In a previous life as a big, bad, stock broker, back in the go-go nineties when that designation still bore some credibility, my coworkers and I had a running inside joke amongst ourselves about a certain type of client. The catch phrase we'd use was, "He's got a
system". The joke was based on the idea that someone who knows they don't know much about trading stocks, will be careful, will take advice, and act prudently. But it was common during the market bubble to have clients who'd formulated or read about some kind of stock trading methodology.
One which was usually convoluted, usually irrational, often of their own design, but which they believed in with religious ferocity nevertheless. The worst thing that could happen to such a client, was if he or she was lucky right out of the gate on their first trade or two. Because then they were convinced more than ever that they were a genius, far smarter than us mortals, soaring high above the need for professional investment management. Such a mindset is appealing. It's all too tempting to equate luck with ability. And when the S & P 500 climbs 30 percent plus every year, and Internet growth funds return triple digit profits in a matter of months, hubris seduced many among the investing lay-public.
It was sad to it watch unfold to the bitter end. They'd churn their account into dust, chasing that initial success, running after the high that inexorably comes with making easy money. The tragic comedy was that such a trader would keep doing whatever arcane stupid shit they were doing, even in the face of sustained, consecutive losses, because they ardently believed in their 'system'. They'd been variably conditioned, Las Vegas style, to pursue that ghostly, fleeting, reward. Like a clueless gambling addict who believes they have finally discovered a way to beat the house, they were convinced, even as their trading losses mounted, that sooner or later the system would kick in, and their fortunes would reverse. So they'd keep priming the trading strategy with cash, with loans on credit cards, with the college savings earmarked for children, and even with their safe money, until they lost a good chunk of their net worth, or until an angry spouse would catch wind of what was going on and shut them down.
I bring this up anecdotally, because it's become clear to me that we have another example underway right now where a group is seemingly ideologically committed to a suspect system. And understanding their continued priming of that system, despite sustained losses, is only resolved if one understand it in this context of a psychological and emotional attachment, reinforced by initial success, to a system they believe is ingenious and ultimately invincible. And they, too, need to be shut down.
The War in Iraq teeters between quasi order at the expense of daily violence and massive US involvement, and catastrophic regional disaster, by any sane assessment, and the unpredictable consequences are far from over. We are now closing in on 300 billion dollars spent, 30,000 wounded or dead soldiers and marines, we have lost the support of crucial allies in the WoT when only three short years ago the international community stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us, and we're putting the Iraqis through a hell arguably as bloody as the one they endured under Saddam Hussein. Although to be fair, the tables have been turned on the Ba'ath Party instigators to the advantage of their previous Shi'a and Kurdish victims, at least in part.
Even more incomprehensible, in the process we have, for all intents and purposes, given up on capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and his deputy Aymen Al Zawahari. Even though Jihadist videos continue to flow from their remote wilderness hideaways, in which they quite bluntly explain that they're going to attack us again and again. It doesn't make a lick of sense to allow your enemy a refuge in which to regroup. There is no chapter in Sun Tzu's The Art of War recommending you go after someone who has no direct bearing on your existing foe, and allow that enemy to catch his breath. Especially while you blow your national resources on military action which does not clearly advance your security interests in face of a defined threat, and stokes the fires of resentment among your enemy's potential allies. But that's exactly what we're doing. How did we get here?
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good"-Gordon Gecko in Wall Street
Traditional conservatives have long held an underlying theme that free market capitalism is a cure all for every geopolitical ill. They believe, truly believe down in their hearts, the words of Gordon Gecko and in "The magic of the marketplace". It sounds crass to say that 'greed is good' and idealistic to think it can do what massive military campaigns never could. But there is factual basis for the idea. One need only look at the economies of formerly hostile nations to understand where it stems from. Countries which successfully thwarted the military might of the US since the end of World War Two, are now being remade into kindler, gentler, nations by a more subtle force: The power of greed, the promise of hope, and the pursuit of the 'American' dream.
In a few short years the efforts of a handful of industrious entrepreneurs living in authoritarian states, have done what rivers of US blood and the lions share of American spending failed to accomplish in decades. China now boasts one of the fastest growing free-market economies in the world. India is rapidly becoming a center for high tech industry. Even Vietnam, which absorbed everything the US military threw at them for years, has begun to embrace capitalism. The power of greed, for lack of a better word, in changing the world springs from the universal human desire to better ourselves, to secure the future for our children, to break the bonds of reliance and achieve independence, and to enjoy the status of all that comes with success.
The early Puritans perceived America as God's chosen land, and the domination of American democratic values over it as God's way of extending His Will to the continent. Americans first repelled the greatest empire on Earth in the Revolutionary War and undercut the very fabric of entrenched decadent aristocracies all over the globe. They then went on to spread over the continent, replacing Indians and rival European footholds in the New World. In the last century, first fascism, and then communism were targeted and defeated, ostensibly because of American moral and economic superiority. This sense of moral divinity and manifest destiny was reinforced with every success. And the US emerged at the end of the cold war the greatest undisputed superpower in the history of mankind, and with a core conservative deme holding an ideological belief that we were in some way Divinely superior because of it. Scholars would have to go all the way back to the height of the Roman Empire to find an equivalent to present day America.
Why would some of the brightest minds in our nation continue to insist this war was necessary and must be 'won' in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? How and why did they lead us down this primrose path to Iraq? Simple: They have a system.
Neoconservative philosophy is a tough thing to pin down with precision. But that's what I'll attempt to do in this series using Iraq and the neocon drive to invade it, as my holotype. Part two tomorrow.
