Sunday, July 16, 2006

Spans of Space and Time

SPANS OF SPACE AND TIME
By Chris Daly


As I looked recently at the diagrams and photos of the collapsed section of the Big Dig connector in Boston I was reminded of a visit I took with my family to Rome last year.
We saw many examples of Roman architecture and engineering, including some that were quite ancient but still standing. It made me wonder about how our own public works will endure.
As I recall them, all the structures we saw in Rome were built of stone, not concrete. And all were built in the form of the arch or the dome. If there were cases of ancient Roman attempts to span space with flat roofs, we didn't see any. They must have all fallen down.

On Fighting Against an Insurgency

ON INSURGENCY AND COUNTER-INSURGENCY:
Lessons from U.S. history

By Chris Daly


It has been said that when the U.S. got involved in Vietnam, we had the challenge of “discovering” a new mode of warfare – known as “counter-insurgency.” The suggestion is that we Americans had never faced such a military problem before and that we had to invent the tactics and weapons necessary to defeat an insurgency. (Never mind that other countries might have done so and that we could study their histories. No, if it hadn’t happened to Americans, it hadn’t happened.)
But that was not quite true. The U.S. did in fact have experience with insurgency. Indeed, it could be argued that the decades of Reconstruction in the defeated Confederacy were an example of counter-insurgency. Certainly, it counts as an example of occupying a conquered territory with a suspicious or hostile population. Or, we could look at our occupation of the Philippines.
But there is also a much more obvious episode in U.S. history that policy-makers in Vietnam could have looked at, just as policy-makers considering what to do in Iraq today might want to examine. That is, the Indian Wars fought by white Americans to suppress the hostile uprisings of the native peoples of North America.
That was a struggle that was bipartisan, total, and ruthless. We used all the tactics we could think of and some we borrowed, as well as some that we didn’t even realize we were using (like germ warfare). We involved almost the entire white population in the effort, and we settled the land we took.
I think that one reason we white Americans fought so hard, so long and so successfully was that there was no alternative. That may be what it takes to defeat an insurgency. You have to be absolutely determined, you have to have a political consensus in favor of it (there was virtually no dissent among white Americans that I can think of), you have to be ruthless in your tactics. And you have to be willing to stay at it. In the case of the “long war” against the native peoples, we were at it for about 250 years.
Does anybody really want to approach Iraq this way?
When we embark on foreign adventures like Bush’s optional choice to invade Iraq, we ought to stop and think if we really know what we are getting into.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

IS DISSENT TREASON?

STAY THE COURSE?



BY CHRISTOPHER B. DALY


At this time of agonizing reappraisal over U.S. involvement in Iraq, here is a thought experiment that might help clarify some of the issues. This exercise is offered to both Democrats and Republicans as a way to think more clearly about the issues.
First, we must ask ourselves: Can a president – any president – ever make a mistake? To listen to some members of the Bush administration and to some of their Republican supporters in Congress and among the right-wing media, their answer might be a qualified “no.” That is, the answer is no for Republican presidents, who are apparently infallible. Democratic presidents, of course, are not only able to make mistakes, they are prone to doing so.
But any American who is not blinded by partisanship must acknowledge that in fact presidents can and do make mistakes. We know from history that presidents have made colossal errors in judgment, costing our nation dearly in terms of blood, treasure and the world’s opinion.
There is no language in the Constitution that grants the president the political equivalent of papal infallibility, and there is no provision that says presidents of one party are infallible while presidents of other parties are not.
Next, we must ask: If a president makes a mistake, does our Constitution offer any remedy? Is there anything that Congress, the judiciary, or the people as a whole can do to reverse a mistake, or at least to cut our losses?
In other words, if a president makes a mistake, must we always “stay the course”?
Are all presidential mistakes beyond review? Are they never subject to revision, correction, or reversal?
If we do not stay the course, are we always being disloyal? In other words, is dissent treason?