The Epistomology of War

Neither war was an epistemological mistake. Both wars are/was more a botched attempt at imperialism.

I don't deny that the wars were a botched attempt at imperialism, with other motivations dovetailing as well. But wars that turn out badly by definition are epistomological failures, whether it is the delusions of the French field marshalls riding to Moscow in 1812, Hitler attacking Poland in 1939, Johnson's escalation in Viet Nam, or Bush's foray into in Iraq. I don't deny the economic or political factors that caused these failures, although frankly I put less weight on them than you do. There was also a failure of separate the real from the false, not just by our national leaders, but by the fourth estate and much of the public. As you state: "It’s as if every now and again we must relearn that direct military occupation never ends well."
Why must war teach us these slow and painful lessons? It is because vain-glorious wishes and hopes skew the perceptions of those who start and support wars rather than understanding things as they really are, i.e. epistomology.

In the case of the Viet Nam war, it is ironic that the most LSD-addled yipster in Grant Park was closer to the essential truth than the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, the august Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the faculty lounge of the University of Chicago in his distrust for the truth that the press, military, and government spun out during that time. As it turned ut Viet Nam was a shining lie from start to finish, from the Tonkin Bay, through Me Lei massacre, and the Pentagon Papers. And the lies continue to this day when neocons assert that the Cambodian genoicide occurred because the US left Viet Nam, while conveniently leaving out the fact that it was the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam that crushed the Khmer Rouge in 1979. .

And now a generation later you see the same kind of epistomology-- forceful actions taken by brilliant people on false premises using stacked facts or no facts. What was the reality that prevailed in 2003 in Bush's head? It was the reality of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a link between terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Iraq, that Iraqi oil would pay for this war, that war could be fought on the cheap, that the people of Iraqi would welcome our troops, and the probability that our domination of Iraq would bring peace to the Middle East.. Perhaps someday hsiotory will endorse the decision Bush made. But there is no question that there was a gap between what was believed and what was real in making that decision, a failure, as I said before, of epistomology that is costing us untold blood and treasure.

American political philosophy has always been Machiavellian.

I wish it were so but that I doubt that it is, as Machiavellian politics is by definition politics that is rooted in what is tangiable rather than what is fanciful. Nothing is more deadly to us as individuals or to our country we we take flight from reality into the never-never land of idealism.

What you failed to quote in the same paragraph, “I suppose its hard showing prudence when you have such a huge military complex itching to gorge itself on government funds”, is the key to understanding why we engage in these seemingly bad wars; it’s not a result of bad epistemology.

I understand your argument, but I remain skeptical of it.

I am skeptical when labels such as "militarism" or "imperialism" or any ism for that matter is applied to the United States. These type of labels have more to do with ideological dogma usually with a quasi-Marxist coloration than explaining the existing reality. I am skeptical of the claim that nations general and people individually are primarily driven by the "pocketbok nerve". The economic interpretation of history that sees men as voting or going to war based on the imperatives of capital is simplistic in the light of what we know of mass human psychology. Hitler may well have been an instrument of the Ruhr industralists, protecting their economic advantage against the workers, but this doesn't scratch the surface in explaining the rise of Nazism.

This-- that people are more than "economic man"-- is clearly true in the Middle East where the satisfication of material wants perversely seems to fuel terrorism and where many of the terrorisms came from backgrounds of comfort or wealth. I think you also discount the negative impact war has on capitalism, in terms of wasted resources and opportunity costs, including those of defense contractors. Furthermore, if our motive of being in Iraq is oil, it seems a nonsensical goal as we can get all the oil that we can consume on the open market at $80 per barrel. Finally, you invoke a shadowy "powerful interests" that somehow are responsible for dispatching our youth to Iraq. There are no such puppet masters. At the end of the day, the electorate will vote people into or out of office based on how our national leaders perform. The Republicans lost Congress in 2006, will probably lose the presidency in 2008 and the Supreme Court in 2010. I'm all for cynicism, but the kind of cyncism that implies that a change in political leaders has no effect on our war policies strikes as an intuition that isn't based on the evidence.

Militarism and imperialism are just words that describe the facts. I think you would have good cause to chide me had I said, “I am skeptical of a word like Darwinism.” if we had been discussing that ever so popular topic evolution.

I object to such words because they carry agitprop baggage that does more to obscure than illuminate and also allow the debate to be framed in such a way that disconnects conclusions from evidence. Darwinism, Hinduism, materialism, spirtualism-- all of these are glittering generalities that mean different things to different people and really have no value until they are intelligibly defined. Can we say the US is a militarist country? Yes. Can we say that the US is a pacifist country? Again, yes. The evidence is there to make the case in both instances. I think you lose sight of the diversity of this country when such superficial categorical descriptions are made. The US is both a racist nation and a tolerant nation, an expansionist nation and an insular nation, a secular nation and a sacred nation, and so on.

Self-interest / greed are what motivate our foreign policy.

And we are all in thrall to the multi-nationals and military-industrial complex. Really? Yes, there were economic motivations in founding this nation, in the civil war, the constitution was a set of compromises between economic interest groups, and so on. But to stop there is to lose sight of a deeper reality of the other motivations that drive you and me. I'm persuaded by Eric Hoffer's True Believer, who linked individual psychology to politics, especially to mass movements. I especially appreciated his insight into the interchangeability hetween mass movements-- that fanatics be they Fascists, Communists, Christians, or atheists--are all brothers under the skin in their frustration, insecurity, and need to sacrifice himself for a holy or historic cause. I don't who said it, but someone said that when someone fires a gun it is fired with his testicles, not his fingers. Ther's a lot of truth in that-- that Shakesperean emotions have much more of an impact on how we live our lives than what our Fidelity statement is. In the case of Bush, a ne're do black sheep well who tried to eclipse his father in statecraft and governance, it's quite possible that that there is more than an element of psychodrama-- much more so than the so-called need for access to oil.

I think you have no idea the extent of our involvement in the Middle East, the least of which is in the current Afghanistan and Iraq escapades.

As someone who grew up in a Muslim country and now works for a leading defense contractor, I can assure you that I do indeed know the extent of our involvement in the ME, perhaps more so than you. And nor do I gainsay the imperative to be involved in the ME to some degree. But it doesn't follow that our ME interests translate to boots on the ground. That we need Iraq for oil and that we need an army in Iraq to protect our oil interests are assumptions, not facts, and tendentious and fallacious assumptions at that.

Your continued insistence that everything politicians say should be taken at face value shows mental shortcoming on your end not theirs.

You sorely misread me if you infer from anything that I've written that the pronouncements of politicans should be taken at face value. When it comes to politicans, I'm an equal opportunity skeptic-- to both conservatives and to liberals, to democrats and to republicans.
The premise of my last post is that truth in politics is both desirable and attainable-- to answer your original question-- and that means having the epistomological discipline to separate truth from falsehood in what politicans and their intellectual handmaidens say or do. If your premise is that political truth is elusive, subjective, relativistic, or power-based, than your competing ideas must also be so based and as equally distrusted and transient. The question for me is not: is that policy liberal or conservative?; but is that policy true or false, right or wrong? To answer those questions, we must start with the premise that those questions can first be answered. And if those questions are answered with sufficient rigor, than, it seems to me, the public policy will take care of itself.

The administration today is largely the same people of the Bush 1 and Reagan administrations; and they are not stupid or deluded but have a clear and consistent agenda.

Ok, but their prime agenda is to stay in power. However, by misreading the public-- believing as you do that we the people are tolerant of messanic foreign adventures and are militeristic and credulous-- they are on the brink of losing their power and their agenda. Thoughts have consequences and epistomology is a two-way street.