Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
Electoral Math
Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
Get 'Em When They're Young | Home | Spoke Too Soon
Naw, couldn't be: Trolling through my sitemeter logs I see a hit from Chappaqua, New York (popn: 9500), that looked mostly at my February archives, which includes several chapter summaries of My Life.
So who from the Clinton Foundation has been snooping around?
Stirling Newberry is on the money again:
The lesson of American politics since Korea has been "win or go home." Truman and Eisenhower knew that they couldn't win, so they went home. LBJ tried to win, Nixon realized he had to go home. Reagan, Bush and Clinton fought very short wars, where they either won, or went home quickly.
This is more or less the political restatement of the Powell Doctrine. Hopping in the wayback machine, from my vantage point only the first and fifth criteria are were met as of March 2003. Yes, preventing Saddam Hussein from acquiring chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons is a vital US interest. And the second point is sort of met ... but only if the objectives for the US Armed Forces do not include occupation.
Thinking about the Powell Doctrine in the context of the anti-war movement's relative success, it would seem as if the US simply doesn't have the stomach for sustained military conflict. But this is the result of the result not of the public's weak stomach, but our rational understanding that there simply aren't any problems that require sustained military conflict. If such a problem arose -- most likely that Iran or North Korea used nuclear weapons -- the public would likely continue to support combat in the face of large casualties. Informal polls of military officials showed that their estimate of "maximum acceptable casualties" of a land invasion of Iraq was much lower than that of elected officials, which was even lower than that of the public at large. That's because the public figures out that if you're invading a country, there's a darn good reason for it and you're going to end up with a lot of bloodshed.
But today, the good reasons behind the Iraq war have disappeared, and with it so has public support. Let's be thankful that it took only three years to unmask the sham arguments for war.
Weekend Content:
| | technorati
Last
updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 10:35 27 September 2005
