http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/opinion/01thur1.html?th&emc=th
Plan: We Win New York Times Lead Editorial Published: December 1, 2005 We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn. It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war. Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him. The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat. On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace. What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces. Americans have been clamoring for believable goals in Iraq, but Mr. Bush stuck to his notion of staying until "total victory." His strategy document defines that as an Iraq that "has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency"; is "peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure"; and is a partner in the war on terror, an integral part of the international community, and "an engine for regional economic growth and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region." That may be the most grandiose set of ambitions for the region since the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar, who saw the hand writing on the wall. Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Substitute the Iraqi constitutional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it), and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead. A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more. *** http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1129-28.htm Published on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 by CommonDreams.org Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism by Robert B. Reich The Conservative Movement, as its progenitors like to call it, is now mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly embraced Darwin's bastard child, social Darwinism. On the face of it, these positions may appear inconsistent. What unites them is a profound disdain for science, logic, and fact. In The Origin of the Species, published 150 years ago, Charles Darwin amassed evidence that mankind evolved through the ages from simpler forms of life through a process he called "natural selection." This insight became the foundation of modern biological science. But it also greatly disturbed those who believe the Bible's account of creation to be literally true. In recent years, as America's Conservative Movement has grown, some of these people have taken over local and state school boards with the result that, for example, Kansas's new biology standards now single out evolution as a "controversial theory." Until a few weeks ago, teachers in Dover, Pennsylvania were required to tell their students they should explore "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution. (The good citizens of Dover just booted out the school board responsible for this, summoning a warning from Conservative Coalition broadcaster Pat Robertson that God would wreak disaster on them.) Social Darwinism was developed some thirty years after Darwin's famous book by a social thinker named Herbert Spencer. Extending Darwin into a realm Darwin never intended, Spencer and his followers saw society as a competitive struggle where only those with the strongest moral character should survive, or else the society would weaken. It was Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." Social Darwinism thereby offered a perfect moral justification for America's Gilded Age, when robber barons controlled much of American industry, the gap between rich and poor turned into a chasm, urban slums festered, and politicians were bought off by the wealthy. It allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim that the fortune he accumulated through the giant Standard Oil Trust was "merely a survival of the fittest, ... the working out of a law of nature and a law of God." The modern Conservative Movement has embraced social Darwinism with no less fervor than it has condemned Darwinism. Social Darwinism gives a moral justification for rejecting social insurance and supporting tax cuts for the rich. "In America," says Robert Bork, "'the rich' are overwhelmingly people - entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc. - who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work." Any transfer of wealth from rich to poor thereby undermines the nation's moral fiber. Allow the virtuous rich to keep more of their earnings and pay less in taxes, and they'll be even more virtuous. Give the non- virtuous poor food stamps, Medicaid, and what's left of welfare, and they'll fall into deeper moral torpor. There is, of course, an ideological inconsistency here. If mankind did not evolve according to Darwinist logic, but began instead with Adam and Eve, then it seems unlikely societies evolve according to the survival-of-the-fittest logic of social Darwinism. By the same token, if you believe one's economic status is the consequence of an automatic process of natural selection, then, presumably, you'd believe that human beings represent the culmination of a similar process, over the ages. That the conservative mind endures such cognitive dissonance is stunning, but not nearly as remarkable as the repeated attempts of conservative mouthpieces such as the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard to convince readers the conservative movement is intellectually coherent. The only consistency between the right's attack on Darwinism and embrace of social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. Darwinism is correct. Scientists who are legitimized by peer review and published research are unanimous in their view that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Social Darwinism, meanwhile, is hogwash. Social scientists have long understood that one's economic status in society is not a function of one's moral worth. It depends largely on the economic status of one's parents, the models of success available while growing up, and educational opportunities along the way. A democracy is imperiled when large numbers of citizens turn their backs on scientific fact. Half of Americans recently polled say they don't believe in evolution. Almost as many say they believe income and wealth depend on moral worthiness. At a time when American children are slipping behind on international measures of educational attainment, especially in the sciences; when global competition is intensifying; and when the median incomes of Americans are stagnating and the ranks of the poor are increasing, these ideas, propagated by the so-called Conservative Movement, are moving us rapidly backwards. Robert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written ten books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Reason. His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. This article can also be found in The American Prospect, December 2005. You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Gary Silbiger is up for reelection to the City Council of Culver City. Sunday, December 4, 7 PM Uncle Ruthie and Fred Sokolow Uncle Ruthie performs a warm and humorous show of songs, stories and poetry for grownups only. Don't miss our dear, funny, funny, profound, irreverent and sometimes shocking Los Angeles radio icon and entertainer. Fred Sokolow, Ruthie's long-time, amazing co-conspirator shares the humor with outstanding music, ranging from rock, blues, jazz to country, et al. At Club Tropical - 8641 Washington Blvd. They have generously offered a complimentary sampler of appetizers and a beverage for attendees. Full menu and bar will be available for cost. Culver City, an ethnically diverse community with a progressive voting base, has had conservative/moderate Councilmembers focused primarily on the needs of the business community since who knows when. In April 2002, Gary Silbiger - the first and only progressive Culver City Councilmember in generations - was elected to a 4 year term, which also includes serving on the Redevelopment Agency. He is currently the Vice Mayor and probably will be selected as Mayor in April 2006, when re-elected to the Council. Gary's election in 2002 has empowered the community whose voice can now be heard. We need to maintain that voice on the Culver City Council tickets, information at (310) 358-3337. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Help tsunami villages rebuild at GlobalGiving. 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