Ideology wins, the people lose

By Julian Delasantellis

It's probably hard to believe or comprehend these days, but not all that long ago, many of the most learned minds of politics and sociology actually postulated that we were entering a time wherein the concept of ideology would play a very minor role in the lives of the citizens of the modern industrial state.

In 1960 Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell published The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, voted by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the 100 most important books of the second half of the 20th century.

In the book, Bell theorized that, after the murderous ideological disputes of the early 20th century, the second half of the 20th century was shaping up as a period in which the ideological differences that had led to two world wars would be tamped down and blunted. Although Bell primarily was looking at the political cultures of the West, implicitly the theory also saw the phenomenon occurring on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall as well.

It was believed and hoped that Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, and the subsequent arrest and execution of his secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, would herald a more managerial, less murderously ideological brand of state socialism - at least in comparison to Stalin and his party purges that killed millions. In place of the fire-breathing, death-delivering ideologue, the avatar of the next age would be the bureaucrat, called a plant manager, program director or executive vice president in the West, the commissar or apparatchik in the East, quietly and effectively managing society's affairs to bring the soothing balm of prosperity to happy, contented citizens.

Looking at matters today, at least as President George W Bush's rule over America enters its final 15 months, it seems that things have turned out completely in contrast to what Bell and his followers had prophesied. America is drenched in ideology these days, superseding any and all other considerations. Were a young sociologist to look out over the political situation these days, his tome would probably be more accurately titled The End of Competence - On the Exhaustion of the Expectation of Effective Governance in the First Decade of the Twenty First Century.

This personal observation arrives on the heels of reading two reports in the media last week.

One is Dahr Jamail's extraordinary piece US soldiers shy from battle in Iraq (Asia Times Online, October 26, 2007).

In it, Jamail provides probably the best explanation for the recent decline in US combat casualties that so contributed to General David Petraeus' smashing victory in September's battle of Capitol Hill. Quoting Iraq War veteran Phil Aliff, "We decided the only way we wouldn't be blown up was to avoid driving around [in their still, after more than four years of battle, unarmored Humvees] all the time. So we would go find an open field and park, and call our base every hour to tell them we were searching for weapons caches in the fields and doing weapons patrols and everything was going fine."

Another soldier, Eli Wright, reported to Inter Press Service that, "We would just sit with our binoculars and observe rather than sweep. We'd call in radio checks every hour and say we were doing sweeps. It was a common tactic, a lot of people did that. We'd just hang out, listen to music, smoke cigarettes, and pretend."

Being of a particular ripe age and vintage these reports rang vaguely familiar to me. I remember that, in the last stages of the Vietnam War, particularly after the Tet offensive in 1968, when the only thing that was still keeping America in the war was its leaders not wanting to face the facts and admit that they had made a catastrophic error by getting into it, there were similar reports of what were, in essence, American troop mutinies.

CBS News filmed an actual instance of troops refusing to leave their forward operating bases for yet another pointless search and destroy mission in the jungle, where success would be achieved and proclaimed by spilling blood and lives to win ground in the day that would be handed back to the Viet Cong at night . More serious forms of resistance signifying the breakdown of morale was rampant drug use (a family friend went to Vietnam a fairly average, for the period anyway, occasional pot smoker, and came back with the mainlining heroin addiction that took his life in 1976), and "fragging", the innocent sounding euphemism for troops who murdered disliked superior officers by throwing fragmentation grenades into their tents.

(In her own singularly genteel way, conservative pundit Ann Coulter brought back the wistful charm of that happy period by suggesting things would have been better today had Vietnam veteran and current Iraq war critic, Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha, been "fragged" by his troops back then. It is truly indicative of just how poisonously polarized the political discourse in America now is, that a person such as Coulter can still be counted among those who "support the troops" even after advocating the murder of a prominent former one of them.)

And so it's happening again, today in Iraq. Karl Marx said that "history always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, then as farce", but the tragedy here is that the nation chose to forget everything that it so painfully learned in Vietnam, and, in doing so, assured that it would someday have to suffer the same mistakes again.

It's not really surprising that troop mutinies are happening again, for nobody knows better than the troops themselves how pointless their sacrifices now are. The soldiers interviewed by Jamail all expressed the sentiment that they did not feel obligated to go out on patrols in Humvees that the Bush administration has chosen to take its own sweet time to "up-armor" against the roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that are the principle lethal threat to US forces in Iraq.

The Pentagon's partial answer to the IED problem, a new class of military transport vehicles called MRAPs (mine resistant armor protected) are well behind schedule for their combat deployment in Iraq; the main function they are now performing is making many of the Republican Party's allies in the military industrial complex very rich very fast. After all the previous focus-group generated and tested rationales for the war (WMDs, deposing Saddam Hussein, inspiring Arab democracy, supporting the al-Maliki government in Baghdad, the "surge" spurring Iraqi political reconciliation) have proved to be lies, many of the troops can see just what purpose they now are actually serving.

In reality, their continued presence in Iraq, driving around dusty hostile streets waiting for insurgents to target them, serves no real purpose other than to be a thumb in the eye of the nominal Democratic Party majorities in Congress, a bloody testament to the opposition’s ever spreading impotence across this and other policy issues.

So now many soldiers seem to feel that is not a cause worth dying for. In 1971, returning decorated Vietnam veteran and 2004 Democratic Party nominee for the presidency John Kerry, rhetorically asked the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Unfortunately, all of the important lessons young Lieutenant Kerry had for today were sent straight down the memory hole by the character assassinations organized by former White House political director Karl Rove and his unleashed attack dogs, the magnificently mendaciously monikered Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

To me, what is going on with today's quasi-mutinies is as natural as the basic human instinct for self preservation, as the troops choose not to sacrifice their lives or bodies for a cause that has been proven to be a lie, for a national political leadership that seems to have so many other priorities more pressing than that of protecting them from harm.

What is really interesting here is not what is being done, or in this case not being done, by the troops, but by their officers. As in Vietnam, they are surely very well aware of the charade being performed right in front of their eyes by their troops.

The rigid mandates of a commissioned officer's honor point to but one course of action here; to bring the troops in their command up on a charge of mutiny. This was not done in Vietnam, and, as long as today's troops keep their rebellion relatively quiet, it won’t be done here, either. No soldier wants to be the last to die for a mistake, more importantly here, no officer wants to be the last to blow his career and chance for promotion for one either.

Charging one's own troops with this type of offense would be the career advancement version of strapping a suicide vest to one's torso and blowing up any further hopes of promotion in the US military. Being the self-professed commanding officer of mutinous soldiers is the surest way to getting yourself drummed up and out of the military by the service promotions boards today so that you can be out selling insurance annuities at shopping mall kiosks tomorrow.

But even here, there is another liar's logic at work, another reason why America's officer class in Iraq, from young lieutenants to the general staff, would look at the truth and ask for other options.

Many researchers, including Duke University Professor of Political Science Ole Holsti, have noted that, in comparison to the general population, and at least before this current war, the political orientation of the US military's officer class skews heavily rightward.

Should their troops' current rebellions make it further into the general press, which would certainly happen if this became a matter for the military courts, it could not help but put the war and the war effort in a highly negative light, demonstrating the fact that many of the troops see their current and potential sacrifices as pointless. This would certainly work to the advantage of the Democrats back home, and, much more so than the Sunni jihadis of al-Queda, or the Quds Force of Iran, the Democratic Party in the United States is the real foe meant to be defeated in Iraq.

This is the total triumph of ideology over competence, of political spin over truth. In much the same way that the early post-invasion administration of American Iraq viceroy L Paul Bremer mucked up the country beyond recognition or any possibility of repair, telling the truth about the ongoing soldiers’ rebellion would strike a blow to the "support the troops" ideological orthodoxy that is, and will, keep America fighting, bleeding and dying in Iraq, until at least George W Bush’s final day in office in January 2009, and possibly beyond that as well.

If ideology is trumping truth and competence in an area as central to the nation's future as the lives of its young soldiers, then it shouldn't be all that surprising that it's also reigning all-conquering over many other policy arenas as well, including blocking any governmental attempts to resolve the ongoing and intensifying subprime mortgage crisis.

In the Thursday, October 25, edition of the Financial Times it was reported that US Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, the chairman of the US Congress' Joint Economic Committee, believed that current US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would like to see the US government take a more active role in pulling the US financial system out of the current deep hole of illiquidity and insolvency into which it has jumped headlong, but Secretary Paulson was being blocked by White House ideologues, presumably including Bush himself, not wanting to sacrifice their core principle of private markets always and forever ruling supercedent over government.

In that Paulson came to the Treasury from previous employment as the chief executive officer of US superstar investment bank Goldman Sachs, it stands to reason that the man who led the company that ruled the markets just might know a thing or two about how to cure what's currently roiling the markets.

Now that last week's presumed private sector subprime salvation, the US$100 billion rescue "superfund", has foundered over the issue of just who was going to be the one putting up the $100 billion (I wrote about the quick rise, and ever quicker fall, of the superfund in my ATol piece of October 23, Subprime fallout: Save our souls) attention is turning to other, possible government centered, solutions to the crisis.

The New York Times is editorializing in favor of a plan in which the US government's Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC), the agency that pays off depositors in case of a member bank's insolvency, would act to freeze interest rates on subprime mortgages before they "reset" to much higher rates in the next few months.

Many of the now long gone and hard to find subprime mortgage brokers lured their borrowers into the now ticking time bomb of their mortgages with low, initial "teaser" rates that would reset higher after a few years. The mortgage brokers promised the borrowers that, when the time came to pay the higher rates, the borrower could avoid the executioner's axe by just re-financing into another low interest mortgage, which, now, of course, they can't. The borrowers believed the brokers; why shouldn't they have? After all, the brokers all wore shiny new suits and ties, and had such nice offices at the far end of the strip mall next to the coin laundromat and the Dairy Queen.

It is the specter of millions of these subprime borrowers groaning, and finally collapsing, from the weight of the burdens of mortgage rate resets in the next few months that is the real ghoulish fright terrifying Wall Street this Halloween season. The FDIC plan could save many of these poor lost souls, but how much good it would do for the banks holding the subprime mortgage paper is another question.

The banks could be helped by another possible solution. It has been suggested that the US government’s two principal mortgage finance assistance agencies, the Federal Home Loan and Mortgage Corp (called Freddie Mac in the markets) and the Federal National Mortgage Association (called Fannie Mae), more aggressively buy the subprime mortgage paper from the banks which can't now unload it back into the markets for anything near what they paid for it.

This could act to free up billions of dollars from the banks' balance sheets, restoring at least part of the liquidity now sorely lacking from the short-term money markets. Also, Fannie and Freddie could make a policy decision to at least temporarily use a lighter touch with the subprime borrowers entering into default whose mortgages they would then own, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of them from foreclosure . Perhaps best of all, in a Washington where it's 100 times easier to get a policy "no" than a "yes", both Fannie and Freddie have expressed their willingness to act in such a way to solve the crisis.

Perhaps a combination of the FDIC plan with the Freddie and Fannie initiatives could effectively work to save both the subprime homeowners and the markets.

Ain't gonna happen. Bush has already shot down the Freddie/Fannie solution. When the FDIC plan reaches his desk he'll undoubtedly do the same, unless, of course, the stock market is then down a couple thousand points from where it is now. With this administration the imperative of enforcing the ideological orthodoxy of free market supremacy ruling over an enfeebled and emasculated government far and away takes precedence over the interests of the quarter of a million American families now losing their homes through foreclosure every month.

The battle-hardened foot soldiers of laizzez faire ideological conformity are now receiving and accepting their combat orders to march out onto the carnage-sodden battlegrounds of the American cable news television pundit landscape. Since two of the American states now being hit hardest by foreclosures, Michigan and Ohio, have Democratic Party governors, it is now being claimed that the entire subprime problem lies not with unregulated Wall Street finance, but with incompetent local state house incumbents. (The fact that California and Florida, also both now getting hit hard with foreclosures, have Republican governors is something not talked about.)

This strategy worked with Hurricane Katrina, as White House mouthpieces laid the blame for the incompetent federal rescue response at the feet of Democratic Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, so they must figure that if the people are stupid enough to accept it once, there's no reason they won't fall for it again.

Ideology wins, the people lose. So what else is new; "what time is American Idol on?"

America has been seduced by ideology's siren song. Ideology is intoxicating, addictive; it replaces the disconsonant jangle of reality with the simple symphony of a secular theological purity and certainty; it takes whoever is debauched by it to what the Greek historian Herodotus called "the happy land of absolutes".

Maybe there is one thing that might bring Americans back to the land of the real. Much like spoiled thirtysomething socialites who have never worked a day in their lives, perhaps America's choice of believing what it wants to believe over what is real derives from the fact that, for decades upon decades now, America has been allowed to live beyond its means.

With the exception of the years of the Clinton surpluses, the US Federal Budget has been continually in deficit since 1970; the balance of payments on current account - what the US borrows/lends from/to foreign nations, has been in deficit since 1983.

If someone else is paying for your reality, it’s easy to live in fantasy. But there are signs that this situation may be changing. The federal government maintains a running monthly ledger, called the Treasury International Capital, or TIC report of how much finance the nation draws in from foreign sources. (I wrote further about the mechanics and implications of TIC data in my March 24, 2006, ATol article, US living on borrowed time - and money.)

The most recent data for August, released on October 16, show a stunning reversal of foreigners' willingness to pay for US profligacy. Instead of foreign capital interests actually putting money into the US in August, for that month the TIC data actually went negative, indicating that, for that month at least, the net capital inflows into the United States were at minus $163 billion. That includes a minus $35 billion capital flow into long-term US government securities, the principal car park where foreign capital traditionally sits.

This is the worst net TIC data report since the late 1980s, and it is the first time that foreigners have been net sellers of Treasury bonds since 1998.

Those who think that America is still looking at an upcoming forecast of unending sunny economic skies brought to us by meteorologist George W Bush say that the August TIC data was anomalous due to that month's severe economic crisis. That is of course possible, but even with all that month's travails, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, and the price of the Treasury's benchmark 10 year note all closed up for the month.

In other words, although you could still make money in US markets even in August, foreigners chose to take their money and run.

Most commentators are looking at the August TIC data with far less sanguinity, interpreting it as indicative of a growing reluctance of foreigners to forever finance a country that can't live within its means. In much the same way as the famed 18th century English literary light Samuel Johnson once said that nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of a hanging, perhaps the prospect of finally living within its means will focus the nation's mind away from ideological fantasy and back towards practical policy solutions to the nation's problems.

But it won't be easy, and it won't be pretty. Just as the paparazzi press captured the famed pictures of Paris Hilton in tears in the back of a police car as she was transferred from her fantasy life of privilege in the Hollywood Hills to the reality of the Los Angeles County Jail, perhaps we will soon see similar pictures of forlorn American consumers in tears, weeping inconsolably outside such high-end retailers as Restoration Hardware or Coach, mourning for the mindlessly acquisitive consumer lifestyle that soon might be no more.

Julian Delasantellis is a management consultant, private investor and educator in international business in the US state of Washington. He can be reached at juliandelasantellis@yahoo.com.

(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.)