About a week ago during a discussion I participated in on the Young Sentinel blog having to do with education the eponymous author replied to a point I made about teachers unions by saying that “Another thing: teacher’s unions (and unions in general) are a good thing for the country. We need to return to a national psyche when unions are appreciated for the good work that they do.” Coming from someone who regularly condemns corporations for being “greedy” and “only caring about their own profits” this puzzled me somewhat (not that I’m picking on the YS mind you, his attitude is just representative of many liberals.)

After all, what truly separates a corporation from a union? Both are groups of people who come together to more efficiently sell a commodity and to make the maximum amount of money possible in doing so; one group sells a product or products, while the other sells its labor. The important part is that (in theory at least; random philanthropy notwithstanding) both are essentially selfish institutions, dedicated to enriching their members at the expense of the greater society.

It is true that after 8 years of Republican rule our governments and laws have become biased towards corporations, but as oppositions are wont to do the Democrats/liberals have overcompensated, casting corporations in general as the Great Satan who exist only to greedily take the money of the common people. This mindset has spread across the country to the degree that even the Republicans are championing their VP choice’s anti-corporate credentials, with much being made of the fact that her husband is a union worker, and Karl Rove himself going so far as to call her “populist”.

This kind of corporation-flaming and pandering to unions might make some sense of union members occupied a sizeable chunk of the electorate, since the only ones who benefit from unions (at least in the short term) are union members themselves. However, according to a 2007 poll by Gallup only 9% of Americans self identify as union members. Yet according to the same Gallup poll a full 60% of Americans approve of labor unions. What accounts for this discrepancy? Part of it is that many Americans have a deep and historic mistrust of corpoarations and the rich, dating back to the Gilded Age and the Great Depression, which results in a support of unions the historic enemies of corporations.

Americans also dislike corporations and support unions for another reason – they need a scapegoat. For a long time, Americans have enjoyed a standard of living and wealth far above that of the rest of the world, to the point where we as Americans have come to take it for granted. As the American standard of living lowers (or really just equalizes with the rest of the world) American workers lash out at large corporations ignoring the basic economic realities at play.

To me the anti-free trade activists and economic populists project the belief that simply by the virtue of being born in America an American deserves to be richer, happier, and have a higher standard of living than those who are born elsewhere. As we steadily lose the riches we’ve begun to feel entitled to it would be wise for us to stop looking for someone to blame, and start adapting. The global economy is changing, and will keep doing so no matter how many companies we tax or tariffs we put in place.

• Quite frankly, the Democratic Convention scared me. I think its unhealthy for any one person to have that much attention and adulation, much less someone who might be the next President. Not that this is any reflection on Obama – he can’t help it, and to his credit he has handled his celebrity rather well. But when I saw that massive cloud of Obama banners and his supporters chanting and cheering and crying shivers ran down my spine. Such mass idolization might be helpful for Obama the candidate, but it is certainly harmful for the nation over which Obama wants to preside
• Still, Obama has continued his position as the lesser of the two evils in my eyes, especially after McCain’s VP pick. I was desperately hoping for him to throw us moderates a bone and choose Lieberman, perhaps as part of a realization that the kind of pandering to the hard right that worked in 2000 and 2004 just isn’t going to cut it anymore and that if he wants to have a chance at beating Obama’s war machine he has to remember the existence of the moderates and independents he used to court. In that sense his choice of Palin as VP was more than just a VP choice. It was another stop, and a big one on the Straight Talk Express’ steady journey to the right.
• Being on vacation I had to watch the convention on Indian hotel TVs that didn’t have CSPAN, and so I was forced to subject myself to the endless punditry and jabbering that is modern political news coverage. Even the normally commendable BBC filled their “American politics special” with the same few speeches being repeated over and over, each time followed by a fresh wave of punditry and speculation. Some day the cable news networks are going to realize that they could cut costs immensely by taking two out of work actors, handing them the transcripts of a few old episodes of Crossfire and having them read random lines out loud in no particular order. The audience would never know the difference.

Then on the 10th of August the Georgians, having realized that they tried to bite off more than they could chew declared a ceasefire and ordered their troops to leave South Ossetia. However, Russia was in no mood for a ceasefire and continued to merrily tear its way through Georgian territory, today moving into Georgia from Abzhakia the other breakaway province under Russian protection. Georgia meanwhile is spiraling into chaos, having declared a state of emergency and recalled its 2000 man deployment in Iraq, the third largest in the country after the US and Britain.

To me with my love for historical allusions this entire situation seems like Korea redux, except this time with the places switched. Just like in Korea Georgia launched a surprise offensive in the hopes of reuniting a split nation. Just like in Korea after a few early successes the aggressor found itself pitted against an intervening superpower that decisively turned the tide of the war, and now just like in Korea the attacker finds itself on the ropes and in retreat.

So it falls on the United States to play its part in this little historical reenactment – that of China. Just as Mao warned United Nations forces not to cross the 38th Parallel, so we should warn the Russians to stop their incursions into Georgia, while allowing them to maintain control over Abzhakia and South Ossetia, and be ready to back up our warnings with force if need be.

Now I’ll be the first to point out that the Georgian government is not perfect; far from it in fact. As I said before, the Georgians were the aggressors in this situation, and should take the blame for that. Furthermore, having supported the principles of self-determination by recognizing Kosovo, the United States cannot now violate those principles by forcibly reuniting Georgia. However, Georgia is also an outpost of democracy in an increasingly authoritarian part of the world. True it is not exactly a “model democracy”, but first-time democracies rarely are, and even a halfway democracy is better than Putin’s (and it is still very much Putin’s) one-party state.

Then of course there is the threat that by intervening in Georgia we may very well cause World War 3, as the Russians will imediately turn their nuclear arsenal on us, blindly destroying the world. Luckily, all parties involved are much smarter than that. Putin and his cohorts, who mastered the art of self-preservation and enrichment in the post-Soviet years would not rush blindly into conflict with a far-superior US and NATO. We can help moderate things by starting small. We should declare an American/NATO guarantee of Georgian (but not Abzhakian or South Ossetian) airspace, and back it up by sending planes into that airspace, and shooting down Russian planes if need be. From there we can escalate to providing air support for Georgian attacks on Russian forces (once again, only within true Georgia), until the Russians finally realize that we are willing to defend Georgia.

We can do that, or we can sit back and watch as the rest of the world sees the West abandon yet another fledgling democracy to the forces of authoritarianism, as its leaders kowtow (in the historical sense of the world) to another one-party state. Hopefully the President, and his NATO “allies” will show that they have some semblance of a spine left, and do the right thing.

In Vietnam by the middle of 1967 things were getting to the point where it was possible for the public to imagine an end to the war, to see the light at the end of the tunnel. A large part of this was due to a new strategy of “attrition” pioneered by a General William Wesmoreland who became a celebrity of sorts, completely identified with the war and its conduct. Sound familiar? It should. Replace “attrition” with “surge” and Westmoreland with Petraeus, and you have a perfect description of the current state affairs in Iraq. The scary part is what came next.

Just as things were looking up for American forces in Vietnam the Vietcong launched the Tet offensive, a suprise attack launched during the ceasefire that traditionally accompanied the Vietnamese holiday of Tet. In the runup to the attack Westmoreland had completely denied the capability of the Vietcong to launch such an offensive, and had insisted that the war was more or less won.

Militarily and strategically Westmoreland was right. The Tet offensive was a grand offensive gamble by the Vietkong, and like most such gambles it ended in military failure. Vietkong units were annihilated piecemeal and the offensive failed completely in its mission of conquering the South. However, while a military defeat the Offensive was a public relations masterstroke. The revelation that Westmoreland’s confident predictions and boasts were so much hot air completely destroyed public confidence in the government and its waging of the war.

The result was that when Westmoreland requested more troops to help push the offensive his request was denied after much debate within the White House staff over the poltitical repercussions such a move would have. That cat was already out of the bag – shortly after, and as a direct result of the Tet Offensive Johnson announced that he would not seek his party’s nomination for President. In 1968 Nixon ran for, and won the Presidency with a slogan of securing “peace with honor”, and the rest is history – Nixon was forced to fight an extended retreat that cost thousands of American lives, and resulted in South Vietnam being overrun right after the last American troops left.

Iraq hasn’t gotten to that point… yet. One bright spot is that chastened by the memory of “Mission Accomplished” and “Bring them on” the Administration and military are much more cautious about the situation than Westmoreland was. However, much like in the fateful days before Tet today’s public has invested a lot in Petraeus and the surge, and should things turn sour even slightly the resulting shift in public opinion would likely be massive.

The danger here is real. Islamist terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda clearly have no problems with manipulating the internal politics of Western nations – remember the Madrid train bombings, and as devoted students of insurgency they cannot have missed the lesson of Tet. Thankfully Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been dealt a severe blow as a result of the surge and the various tribal “awakening councils”, but they are far from the only threat in the region. We currently have an uneasy truce with the Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, which has contributed to the recent progress, but remember that the Tet Offensive too was launched in violation of a truce.

In the end the lesson is this: Should the attack come (and hopefully this entire post will be completely wrong and it won’t) we must stand our ground in Iraq, and not allow ourselves to be manipulated by our enemies. Especially with November just around the corner such short-term hysteria can have grave consequences, and this must not happen. Starting this war might have been a mistake, but it is our job to ensure that the way we finish it is not.

The Man with the Iron Heart is the latest book from author Harry Turtledove. Harry Turtledove is the master of “alternate history”, a rather niche genre, but one that I find fascinating. Those who are fans of Turtledove and the genre in general should be able to jump right into this book and enjoy it. Those who are new to the genre might need a bit of an introduction.

The basic premise of most alternate history novels is that somewhere, at some point in our history something changed, and like the butterfly flapping its wings the effects reverberate across history, changing its course. These changes are called “points of departure” (PODs) in alternate history terminology, and in The Man with the Iron Heart the point of departure is the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich a Nazi SS officer who in our timeline was killed by Czech assassins in 1942 but in the book survives as a result of a machine gun jam.

Shaken by his brush with death, Heydrich sees what others do not – that Hitler’s Reich is overextended and doomed. However, with knowledge of how much trouble Soviet fighters and partisans are causing the Wechtermat in the East he starts planning for a similair resistance against the soon-to-be victorious Allies. The result is Iraq in Europe – car bombs, suicide bombers, antiwar protestors, and hijackings. Turtledove works in many references to current politics and issues – one that stuck out for me was when the Secretary of State in the Truman administration makes a reference to American troops staying in Germany for 40 years, which immediately becomes a favorite soundbite of the antiwar movement.

The book deftly explores the ideas and questions that dog us every step of the way in Iraq – what does the phrase “wartime” mean? How far should we be willing to go when fighting terrorists? When is it time to cut our losses and leave? The different setting and context serves two purposes here: it allows the book to stay ideologically neutral by staying away from direct current affairs, and it allows the author to change the situation slightly from what is actually happening in Iraq, exposing new angles on contemporary issues.

The writing, as in all of Turtledove’s novels is clear, crisp, and straightforward. Don’t come to this book expecting beautifully formed sentences and artsy metaphors – the writing is clearly subordinate to the story. One thing that deserves mention is Turtledove’s signature writing style. He has multiple point of view characters, and the narration switches between them each character in third person narrative. The result is a sweeping view that includes politicans, journalists, housewives, and soldiers on the ground, each giving their insight into their world.

Overall, this is a great book, and a great story. I would recommend it both for the story and the questions it raises, and as an introduction to the author and genre as a whole. A word of warning though: this is a book that is full of profanity and obscenities, a large part of it in dialogue, but Turtledove’s characters are adults, and they do find themselves in adult situations. It didn’t bother me much, but consider yourself warned. Still, far from detracting from the book, I think that the dialogue adds to it, giving a layer of authenticity to the interactions between characters, showing us that though they may be in a world completely different from our own they are not very different from ourselves. If you are at all interested in World War 2, counterterrorism, insurgency, or just historical fiction in general pick this book up. You won’t regret it

Of course Obama did not pull this movement fully formed out of the proverbial hat – it has been slowly maturing over the years, especially after Kerry’s 2004 defeat which created a group of bitter Democratic activists grimly determined to take back the White House. This movement draws much of its support from the so-called “netroots”, the collection of liberal blogs and websites that arose from the accumulated frustration of the past eight years. These websites first showed their influence when they propelled Howard Dean to an early lead in the 2004 primary, though at that point they were still too weak to prevent his eventual defeat.

However, the true “coming out” of the netroots was the 2006 election, where in addition to helping the Democrats gain both Senate and Congressional majorities (including in the key state of Virginia where they helped spread news of the infamous “macaca incident” giving Jim Webb a close victory) they orchestrated the primary defeat of the notoriously centrist Joe Lieberman, in favor of the more partisan Ned Lamont. This campaign, and the energy poured into it from across the blogosphere shows a lot about the netroots – the frustration and alienation from Republican politics that manifests itself in a rigid distrust of compromise and compromisers.

It is ironic then that these people have chosen to rally behind Barack Obama, supposedly the post-partisan and non-divisive candidate. Part of this is because of the absence of viable competition – many bloggers would rather die than support Hillary Clinton, to the point where the founder of the Daily Kos Markos Moulitsas declared “civil war” on her and said “as far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t deserve “fairness” on this site”. His impeccably liberal voting record in the Senate also helps, but part of it is Obama himself.

Obama is trying to transform what started as a negative movement, one that started as a reaction against Bush and neoconservatives into a positive one that can stand on its own, and I applaud him for this. Part of the reason that he has stayed away from running partisan attack ads on McCain is to avoid pigeonholing his movement as a mere reactionary force, but the only reason he has been able to do this is his lead in the polls which is a result of McCain’s lackluster campaign so far. The question now is if push comes to shove and McCain continues his recently started offensive, will Obama be able to stick to his guns and restrain the activists who will do anything to stop a repeat of 2000 and 2004? For his sake, and that of the country I hope so.

Now I’m not Fox News – I won’t claim to be “fair and balanced”, because I’m not balanced; I tend to shift slightly to the left. What I can promise is to always be open for discussion. If you want to start a discussion in the comments or by email, I can promise that I will go in with an open mind, and that I will keep talking for as long as you want. I believe that reasoned discussion and debate, where both sides are open to changing their minds is the cornerstone of any democracy, and one that is being replaced by mere partisn shoutfests. Here’s hoping I’m wrong.