In Re Rothkopf

From Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" Weblog:
March 23, 2009

Thank Goodness for the Obama Administration’s Thorough Vetting Process

By Ted R. Bromund

I had dinner last week with a former student who worked for Obama’s campaign and now, like millions of others, is in town to try to land an administration job. His complaint was that the administration’s vetting procedures were so thorough that they were slowing him up, a complaint that made me choke on the excellent Pomerol we’d ordered.

I thought of his complaint again today, when a friend pointed out an interesting item in the February 26, 2009, New York Review of Books: a petition calling on the U.S. to withdraw immediately and totally from Afghanistan. One signatory, predictably, was Norman Finkelstein. Another, equally predictably, was Chas Freeman. That petition was published weeks before Freeman’s name was put forward as the arbiter of U.S. intelligence assessments. Now, naturally, it would never for a moment compromise Freeman’s objectivity that his self-declared political opinions are wildly at odds with those of the administration he sought to join. Nor is there anything even slightly unseemly about a candidate for such a position publicly stating preferences that would immediately put him at partisan odds with the President. Nor, of course, need we wonder at the fact that Freeman found himself politically at home with a conspiracy theorist like Finkelstein.

But I do have to wonder about those vetting procedures. Freeman wanted the job, but it seems unlikely that he informed the administration of his publicly-expressed views. And amazingly, no one in the administration noticed them. The press doesn’t get a pass here: it’s astonishing that this publicly-available petition wasn’t immediately brought up as a reason why he was profoundly unsuited for the intelligence job.

Of course, all that may be too generous. Perhaps it’s not true that no one in the administration noticed his views about their policy. Perhaps, instead, they noticed and didn’t care. In that case, we have to ask not about the competence of their vetting process, but about the sincerity of their commitment to the war in Afghanistan.

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http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/bromund/59741

Grand Sen-or, I gave you a serious reply in another thread and you answered so late I didn't see your answer until just now, and by now it's so late you might not see mine if I put it there.

I say that people have supported governments for reasons, and those reasons made sense to them at the time. If things are changing now -- if you want them to change -- you need something that will make more sense to modern people than the old way does.

For most of recorded history most nations have been run by kings. This was largely voluntary. People got used to the idea and they wanted it. Note from the book of Samuel for example. An excellent example in many ways.

http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/15837

People identified with their king. They gossipped about him. They ate their gruel and imagined the king eating peacock tongues and they were glad that somebody connected to them lived in almost unimaginable luxury.

If somebody trash-talked the king then the king was supposed to punish him for it. People approved, that was how it was supposed to go. They wanted a strong stern king who'd be real kingly, they didn't want freedom of speech for malcontents.

If they had a bad king, one whose luxuries were too stingy, whose dominance was too weak, whose harem was too small or to infrequently used, or who lost wars, then they were glad to see him replaced with a more kingly king.

A good king did more than spectacles. He taxed the rich and spent the money. It was hard to tax the poor, that took an army of bureaucrats or thieves. But the rich tried to collect hoards of money and sit on them like so many dragons, and the king could take their money and spend it. Also he could hear court cases and make a big show of finding for the poorer side, he could be the only source of justice. On the other hand he did find ways to tax the poor. One traditional way was with salt. Salt was bulky and yet valuable, it came from a central place -- a mine or else an evaporator by the sea. Kings could declare the saltworks a monopoly, give it to some good friend and collect taxes from that. Everybody needed salt and had to pay.

Kings pretty much everywhere, all over the world. Some greek cities lacked kings. The romans got rid of their king for awhile, and then went with an emperor. The english nobles banded together to restrict their king instead of replacing him with a more kingly king, and their restrictions gradually got more and more binding; their people suffered horribly until improved siege engines let him break their walls and regulate them. For most of human history most people had kings and considered it natural, normal, and right.

But then we got new technology which suddenly allowed much larger governments. Some kings had the resources and the people and the technology to conquer others, and instead of appointing new kings who would be their vassals until the balance of power shifted, they kept their winnings. We got big empires run by bureaucracies. The ottoman empire became a real empire and not just a net of satrapies. The austro-hungarian empire. Etc. Big armies, and yet many of the recruits had to come from conquered lands and they were not particularly loyal to their kings. They felt like they served foreign kings. But often their own kings were gone. They developed a concept of nationalism apart from kings. And yet the kings remained.

The french killed their king and declared a republic and got king Napoleon for awhile. WWI got rid of a lot of kings, but opened the way for king Stalin. Recently we've had such a turbulent time that it's hard for kings to pass their crown to their sons. King Hitler didn't last long. King Batista of cuba had to fly away on a US warplane with his gold, and king Castro has no son. King Marcos of the philippines had to run away on a US warship with his gold. King Saddam of iraq was hanged. King Sadat of egypt was machine-gunned and king Mubarak has no obvious successor. (Though even in the old days declaring a successor meant pinning a target on his back, see 1st and 2nd Kings in the bible. Every time king David had a son who looked like the next king he would be killed or discredited. Accused of raping his sister. Accused of plotting to overthrow David. Etc.) King Assad of syria did manage to pass his kingdom to his son.

In ancient times some countries had a tradition that the king would serve a limited reign -- maybe only a year -- and then he was ritually slaughtered and replaced by a new king. Sometimes he had the chance to kill his challenger and reign a second time. In the USA king Bush accepted the tradition and stepped down after 8 years rather than fight to keep his kingdom. Maybe he knew it was sucked dry?

Monarchy seems to fit human instincts or something. It keeps popping up all over. SPEEs will probably not replace it easily.

And yet you have a point.

When nationalism got big and swept away a lot of old kings, lots of people got real loyal to their nations. And yet in many places that loyalty has become frayed, particularly in the USA and perhaps western europe. Many americans don't see that the USA stands for what they believe in. Some of them object that USA allows abortion and flag-burning and gay marriage and lots of unamerican behavior -- they are stuck in a nation of unpatriotic gay abortionists and they are screaming to get out. Others object to our foreign wars. Everybody objects to high taxes and inflation, they have the highest standard of living in the world (by american standards) but they want government to take less. They have other loyalties. Libertarians are loyal to their imagined libertarian state. Marines are loyal to the Marine Corps. Scientologists are loyal to their org. Zionists are loyal to israel. SCA members are loyal to their kingdom. Etc. They all put up with their government because they have no effective way to revolt, but they don't love it.

Underneath it all, though, kingdoms and nations survive because they have human beings who are loyal to them, who are willing to fight and perhaps die for them. In the years before WWI most kingdoms didn't have enough people like that; they were too small and they were swept away. Governments are created in acts of war, by armies. Iraq was created by the british and the sunni minority was mostly loyal to it; they fought hard to stay on top. Groups that don't create enough soldiers don't get to run governments. So if by some chance the USA were to be replaced by something else, what would it be? Who would declare themselves king of the mountain, who would be ready to fight and maybe die to get their way?

Of all the SPEEs I see around me, the US Marines look like they'd have the best chance.

But you want something else. You want a country where homosexuals can have their own laws for dealing with each other, and pro-choice women can have their own laws, and people who want to get together every Thursday and ritually burn US flags and Marine pennants can have their own laws? I don't think so. Because the biggest group that's ready to kill to stop them, and who's ready to organise however it takes to win, will enforce its will on everybody else.

That's what it takes to have a government. Without that you don't have a government. And with that you get one government that enforces its will wherever it can project sufficient power. The SPEEs have to just suck it up.

Unless you can find some idea that trumps this one.