Frank’s Case Book

French intransigence, especially with regard to cooperating with its friends, is certainly not a new phenomenon. In the late eighteenth century, immediately after American independence, the United States delegation worked tirelessly to reduce the trade barriers between the United States and France. Such an open market would have benefited both countries, but would have reduced the income for the French customs agents. Those special interests won out.

It certainly could not be argued that the American delegation was not sufficiently competent or persuasive. It was composed of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. It is likely that Paris has not hosted such a high concentration of intellect and political wisdom since.

France’s immunity from conspicuous but inconvenient evidence is also not a new phenomenon. In characteristic anti-New World bigotry, France’s premier naturalist Georges de Buffon argued that plant and animal species in North America were inferior in size and robustness to their European counterparts. In defense of North America, Jefferson had a large moose killed and its remains sent to Paris to demonstrate the great size of American animals. Buffon was no more persuaded by the large carcass that Jefferson lay in front of him than the French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin was persuaded by the massive body of evidence demonstrating Iraqi non-compliance with UN resolutions that US Secretary of State Colin Powell laid before the UN.

The French have a number of special interests that only partially explain its foreign policy with respect to Iraq. They stand to reap several billion dollar contracts when the sanctions against Iraq are dropped. They have, therefore, continually sought to undermine the last decade of sanctions in the hopes of monetary gain. However, monetary gain alone is not sufficient to explain French antipathy to military action against Iraq.

It may also be the case that evidence of French non-compliance with sanctions against Iraq during the last dozen years will come to light in a post-war Iraq. This factor is also insufficient to explain French duplicity in this matter. The revelation of French cynical exploitation of the Iraqi market would surprise no one, and certainly not the French public.

Recent French actions reflect a much deeper and fundamental national psychosis. At one time, the French under Napoleon Bonaparte ruled Europe and an empire that extended to Egypt. Ever since the French have harbored delusions of national grandeur. They have not come to grips with the fact that since the Franco-Prussian War, they have been a nation in relative decline with respect to the rest of the world. Humiliating defeat at the hands of the Germans in World War II did not awake the French from this stupor, but perhaps made the fantasy of French importance even more alluring. Unfortunately for the French, from an economic and military standpoint, they can no longer be considered one of the great nations of the world.

The French have nurtured aspirations of grandeur and insufferable arrogance into a foreign policy by playing other real world powers against each other. During the Cold War, safely behind the physical buffer of German civilians, American troops and their independent nuclear deterrent, they tried to act as arbiter between the West and the Soviet block. They were not willing to devote the economic resources necessary to be a true super power but they were willing to interfere whenever possible to satisfy their swollen sense of significance.

The French are not blocking UN action against Iraq because they are concerned about unilateralism or about the use of force in general. The French regularly deploy forces in parts of former French African colonies and test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere with nary a concern about international legalisms. The French concern is that the United States, by virtue of its economy and military, is becoming a uni-polar power.

France is trying to organize a French-led Europe as a counter weight of world power and France’s current tactics are a meant as a direct challenge to American power. If it has to weaken the UN and NATO in the process it will do so. Iraq may develop weapons of mass destruction, but America is the true threat, a reminder of French decline.

The irony is that other European governments are equally concerned about French political dominance of the European Union. At one point, the French opposed the unification of Germany fearing that the resulting economic power of the enlarged state would dilute French influence. Now that Germany has decided to hide their economic problems by indulging in anti-Americanism, French political dominance in Europe is largely unchallenged. However, the governments of eight countries including Spain, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom indicated their support for the United States in a joint statement published in the Wall Street Journal. Part of the support was a real recognition that “the transatlantic bond [with the United States] is a guarantee of freedom” and partly as a way to assert their political independence from France.

Perhaps the world will be a lot simpler when France grows up. Everyday they allow Iraq to believe they can divide and delay decreases the likelihood that Iraq will comply with UN resolution 1441. The French actions virtually guarantee there will be no peaceful resolution. It also guarantees that US victory will come at the highest possible cost.

Last week in front of the United Nations Security Council, US Secretary of State Colin Powell outlined Iraq’s non-compliance with all the relevant UN disarmament resolutions, particularly Resolution 1441, passed unanimously last fall. The speech was persuasive in part because of the deliberateness and dryness of the delivery. The lack of emotion created an aura of objectivity that ultimately supplemented Powell’s already formidable credibility.

Nonetheless, there is no amount of evidence that the mind of man cannot connive to ignore. The pre-prepared dismissive response by the French made clear that they were immune to any evidence presented in Powell’s presentation. But this behavior was consistent with the fact that the French no longer subscribe to the findings explicitly listed in Resolution 1441, they signed a few short months ago. Duplicity is common, indeed normative, in diplomacy, but the recent French verbal summersaults raises dishonesty to an art form.

To add to the irony, French and German intransigence allows the Iraq regime to maintain the illusion that it can delay and obfuscate to dissipate the current crisis, while maintaining its chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. If the French and the Germans insisted upon Iraq compliance and made clear that it supported the grievous consequences that would follow non-compliance, Iraq would be more likely to be compelled into compliance. French and German actions are almost certainly guarantee military action against Iraq.

However, what is more curious are the people who were swayed by Powell. Washington Post pundit Mary McGrory recently penned a column entitled, “I’m Persuaded.” Though she hasn’t signed on for military action, she finally conceded that, “I heard enough to know that Saddam Hussein with his stockpiles of nerve gas and death-dealing chemicals, is more of a menace than I thought … Powell convinced me that it might be the only way to stop the fiend, and that if we go, there is reason.”

Now I am certain that McGrory is an intelligent, thoughtful, and honest pundit, but what did Powell convince her of that was not already plain, that was not already stipulated in UN Security Council Resolution 1441? Powell may have fleshed out details with newer and more explicit evidence, but it only served to cement the certainty dispassionate observers should have already acquired. Surely, we have all known throughout the 1990s that Hussein had formidable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; even former President Bill Clinton told us so. If Hussein did not have such weapons, why would he endure economic sanctions that cost him tens of billons of dollars in oil revenues? All he had to do was explicitly list his weapons programs and stockpiles and allow the UN inspectors to certify their destruction to radically increase his country’s, and thus his own, income. Indeed, the potential income the he relinquished is a measure of the value Hussein places on these despicable weapons. Why would he need these anti-population weapons if his only intention were to live in peace with his neighbors?

It is impossible to conduct a controlled experiment, but it is reasonable to speculate that if George Bush had read the exact presentation that Powell delivered, word-for-word, photograph-for-photograph, McGrory would not have been persuaded. McGrory was not swayed by the evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and perpetual duplicity, sufficient evidence has been available for quite some time. She was persuaded because at some very intuitive level she trusts Powell more than Bush. She was not persuaded by Powell’s evidence or eloquence, but by his judgment and perhaps simply his persona.

But why should this be the case? Has Bush had a habit of mendacity? Right or wrong, does anyone seriously believe that Bush is not acting on what he at least perceives to be the best interests of the country? As intelligent and honorable as Powell is, his judgment about Iraq has not been flawless. He counseled an early cessation of hostilities during the Gulf War. A short continuation of the war might have destroyed the Republican Guard and fatally destabilized Hussein’s regime. This was not a moral failing on Powell’s part, just an honest mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. Over the last year, Powell’s position has shifted far closer to those of the hawk’s in the Bush Administration, then they to his. Powell is the one that has been persuaded and now he persuades McGrory.

No, McGrory has fallen victim to the cartoon of Bush as either a buffoon or bloodthirsty cowboy willing to capriciously risk American forces, only restrained by the adult supervision of Powell. The iron bars of her own misconceptions imprison her. Thus, Powell’s real value is to pry open the minds of those caulked and sealed shut against the Administration. In her column, McGrory has revealed far more about her own refusal to evaluate Iraq’s threat than about Powell’s persuasiveness.

“At the summit, true strategy and politics are one.” — Winston Churchill.

It has long been a concern of political philosophy to structure military organizations in democratic societies that are strong enough for legitimate defense while sufficiently constrained to protect civilian society from excessive military influence. In the words of Plato, how does a society create a military, “gentle to their own and cruel to their enemies?”

In mature, constitutional democracies, this problem has largely been solved. There is no real probability that a Western-style democracy in North America or Europe will fall in a military coup. Nonetheless, the relationship between a civilian-controlled military and its civilian leaders remains a serious question.

In 1959, Samuel Huntington wrote The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, which has come to be the seminal piece on the subject and is studied at military colleges. Huntington made the case for what is now the conventional wisdom about civilian-military operations. According to Huntington, the role of civilian leadership is to set clear, achievable military objectives and then allow a professional military to design and implement the means to achieve these objectives.

This conventional wisdom has been reinforced by what many people believe is the lesson of the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, President Johnson is perceived as having restrained the military from achieving victory, while micromanaging to the point of personally reviewing target lists.

Professor Eliot Cohen of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Relations of the Johns Hopkins University in Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime turns this reasoning exactly on its head. Cohen argues that successful wars are best conducted with intimate control by civilian authorities over military decisions and a constant dialogue between civilian command authorities and military commanders. As military strategist Claus Von Clausewitz explained “war is simply a continuation of political intercourse.” Waging war is not a single decision. Rather it is a set of continuing decisions in response to changing circumstances many with direct political import. War necessitates decisions on alliances, strategies, means, and limits that are more political than empirical. As Georges Clemenceau explained, “War is too important to be left to generals.”

In making his case, Cohen examines the war record of four successful wartime leaders: Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War; Georges Clemenceau, French leader in World War I; Winston Churchill Prime Minister of Britain during World War II, and David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel during the Israeli War for Independence.

In all these situations, Huntington’s admonition to acquiesce to expert military advise was not even possible given the fact the generals often differed sharply in the their advice and perspective. Through constant oversight, questioning, prodding, and haranguing, these leaders forced their generals to devise and implement coherent military strategies. This often involved reorganizing military commands and individuals to adequately implement civilian decisions. Abraham Lincoln had to work through a series of generals until he found ones that were competent and aggressive enough to implement his vision of victory.

If Lincoln had simply instructed George McClellan to defeat the South and not intimately involved himself in the conduct of the war, the United States would likely be two countries today. One of these countries may have maintained the institution of slavery throughout the nineteenth century. If Clemenceau had relinquished authority to Marshal Ferdinand Foch, an even harsher peace would have been imposed on post-war Germany than the disastrous Treaty of Versailles. Indeed, Foch could have caused a greater political rift with England and the US that would have inhibited the alliance against Nazi Germany during World War II. Without the continuous and severe audit of the military’s judgment by Churchill in practical and detailed military matters, resources would have been squandered and lives lost, perhaps changing the outcome of the war. If Ben-Gurion had not leashed in disparate military groups forcing them into a single coherent command during the formation of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces may have never marshaled the limited resources necessary to defeat an enemy that overwhelmingly out numbered them.

In Vietnam, rather than there being too much civilian oversight, there was far too little critical supervision. Despite a reputation for abrasiveness, President Lyndon Johnson never forced his generals to formulate a coherent strategy for winning the war when their efforts were clearly ineffective. It would be impossible to imagine Abraham Lincoln allowing a General William Westmoreland to remain in command for four years of ineffectiveness. The military never really gave Johnson any options above merely more of the same: more bombing, more firepower and more soldiers. Indeed the sheer size of the American forces delayed the transition of the indigenous South Vietnamese Army from a petty bureaucratic impotent institution into a force that could effectively defend South Vietnam with only modest US assistance. Johnson should have reassigned generals and commanders until he found a set that demonstrated a successful strategy for victory, if indeed such a strategy existed.

Cohen argues that Vietnam does not make the case for letting generals run the war. Rather Vietnam is a classic example of a debacle that can follow inadequate civilian direction of the military. As President George Bush contemplates war with Iraq, he should not be so foolish as to employ the dogs of war without retaining some control over their leashes. In many ways, how and when to attack Iraq has important political imports. The responsibility to make these decisions resides with the president.

Originality is not safe. Trying to duplicate past successes is boring, but it offers the greatest chances for repeating. That explains why when one genre of television show is successful, like Survivor, the show is duplicated or permutations along the same theme appear. The same can be said of politics.

On the national level, Bill Clinton was the Democrat’s latest and biggest success. In 1991, fresh off the victory of the Gulf War, the first President George Bush’s approval rating was astronomical. Many of the Democratic heavy-weights, like then Senator Al Gore, declined to run. They did not want to squander an opportunity to be the party’s nominee in a futile effort. This left the field open for relative unknowns, like an obscure former Governor of a small southern state, Bill Clinton.

Random factors seemed to fall in Clinton’s favor. Although the recession had ended by early 1992, unemployment rates still had not responded and the economy appeared sluggish. This, accompanied by what some considered a diffident attitude by President Bush, who seemed preoccupied with foreign policy rather than domestic discontent, provided Clinton an opening. Moreover, maverick third-party candidate Ross Perot garnered 19% of the popular vote and may have very well tipped the outcome in the 1992 in Clinton’s favor. Nonetheless, give credit where credit is deserved, Clinton took the political gamble and won.

Clinton was the recipient of a few political advantages that have helped Democratic presidential hopefuls. First, he was from the South. No Democrat from a state north of the Mason-Dixon line has been elected President since 1960, when John Kennedy won. Not only have Democrats from the north, or northwest not won, they have been clobbered. Just ask George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis. Jimmy Carter from Georgia defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976 and Tennessee’s Al Gore won a popular national majority in 2000. If Gore had just managed to win his home state, he would have won in the Electoral College and be president today. It is clear, if the Democrats want to win, they would best look toward a candidate from the South.

Second, Clinton effectively nurtured an image as a moderate. He was a member of the Democratic Leadership Council that had tried to wrest the Democratic Party from its more Liberal elements that up until that point had doomed Democrats to losses in three sequential presidential elections. Jimmy Carter too had run as a fiscally conservative moderate. Whatever, one’s evaluation of how they governed, Clinton and Carter did not run as traditional Liberals.

If Democrats are looking for a candidate that has a reputation as a moderate and is from the South, Senator John Edwards from North Carolina, who just declared his intention to run for president, fits the bill. Add to that his youthful and vigorous appearance, and the current President George Bush could have a formidable opponent.

Bush’s current popularity ratings are high, but if the economy does not rebound and if the War on Terrorism is perceived in 2004 to be inconclusive, Bush like his father could prove to be more vulnerable than he now appears. If so, Edwards’ political bet could pay off.

David Broder of the Washington Post notes that Edwards’ political gamble in running for president may be an all or nothing proposition. Apparently, “Votes he cast on labor union matters and some social issues have won favor from important national Democratic constituencies but do not sit well with many voters at home.” Edwards appears to be lurching to the political Left for help in the Democratic primaries.

In dealing with a potential Edwards candidacy, Republicans would want to emphasize his more Liberal positions. What part of the political spectrum does John Edwards occupy?

Professor Keith Poole of the University of Houston uses an “Optimal Classification” algorithm to cluster Senators and Representatives based on their voting patterns. He can rank politicians as more or less Liberal or Conservative depending on how often their votes align with other Liberals or Conservatives. The rankings can be a little wacky because there are a lot of votes on matters that are more partisan and organizational than ideological. Nonetheless, the rankings are an interesting way to order by a combination of partisanship and ideology.

As one might expect in the 107th Senate, the three most Liberal Senators were Russell, Feingold (D-WI), Mark Dayton (D-MN), and Jon Corzine (D-NJ). Interestingly, the late Paul Wellstone (D-MN) ranked fourth. On the other end of this one-dimensional spectrum, the three most Conservative members of the Senate were Don Nickles (R-OK), Phil Gramm (R-TX), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ).

In such a ranking, John Edwards is only the 38th most Liberal member of the Senate. That places him toward the Conservative end of the Democrats. However, there is a significant distance between Republicans and Democrats and ordered ranking has its limitations. Being toward the Right of the Democratic Party does not necessarily place Edwards at the nation’s political center.

The Americans for Democratic Action score Edwards as having voting with them 70% of the time. The mean score for all Democrats is 86% and for all Republicans 11%. The other side of the political spectrum ranks Edwards in an analogous way. Where Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina gets a 99% ranking from the American Conservative Union, Edwards hovers between 12 and 16%.

Despite the label of moderate, it is reasonable to expect that Edwards is about as far Left as his constituency will allow and, like Lieberman in 2002, he might move further to the Left to please other Democrats.

Edwards’ background as an “aw shucks” sort of trial lawyer means not only will he have plenty of financial backing in the election, it means that he is skilled in talking everyday folks in to making themselves feel good by taking money from Peter to pay Paul.

The combination of Southern heritage, an appearance of moderation in ideology, and an ability to connect with ordinary people, will make Edwards a formidable candidate if he can survive the Democratic primaries. If their goal is to win the presidency in 2004, the Democrats could certainly do a whole lot worse than picking Edwards and not much better. He ought to be the candidate that Republicans fear most.

There are many Conservatives like David Horowitz who rail ceaselessly about the Liberal bias on campus and the consequent lack of a diversity of ideas. William F. Buckley, by contrast, has generally been unafraid of the fact that much of academia leans to the Left. He once observed that good students drive out, or at least ignore, bad teaching. Teachers who are too ideological will likely turn off as many students as they persuade.

Much of politics in the US winds up being a contest between Democrats and Republicans. Despite many rhetorical differences, in practice they govern more similarly than either would care to admit. As a consequence, most Americans and most students are too busy with their daily interests to pay much more than passing attention to politics. Political apathy is perhaps the sign of a mature society that has largely already reached a consensus on large political questions.

Although campuses across the country lean to the Left, the strongest, contingent of Left wing professors inhabit pseudo-intellectual departments like Women’s Studies. The dominant purpose of these departments is not research and honest pedagogy, but ideological proselytization. Students who gravitate to these disciplines largely already have a suitable ideological predilection. Few new converts are secured. The remaining student body will ignore these courses unless they view them as an easy way to pad their grade point averages.

Nonetheless, the Left-ward tilt on campuses has the salutary effect of toughening Conservative-minded students. While Left-leaning students can safely roam like sheep through campus with their ideas unchallenged and unmolested, Conservatives must either learn how to argue their cases in an unfriendly and unsympathetic environment or remain silent. Those who speak up grow in self confidence as they learn to critique their professors and fellow students. In short, the Left on campus has nurtured a new generation of lively and irreverent Conservatives.

Perhaps this is nowhere more apparent that at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire. In the 1980’s, the Dartmouth Review, a Conservative magazine, emerged. The pages of the publication served as a voice for Conservative students frustrated by the uniformity of ideas enforced by political correctness on campus. The Dartmouth Review was been a constant thorn in the side of the Dartmouth Administration and Liberal professors across campus. Many of the stunts the Dartmouth Review staff embarked upon to generate good copy were in bad taste and sophomoric, but remember many of the culprits were sophomores. This crucible has formed a number of Conservative pundits including talk show host Laura Ingraham and writer Dinesh D’Souza.

In his recent book, Letters to a Young Conservative, D’Souza attempts to instruct a new generation of Conservatives. The book is structured as a series of letters to Chris, a fictitious campus Conservative. D’Souza spends much of his time speaking on college campuses. He is thus intimately familiar with the usual arguments of college professors and offers Chris guidance on how to respond.

Though many of the notions D’Souza explains are plain vanilla Conservative ideas, he explains them in a cheerful, straightforward, and lucid way. The book is an excellent primer and source of moral support for the emerging Conservative undergraduate.

Many Conservatives are Conservative by temperament and grow into political Conservatives later. Ingraham and D’Souza represent a new breed on energetic Conservatives who have learned to use the rhetorical methods of the 1960’s radicals on campus to frustrate many of the same radicals who have managed to acquire tenure. For this we have Liberal college campuses to thank.

There are many places where politicians can get themselves into trouble. They can stumble in a response while thinking on their feet in a debate. They can misspeak under the pressure of poignant questioning by the press. Good politicians learn to deal with these situations. Politicians rarely commit political suicide at a birthday party. The Republican Senate Leader Trent Lott managed to rhetorically hang himself.

On December 5, friends of Senator Strom Thurmond were gathered to celebrate the retiring Senator’s 100th birthday. It would have been possible to lavish praise on Thurmond for his length of service, for rising up from his segregationist past, for his love of country. No! Lott had to praise Thurmond’s run for president as a Dixiecrat on the platform of continued segregation in 1948. After making a point of the fact that Mississippi voted vote for Thurmond, Lott added, “If the rest of the country had followed our lead we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Now, it is possible to argue that perhaps Lott was speaking of Thurmond’s stand on national defense or that Lott was carried away on the occasion of Thurmond’s birthday. However, the key element of Thurmond’s presidential run was his segregationist policies. Intended or not, Lott’s statement implied an endorsement of those ugly policies.

Since that time, Lott has profusely apologized and recognized the error of his statement. I am sure that the Lott of 2002 is not a segregationist. Lott should not be demonized more that his statement warranted. However, that does not mean that Lott should remain the Senate leader. Much of politics is about symbolism. Having someone who is tainted, no matter how indirectly, with segregation and who is apparently politically inept would not serve his Republican colleagues well. Lott should step down from his Senate leadership position.

This may be hard for some Republicans to accept. They could be rightly upset with the apparent double standard of former KKK member and Democratic Senator Robert Byrd using the n-word and not enduring nearly the same amount of negative attention. Senator Edward Kennedy who soundly criticized Lott was silent about Byrd’s remarks. Former President Bill Clinton has many times lavished praise and honors on the segregationist Arkansas Senator William Fullbright whom Clinton viewed as a mentor. Clinton has immunity from such criticism. Most have forgotten that Jessie Jackson used an anti-Semitic epithet. There is much truth in the quip by Rush Limbaugh that the fastest way for Lott to extricate himself from this self-inflicted mess is to switch parties.

How much more ennobling would it have been if some of the leadership in the African-American had accepted Lott’s apology, worked for true reconciliation, and tested Lott sincerity. There was just too much political advantage to be gained from ignoring that course.

Sure, there may be a double standard, but double standards sometimes are a consequence of holding yourself and your allies to higher ones.