The U.S. Army doesn’t believe it can rely on its troops to maintain good order and discipline with Sarah Palin around. Or her ability to modulate herself. So why have her on base at all? Just another small but notable development given the rapid growth of seditious ‘oath keepers’ and other anti-liberal democratic groups.
The Movement long ago figured out that FDR’s liberalism reigned for 34 years because liberal personnel staffed government, especially the ‘power institutions’. In traditional political science terms the latter are usually internal security, law (DoJ) and the military. Today, FDR’s paradigm is on its head. The Warlord stuffed them with recruits during his most toxic years. Obama’s enemies now unsurprisingly are targeting power institutions first to de-legitimize Obama personally and secondly to activate their self-righteous impulses to act out.
One can debate how much immediate danger these brazenly treasonous activities may pose to the Republic. We do think it’s no longer debatable that Shy Meyer’s post-Vietnam tripwire all volunteer force (“AVF”) can be called a definitive failure. He designed the AVF in the 1970s to prevent the U.S. Army becoming a tool of imperial aggression divorced from domestic political commitment. In his world of mass armies with secondary and tertiary echelons he made sure a 500,000 commitment like Vietnam would be impossible because the AVF would be too small. A president would be forced to call out the national guard Meyer assumed. Something Johnson and Nixon never did. Both refused to burden the voters that way. Plus, Meyer knew ending the draft would save the military from civilian contempt.
Today’s quasi-mercenary AVF is untethered from all of Meyer’s anchors. In fact, rather than a safeguard protecting the Nation, Meyer’s AVF poses potential problems far beyond Westmoreland’s era. More than ever today’s military culture inherently is distinct from our civilian world (although what we know today as corporate hierarchies and chains of command were copied from the Union Army during the first industrial surge post Civil War). The AVF culture is self selecting – the evangelical problem at Colorado Springs just one indicia. Meyer couldn’t have foreseen how technology would be a force multiplier allowing a small, isolated, self-selected AVF force to maintain itself deployed while Americans shop and watch TV. Meyer devoted himself to prevent America from living out every day 2001-2009.
And resentment builds. These over-stressed troops see their reality in theater and broken families as merely fodder for stunt media reporting. Add a Nation which openly tolerates actual mercenaries to operate with more pay and less rules like Prince, Dyncorp, etc. Cynicism naturally builds. And then the top brass dip in. The underlying moral corruption becomes pervasive. It’s not a new thing – the Stiftung used to see it every week going back decades. But the trend line spiked sharply up.
Shy Meyer’s gift to the Republic? A dysfunctional civil-military relationship that breeds recruits for the oathiness crowd. Recruits committed to kinetic solutions and already largely strangers to civilian liberal democratic society and pluralism. We don’t know what percentage are *potential* McVeighs. But to shove Cheney-ism back at him, it’s gonna be above 1 %.
Meanwhile, local and state law enforcement likewise have been radicalized the last 8 years. Obama shows no sign of breaking the cycle. ‘Fusion centers’ where your local sheriff or police chief might have the almost pornographic thrill of rubbing elbows with FBI, Homeland Security, even the now considerably less cool CIA, etc. And how empowering for a local or state official to receive information stamped “Sensitive But Unclassified”. Why, they’re almost one of the team! National security is the ultimate get out of boring routine regulation free card. When the Warlord’s crew proposed creating that new tag we at first would sit in meeting and strain not to roll our eyes. But the goal was to radicalize and it worked. We can’t remember how many hours of our life we will never get back listening to pleas from dairy processing plants in Strawberry Point or truck refitting depots in Texarkana that they needed millions in federal aid to stop imminent Al Qaeda attack. Now, recruitment pools for anti-liberal democratic forces under the banner of oaths, the constitution, etc.
Shy Meyer failed. The AVF as a concept failed. America let them both down. The military must be reconnected with the polis. It’s time for Americans to cowboy up. Whether by draft, by changed incentive mechanisms or other means. The military burden must be shared and that experience flow both ways. Our liberal democracy will be revitalized with a broader life experience of the military’s perspective of team work, discipline and learning to tolerate diverse backgrounds re-entering our culture. The military will become a democratic force with fresh infusions of civilian tolerance of non-radicalized ideologies. Ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is getting it backwards. We all win by taking steps to ensure the military looks alot more like America.
The odds of any of this happening are about as good as Obama doing more than Goldilocks on Afghanistan. We know. Same with the Movement walking away from shot after shot of impulsive, nihilistic fantasies. We share some readers’ skepticism that a rebuilt Republican Party (or other means) committed to pluralistic participatory politics can put the leash back on. An interesting conundrum? Which problem is the more urgent for liberal democracy – an expanding radicalized Movement here at home or the bloated Permanent National Security State? We’ll concede it’s a false binary. There’s a third and possibly more likely outcome. Americans may not care.
____
* We blew the mass spell check. Mea culpa General Meyer.
Sam Lowry says
Who would have thought they’d see the day when a mainstream publication like Time Magazine takes on this subject. Covers a lot of the points raised here in The Bunker 2 years ago. Not bad for the MSM (IMO).
From the November 10th issue of Time:
An Army Apart: The Widening Military-Civilian Gap
Comment says
Yes – Welles as Le Ciffre – excellent. It seems Bond fumes are running weak. Though some of those older ones with Connery can just remind everyone of why it was cool to begin with.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Comment
Both Casino Royales are on again tonight. Watched back to back the choice is clear. Eon Productions blessedly dropped the absurdist camp from the Brosnans. We forgot just how much the new CR was a mirthless, tedious actioner. Die Hard is a superior example. What a pleasure then to just take in the Niven/Wells/Sellers/Allen mess in all its glorious incoherence. Jimmy Bond indeed.
Comment says
Studs Terkel was tracked for 45 years. That’s just funny.
Comment says
AE is not alone – there are a number of conservative bloggers who have quite recently because they are sick of the threatening tone – the ALL CAPS morons – who contantly vomit their hate on their blogs. It just becomes so tiresome. We knew some people during the Bush years who were just not mentally able to not personally insult people if they heard someone mock Bush or Cheney – Now with Obama, they have truly lost their minds. Often their lives are in distress and this causes them to lose their temper rather easily. It’s probably not new, but it does seem a bit new in scope.
Alex says
AE has been teabagged out of the blogosphere. Wasn’t I saying the other day that CNAS was increasingly a target for the movement, in an analogous way to how the original red baiters targeted CFR?
Hunter says
On a slightly more on topic note, this is cheery.
Hunter says
re: the bloggingheads bit: I’m totally addicted to the format, but have to be careful to avoid Althouse and her ilk. Frankly, the system works best when the topic is not politics. As for people discussing things they haven’t read, I recall fondly an episode many years ago in high school when a friend and I argued over a chapter of the Scarlet Letter for an entire English class. At the conclusion, the (somewhat hippy-dipp, female [in an all boys Catholic school]) teacher wrapped up the class with some useless platitude about how great it was that we were so engaged with the material, etc. The kicker: neither of us had read the chapter. Good times.
@Comment – “Could not Sarah say “It’s easy to dismiss Dowd, the queenbee of the Times in her Kennedy fantasy house as she ignores low price stores and stews about with her cotton candy pop culture mind and her bad shakespeare allusions.”
No, Sarah! could not say any such thing. Not because it would be untrue, or even unfair, but because Sarah! is quite incapable of putting together that many words even that coherently.
Comment says
Perhaps the like precurse of feared events, As harbingers preceding still the fates and prologue to the omen coming on, suggests a Joementum surge on the Hill
Comment says
That Intel story is interesting and we guess that will be an increasing trend in Israel as it becomes more polarized and its relative strength wans – Btw, Robertson would love to do that.
Comment says
Here’s a crazed Dem who seems to be about to totally collapse – Imagine him running against Palin:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/gavin-newsom-throws-tantrum-in-first-interview-since-dropping-gov-bid.php
Dr Leo Strauss says
On a total non-sequitor, here’s an interesting item on Intel caving in to right wing demonstrations in Israel. What puzzles the most is why the writer is so keen to beat up on Intel (which has always been craven to us in our dealings with Les Vadasz when Grove was flying high) rather than the Israeli people.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/22/intel_inside_prove_it/
Comment says
Speaking of people with issues – Andy McCarthy. That dude definately has some darkness within. His love for torture is unnatural. One can only speculate how he grew to be like that. He’s also a bit of a Birther. A true kook, yet still mainstream.
Comment says
Watching Holder on c-span try to thread many needles – Kyl – who comes off like a bad sitcom dad invokes NRO kook and torture advocate Andy McCarthy to suggest Bush is not to blame for 8 years of delayed justice. Rather, it was all the left wing lawyers who were running the country – Not Bush and his Congress and his judges.
This infantile inability to accept responsibility is annoying.
Now we see mcCain’s cup bearer – Lindsey Graham is pouting. This sage of southern justice is just too in over his head.
Comment says
Cheney and Bush are both like that big fat guy in the Monty Python movie that enters a restaurant and eats eats eats and just vomits and explodes all over the place. Obama has to clean up all that puke and prevent a depression at home and humiliation abroad. That’s the main job for the first two years. Frankly, we are amazed health care has moved this fast. It’s so sad to see the folks out in red land – cover their own need for help with cries of hate and ignorance.
Comment says
Note – in a similar vain – Both Tweety and Dowd are obsessed with culture war tropes – not real issues. They don’t want to ban abortion, so they make up for that with garbage aboout bowling and beer and flag pins.
Comment says
We see that Dowd (like Tweety) has picked up on Cheney dither meme – The entire Afgan fiasco has followed Cheneys dithering for eight effing years, intentionally. They whole thing is so dumb that its painful
to talk about. John Hannah – Cheney’s aid – recently fell on his face trying to explain this.
Dowd and Tweety are both products of baby boomer post Vatican 2 Catholic Irish culture. Tweety – no doubt imbibing the mythos of Irish valor – feels deep shame at his own cowardice during the Vietnam era.
Precisely because LBJ did not dither – Tweety spent his whole youth avoiding a war and trying not to look like a hippy.
Dowd is part of that – That’s why they both argue for points they personally don’t believe in – It’s masochistic and odd. It’s a replacement for the lost religious certainty. The siren song of
simple minded stupidity is calling them.
Comment says
Is Maureen Dowd “projecting” herself a bit here on Palin?
It’s easy to dismiss Sarah Palin.
She’s back on the trail, with the tumbling hair and tumbling thoughts. The queen of the scenic strip mall known as Wasilla now reigns over thrilled subjects thronging to a politically strategic swath of American strip malls.
—
Could not Sarah say “It’s easy to dismiss Dowd, the queenbee of the Times in her Kennedy fantasy house as she ignores low price stores and stews about with her cotton candy pop culture mind and her bad shakespeare allusions.
Comment says
It’s hard to overstate the stupidity of Tweety’s CW prattle – The absurd fears of all these boomer chickenhawks (yes Tweety is a chickenhawk) with regard to trials shows the essential character weakness that people like Cheney always fed off. Recall them all running in fear when there was some vague warning in DC – Then they get back to their studios and talk tough about bombing somee far away Arabs.
It’s just so stupid.
Comment says
What we find amusing by the colossal oaf tweety is that he has often claimed to be pro Geithner. So why does he imply Geithner (an Irishman!) is now bad? No reason – just stupidity village CW. Ofcourse, trials are so the government can tell it’s story, but typically Tweety says the opposite of the truth,
Comment says
Session from Alabama on c-span pretending the safety of new yorkers is his biggest priority and the root of his opposition to terrorist trials not brought by Bush.
Comment says
A few days back we were discussing the stupidity of the
“adlai” meme and how it made no sense. Alex from Yorkshire
pointed to the obvious. But who is so stupid they did not get
the message.
“Chris Matthews: He is leading with his chin on just about every issue out there — healthcare, terror trials, job losses, even the breast cancer report. He’s exposed and vulnerable. His poll numbers are dropping.
Is he just too darned intellectual? Too much the egghead? Why did he bow to that Japanese emperor? Why did he pick Tim Geitner to be his economic front man? Why all this dithering over Afghanistan? And who thought it was a wonderful idea to bring the killers of 9/11 to New York City, the media capital of the world … so they could tell their story?
Is Obama channeling Adlai Stevenson for heaven sake?”
–Tweety
Comment says
These two Carlson’s are just so lame. Thank God for John Stewart for his patriotic act vis-a-vis Tucker.
Comment says
Tucker Carlson and Margaet Carlson as a s duo on c-span this morning. What a sad duo. Margaret is whiing about “pork” – a pet issue for the MSM precisely because it is meaningless.
Comment says
Ike may have been the only sane President since Harding.
Comment says
re Bloggingheads – Leo, you’d be great to see on it. Most of the current ones (with many exceptions) are lightweights. But then again, why bother?
Comment says
re WH sanity – Think about LBJ – Arguably his insecurity vis-a-vis JFK and The Bundys may have led him to wage war that he did not want to wage. His fear that soon to be antiwar Bobby would be prowar Bobby led to the deaths of many, according to some serious analysis.
Comment says
Btw – Casino Royale on REELZ tonight.
Comment says
re WH dysfunctional persons – It’s really an understated fact – Modest or minor mental illness seems to be the norm in the WH. Was TR sane? Even by the standards of his day – Not really. JFK was a total rock star, but even if 10 percent of the chatter about him was true, a satyr. Wilson had deep personal issues. Dubya has little internal life, it seems. FDR was a healthy meglomaniac. Ike? We just don’t know.
Ah, We love America because of this, not in spite of it.
Comment says
Ezra puts down his Latte and sticks it to the Dean. Someone call the campus police:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/11/you_cant_cut_the_deficit_witho.html
Comment says
Sid Blumenthal got Newt right in his pretty good book. Newt (we also are reminded that Dick Armey was steamed when Larry Summers supposedly smirked at his academic work – as he did with that hipster Cornel West) covers his insecurity with bluster. No doubt he also envies the Kennedys with womaning. Btw – Stewart earns his keep with this:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-november-5-2009/the-11-3-project
Dr Leo Strauss says
Didn’t read the Obama book but your take makes sense. On the whole the blogging heads thing, we’re not sure what to make of it. Over the years we usually ignored email from acquaintances sending themselves in a link. Even when the NYT features the video. We’ve even told the quasi-white lie that we enjoyed it. We’re being left behind, perhaps, preferring text. More and more sites are doing the video thing with ads or multiple clicks to generate statistics for ad revenue, etc.
Have to agree with you about dysfunctional personalities in the WH going way back. Good call on Newt. He’s a very needy person.
Comment says
Incidentally – that was not really a catfight because Goldberg just didn’t wanna engage the silly premise – In sadness and boredom, she just shrugged.
Comment says
Newt’s pretty bright – but he is sooo intellectually insecure that it’s laughable.
Comment says
Just one more point – earlier we mention that we were surprised to fin Jimmy Carter’s novel about the rev to be ok – We did not finish it because we did not want to buy it. But it was good , relatively. It was no where close to Obama in writing quality. Not close. The idea that Palin’s ghostwritten BS is worth reading is just silly. Althouse has been smoking too much of that Madison stuff.
Comment says
Come to think of it, Clinton was/is a bit nuts too. Oh well. Never mind.
Comment says
On second thought Nixon also had a low EQ – Those tapes reveal a dark soul. Such a shame because he had such a fine mind. But darkness intrudes. So much emotional blockage. Carter’s unique sort of arrogance is of a different sort. Carter is tonedeaf.
Comment says
One giveaway that Althouse never read the book is that she catagorized the style as Creative Writing – In fact, it is not – Perhaps, here and there one could shark up a few passages that fit that discription – Probabaly Althouse read them on a winger blog etc.
What is unique about “Dreams” is how down to earth the prose style is – With a jazzy bounce to it. Just like he speaks when speaking casually.
Comment was actually surprised to like it – We fully expected it to be hyped. But we soon found it rather excellent. In fact, contra Althouse, we were tempermentally inclined to dislike it.
Obama was not really political in the book – He wrote many things in the book (usually people just think drugs) that were problematic. Althouse seemed to be unaware the book came out in ’95 before he eve lost to Bobby Rush.
Obama is not a genius (IMO) – but he has a fine fine mind – roughly equal to Clinton or Nixon. Carter is smart, but has low EQ sometimes.
Comment says
Ideally we’d like Wolfowitz to subpoenad for questioning – preferably in France. So he’d be put in some situation where he’d have to squeal to maintain his freedom. In our minds eye, we see some stage Frenchman – Murdoch bait – arrest him and make a pompous speech about human rights.
Comment says
Hayworth is right out of central casting for a certain kind of boob conservative – His vacuous and sweaty face etc. His endless coded whining for pissed off whites.
Comment says
We think if Goldberg – a witty gal – had called out Althouse and said (in media fury) “You know, you didn’t read the book – you’r faking it. Let us quiz you on some aspects” Althouse would have lost her mind and gone beserk. It would have been good theatre,
Comment is very good at provoking these mindless rages among some of our winger friends – Althouse is a pseudo lib – still brands herself as a liberal. But that’s baloney. She’s pissed at her neighbors and she wants to bomb Arabs.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Hayworth is good pop corn material. Interesting link re Althouse. It’s true what you say. No one calls them out for it because there is a form of tacit MAD going on – we won’t fact check you if you won’t call us out either. Bad form is the ultimate black ball.
re war crimes we suspect Wolfowitz will be our Speer (not in the exact analogy of technical managerial genius, of course). He may well be the one who escapes ultimate sanction for being ‘more like his judges’ and serve out his time in the prison of a second tier trade association. He won’t pull the whole grandiose ‘I accept responsibility but was never responsible’ ploy but use the romantic card. The Tweeties of the world will lap it up.
Comment says
That war criminal Paul D. Wolfowitz is on c-span now taking credit for the fall of the Berlin wall.
Comment sympathizes with Obama’s decision to try to sweep the war crimes stuff under the rug (rather than the bus), but we do relish the thought that one day these people will have to answer for their crimes.
Comment says
Bloggingheads catfight:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/23960?in=00:31&out=06:52
Couple of points – Althouse is a women with some deep anger issues – we’ve seen her blow up before.
Also – she repeats a truism – a trite truism – That liberals wanna like Obama so they just pretend to like his book etc. Whatever — Althouse is really thinking a certain kind of white liberal she has communed with all these years. She is projecting her anxiety.
But more broadly – Althouse has not read “Dreams” – at least not all of it. Her comments reveal that. She may have read about it or parts of it or bits. But she did not read the book. So this is actually a common trend in the media where people argue things in total ignorance – Like neocons who argue about the Gulf or Iran etc
Comment says
Meant to say Hayworth is infra dig, but our point is that this GOP civil war is pop corn material.
Comment says
We generally find JD Hayworth to be but we look forward to his race against McCain.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-teo/john-mccain-could-lose-se_b_365364.html
Comment says
Interestingly Norman Mailer decided to give up his novel-izing of the Agency because it had become less cool – more of just another gov agency like FERC or something like that. His earlier anti agency feeling had always been leavened with respect for its power and coolness. Watching that fiasco in Italy was very unfortunate – Especially since Italy is like the Yankee stadium of historical intrigue. Cool people can get away with all sorts of things. There are different types of cool – No one would ever confuse Perle of being like JFK, but he is someone who can sit down with a bunch of people who regard him as a criminal and still advance his case. Obama’s coolness is the dominant aspect of his considerable charisma. That’s why that nerdy looking picture of his bycycle riding could have cost him the election against a semi-cool but ageing hothead McCain.
Comment says
“even the now considerably less cool CIA…”
It seems sort of silly to frame it that way, but you are correct to highlight that intangible coolness factor – It has a big effect on students – who would be quite willing to forgive and forget an un-pc agenda if they admired the coolness and savvy of some Elliot quoting savant.
Send Larry Johnson to recruit students at Harvard or Cal Tech. lol.
Comment says
Cheeseball graphics on that oath page.
Tbilisi says
Excellent post. I think you have found your post-Warlord voice, Doctor.
The last sentence is the key. The thing about the Oathers et al is that they do care, they care about the right themes, they understand power and the powerful, they are experienced community organizers, and they are organizing for action. But like you say their worldview is radicalized and their plans for action are totally decoupled from the realities of a living liberal democracy. So, congratulations America. This is what we ended up with at the end of our Golden Age – no Acropolis, no Empire, just squalid rule by criminals, constrained only by fading laws and the emotions of the idiot masses.
Moot Point of the Day: I thought Ron Paul was the most interesting candidate in 2008 for the above reasons. He was talking about the Constitution and what it means to be American, what change we can make, and how to organize to make it happen. He was wrong/unrealistic of course on many things, but regardless one of Obama’s biggest mistakes was/is never making an attempt to connect Ron Paulism with Democratic liberalism (or either with liberal democracy for that matter).