Unused and Probably Unusable

I haven't commented directly on the War Against Iraq on this blawg before. I've touched on it, lots. It reflects on the judgment of the administration. It kills our best and brightest. It sours the world on us, particularly the Arab world but not at all confined to the region. It's expensive. It was wrongly justified. It was badly planned and poorly executed, despite great sacrifice by our troops on the ground. It's a disaster, and worse, it was a predictable disaster. Look, we predicted it. QED.

Consider this statement of faith by Roger Cohen of the Int'l Herald Tribune in the NYT:

Because I believe the net impact of American power, mistakes notwithstanding, over the past century has been a freer, more open, more accountable and more rewarding world, I am inclined to heed Petraeus rather than the Democrats in the House.

"The Biggest U.S. Error in Ousting Saddam," April 27, 2007 NYT (Select only, requires password).

Big words. Hard to fault him for his faith. Fine. But I will not willy-nilly go along with Cohen's unwillingness to change horses when he's halfway - can he even say halfway? - into an ocean.

Because I believe the net impact of American military power, successes notwithstanding, over the past 5 years has been a more terrified, more dangerous, more anti-American, and generally closer-to-killing me world, I am inclined to cut Bush no slack whatsoever until he shows some tendency to have a better idea than the Democrats.

His contra-timetable argument is brilliant rhetoric. It's nonsense, of course, because a deadline could be hopeful, for our troops and allies and for all Iraqis (except the ones who will die when we leave...) as easily as it could be an aid to insurgents - or, if you prefer, terrorists.

Bush has been reactive. He reacted to 9/11 by unleashing Cheney's pet plan to invade an unrelated but irksome country. He reacted to Abu Ghraib by condemning the effect on our troops. He reacted to troop deaths, caused by his actions and his commanders' decisions, defensively. He reacted to criticism as poorly as any President in my memory. I had no faith in hm before 9/11. I put faith in him that week because I had to, but I did not feel good about his hawkish instincts.

The same immoral, un-Christian, wrongheaded, perverse, murderous, vicious, foolish, ugly, evil instincts and behaviors that led him to be one of the most depraved Governors of the country - how many death sentences did he set aside? How many did he even pause over? How many caused him anguish, doubt, regret? His deliberate, callous inaction when given ultimate and unfettered power to grant mercy speaks volumes about his indifference or his ambition, I'm not sure which.

- that same pattern of being an essentially bad person when it counted, on the moral ledger of life, led him to disaster in Iraq.

It's not bad luck.

It's not coincidence.

A President without the ability to accept humility before it is politically expedient is virtually guaranteed to get himself into that political mess. Yes-men. Loyal party members rather than competent professionals. Ideals over results. Faith over fact. Death rather than life. War rather than peace. Power rather than process. Arrogance rather than cooperation.

Bush has not been a perfectly imperfect President. If one were to take him, for example, and systematically turn all his right actions into wrong ones, then we might call him the perfectly bad President.

As it is, he's merely the worst that there's been in years and years and years.

Let his legacy be low taxes on the rich, ballooning inequality, failure to identify broken processes that led to 9/11 and Katrina, failure to cope with those disasters once they occurred, failure to appoint and assign competent personnel, a failed attempt to destroy a wildly popular social safety net, and death. Lots and lots of death. It's on the heads of those who incited him, who encouraged him, who voted for him and who aided him, but it's on the hands of all of America.

And what now?

Well, now we take hope and take courage going forward. American citizens have an opportunity. Look into citizen diplomacy ("the right, if not the obligation of the individual citizen to be personally engaged in international relations") - don't leave it up to the experts in government. They can't do it alone, and shouldn't be allowed to even if they could. If there's a local International Visitors Council (IVC) near you, join it. Meet someone from Iraq, from Saudi Arabia, from China, from India, from France. Shake their hands, introduce yourself. Listen to what they say. Make a difference. Non-American citizens can also do their part, in the U.S. and abroad, by challenging beliefs, helping bridge gaps and educate those who don't know, and participating in exchange of all kinds. IVC also has need of you.

The best IVC, in my unhumble opinion, is the one I belong to, the IVC of Philadelphia, www.ivc.org. There are lots of them, but our program is terrific, our results are terrific, our people are terrific.

I have personally attended events and met people from every continent, and greeted them in their native languages. It makes a difference. Say hi to someone from Venezuela, from Cameroon, from Syria and Oman and Yemen and Bahrain and Kazakhstan and Canada and Spain and more. It affects you, sure. But much, much, much more importantly for the U.S. and everyone who lives here, it affects them.

Join us. Welcome them. Make a difference. As Abraham Lincoln is quoted on the front page of Philly's IVC page, "I destroy my enemies by making them my friends."

Don't let Bush be our face to the world. Be a non-ugly American. Help us atone for what he has done in our name, and for what we allowed him to do.

President Bush speaking about the event that Wikipedia seems to have settled on calling the "Virginia Tech Massacre" (as opposed to "Virginia Tech Shootings", see the Talk page for the discussions), called it the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history, a horrible but accurate description.

I am already ready to be done with the conversation about gun control (great idea? or greatest idea? [apologies to S. Colbert]) vs. happy gun ownership (this could have all been prevented, if students were prepared to return fire while in English class. And wouldn't that make the professors more calm, to have lots of armed and surly freshmen in their must-pass class...).

This was not a case of gun control gone bad. This was also not an illegal alien committing a crime; not an act of terrorism in the political sense; not something we should be fearful of at any moment.

This was an act of... wait for it... premeditated murder by a disturbed, isolated individual who may have been looking for an ex-girlfriend, as he walked from room to room.

I have already determined that I will not bother learning the name of the individual to blame. He was a young adult. He was a permanent resident. He had an ethnic origin, like every other American. He had a family, a roommate, occupied a physical space in the world. Now he has marked many others, indelibly, and escaped the consequences forever. Let his name be forgotten, not repeated and repeated.

So the origin of this mayhem and suffering may have been (we'll know more once we watch the movie of the week!) a victim (see his "rambling" suicide notes, and the play he wrote about "Richard McBeefy") turned abuser, unable to cope with feelings other than by acting them out.

Should we be having a conversation, this society, not about bang-bang but about relationships and violence? Or about society or schools making an effort to reach out to the disaffected, the disturbed, the distanced and the deranged?

Meanwhile, I'm done reading the speculations of amateurs, self-promoters, and blameless experts roped in by a scoop-thirsty media. Notify me when the stories of heroism, sacrifice, and giving -- that is, the best of human nature, not the worst -- have finished being vetted, debunked, and verified by witnesses. After, not before, there is some time for them, and us, to heal.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this tragedy.

I'm pretty sure that the pervasive criticisms of those members of Congress who suggest that things in Iraq are going quite well, based on their own observations, are actually about nuclear physics.

Even though the Senator from Arizona and the Representative from Indiana, and their aides (who all happen to be Republican, and in favor of the war, politically speaking) saw things with their own eyes, they seem to have come to a conclusion opposite that of the commanders and troops on the ground, most of the reporters who have spent substantial time in Iraq, and virtually everyone who lives there.

How could such disagreement occur?

Well, consider the following:

Delta(x) times Delta(p) is greater than or equal to h divided by 4 times Pi.

That's Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It says that if you start cranking the Delta (x), which is on the left side of the equation, downwards, then something will have to give. You can't drive it to zero, because then the Delta(p) would have to be infinitely large in order for the principle to remain true.

The smaller the uncertainty in where a quantum particle is, the larger must be the uncertainty in its momentum. Or conversely, if the momentum (and therefore mass and energy) of a quantum particle is known with great exactness, its position becomes as greatly uncertain. There is a lower limit, in the universe, to how certain you can be of both at the same time. By measuring position (precisely), you lose - in fact, destroy - information about its momentum. In taking a reading of momentum you lose all detail about position. It's not because of faulty equipment. It's because of the nature of the teensy little things being studied. Infinitely tiny microscopes (or rather, collision detectors or the like) would not help. The position of the particle IS IN FACT highly uncertain, being a superposition of many states, as a result of its momentum being known.

In the world of politics and war, there's a similar problem. In order for Sen. McCain and Rep. Pence to view that market in Baghdad, they needed to observe it. In observing it, they changed its state.

They were not, as scientists used to pretend in their philosophical constructs, disembodied eyes, observing without being observed or otherwise interfering.

They brought with them, according to the NY Times article today,

more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters

as well as having traffic diverted, access restricted, and sharpshooters placed.

Isn't it possible that the Iraq that the honorable gentlemen observed is not in fact the same Iraq that, say, an unarmed civilian without escort might observe? Might not the circumstances of their (heavily armed and closely protected) observation impact what results they saw?

In Iraq, you can be heavily protected and safe, or you can observe reality as it exists in the absence of a company of soldiers with Humvees, plus helicopters and marksmen above. But you can't do both.