Igni ferroque

At last!  At last!
The Sleeper awakes!


Today, the national nightmare ends!  We can now start to heal the damage that the Bush administration has done to the world. 

Despite Mr. Bush's belief that history will vindicate him, he will go down as the more destructive reincarnation Herbert Hoover.  For like Herbert Hoover, he has done massive damage to this country that will take many, many years to undo -- if ever.  Consider, the problems:  the economy, national prestiege, allied relations, poverty, the environment, verterans care, wars in Iraq and Ahfganistan, massisve debt, corporate give aways, unemployment and under-empolyment not seen since the Great Depression, government dissatisfaction at levels that would cause rebellion in any other country; and that is the short list.  Unlike Hoover, Mr. Bush has engaged in a war of choice: Iraq.  It is my opinion that Mr. Bush did this to outdo his father Bush Sr. (Bush Sr. did not take Baghdad because his Sec Def. Chaney knew that there would be an insurgancy that would be unwinnable).  This fact alone makes him worse than Hoover.

Sic semper tyrannis.

President Obama has already (read actions taken as President Elect) taken actions to that continue the morale war on the failed ideals of Neoconservatism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism ) by dining with conservative journalists ( http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/obama-dines-with-conservative-columnists/ ),  He is reaching out to the oppsition.  In any conflict there are at most 33% of the populaiton allied with you 33% oposed and 33% indiferent.  The objective of any "Grand Strategy" is to persuade the indifferent, fortify your support, and bring the opposition to either the different or the support catagories. 

I marvel at how well President Obama understands and practices strategy.  While the American analogs maybe Lincoln, and FDR, the name that comes to my mind is Titus Flavius Vespasianus ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespasian ).  The Roman  Empire was staggering under the rule of Nero ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero ). This crisis of leadership if continued, would have eventually destroyed the Empire.  Because of the reforms implemented by Vespasian, he was considered to be the savior of the Empire.

President Obama will need all of his skills and talents to heal this country and guide it to on a prosperous path in the 21st century.

While some believe that President Obama does not connect to the military, because he has not served, I believe that he will win them over because he understands the universal contract between a society and her warriors: we who will die for you ask that you not spend our lives in vain.  He has shown that he understands Grand Strategy, that he is a ruler that understands the "Way".  Master Sun says that he one of the factors in calculating which faction will succeed in a conflict is to assess the ruler.


" Ask:

Which ruler has the Way,

which general has the ability,

which has gained Heaven and Ground,

which carried out Law and commands,

which army is strong,

which officers and soldiers are trained,

which reward and punish clearly,

by means of these, I know victory and defeat!"

(http://www.sonshi.com/sun1.html).


For the first time in many years I believe that my country will be in good hands.   With President Obama this country will see better times.  Here is a President that understands the "Way".  A ruler that will make our enemies cower in fear, give our allies hope, and our people peace, prosperity, and pride.  President Obama has united us for the long hard road ahead.

Semper fidelis.

Currently, Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign has devolved into internal squabbling, selfserving information leaking, finger pointing, and a general inability to adapt to the Obama campaign's activities. Much of the McCain campaign's flailing on issues, attacks, and negative campaigning are attempts to make an issue "stick" to Obama. Some pundits have called McCain's campaign all tactics and no strategy. Some pundits believe that it is the financial meltdown They are all wrong. What we are seeing is the Musashi 's classic definition of collapse as mentioned in the Go rin no sho's Book of Fire.

Sen Barak Obama will be president because not because of the money, Senator McCain's short commings, President Bush's failings, or the financial meltdown. Senator Barak Obama will be president because the country understands that he is the prospective sovereign that understands "The Way", and that this is what the country needs now.

Senator McCain's precieved flailing is a product of his fighter pilot training. Here is what McCain says about his own decision-making process in the 2002 book "Worth the Fighting For" which he co-wrote with Mark Salter:

"I make them (decisions) as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can," ...furthermore... "Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint."

Why does Senator McCain say this about his decision process and why is it due to his fighter pilot training?

The answer is due to John Boyd's OODA Loop. John Boyd was an airforce fighter pilot who saw combat in the Korean War; he is the U.S.'s Musashi. He is revered not by the USAF where he served and litterally wrote the book on fighter performace methodology ("Energy-Maneuverability_theory"), but in the USMC where his theories are the foundation of maneuver warfare.

"According to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. An entity (either an individual or an organization) that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby "get inside" the opponent's decision cycle and gain a military or business advantage....

"In order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries--or, better yet, get inside [the] adversary's Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action time cycle or loop. ... Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries--since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against."

wikipedia OODA Loop

Sadly, Senator McCain is misinterpreting John Boyd's OODA Loop. Senator McCain s understanding is based solely on speed in traversing the OODA Loop. This is a very common and very fatal reading of Boyd. What Senator McCain is doing is quickly observering, making decisions and acting but eliminating the orientation process. Further, the OODA Loop is not a simple loop, but "the entire 'loop' (not just the orientation) is an ongoing many-sided implicit cross-referencing process of projection, empathy, correlation and rejection.". Currently, the McCain campaign has become detached from the empathy and correlation part of orientation.

 

Blogger Viviana A. Zelizer recently posted a piece on Huffingtonpost "Pricing a Child's Life". She asks the question of how to put a price on a child's life when determining compensation in civil actions. This is a very good post with a good historical information. I highly recomend it. Professor Zelizer rightly understands what motivates most Claimants: "Claimants ask for public recognition of their losses, fixation of responsibility for those losses, and enough damages to hurt the responsible parties. Payments for the love and a child's lost future seem just compensation". She also, understands that conservatives view this as "money grubbing". What she does not mention is that it is all about crime and punishment, and the justice that it brings.

The conservative View

The opposition to punitive damages is often led by conservatives. Conservatives value punishment when disscussing the law. Conservatives believe that punishment is a "deterrent". The exception being when said punishment may be metted out to one of their own (Scooter Libby ). When individuals, not of the rich elite, attempt to gain justice from a civil action against a large corporation, or member of the consevative elite, then conservatives claim that plantifs are "money grubbing".

Using conservative reasoning, it would seem that punishing (thru punitive damages) the enitiies for negligence with regards to 9/11 would serve as a deterent toward future negligence. Further, punitive damages applied to enitiies (typically corporations or government) would deter them from bad behavior. In general, for our government, this is not the case because the individuals responsible do not personally suffer. For corporations the individuals responsible (in practice), again, rarely suffer any penalties, or the penalties are insignificant with respect to the crime (Enron .,Robert Milken). In fact, for corporations, they routinely calculate any negative payouts when deciding if it is profitable to break the law. So what we have here is a lack of "personal responsiblity" .

Value of a Life? What is just?

What is a life worth? I believe that this is the wrong question to ask. The appropriate question is what is the monetary award that would dissgourge any gains made by the defendents, render defendents financially incapable of any recitivism, and compensate for any lost income and benefits of the plantifs. This is not a random or "money grubbing" concept. This is about the "public good". When corporations and government (and the individual decision makers therein) are not brought to justice then we have no civilization.

Clash of civilizations

The Bush administration often calls GWOT a clash of civilization against barbarisim. Aeschylus in the Orestia tells us that Athena brought civilization to the city of Athens by replacing private vengence with public justice. Punitive damages that help preserve the public good are part of public justice. What conservatives and the Bush administration advocate is a return to a feudal system where the noble does not answer to any but his peers and his betters. Justice for those of lower social standing is nonexistent. It is a world view of might makes right, where personal loyalties and conections are preeminent.

The issue of justice is also prime to the issue of why we are failing and will continue to fail in the middle-east. Aeschylus would have been familiar with the culture of the middle-east. It is tribal, it is about personal loyalties, personal honor, and private vengence. If we do not provide public justice to Iraq and Afghanistan, then we will never be able to bring any kind of civilization to those regions. Why was the Taliban successful? What is the appeal of Sharia law ? The answer is that they bring a form of public justice to a tribal society. We may dissaggree with the form of public justice, but we do not provide an alternative.

Because there is not central authority controling the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, we see it as chaotic. We look to external and internal causes like Al-Qieda, or Iran for the violence, but what we have failed to see is that Abu Gharib, Guantanomo Bay, and contractor malfeasence has shown the people of Iraq and Afghanistan that we will not provide public justice. Therefore, all these people have left is the tribe. All we leave them is private vengence.

What the current 9/11 civil action says to the world is that the conservative ideology does not provide equal protection under the law, nor does it provide public justice. Instead it is a return to public justice for the privileged.

Freemarket is not justice

What the conservatives have never understood and will never understand is that what we see in Iraq and Afghanistan is not unique. At the end of the last "Gilded Age", Marxism arose as an alternative to "freemarket" capitalism. Eventually, what people found was that neither extreme worked well. What did work well was a regulated market system. One that balanced workers rights with employer's bussiness needs. A system that protected public goods like air, water, energy, food, communications. and transport. This system worked because it provided public justice at all levels. It had mechanisms that allowed recourse against those in positions of power that stepped outside the law. It protected those who blew the whistle on those in power when protecting the public good. It was not perfect, but a work in progress. People believed that the system was attempting to protect all of us. Today, we have allowed this system to be gutted at all levels. At some point in time, there will be a backlash.

The genius of the American system is that the Constitution provides for a bloodless change of power in the form of elections. However, the integrity of our elections has come into question. If this system is completely discredited then we may find that people will seek private vengence to fill the vacuum left when there is no public justice.

Nature of Power

Sun Tzu likened power to water. One may hold water in your cupped hands, but even then the water slowly leaks between you fingers. So it is with power. One can never hold absolute power for long. The harder one tries the more power slips from your grasp. If a ruler is not just, then he will not be able to lead the people in a time of conflict.

Conclusion

While the 9/11 civil action will not decisively move us from civilization back to barbarism, the verdict rendered and upheld upon appeals will indicate which way we are traveling. Justice is not only about crime and punishment, but a requisite foundation of our civilization.