Dear Republican,
I wrote this as part of an ongoing email exchange with a Republican friend. It represents a lot of my thoughts in one place, so I thought I would share.
I am a registered Democrat, but I consider myself a left leaning independent. I'm registered as a Democrat because my state doesn't allow unregistered primary voting.
Anyway, I would have absolutely supported Dean, but not because of his platform. He came out against the Iraq invasion, and that's really all I needed to know as far as positions are concerned. The main reason I was for Dean was because I think he was a glimpse of something to come... where leaders derive their base from a network model. I don't think Dean ever intended to be president, I think he meant to drive the Democratic party to the left. He was successful in that I think, and perhaps even damaged the eventual nominee a little in the process. Anyway, I think his campaign unexpectedly took off for two primary reasons... it was funded in small increments by a broad network of indivuals, and his campaign was also willing to evolve it's platform using that same network.
Think of the big picture, of the era we are now in the early midst of... that of globalization and the information age. Forgive a grand statement, but I think that globalization will be as fundamental to changing the face of civilization as was agriculture or industrialization. Think of how it has effected out country to date... for instance, a multi-national, because of a global communications network, has the ability to have it's headquarters in New York, it's manufacturing operations somewhere along the Pacific Rim and distribution centers dotted all over the globe. A corporation is a corporation, and it's natural tendency is of course for the bottom line as it should be. In terms of our country, it means lost jobs... from GM shutting down it's plant in Flint years ago to now with call centers that are headquartered in India and countless other examples.
Within the framework of globalization, the network model is king... where strength is derived from distributing power and function across a series of nodes. Take out one node, and the network can still survive. Think of Napster and all the others that followed, where individuals on a peer-to-peer network brought the recording industry to it's knees. Or something as simple as Netflix, where I can order movies via the internet, and then that DVD gets shipped to me from the nearest node in their distribution networks. Think of the open source movement, where a network of individual developers came up with an OS that competes head to head with Microsoft. Or global financial networks, where the withdrawal of investment capital on a mass scale can collapse a country. Or think of the European Union, where countries are taking down barriers that inhibit a network of trade, and together they are stronger than if they stood alone. Or think of al-Qaeda, with a network that reportedly has nodes in up to 60 countries around the world. Or think of Rumsfeld's transformation of the military into a series of nodes that can be quickly combined around an objective.
How does this era and it's implications effect our country? This is something I'm still trying to get my head around, so I can only wonder at this point. But it does seem inevitable that there will be a global redistribution of wealth, kind of a great leveling-out. Let me return to the example of the call center in India, which is only possible with a global communications network. So some guy in India can speak english and he gets a job at a helpdesk call center. By local standards, his wages are pretty damn good... by US standards, where his paycheck comes from, his wages are dirt cheap. Someone in the US is out of a potential job, someone in India now has a little spending cash to go and buy some jeans at the local Gap. So not only does the wealth get transferred, but increasingly the market is following the wealth there. The part I don't understand yet is what that means for this country... is it possible that the standard of living will will increase across the globe to a US level, or will we meet in the middle somewhere? I would speculate the latter, but I still have more thinking to do on that one.
Pretty complex stuff I think, and I still have a whole lot to understand. I wonder if international borders and the system of nation-states is becoming irrelevant? Certainly multi-nationals have figured it out, and are ahead any accompanying global social structures. And clearly borders don't mean all that much to al-Qaeda either. I think that this is the greatest challenge to our country, to find that place within a global network where we can continue to be successful and even potentially lead once again. How will we adapt to the world changing, to something that is beyond our control? I don't blame Bush for the loss of jobs overseas, as I think it's an inevitable result of market forces. What I do blame him for is not doing anything to slow it down for the benefit of our country, as Kerry has proposed.
I also wonder how this will reflect in geo-spatial structures, as international borders become less relevant. I wonder if cities will continue to develop as nodes... like New York and London as financial centers, Los Angeles as entertainment capital of the world or Hong Kong as a center of manufacturing and gateway to an emerging market. I think that they will, and I think a new security model comes with it here. It's no longer us here versus them over there... it's us and our interests distributed across the globe, and them distributed along with it. Here the trend is towards a police state, where we have to deal with security in our airports, our ports, transportation networks and everything else. Hence we have the Patriot Act, that places limits on freedom and privacy in exchange for the promise of greater security.
Okay, so we have some complex issues to deal with and a lot to figure out as a nation. Now take that and make it more complex by terrorist attacks against our interests here and abroad. Then take that and make it infinitely more complex by Bush's myopic invasion of Iraq and escalation of the overall conflict. We are entering a period of transition, independent of the war and heralded by 9-11, one that will effect our country in no small way. Thanks to Bush we have a divided country, our military is strapped down in Iraq with no end in sight and we have a huge budget deficit. This is not the position I want our country to be in now, not when we have so much to face.
Look at where we stand now... we are in Iraq for reasons that have been easily disputed. While I expect that Rumsfeld's reorganization of the military is brilliant, I think he was so focused on proving that it could work that he did not calculate for the occupation... despite warnings from some of his underlings. So we're there, what do we do now? Clearly we don't have enough troops there to win as it stands, so we face one of two options: Withdraw, which would be disastrous... our withdrawal would be seen as nothing other than what it would be... a sound defeat of the world's remaining superpower. Would it be unreasonable to speculate that a Muslim world, emboldened by a defeat of the US, would knock off Israel next now that their greatest ally was no longer around? And say goodbye to the House of Saud, and then you can kiss goodbye that nice steady flow of cheap oil from the Middle East that we love so much. I think that would be pretty disastrous, considering the position that we are already in and what we have to face excluding the challenge from our enemies.
The other option is to increase the troop levels in Iraq, now, and lock it down under any circumstances necessary. This is not so rosy an option either, because just where are those troops going to come from? Enlistments are down, Re-enlistments are down and other countries don't really have a lot to offer in the way of troops even under the assumption that they would agree to send them in the first place. So that leaves us with a draft, regardless of who wins tomorrow or whenever it gets decided. And it pisses me off to no end that my nephew's number might just come up in a couple of years when he's eighteen. But even if we increase the troop levels, it doesn't necessarily mean mission accomplished... because it's not just an Iraqi insurgency that we face... it's also Muslim insurgents from the whole region who would love nothing more than a US defeat... who have financial, hardware and tactical support from people in surrounding countries.
Then, of course, there's the question of why we invaded Iraq in the first place. Was it the WMD? Where are they? Even the guy who the Bush administration assigned to head up the ISG after David Kay concluded that there wasn't anything of significance, certainly nothing that represented an imminent threat to us here. Connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda? The Bush administration acknowledges that no such connection existed, at least not in an operational sense. So then we are left with freeing the Iraqi people from an evil dictator that we helped created, and installing democracy from behind the barrel of a gun. Brilliant.
I, for one, don't think the invasion of Iraq had much to do with the publicly stated reasons. To paraphrase Wolfie in Vanity Fair, the possesion of WMD's was the one that they could all agree on. Certainly Saddam has them, it will be a slam-dunk! But what are the other unstated reasons that they couldn't agree on? I think the invasion of Iraq was primarily about a continuing steady flow of Middle East oil, doing something about failing sanctions, with some Neocon support of Israel in the mix. I think the Bush administration, which has plenty of people who think on a world-as-chessboard level, saw that terrorism in the Middle East and the potential fall of the friendly governments (regardless of whether they're dictatorships or not) as a threat to our national security. Not in the sense of 'they're going to kill us', but in the sense of preserving easy access to the lifeblood of our economy. And while I have reservations about oil as a justification for invasion, I can see the point. And I can see why this might not be a publicly stated reason, as it's not exactly politically popular.
So let's set aside for a moment that the Bush administration has outright lied this country into believing all the false justifications, and let's assume that we were justified in invading. They still blew it! If they realized the critical importance of oil in the Middle East, enough to precipitate a rush to war, then should they not also realize the critical importance of winning? Flowers and sweets, my ass! Rumsfeld was so intent on winning the Pentagon pissing contest, that he forgot the basics of the following occupation. I'll tell you what else, thank the powers that be that there were no WMD's... where was the security of al-Qaqaa and Tuwaitha and other facilities? And if it's such critical importance to have a seed for democracy in the Middle East, they should have been absolutely prepared for the aftermath. We didn't know who we were fighting, so much so that they had to import tactics from Guantanamo for use in Abu Ghraib on random Iraqis because they didn't know what the hell was going on. These are the people that we need to win the hearts and minds of, remember? And these are now the people who we have convinced that we are no better than Saddam. And now we have a security situation where it's not even possible to to engage in reconstruction... what percentage of those reconstruction funds have been spent to date, not including what was reallocated for security?
And then take a step back and regard this in the framework of an Islamic insurgency. How can this disaster in Iraq be anything else but a justification for bin Laden's arguments for a Jihad? Here we are having invaded Iraq, where it has become quite clear to the rest of the world just why it is that we're there. Bush is strong in the so-called 'War on Terror'? I just saw Osama bin Laden on my television on Friday like Emmanuel Goldstein, commenting on our elections. What, is over three years not enough time to get the job done? Kill that bastard already! And how is escalating the conflict translated to winning? And please don't feed me any bullshit about we're fighting them over there so they can't get us here. First of all, since when is al-Qaeda defined by the Iraqi borders? Or Afghan borders for that matter? Secondly, what in the world is the invasion of Iraq going to do against a global network of enemies? And third, they don't need to crash a plane into a building here to hurt us... do you think it's any coincidence that oil pipelines are regularly sabotaged, and that oil is now over $50 a barrel? They know that they can hurt us this way too.
And then take a step back and frame it in terms of our position in the world. We have alienated many of our traditional allies, exactly the people that we're going to need. I think we have to take part in the network of nations... how else do we defeat an enemy network but by engaging with other countries who can help us? Other countries where our enemy exists? Other countries that our economy is intertwined with? It's the only way to get things done.
So give me the candidate who will raise my taxes... I want the funds set aside to help us prepare and succeed in this transformation, and not a huge deficit. Give me the candidate who wants to take part in a system of nation states and who will promote our position on the world stage, not the candidate who alienates our allies and who sees the key to global success as global dominance. Give me the flip-flopper, who will consider both sides of an issue before taking action. And give me the liberal, who will pay attention to the social programs that we are very likely going to need.
So do us all a favor and abandon George Bush now and give us a real candidate in four years to work with.
Best,
John W Norton
spam4john@comcast.net