral restraint as propaganda to attack us is a tactic that ought not be permitted to work indefinitely. Perhaps total war ought to be an option against population groupings that support terrorism. I'm not sure why saying it isn't is "realpolitik". Because Kissinger says so? But Kissinger hasn't come up with a solution to terrorism, so what does he really have to offer? Is he the kind of 17th century physician who used leeches to bleed patients? I suspect that the entire field of foreign affairs has this quality of quackery. So why is the public taking the quacks seriously?

The Iraqi war is certainly winnable. The question is which path maximizes the US's interests. One thing that I am certain of: defining the war as not winnable is not in the US's interests. Kissinger ought to reframe his analysis to make it more precise. Someone who has failed to grasp the nature of or project methods to resolve the terrorist assault on America, like Kissinger, ought to be busy revising his theories and doing some basic reading instead of offering advice that has proven unsuccessful in the past. Yet, I do not hear anything new.

It seems evident that in dealing with a multiplicity of terrorist groups the concept of winning and losing that held true through World War II may no longer apply. The question is, how to convince the people of Iraq to support a moderate government and how to convince them to take action to stop terrorist violence. This might involve securing control of specific territories, providing economic support in those areas, propagandizing to the remaining areas, targeting specific terrorists and eliminating immigration here to the United States. There are likely other approaches. One might be total war.

But we are not hearing about them. What we are hearing is that the US's media, press and politicians lack ideas.

John Kenneth Galbraith on the Iraq Study Group

Baker's and Hamilton's Iraq Study group exemplified the clichés and inept analyses that have characterized popular discussion of the Iraqi and Vietnam wars. The idea that a committee of many uninformed former politicians could arrive at an informed military strategy was as silly as the report's media attention.

David Farber's excellent book, Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), explains the Hamilton-Baker phenomenon. Farber writes very well. He and I do not agree politically, but I appreciate his historical knowledge, competence and fine writing. Sloan's own book, My Years with General Motors, also is a fascinating, brilliant book, but dull as dust because of Sloan's writing style (Sloan was an MIT-trained engineer whose vision created the mid-twentieth century "concept of the corporation", and is of course forgiven for dry writing). Farber adds to Sloan's book by providing considerable historical context, detail and rich writing. For example, in John Kenneth Galbraith's classic Great Crash 1929 Galbraith writes of the role of John J. Raskob, and Farber gives us wonderful detail about Raskob's role as GM treasurer and "pal" of the staid Alfred P. Sloan.

On p. 138 Farber reminds us of Galbraith's "acerbic" assessment of the series of White House meetings that Herbert Hoover called concerning the downturn in the stock market in late 1929. Sloan attended one of these meetings of "business, farm and even labor leaders" on November 21, 1929. Farber notes Galbraith's phrasing, that can easily be applied to the Iraq study group almost exactly 77 years later about "one of the oldest, most important--and unhappily one of the least understood rites in American life.":

"This is the rite of the meeting which is called not to do business but to do no business. The 'no-business meeting' Galbraith explained, served to create the impression that business is being done...'Even though nothing of importance is said or done, men of importance cannot meet without the occasion seeming important. Even the commonplace observation of the head of a large corporation is still the statement of the head of a large corporation. What it lacks in content it gains in power from the assets back of it...'"