Steven Pinker: "The stupidity of 'Dignity"

Dayo quoting Tom Schaller: "Mr. Obama and his foreign policy team emphasize 'dignity promotion'... "

I'm with Pinker on this one. As he points out, absurd and cruel, incompetent dictators set great store by dignity. In Putin-Mobutu's Russia, for instance, lese-Pujeste is now de facto a crime that will ern you a vicious beating from OMON or other thugs, possibly even a jail stint. Qaddafi and Bob Mugabe also emphasize their own dignity.

The concept isn't soft, it's vapid and foolish. At least democracy promotion has some intellectual coherence.

I have long enjoyed reading Fareed Zakaria. He is a dialectical thinker (in the non-Marxian sense, of course). Rather like you, Dayo. Robert Kagan attempted to dismantle him in TNR a few years back, not successfully, I think. I recall an excellent review he had in the New Yorker a number of yeard ago in which he scored conservatives for their sense of perpetual underdog status at a time when they dominated all three branches of government. For those interested who don't have his book, you can read an excerpt in  the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs by googling the magazine name.

I found this essay very difficult to read, so I'm not sure I understand what is being said, but one sentence stood out, "If he's reading Zakaria, he's also . . . "

I have no idea whether Obama agrees with Zakaria, but frankly, neither do you. Obama strikes me as the type of person who reads voraciously and who stays current/informed by reading authors he both agrees and disagrees with. Just because he's reading a book doesn't mean he endorses its thesis.

I wish I had a euro for every time I've heard declinist hysteria about The Coming End of American Hegemony.

First it was Vietnam, Watergate, the dollar's slide and hyperinflation that spelled the end of the American Empire in the early 1970s. Then it was OPEC, stagflation, Carter's ineptitude, Soviets on the march etc that spelled the Demise of the US Republic. Then we were told that Reaganism was the last gasp (no, really, we mean it this time!) and that WWIII was nigh.

And then when the Soviet Empire buckled and collapsed, we were told America was a "Pitiful, musclebound giant", a victim of imperial overstretch hopelessly incapable of competing against -- get this -- the indomitable Japanese juggernaut ("OMG! They bought up Rock Center and Pebble Beach!!!"-- and sold them back to Goldman and others for cents on the dollar a few years later).

When Japan slid into a 15 year recession, the chorus was, "Did I Say Japan? I meant China!". And on and on we go.

Talleyrand's apothegm about Russia needs to be applied to the US: "[the US] is never so strong nor so weak as she seems." I remember when the Crown Princes of Davos were all genuflecting before the miraculous and all-powerful American hyperpower, just a few years ago. Someone needs to start an investment fund that goes short on the reigning Davos consensus.

A little clarity's in order. First, our markets are not "tanking." Even the real estate market is merely going back to the levels of 2003 -- which were extraordinarily high by most standards and still provide anyone who bought a house prior to 1999 or so a hefty return. Those who bought with at least some intelligence, ie the vast majority of buyers in recent years, will have to wait a bit longer to cash in our price gains but we'll do fine. The financial mess is a mess for wall streeters-- lovely, couldn't happen to a better bunch.

Unemployment is still low, and inflation, while rising, is *nothing* compared to the bloodbath of the 1970s. Nixon imposed price controls. We're nowhere near anything like that now. Even gas prices are much more tolerable today than they were in 1979. Yes, things aren't good, but we've seen far, far worse, and in recent memory. When I graduated from HS the unemployment rate in my hometown was 25%, inflation was 13%, and interest rates were around 17%.

Finally, despite all the hand-wringing about the international situation, this is nothing compared to the fears of nuclear confrontation during the early 1980s, when Central Park, Hyde Park, and capitals across Europe saw massive rallies against our (necessary, Helmut Schmidt-requested) buildup to counter the Soviets' SS-20s in E Europe.

Sorry, but I remember those days. THEY were tough. Today's challenges are a cakewalk compared to the storms we faced in 1973, 1975, 1979, and 1981-83. We'll get through this just fine, just as we did the earlier storms that, we were told, would propel the USSR, oops, I meant Japan, oops, I mean China past the US.

In the New Yorker, Ian Buruma does a pretty good job dissecting Zakaria and Kagan's respective strengths and weaknesses. Kagan comes out rather well vs Zakaria. Excerpt:

"[Zakaria expresses] what might be called the Davos consensus, after the Swiss resort where, under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, financial and political élites gather each year for convivial networking. What’s striking about that consensus, though, is how swiftly it can change. The first time I visited this august assemblage, around the turn of the century, the received opinion was that the United States was so far ahead of the rest of the world that no one could ever catch up. This year in Davos, America’s fall was on everyone’s lips.

Zakaria, who is judicious, reasonable, smooth, intelligent, and a little glib, predicts nothing so rash. He points out that, aside from some pockets of backwardness, the whole world has been getting much richer. Global capitalism has been a huge success. Far from menacing local cultures, as some fear, globalization has, by his accounting, been good for cultural diversity. France and South Korea, “long dominated by American movies, now have large film industries of their own,” he writes, omitting to mention that France had one before Hollywood threatened to wipe it out, and that its revival in France, as in South Korea, has been due more to state subsidies than to global capitalism. Still, even though the economic scene looks gloomier now than it did when he finished his book, Zakaria is correct to insist that many people everywhere have benefitted from the global boom.

The problem, Zakaria writes, is that “as economic fortunes rise, so does nationalism.” This is apparent in Russia, of course, but it is equally so in China, where he talked to a young businessman, and felt as if he “were in Berlin in 1910.” Actually, the prickly nationalism of many Chinese may have less to do with their newfound prosperity than with China’s fraught combination of political autocracy and economic liberalism: nationalism and economic boosterism are all the autocrats have at their disposal to try to legitimatize their continuing monopoly on power. In any case, Zakaria is inclined to think that rational calculation will ultimately prevail. He maintains that the Chinese are by nature a pragmatic people, who will surely realize that it is in their interest to be embedded in the liberal global order. “The veneration of an abstract idea,” he explains, “is somewhat alien to China’s practical mind-set.”

This piece of cultural analysis does not quite explain the veneration, fairly recently, of Chairman Mao’s highly abstract ideas. In fact, ideology has always played a large role in Chinese politics, and Robert Kagan, perhaps the cleverest of the neoconservatives, points out the limits of Chinese pragmatism. Like the Russians, he writes, the Chinese leaders have “a comprehensive set of beliefs about government and society and the proper relationship between rulers and their people,” and are convinced that the chaos and uncertainties of democracy pose threats to their nation. “Chinese and Russian leaders are not just autocrats therefore. They believe in autocracy.” This is indeed what Chinese rulers have believed for thousands of years, drawing support from some highly abstract ideas expressed in Confucian philosophy.

Zakaria says that China, like India, wants “to gain power and status and respect, for sure, but by growing within the international system, not by overturning it. As long as these new countries feel they can be accommodated, they have every incentive to become ‘responsible stakeholders’ in this system.” But can powerful autocratic regimes really be accommodated in global economic institutions, without undermining either their own autocratic powers or the liberal democracies?

Top Ten Books Obama May Be Hiding Beneath the Zakaria Dust Cover:

10. The Pet Goat

9. Stranger in a Strange Land

8. Frommer's San Francisco

7. The Prince

6. Bowling Fundamentals

5. Das Kapital

4. Dianetics

3. Black Like Me

2. The Koran

and the No. 1 Book Obama May Be Hiding Beneath the Zakaria Dust Cover:

1. It Takes A Village

Dayo, you should also tackle Dreams of the Red Mansion, Journey to the West, and Outlaws of the Marsh, to complete the Chinese classics.

It seems the only real way is first security, then economic freedom, and finally Political freedom. It seems dignity promotion assumes the first and seeks to bolster the second. If so I am all for it.

Tep, if you haven't noticed the US political brand hasn't been popular worldwide lately, sadly the Chinese Mercantalist one has been more successful, even with the people themselves. The main reason the Chinese have been so successful is that the don't start off essentially pissing on other societies. I am not saying I am in favor of what the Chinese are doing just that we should take note of their success and learn what we can from it. Call it vapid or foolish, but they are the ones who are locking up a lot of oil and gas contracts.

I don't buy this Descent of America crap.  Who is positioned to replace us?  

China?  A still poor nation that is ill equipped to communicate with the rest of the world or export its culture.  Not to mention the fact that it is a tyranny that will eventually hit an iron ceiling, as all tyrannies do.  Then there is there aging population.

India?  Talented, intelligent people with a rich history.  And lucky to have had Britain to give them railroads, democracy, a civil service, and jurisprudence.  But still woefully poor on basic infrastructure, overpopulated, rife with religious strife, and held back by ancient rivalries and animosities.

Europe?  A joke.  They don't have a common language.  Except English.  And they refuse to create a military to defend themselves.  And worst of of all, they are losing the Battle of the Bedroom to a fifth column of muslims who are rapidly out-replicating the indigineous Euros.

That leaves us.  For all our flaws, and if we aren't innundated by unassimilated Hispanics, we are still far better positioned to cure our own ills and adapt to the constantly changing world.

I'd like to see what odds Vegas or the London bookies would give on the United States vis a vis the rest of the world 50 years hence.

yard, you should send that into Letterman. (I would lose the Frommers San Francisco, is that self referential? as to the rest, brilliant)

Billy Yard, brilliant as always.  Send it to Letterman and pick up a hundred bucks.

Teplukhin2you - I disagree. Yes, fears over the American decline are, to a good extent, inflated. Yes, America is still the most powerful force in the world. Yet, you can hardly deny that the world has somewhat shifted from the unipolar structure of the 50s and that the challenges to American hegemony are mounting. Just about any economist would affirm that the country has lost a good portion of its economic might and that alone suffices to cause it to slide in all other aspects since economy, ultimately, does constitute the substructure upon which all else is based (Marx critics notwithstanding). Barring a reversal in terms of where the world is headed at this point, future decades will, more likely than not, bring about a multipolar power structure, not an Americana that reigned supreme for the greatest part of the 20th century.  

blackton - I can remember *multiple* periods when the "us political brand" occasioned violent demonstrations across Europe, US flag-burnings around the world.

The most vivid of these, and the only time I ever really gave a thought to my own safety in a foreign land, was when shots were fired at the US Embassy in Moscow and one of my non-Russian speaking, western colleagues (he was Canadian) was roughed up by strangers in the street near Manezhnaya Ploshad' in early 1999. That was when the Davos Consensus was that the US was beloved, that we were invincible and could do no wrong, and were on our way to saving 50,000 lives against fascist, christian genocide-- MUSLIM lives, you'll recall. As is so often the case, nations love or hate us for reasons that are largely parochial and often less than attractive.

Get a little perspective. This current storm is nothing compared to what we've gone through. You do remember 1979, don't you? 1968?

jkolic - I vividly recall Pete Peterson essays from the end of the 1970s about American economic decline. My whole political education was focused on the problems of declining US manufacturing competitiveness, US indebtedness, waning US market share vs the Japanese etc. The decline you're talking about occurred THIRTY YEARS AGO.

I'm not saying it's insignificant but it;s been around a * long * time. I mean, really, read a little history if you're not old enough to remember the 1970s and early 1980s.

blackie & channy: thanks, guys!

Here's what could go wrong for those who would challenge American primacy:

China.  As the disparity between the urban rich and the rural poor increases, as negligence like the collapsing new schools of the recent earthquake underline these disparities, the rebellion followed by revolution and chaos, as long feared by the Regime, comes true.

India.  A nuclear war with Pakistan.  Or, an inability to convert wealth into a complete infrastructure or into meaningful international influence.  The most successful powers-- Greece, Rome, Britain, the U.S. had an excellent ability to export and popularize their culture.  Can India.  Or, for that matter, China?  Even Japan could not.

Europe.  Europe will prove not to be a meaningful concept as any kind of unified entity beyond an economic one.  Politically it will never be unified.  Thus, never a Great Power as "Europe".  And, in any event, lacking the will to resist or even to raise children, it will be subsumed by the Middle East, barring a cataclysmic nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the M.E.

Tep - if I recall it correctly, the financial crisis out of which U.S. was bailed by the virtue of the Japanese dollar diplomacy occured between 1985 and 1987 which, as the simple math shows, would have been twenty, not thirty years ago. Either way, surely you do not deny tha the fact that decline has lasted awhile does virtually nothing to detract from the validity of the declinist hypothesy?

As a young person that was born in Eastern Europe and did not migrate to America untill the age of seventeen, I am indeed unable to recall seventies and eighties as they played out in U.S. from personal experience. Any recommendation as to which literature I ought to take up to enhance my historical knowledge beyond what I have received throughout my college career while earning a B.A. in Political Science would be highly appreciated (and I do mean that, however sneeringly the suggestion might have been meant). You I would direct to read Introduction to International Political Economy by David Balaam and Michael Veseth. It is a highly informative and comprehensive book that makes all relevant points regarding the current standing of U.S. in the context of global economy far more competently than I could.

But, Tep, although the prophecies were premature does that mean that they were wrong? It is comforting to think that Paul Erlich's Malthusian forecasts were naive. But now look at the food crisis. Or look at the rising labor costs in Cihina--a sign of progress but also a portent of decline. I recently traveled to Guangdong province, and I was astonished at how much China's  workshop resembles Ohio of yesteryear. Guangdong is a rust belt in the making. I asked the factory owners I met if they were worried that their business might soon be outsourced to countries poorer than China--Cambodia, for instance, or Vietnam. "It's already happening," one of them said.

Chan - its not that someone is going to replace, it's more along that other countries are going to come in with a competitive advantage and potentially do well. Sadly the declining cultural importance of learning, especially in the hard sciences is going to hit us hard. Many of the graduate students aren't American and many of them (although not all) are taking their degrees back home. Post 9/11 immigration rules means that the very brightest who used to come to America to learn and stayed can do so no longer. I view the anti-scientific, anti-learning ideas in many places in the US a serious problem which will contribute to a weakening of US influence.

I don't think ensuring America's power and prosperity in the foreseeable future is best served by over-confidence.

bsdespain - You took words right out of my mouth. I was going to reply to ChanRobt with the exact same argument but your reply spares me the trouble.

bsdespain, I don't think we have so much an anti-learning prejudice in America as we have a bias towards studying what becomes useless in its excess.  

The law, in particular comes to mind.  It's hard to believe that we don't have too many lawyers churning their own professions by creating conflict and problems where there would otherwise be neither.

We aren't producing enough engineers and scientists, and soon medical doctors, because we don't reward them sufficiently.  

The whole idea that we could outsource the making of things and be a nation of intellectual property may prove to have been insane.  In a truly "global economy" that might have been possible.

But, I'm not so certain we will always be global.  Certainly not if there are hostilities between great powers-- say the U.S. and China, or North America & Europe vs Asia.  

Then we may discover there are all sorts of things we can't make for ourselves that we damn well need.  From engine parts to bath mats.

Chan (copy edited):

"That leaves us.  For all our flaws, and if we aren't innundated by [indolent] Hispanics, we are still far better positioned to cure our own ills and adapt to the constantly changing world."

The other thing is, it's not so much that America is declining as that other nations are becoming less unequal, and will be in a position or are-- to challenge us where they could not before.

But, did not America set global prosperity as an ideal?  Was not the theory that nations that were prospering would not have an incentive for war?

Although the U.S. has been briefly unchallenged from 1989 to 2001, that has hardly been the norm for the past 100 years.  There have been many other nations who have challenged us in different ways in different decades since 1900:  Britain, Germany, Japan, China, the Soviet Union.  Even North Korea and North Vietnam.

jhildner, if it is me your warnings about over-confidence are aimed, I don't disagree.  No matter how dominant ones position might seem, hubris is always foolish.

What I'm saying is, unless we lose confidence and throw in the towel, we have many more advantages on our side than any potential challenger.

And anyway, I would take Zakaria's book and title with a grain of salt.  He is purposely being provocative, as most issues authors are, because he wants to sell books.

Yes, all great nations can and do overextend.  All great nations have lifespans, just as people do.  And they die.  Whether our prominence will prove to be only a century or so, or more like Rome's, for eight centuries, is the actual question.

And Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, though no longer empires, still live and prosper.  Only in other forms.

By the way, the biggest danger to contemporary America is not external, but internal.  Lack of will.  Lack of faith and confidence in our nation and our ideals.  Self-loathing and non-constructive self-criticism, those since 1968 have been the biggest threats to this country.

tomeg, I have neither said nor implied that Hispanics were indolent.  Clearly the ones who go through the effort to come here and find work and send money home are quite the opposite.

the problem with Hispanics are a) we are getting them in numbers larger than we have chosen or than we can digest.  And b) there is evidence that Hispanics are not fully assimilating in the way that previous waves of immigrants have.

I know how to articulate what I mean to say for myself, tomeg.  I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth.

I'm slightly out of the loop at the moment but my 5 cents worth is that we can get so obsessed with either exulting in or doggedly countering the stories of our relative disadvantages vis-a-vis the rest of the industrialized world that we forget that we are a real place, America per se so to speak.

We need to solve the health care problem, resolve the Iraq/Afghanistan situtation, and do something about our cavalier attitude to energy and transport and urban planning and education because it's important for us, not because we'll be more like the Europeans or more like the Asians or anything other than that it needs to be done here, now.

I agree with Chan about the confidence issue -- but I'd say that a part of it is our own tendency to ideologize pragmatic modern issues like the provision of a functioning health care structure for all citizens.  Nowhere except here in the U.S. is there a problem just getting basic stuff done.

I saw him speak last night in Seattle. It wasn't chicken-littley at all. But you have to go further back to see the trajectory of this - back to the end of maybe ww1. We have exported our technology steadily, and that has raised living standards across the world pretty rapidly. They have a long way to catch up, but our huge pie share of after ww2, we probably will not get that back the way things are going. Not exactly controversial, I don't think.

I want to read the book. But until y'all have read the book, I'm not sure I want to wade through all your posts*. Becuase there's the inevitable "but that's not what the book is about" arg, which is boring. No offense

*Except Williamyard's: Stranger in a Strange Land. HA!

Super post Dayo. Encouraging indeed, I wonder if Hannity will try and make something of Obama reading such an anti-American screed.

Tep - I agree, it's ridiculous to suggest that America will somehow collapse while the rest of the world continues on a path to growth, and you rightly point out the cyclical hysteria.

But...things are a lot worse than you think. Your government figures on inflation, unemployment and growth are smoke n mirrors, have been for about 30 odd years and this realization is now seeping into the MSM, so I can put my tin foil hat away now. http://tinyurl.com/6h73w7

See former Nixon aid's Kevin Phillips book - "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics & the Crisis of American Capitalism."

Money quote: ""Based on the criteria in place a quarter century ago, today's U.S. unemployment rate is somewhere between 9% and 12%; the inflation rate is as high as 7% or even 10%; economics growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite the surge in wealth and incomes of the superrich, and we are falling back into recession."

Chan - "battle of the bedroom", I love it.

Nothing against Zakaria or his book which I'm sure deserves a place on any politcian's night table but dear lord where is the Obama staffer who's sole job should be making sure he is never seen in public holding anything with as terrible a set of optics as a book titled "The Post-American World." Talk about feeding right into the chain-email fueled psychosis that he's already struggling to overcome. And while the average TNR reader will likely be quite familiar with Zakaria, to the average "hard-working white person" his foreign sounding name and the fact that he wrote a book with such a title is all they need to know to guess that they don't want a future president reading such a thing. Mark my words, the right-wing noise machine (of which the Clinton campaign is now a charter member)  will make a field day of this.

Chan - I am more concerned with production of top flight engineers than I am with lawyers. As far engineers and doctors not being rewarded enough, that's just not believable. I am trying to hire a few engineers for a start up and they are nearly impossible to find. I believe that part of the problem is cultural (multiculturism on the left and fundamentalism on the right) where interest in science and scientific method are not celebrated but actively discouraged. Sadly we should be encouraging immigration of the brightest engineers to the United States. Instead our current policy rewards illegals who are largely hardworking but uneducated.

"The other thing is, it's not so much that America is declining as that other nations are becoming less unequal, and will be in a position or are-- to challenge us where they could not before."

That was my point. I think our positions are fairly close.

Dignity isn't always equivalent to nationalism -- Thomas Friedman sometimes points out that respect is the most neglected factor in our Middle East policy.  

That said, as to Zakaria's point as relayed by Dayo, I'd argue the only thing we need to learn from others at the moment is not to be so stupid as to treat energy (whose abundance drove economic recoveries in the mid 80s and mid 90s) like penny candy.  I really don't want to learn the political lessons (genocide is ok, the world doesn't need a policeman, etc.)

psantillana, you write, "...but our huge pie share of after ww2, we probably will not get that back the way things are going. "

psanti, I don't think more than half the Americans still alive can even remember what pre-Vietnam America was like.  But all our standards of living are much higher than in, say 1953, when America had the big piece of the pie.

What has been true for a long time, is that America has been the only nation that could, and could be depended upon, to act militarily and effectively in a crisis that threatened the interests of the West and of freedom on this globe.

We were reluctant post-Vietnam to exercise that ability.  But, gradually, starting with Reagan, and accelerated by the invasion of Kuwait, got back the confidence to use that power.

Who would have acted in Kosovo without us?  Who would have rolled back Saddam after Kuwait but us?  Who would have removed the Taliban and Saddam, but us?  Who could have challenged the Soviet Union's designs on Western Europe and likely the rest of the world, but us?

This question U.S. power and hegemony isn't just a chest beating, we're number one thing.  The problem is, it is really scary to contemplate a world in which most any of the other contenders replaced us as the dominant power.

How would you like a world dominated by China or by Russia?  Europe isn't truly a contender.  Nor, do I think, is India.  

And a world of several peers powers is hardly to be desired.  Last time we had that, it resulted in WW1 and WW2.  Prior to that, were the 19th and 18th Century world wars-- The Seven years War and the Napoleonic ones.

the truth is, the world under a dominant power, if it is a relatively enlightened one-- Rome, Britain, the United States-- is better than a world of rivals of about the same potency.

And, bsdespain, our positions on the non need for more lawyers is the same, as well.  We should probably have a ten year moratorium on the production of more attorneys, who to a great extent are also a hindrance to national productivity.

You say you need engineers badly, bsdespain.  And i know there is a critical shortage of them in many fields in this country.

But, how much do you pay your top engineer?  $250k  $400k?  $1 million?  I don't know many engineers, but none of the ones I do make that kind of scratch.  I know a lot of lawyers.  And all of them make those dollars and much more in the case of some tort attorneys I know.

Meanwhile, when there were a lot of engineers in my part of the world--Southern California-- they were often whiplashed by the ups and downs of the aerospace industry.  

And, I got the impression, that even in the heyday of aeronautical engineering, only a few stars made the big bucks.  Most were in the middle of the middle.

The only place you hear a different story is from Silicon Valley where with equity in startups that became successful and on the staffs of Intel, MSFT, Apple, etc, engineers are doing well.

I don't have the hard data on engineer's earning in the U.S.  Anybody here more knowledgeable?

lymon1 writes, quoting Friedman, "...respect is the most neglected factor in our Middle East policy."

You can't legislate respect.  Either domestically or globally.  and the M.E. has given us a lot of reasons not to respect them over the last forty years.  During much of which time, M.E. actors have done us more damage than any other nationals.

Chan, I apologize for my snarkiness, but I become frustrated with your inadequately informed attitudes (imo) toward "hispanics" (read, mexicans and central americans). The fact is Mexican immigrants, no less than past immigrants, are becoming assimilated as quickly as possible, learning english (maybe not "perfect" or fluent in some cases) and adapting to employment needs in the marketplace to earn at good (or best possible) paying jobs. It isn't just an individual effort, moreover, but a robustly communal one, to advance the earning power and "staying power" of as many as possible. And they are not on the whole greater drags on medical and social services.

Look at all the research and to the experienced judgment of many who have lived and worked, and worshipped, with Mexican- and Central- and Southern Latin-Americans, most of my adult life and that of my parents. Better still, get to know some informed and educated Latin Americans who may live in your area, and bring the subject up with them. You might be surprised.

Much as I hate to bring it up, when the matter of retarded assimilation comes up, why are you not similarly up in arms at the thousands of East and Southeast Asian immigrants who live in rapid growing ghetto-like environments in the East San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere in California. Is it really so much different than the barrios. Or other communities of immigrants past?

Finally, consider the amount of money all immigrants send to relatives in their home countries. It is helping the Mexican economy and making it less likely that people will continue to immigrate at the rates you now so deplore.

I wonder if you live in Los Angeles as I do tomeg.  

Let me stiupulate once again, I admire, as most people do, the obvious willingness to work of the Latinos who have come here.

But, America has a right and a duty to control her own borders and monitor the flow of immigration.

The result of the flood through our broken and breached borders has been the destruction of our once excellent public school system, our emergency rooms, our hospitals.  It is an enormous burden on the entire state.

If these immigrants are assimilating as you say, then why the unprecedented insistence on classes being taught in Spanish in our schools, which was only stopped after years of fighting.  

One need only drive east of Vermont Ave to see that vast tracts of Los Angeles have come to resemble a third world south of the border city.  This is hardly assimilation.

And with the efforts of the mayor and other fifth column government officials to turn Los Angeles into a "Sanctuary City," it is obvious what Trojan Horse illegal immigration has become.

You can sit there spewing your statistics all day long.  the rest of us are living with the reality on the ground.

tomeg writes, "...why are you not similarly up in arms at the thousands of East and Southeast Asian immigrants who live in rapid growing ghetto-like environments in the East San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere in California."

To my knowledge, tomeg, the vast majority of Asian immigrants are here legally.  Unless there have been ships each night putting Asians ashore by the millions the last thirty years.  Is this an unreported story?

And, frankly, tomeg, I look at the University of California and the honor rolls of high schools and the engineering ranks of the Silicon Valley.  I see all of those filled with Asians who earned their way in on academic merit and competence in advanced technology.  

Sorry, tomeg, I buy the positive stereotype about Asians because you can see the evidence all around you.  Cheap labor is nice for corporations who want to bust unions.  Smart labor and ethnic groups that revere education are good for the country.  

And, again, the Asians did not break our laws and disrespect the country by coming here.

Great thread.  I'm with Channy.  The biggest threat to us is internal, not external.  The K-12 public schools in too many places simply fail to educate, and even in the face of longer life expectancies, our health care system is a disgrace.  Though it may be that I'm just getting older, the popular culture is just Gawd-awful, and getting worse.

On immigration, I agree that we can, should and must control our borders, but I am also impressed with the spped of assimilation of all immigrants, legal and not.  It's one thing we do FAR better than our European friends.  The Asians doon't have occasion to try.

I don't often cite M. Albright, but we truly are the indispensable nation.  For all of our current problems, things have been far worse, even in my lifetime, never mind the Depression/WWII.

The Republic survived Carter, will survive W, and whoever is next.

Happy Memorial Day!

butchie, you write, "... The Republic survived Carter, will survive W, and whoever is next."

Obama has this Mantra that McCain is "Bush's third term".  

Well, McCain's mantra ought to be that Obama is "Carter's second term."

Obama promises to be what Carter was:  highly intelligent.  And feckless.

FDR was no intellectual.  Neither was Truman or Eisenhower.  All three of them were highly effective leaders.

Jack Kennedy, for whom I have a lot of affection, was damn smart and both more eloquent and more witty than Obama.  But, Khruschev's critique that he was "too intelligent and too weak" proved fatefully true.

Luckily, he did pull out the wisdom to get us out of the two crisies he got us into:  Berlin and Cuba.  And although he got hismelf off the hoof for the Bay of Pigs by fessing up quickly, his mistake there cost many brave lives.

Chen:

I don't have the legal/illegal immigrant status statistics handy so I can't compare, but that isn't my point. I objected to your use of "unassimilated" re: Latino immigrants (again, by and large Mexican and Central Americans). And I'm well and delightedly aware of the presence and excellence of students at campuses such as UCLA.  

However I haven't any intention of invoking a "negative" stereotype. Though I am not as familiar with customs and lifestyle preferences of Asian immigrants as I am with those of Mexican and Central American, I don't consider it any of my business unless I directly experience it negatively affecting my or my neighbors' welfare (which I don't). Until I'm shown otherwise I assume, as with past immigrant cultures, that similar motivations to assimilate in whatever ways are customary and traditional are leading to their becoming more fully integrated participants in our economy and society.

Also, I am motivated to become more familiar with any and all immigrant cultures who are becoming neighbors and friends of mine. For example, I have made many happy acquaintanceships and friendships, as well as some not so successful, with Asian and Asian-American students and faculty while I was an employee at a research center affiliated with UCLA,  and a few are now quite close friends of mine. From them I endeavor to learn as much about their native cultures as they have been willing to share with me, and research further on my own. I like to know as many different people and cultures as I have contact with,  and I resist making assessments and judgments that set or reinforce attitudes without checking my own biases and prejudices (including, I have become painfully aware, the oft experienced prejudice that makes Asians "invisible" to non-Asians in our society. It's just in my nature. Arbitrary racial and ethnic bias makes no sense to me consciously, even as I admit to having such biases subconsciously largely out of plain ignorance and lack of familiarity.

It's the assumption or conclusion of yours that Latino immigrants aren't just as motivated and purposeful - and successful - in making a good, productive and proud life here that I'm challenging. I frankly hope I misunderstand you, but sometimes I think you are just insensitive. Come to think of it, it's probably because I am prone at times to being insensitive to my regret and embarrassment that I take notice or at least have doubts that distress me. You're a very good chap, imo, and I just think it unbecoming.

Channy, I'm afraid you will be proved correct.  Especially the feckless part, judging by the "meet with our enemies" centerpiece (so far) of the Obama administration's foreign policy.

This reflects the Dems' view that talking is a strategy, instead of a tactic, a technique.  For example, W has ignored Chavez in the main.  What would we gain from sitting down with him?  He will stop supporting the FARC?  Why would he?  All Obama would be doing is investing the prestige of the Presidency for nothing.  Feckless, indeed.

Chan, yes, I do live in Los Angeles as yourself, as I believe I have said so in past conversations with you. I was also born and raised here and am proud of my city, state and country, flaws and shortcomings notwithstanding - and its Asian, Middle Eastern, Central and South American, African, etc. residents. It's a main reason I love living here, it's diversity of color, faith, and culture.

Yeah, and I have been "east of Vermont Ave" - I believe we have covered this ground together too, prior - and I don't consider the eastward extension of Koreatown, Historic Filipinotown, and yes, the "vast tracts" of Echo Park, the length of Alvarado Street, etc., any more third world than a wide assortment of other neighborhoods throughout Southern California, of diverse ethnic and national groups including, OMG, African- and Anglo-Americans. I see a great deal of commercial, educational, social service, cutural and native and fine arts enterprises, and some vacant lots that are rapidly being developed for condominiums, apartments of every type and income level.

ChanRobt - I agree that, generally speaking, there is no shortage of lawyers in this country. It is also true that, on average, they tend to earn more than engineers. What I would like to point out, however, is that lawyers typically invest a bit more money into their education than engineers do (with the exception, of course, of those who go on to earn degrees beyond their B.S. and even then not quite as much since, as I have found out throughout my own research of my postcollege educational options, price tags for grad schools do not tend to equal those of law schools). The reason I am harping on this point is merely because my husband is an engineer and I am a soon-to-be law student. Less than two years out of college, he is making around $50,000 a year - middle of the middle, as you say, but still far better than what I, a holder of two (as it turns out, relatively useless) B.A.s in English and Political Science could hope to make untill I have obtained my J.D. And should I follow my natural inclinations and pursue human rights law as opposed to IP (an ever booming field most certainly not saturated with legal professionals), my earnings might not even equal his, even after three extra years of education (not to even discuss the additional monetary investment). Ultimately, I have a hard time imagining that many would wish to be lawyers if the profession was not as lucrative, given how much entering the profession costs.

On a related note, I would also like to add that lack of engineers in this country can, among other factors, also be attributed to the demanding nature of scientific fields and the general unwillingess of increasingly indolent American students to dedicate themselves to anything as tasking as mastering the scientific method. I say this as a legal immigrant who migrated to U.S. at the age of seventeen and went through college on a merit scholarship, graduating a semestar early with a stellar G.PA. My college career never introduced me to examples of international kids slacking off or underachieving - but examples of such behavior were (and, I suspect, continue to be) epidemic among their American counterparts.

All of this discussion about immigration etc. is very interesting, but to me the real story was something I saw in USA Today earlier in the week.  A truly terrifying story about how, if we use the accounting we expect businesses to use, the current government debt and liabilities adds up to something like $500,000 per family.  Last time we had debt levels like that we were the only manufacturing power that hadn't been bombed flat and hence had a whole lot of markets to sell stuff to in said bombed flat countries,  That is not the case today.  And a lot of that unfunded liability has been due to the interesting spend-more-than-you-earn policies followed rather religiously by the party that Chan and Butchie support.

And seriously guys, how was Carter "feckless"?  For not wanting to invade Iran?  For not invading OPEC to resolve the oil crisis?  How is that different to Reagan bailing on Lebanon, which curiously doesn't seem to get the same description.  Both of them made a judgment call that the potential cost and risks of retaliating/remaining did not outweigh the benefits.  That would be judgment that we would apparently be sorely missing these days.  And don't get me started on Bush pleading with the Saudis to further damage their oil fields by increasing production to cover his apparent inability to predict the rather predictable situation in which we now find ourselves?

You do realize that you are fitting Chait's characterization of policy-void conservative populism quite well by waiving rather vague notions around such as "feckless", "control our borders" etc. without ever offering an alternative you would have taken or preferred or proposals for how to achieve your stated goals right?

I deliberately omitted "EastLos" (East Los Angeles) because in fact it is east of Sunset. It, too, is on the upswing (not that it was dreadful before) and is in the midst of a renaissance - I'm not exaggerating, the look, feel and vitality is palpable, meaning inspiring.

Am I suggesting there are few or no problems of significance? Not at all, many remain daunting, and the school system is overall in a degraded state (though not without bright areas and general improvement, owing to tremendous effort and commitment by people whose value system includes education at a high level, higher than in many parts of the nation with similar challenges. The sad fact is, the LAUSD began its present decline more than forty years ago, when the infrastructure began to deteriorate and the bureaucracy grew in inverse proportion to the quality of education, due to the tremendous rate of population growth of the region an inability to keep current with expanding needs. Again, it's a matter of one's point of view, born of attitude and quantity and quality of experience what to make of it. There's lots of room for disagreement but thinking their are specific cultural groups responsible for the whole situation is preposterous.

here's the rough factoid, tomeg, politically indiscrete as it is for me to utter it:  Hispanice immigrants have a terrible dropout rate.  Asians bust their butts and their brains and finish high school, finish college, often get advanced degrees, become engineers, start big businesses, etc etc.

Maybe its because they have a 5,000 year old tradition of keeping of revering wise men, or whatever,. But, their families are behind them all the way and keep the pressure on Asian kids to succede.

I don't know why, and maybe it would be good if some of those UCLA types researched why and told the Hispanics about it.  

We don't need illiterate labors, hard working though they may be.  We need well educated, academically motivated, upwardly mobile people.

tomeg writes, "... IArbitrary racial and ethnic bias makes no sense to me consciously, even as I admit to having such biases subconsciously largely out of plain ignorance and lack of familiarity."

My comments are not based on bias, but on observation.  if Asians are "invisible" it's because they're keeping their heads down, working hard, staying out of trouble, and not getting in the news.

But, they sure as hell aren't invisible at UCLA, Berkeley, etc where you can't help but see, and be impressed, at what a large proportion of the student population Asians represent.

The prisons, however, are filled with other ethnic groups, including plenty, Northern European Americans.  

"Intellectuals" and academics can always rationalize why these observations are all wrong, out of context, etc, etc.  But, there's no getting around plain facts.

omeg, you write, "...It's the assumption or conclusion of yours that Latino immigrants aren't just as motivated and purposeful - and successful - in making a good, productive and proud life here that I'm challenging. "

Latinos are clearly motivated, purposeful, and successful at the level at which they compete, and have every right to be proud.  

But, we are an advanced industrial society.  We don't need unlimited hordes of unskilled, uneducated people with no tradition of education or seeking such.  Sorry, it's just the way it is.

If Mexicans were sneaking in and becoming software engineers within the second generation, we could all be sanguine about the 20 something million of them we have illegally acquired.

Chan, I'm afraid that I am becoming invisible, and inaudible, and unreadable as we go around each bend, and I'm declaring a unilateral halt to the argument. What's just the way it is to you is a judgment and conclusion, not solely "an observation." What you view with alarm as "a horde" I believe to be only a recent waxing of the long-term cycling of immigration across the America-Mexico border, which has perpetually stirred up controversy as now, to as ambiguous a reality as ever. Their are many contradictions, real and imagined, in the societal impact of each successive wave, but over the long haul the arrangement has benefitted the prosperity and mutuality of both nations, whose cultures otherwise still barely understand the other. It's a unique relationship and one I dare say will yet continue for quite some time, regardless either of our points of view about it. I acknowledge your different point of view and while I respect your opinion, I think it's an exaggerated reaction to "just what is."

Tomeg, you made some interesting comments and observations.  I'll be back to respond.

Last Sunday, in comments seized on by Karl Rove and other adversaries, Obama seemed to be channeling Zakaria directly in his statements about Iran:

"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union," Obama said. "They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us, and yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.

"We should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. We might not compromise on any issue, but at least we should find out are there areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that have caused us so many problems around the world," Obama said.

Obama said he was aware of the "grave" threat Iran poses to the United States, but that it was "common sense" that Iran is less of a threat today to the U.S. than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.

Compare Zakaria in an Oct Newsweek article:

   The Soviet Union had the ability to destroy the world several times over, had satellites spanning the globe, had huge masses of conventional military power, all directed at destroying us," he said. "So, I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave. But what I've said is that we should not just talk to our friends. We should be willing to engage our enemies as well. That's what diplomacy is all about...

   Iran is a grave threat. It has an illicit nuclear program. It supports terrorism across the region and militias in Iraq. It threatens Israel's existence. It denies the Holocaust," he said. "The reason Iran is so much more powerful than it was a few years ago is because of the Bush-McCain policy of fighting in Iraq and refusing to pursue direct diplomacy with Iran. They're the ones who have not dealt with Iran wisely.

apologies - prior post pulled the wrong text block for Zakaria excerpt. Here it is, corrected:

Last Sunday, in comments seized on by Karl Rove and other adversaries, Obama seemed to be channeling Zakaria directly in his statements about Iran:

"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union," Obama said. "They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us, and yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.

"We should use that position of strength that we have to be bold enough to go ahead and listen. We might not compromise on any issue, but at least we should find out are there areas of potential common interest, and we can reduce some of the tensions that have caused us so many problems around the world," Obama said.

Obama said he was aware of the "grave" threat Iran poses to the United States, but that it was "common sense" that Iran is less of a threat today to the U.S. than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.

Compare Zakaria in an Oct Newsweek article:

   The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

   Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Planet Bush -- the planet on which all important issues are given values according to how effectively they embody a symbolic identity divide in the electorate, as opposed to how important it is to resolve those issues for the good of the community.

adsprung quotes Obama and references, Zakira, "..."Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union," Obama said. "They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us, and yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time..."

What Obama and many of the Democratic party don't seem to have learned is the lesson of 9/11 and the phenomenon of asymmetrical warfare.

The Soviet Union in the 43 years of the Cold War never attacked this country.  They did use national surrogates to menace us, and they did use Russian pilots flying North Korean Migs during Korea, and supplied anti-aircraft missiles and crews to North Vietnam.  That's it.

The reason is that if they ever had attacked us directly, they knew we would respond more than in kind.  We held each other in nuclear checkmate for 39 years.

The independent actors, the terrorists, pose a greater threat because, as on 9/11, they can strike us ferociously and with impunity, because we can't, or can't always, identify who they are.

The great threat to us from Iran, is that Iran and North Korea, is that once they achieve nuclear capabilities, the will seek to achieve scaled down nukes.  A suitcase nuclear device, put in the hands of independent actors, could devastate us, and might be untraceable.

If a small nuke was detonated by a suicide terrorist just outside of the Capitol when the president was giving the State of the Union message, the United States would be decapitated.  Preisdent, Vice President, Speaker of the House, and down through the entire succession, plus the Joint Chiefs, plus the Supreme Court, and the entire Congress would be gone.

We don't have clear means to reconstitute ourselves in such an instance.  

Now, perhaps we would assume that the attack had come from Iran surrogates and we would then destroy Iran.  But, unless we invoke NEO-MADD and make sure Iran and other such understand that, we would assume any such attack came from them, then we have no answer to nuclear terrorism.  

And, if Iran's leaders believe in suicide attacks on a national scale, NEO MADD would not deter them.

Obama, for all his intelligence, seems, like many "smart" people to lack imagination.  Or pretends to.

David killed Goliath.  There are scenarios under which nations smaller than we could defeat us.

I'm a bit at sea in this discussion as it seems to me that Obama is the one candidate who grasps the real problem complex of assymetrical warfare, exactly that complex that the Bush administration has consistently failed to understand.  One important first step is not to apply the wrong method, born of another type of defense thinking.  Iraq is, among other things, a shocking and awe-inspiring lesson in how not to deal with assymetry.

irony, setting aside Iraq, because we'll simply go 'round and 'round on that, it is absurd for Obama to say that because Iran is smaller than was the Soviet Union, it is much less of a threat.

The Soviets wee very cautious, predictable adversaries.  They were materialists and never showed any interest in suicide.  Although they had a leader who rhetorically stated "We will bury you," they were not in the habit of threatening almost weekly, and at the presidential level, to wipe us or our allies off the face of the earth.

And there wasn't much threat that they would send terrorists at us with suitcase nukes because they knew we would assume it was they who had done it.

Iran under the Mullahs, is in most respects a different animal entirely from the Soviet Union.  

And, in any event, it is both naieve and bad poker for Obama to say that such countries are small and pose little threat to us.

A propos: "The book was already at #7 in our Top 100," said Amazon.com's Omnivorous blog. But by Thursday, May 22, "Zakara passed stalwarts Barbara Walters and Stephenie Meyer to hit #4." With literary influence like that, Barack Obama could be "the new

Nari244 writes, "...And seriously guys, how was Carter "feckless"?  For not wanting to invade Iran?  For not invading OPEC to resolve the oil crisis?  How is that different to Reagan bailing on Lebanon, which curiously doesn't seem to get the same description.  Both of them made a judgment call that the potential cost and risks of retaliating/remaining did not outweigh the benefits"

Carter was feckless in much the same way that Obama is.  In his body language, in his statements that reeked of turn the other cheek, and we're nice reasonable guys he lead our enemies to believe they had nothing to fear from us.

Why is it that the Iranians, who thumbed their noses at Carter for 400+ days, released our prisoners at the mere thought of what Reagan might do after he was sworn in?

Why was Carter's rescue attempt so pitiful?  And why was it abandoned simply because two helicopters collided?  Were there no residual forces available?

I will remind you that an embassy is sovereign territory.  Invading an embassy is the same as invading that embassy's nation.  That act ought to have been treated as such.

As to Reagan retreating from Beirut, it probably is not entirely defensible.  But, it is a different circumstance in that our Marines had invaded Lebanon, albeit on a defensible mission.  They were attacked by one of the belligerents they had entered the country to fight.  

Perhaps there was no clear retaliation because it was a terrorist act we weren't certain whom to retaliate against.  I would say that Reagan was remiss in not finding out who was responsible and bringing retribution to bear down upon them.

In any event, Carter's pitiful experience with Iran demonstrates why a president ought never to speak as if he is ready in advance to retreat.  Obama is already giving off signals to our enemies that he'll do anything to avoid a military reckoning with them.  The reason the Democrats for 40 years have not been considered trustworthy in matters of national security.

Which, as Senator Lieberman made eloquently clear in the WSJ the other day, they are not.

If Obama wins, prepare yourselves for more humiliations of the kind Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton brought down upon us (9/11 can be traced to Clinton fecklessness).  We'll be forced to suffer attacks again until a strong leader can once again be restored to the White House.

We have an entire generation of voters under forty, with poor memories and a Liberal run education who will have to relearn the history thjey were not taught in school and did not learn on their own, mesmerized as they are by Keith Olberman and such other idiots.

tomeg writes, "...What you view with alarm as "a horde" I believe to be only a recent waxing of the long-term cycling of immigration across the America-Mexico border, which has perpetually stirred up controversy as now, to as ambiguous a reality as ever."

There has been no such "long-term cycling of immigration" until we lost our nerve and our will to enforce our own borders.

Under Eisenhower, there was a Bracero program that legally brought in field laborers who would do the work and then return home.  In the 1950s and '60s, we were not embarrassed to fill trucks with illegals and take them back to the border where they were sent back whence they illegally came from.

The problem with the Left is they don't believe there ought to be borders.  The problem with the corporate Right is they have sold thje country out for cheap, union busting labor.

But the real problem with the Left, is they rather be thought "decent" and "nice" rather than have their country survive intact.  It is easy to sympathize with hard working people who have fled poverty by the millions to work here and send money home.  Who wants to be seen as harsh, cruel, or "racist" for insisting that such people have no right here?  

If a poor but honest family were suddenly squatting in your back yard, tomeg, and they said the intended to stay but would gladly work around the house, and damn cheap, too, would you be sanguine about their camping in the back?  I bet not.  I bet you would call the cops to roust them just as fast as we Neanderthal redneck nativists.

But because the illegals don't appear to affect you directly, you're happy to appear to be more decent than I by raising all these supposed complexities.  

I would bet dollars to Euros, tomeg, that you don't have to send your child to schools crowded with illegals because you can't afford $20k/year tuition for your kids in private schools.  So, it's easy for you to be "kind".

But Chan you can't demand that a presidential candiate show his/her capacity to understand assymetrical warfare and in the next breath accuse that candidate of signalling that he/hse wants to retreat from a direct military confrontation.  The  point about assymetrical warfare is that our capacity to engage in a direct military confronation is substantially less effective in winning a conflict based on exactly that assymetry, which is (from the enemy's pov) the key tool that they use to neutralize standard military responses.

irony, asymetrical warfare is not waged in a vaccum.  The players are not Captain Nemo funding themselves and taking on the world singlehandedly.

The actors against us are supported by hostile states.  Severe pressure must be brought against these states.  Diplomatic, yes.  Fiscal, yes.  But, also sometimes military.  

And we must also demonstrate that we are willing to use our military power indirectly and directly.  Something that wasn't evident until the first Persian Gulf War.

Meanwhile, Obama has not addressed the asymetrical issue.  He has only said that he would be willing to meet anywhere, anytime, and without preconditions, with the leaders of the hostile and often rogue states.

He has tried to backpedal some.  But, if this is the kind of thinking a Columbia and Harvard education buys, a lot of parents better get their money back and send their kids to State U.

Once he gets off slogan or off the poetry he mustered in his Checkers Crisis, he doesn't sound too damn bright.  He should read some Neal Ferguson and Robert Kagan to go with his Zakaria

OK.  Then which state or states, in your assessment, support Al Queda, and how do you think we should resolve that problem to our advantage?

ChanRobt: You know, that's a really good point - why would the Iranians let the hostages go after Reagan's inauguration.  If they were actually scared of him, why not after the election?  Since you seem unaware (or simply disagree) with what a number of Israelis have said about what happened, I'd recommend either thinking about or going and reading up on it.  At least a couple of people have posted on the topic here recently.  Here's a hint: from what I understand, were Reagan still around, it would be somewhat hypocritical of him to speak out against talking to the Iranians.

As for the rescue mission - what was Carter's next move?  Invade Iran?  Risk the lives of even more US military personnel on another attempt? With what game plan (you know, that thing we didn't have going into Iraq)?  Do you know what military advice he was given that he should have followed but instead ignored?

As for "fecklessness" in general, which you describe as more successful - our method of "disarming" Iraq, or the (from what I can tell of your viewpoint) "feckless" approach taken by the British with Li