The Little Matter of the Monroe Doctrine

In his latest New York Times column, currently the most e-mailed article on nytimes.com, Nick Kristof "asks,"

Hmmm. You think it’s a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth...Costa Rica’s national decision to invest in education rather than arms has paid rich dividends. Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad.

Costa Rica really does sound like a great place, and the U.S. does spend way too much on military hardware and so forth, as Dwight Eisenhower predicted we would. But couldn't Kristof at least throw in a little sentence or two on the fact that perhaps one reason Costa Rica doesn't need an army is because of security externalities provided by the United States?

Hegemons do a couple of things, among others:

1. Tell other countries what to do.
2. Keep things relatively stable.

The U.S. has meddled and invaded and killed all over Latin America and its conduct in the hemisphere has often been deplorable. But deplorable compared to what? Compared to the Spanish and the Portuguese and the British and the French and the Dutch? Or compared to a hemisphere with no hegemon at all — a counterfactual about which we can only speculate?

It's just more of the shallow tsk-tsking that passes for liberal internationalism these days. I don't blame Kristof so much as I shudder at the thought of the legions of jackasses in coffee shops who will read this column and say,"Wow, Costa Rica really has it all figured out, why can't Obama make us more like them?" And meanwhile the Dick Cheneys of the world are still out there, plotting their return to power.

Quick Question

Why does John McCain, the guy who decided that Sarah Palin was qualified to be President of the United States, still get to go on the teevee to talk about foreign policy?

Lucky duck

So I was watching a bit of Israel-Hezbollah coverage tonight and it sorta struck me: I really have no idea what it's like to be in a situation where I felt so strongly about something that I would decide that the only possible course was to take up arms and be willing to die, or more importantly, to kill, for that something.

I try not to take for granted how incredibly fortunate I am to have been born a white male in the United States in 1968. About the worst I can say about my fortune is that the U.S. economy started to be just so-so in about 1973. The postwar boom ended that year, growth slowed, inequality increased, and the marginal gains from increased productivity have shifted to capital from labor. So as a wage-earner it's been an 8 or a 9 instead of a 10, like it was for my parents' generation. But I have never wondered where my next meal was coming from, never worried that a militia was going to ethnically cleanse my neighborhood, and, apart from a general anxiety about nuclear war, never worried that my house might be hit by a rocket or a bomb.

If This is Pottery Barn, I'd Hate to See Pier 1

Can we call a halt to the "Pottery Barn Rule" phrase? It didn't apply back when Colin Powell reportedly said it in 2002, and it doesn't apply now.

Today Tim Russert had a quartet of retired generals on Meet the Press to discuss Iraq. The options advocated by the generals ranged all the way from A to B, from "Stay the Course" to "Stay the Course, But With a Bigger Boat."

One of the guys urged that the U.S. stay the course, and he mentioned the "Pottery Barn Rule:" You break it, you bought it.

Can I just point out that once you start talking about launching Tomahawk cruise missiles off of a destroyer in the Persian Gulf, we're really beyond the scope of a shopper dropping a fragile porcelain candle holder on the floor in a home furnishings store. So right off the bat the "Pottery Barn Rule" is pretty unhelpful, is it not?

Even if we allow the "Pottery Barn Rule" People some poetic license, what is the military equivalent of a customer breaking something in a home furnishing store? Well, in Iraq, it certainly couldn't entail much more than the first shock-and-awe bombing of March 2003. Seems like in that case, the next step under the Pottery Barn Rule would have been to say, "Oops, sorry about that," and then to send the Iraqis a check for $45.6 million or whatever it took to repair the damage, with a little extra for maybe some hummus or a nice cup of coffee.

Obviously, we've done a bit more in Iraq than the military equivalent of breaking a candle holder. Imagine that you are a manager of a Pottery Barn store. The biggest dude in town thinks that to protect everyone he needs to come in to your store and throw everything on the floor, tip over shelves, pour the dirt out of the planters, and then punch everyone in the gut for good measure.

Then, once he starts trying to "clean up," it turns out that this big dude is more of a Jerry Lewis type. He starts slipping and sliding all over the place, dropping the stuff that didn't break the first time, saying things like "Whoa, Dean! Friction burning!" and "Whoa Dean! Hot water, burning hand!" and even a "Ladeee!" or two. Generally making the mess worse, in other words.

If you're the store owner, do you really want this guy to keep on trying to "clean up?" No. You'd probably say, "Hey, friend, thanks for your 'help,' but you're really doing more harm than good here right now so why don't you pay me for the damage and then GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"

At this point, if we really want to observe the "Pottery Barn Rule," we should ask how much Iraq needs to repair the damage we caused, leave the money on the counter, and leave. Because that's what would really happen in a Pottery Barn.

Right?

Ignoring Reality

I'd like to highlight a comment made by "turandot" earlier today on Pandagon regarding the Cindy Sheehan situation in Crawford:

"The questions, and they are perhaps central, are: why won't Bush talk to her, when all it entails is just stepping outside his Ranch, and talking to the woman for 10 minutes?..."

That's definitely the heart of it. As Maureen Dowd wrote today in the NYT, "It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea."

But this is part and parcel of the problem in Iraq: Ignore reality and hope it goes away.

Leave aside, for the moment, the ethics of the invasion (disastrous though they may be) or the theories about the real reasons for the invasion (controlling the world supply of oil). This is also a competence issue. Surely the sincere supporters of the President's foreign policy can recognize that?

Guys, really, it's okay to be wrong once in a while. We all are. Admit the mistake. Ask for help. Change the policy as warranted. It's in all the top management books.

London

The bombings in London on Thursday have prompted for me a memory and a comparison.

1. Russell Square, near two of the blasts, is where Helen, her mother, her great aunt, and I stayed for a few days back in September 2000. Helen's great aunt Betsy and I had flown overnight from Boston together to meet Helen and her mother, who were arriving from Denmark. Betsy and I, bleary-eyed, took a bus to Russell Square from Heathrow. Walking across the Square to our hotel, Betsy stumbled on an uneven paving stone and fell, cutting her chin. Literally within seconds, motorists who had seen her fall were stopping to offer aid. One man in a delivery van gave me handfuls of napkins, which stopped the bleeding long enough for us to get to our hotel, where the manager ran out into the street to hail a cab. The cab driver took us to a nearby emergency room and absolutely refused payment. At the emergency room, due to the UK's system of socialized medicine, Betsy did not have to show an insurance card or make a payment of any kind for the three or four stitches she received. On that day, we benefited from both private charity and a "big government program," proving that the two can coexist (and, I would argue, reinforce one another).

2. At this writing, according to the BBC, 37 civilians have been killed in London in the pursuit of a political agenda. To date, according to IraqBodyCount.net, 22,787 civilians have been killed in Iraq in the pursuit of a political agenda.

"Occupations don't work. Never have."

No, it's not the latest heresy about Iraq to come out of Sen. Chuck Hagel's (R-NE) mouth. It's the most memorable line from Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," which Helen and I saw tonight.

I know it's fashionable to dis Spielberg, but nobody does extra-terrestrial visits to Earth better than he does. This movie is so far ahead of junk like "Independence Day" and "Signs" that it's now difficult for me to believe that the latter two were ever even made.

UPDATE: The Retro Crush review of WotW is right on the money.

The warning about occupations never working is spoken by an old guy holed up in a farmhouse (Tim Robbins) whilst the alien invaders visit destruction upon the Hudson River valley. It joins these two passages from "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" as this summer's best cinematic comments on US government policy (thanks to Rosemary at Eve's Apple for reminding me of the Star Wars lines):

1.

Padme Amidala: “So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause."

2.

Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader: “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy."

Obi-Wan Kenobi: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes."

Before seeing the movie, we went for Shabu-Shabu ("Swish-Swish" in Japanese) at Shabu-Zen in Chinatown. Unique place: you sit at a counter with a boiling pot of broth in front of you. Server brings meat, fish, vegetables, whatever you want, and you dunk it in the boiling broth and shabu-shabu it around for a while before transferring the cooked food to your plate. Me likey.