LIBERAL PUNDITS "CASHIER" VICTORY IN IRAQ

A brief reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to

Chickens Coming Home To Roost

Ed Kilgore TPM CAFE December 27, 2006


It might turn out to be most unwise for pundits to rush and "cashier" victory in Iraq. According to most liberals, the Bush Doctrine and the reasons for the war in Iraq are collapsing like unravelled myths. So declares Ed Kilgore in his piece on TPM Cafe. But it's still possible, against all the odds of the prescience of Bush's critics about the unwinnable war in Iraq, that 2007 will be "Annus Mirabilis" for Bush, with the implementation of a new strategy and tactics in Iraq that will deliver victory, and hence "implode" the wisdom of the pundits.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: THE CONTINUATION OF “REVOLUTION” BY OTHER MEANS

Con George-Kotzabasis

A specter is haunting freedom of speech the specter of political correctness. All the moral and political values of democracy, liberalism, individualism, freedom of speech and expression, are haunted and cast out as empty and false bourgeois values, as they were by Marxian revolutionaries in the past. Under the “revolutionary” order of political correctness, these values have no substantial right to exist, if they are going to be used to criticize and call into account the self-appointed guardians of the less privileged in our society. Needless to say, no votary of this new dispensation would concede that the adoption of the precepts of political correctness would suborn and undermine these venerable values of democracy. And without any doubt, the followers of political correctness would consider such an accusation as laughably nonsensical and a calumny to their true position.

It’s not unusual, however, for people who are so clearly aware and conscious of their thoughts and actions, to be completely oblivious and unconscious of the consequences that emanate from these same thoughts and actions. In the “blind rage” of their “correctness”, they cannot see nor can they imagine the wide and meandering ramifications of outcomes their precepts are engendering, and in the darkness of their blindness, they cannot perceive where the latter are leading. For once you proscribe, even by implication, certain ideas and opinions, or by giving them red neck status, and forbid their voicing or prescribe the form of their expression, you erode the value-hold these ideas have in the general community, hence making it more easy for people not to adopt and not to express them in the form of their own liking. Consequently you deprive people their inalienable right, in a democracy, both to voice and express ideas in accordance to their individual wishes and preferences, i.e., to choose the forms and figures of speech by which to articulate them. In the past, phrenologists use to put mad people in straitjackets. Presently, the high priests of political correctness are putting reasonable conventions in the straitjacket of their own “madness”.

The followers of political correctness have deliberately chosen not to conduct the debate of their propositions before the court of reason, but in the emotionally charged precincts of the boudoir. Whence they can dub and castigate their opponents with the emotive terms of racist, sexist, etc. with the purpose of shutting them up. Where reason is absent, however, the issues that are important to the advancement and public good of a society tend to swing to-and-fro without resolution. Even when a resolution is reached its outcome, more often than not, arises from a bad compromise that the best side of the argument makes to the worst, due to the mistaken belief that it’s better to come to some sort of conclusion, even by means of a bad compromise, than to no conclusion at all.
The protagonists of political correctness, in the torpor of their satiated intellectual state, are not aware that they are conceiving and are giving birth to a “Frankenstein”, who will wreak havoc on the institutional values of a democratic society. Nor are they conscious that by succeeding in dubbing certain forms of speech and expression as socially unacceptable, they will crack the foundation upon which a democratic society functions. The vigor and robustness of liberal institutions depend wholly and utterly in the strong disposition and will of the people to exercise their democratic rights regularly and fearlessly and not let them fall in a state of desuetude.The latter is a real danger and no hyperbole. In contemporary democratic societies, when human rights and social justice are strongly stitched in the social fabric and have great political and moral appeal among the people, it would not be difficult for a small group of political activists, who ostensibly profess to represent the interests of the less privileged and less favored among us, to persuade a sizeable part of the majority that political correctness not only protects and augments the rights of the under privileged, but it’s also a better fit to our democratic structure in alleviating, and, indeed, in eliminating injustice, than the “formal freedoms”, according to them, that emanate from liberal institutions. The latter, after all, from their radical perspective, are no more than the instruments by which the powerful are depriving the socially indigent from their rights, with the outcome of keeping the latter in a permanent state of disempowerment. The acceptance of such a proposition by a large number of people, as well as by many Labor politicians, is already becoming de rigueur. Especially, when it’s supported and promoted by the artfully “credible” voice of sections of academia, as well as by the fourth estate, the media, which has chosen, with some exceptions, to shroud its critical faculties behind a veil of darkness, avoiding to criticize the paltriness of reasoning that is embedded in such a proposition. That the influence of political correctness is real, and that it can determine the discourse of political and civil debate in our society, or stifle it, is demonstrated by three recently published events.


CONCRETE EXAMPLES OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESSFirst, the maladministration of the financial affairs of ATSIC and the venal practices of some of its leaders, have been known by at least one former minister of Aboriginal affairs, almost five years ago. Yet that minister refused to investigate these serious allegations and directed his department not to probe into them, apparently being concerned and fearful of the backlash that would have risen against him and the government from most leaders of the Aboriginal community. Who would have slurred such an investigation and they would have claimed, as they do now, that such investigation would have brought reconciliation to an end. It was due to this reason, that the former minister abandoned his ministerial responsibility.
Secondly, in the Easton Affair, Carmen Laurence, the premier of Western Australia, before and after her condemnation by the Royal Commission, was able to cover her brazen lies behind the hood of sisterhood. All the feminists were up in arms against anyone who would dare to criticize her. The feminist lobby of political correctness and its supporters within the Federal Labor Government were able to seduce and mobilize a “glitterati” of ministers and the Prime Minister Paul Keating, to defend the indefensible. Despite the doubt and moral apprehensions some of them, in all probability, might have had, about the veracity of their Labor colleague Laurence. Ostensibly, not even the former government’s glitterati would have dared to confront the wrath of the feminists. On the altar of political expediency and political correctness they sacrificed their moral and intellectual integrity, which fatefully led to a further lowering of their political credibility, and which in turn contributed significantly to their electoral defeat. What was more disturbing, however, was the conspicuous absence of the moral and intellectual leadership of the country, and of the media almost as a whole, on this primarily important issue. That is, whether public personae had an absolute obligation to uphold the moral values of our society, and to tell the truth. What made the keepers and upholders of our moral values, our academics and church leaders, to be so closed-lipped on this fundamentally important issue? Were they afraid, that if they had spoken publicly and condemning this mendacity coming from a premier, they would be stung by the “bee” of political correctness? And was the media too, with some exceptions—one of which was Laura Tingle of The Australian—afraid of this same sting? As on this issue of the Easton Affair, it transmogrified the fourth-estate into the last estate, apparently, without any professional pangs of conscience!Thirdly, the welfare state, which in a short time would become in so many areas the fraudulent state, and its extensive abuse, must have been known to government officials—and if it wasn’t known, these officials would be just as culpable both for the grossness of their ignorance and professional ineptitude. Yet these high officials and their ministers, with the exception of some of the more blatant abuses for which few persons were prosecuted, were unwilling to enter this hornet’s nest and initiate a commission of inquiry that would expose this widespread abuse of the welfare system. When the Paxton family was criticized for its lack of zeal, to say the least, to abandon the state of their unemployment, all the guardian angels of the welfare state were in full flight accusing the critics of being insensitive and unfair to the plight and distress that the members of the Paxton family were experiencing. And, indeed, that such critique was an invasion of their privacy. No lesser institution than the ABC adopted such a line of political correctness. Stuart Littlemore, of Media Watch, criticized Channel Nine for pillorying the Paxton family. If the powerful and independent ABC can be coaxed and allured by the “trendy” etiquettes of political correctness, what else can lesser mortals do than succumb to these same etiquettes?


THE LABOR OPPOSITION TURNS A BLIND EYE

What is astonishingly surprising however, is the statement of the leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, that there is no “wholesale fraud” in welfare payments. In a recent Four Corner’s program on the ABC, that covered the issue of outdoor workers in the clothing and textiles industries, the unions covering these two industries claimed, that there were at least three hundred thousand people who were working in these industries and who were rapaciously exploited by employers. In the course of the documentary, it was revealed that the majority of these workers were at the same time receiving some form of welfare payments that they were not entitled to receive as employed workers, as well as not paying any taxes on the wages they were receiving.

The unions had known for years of the existence of this outdoor work and had made several approaches to the former Labor government to stop this rampant exploitation that was affecting migrants by appropriate legislation. In this context therefore, the statement of Kim Beazley, to say the least, is puzzling. With such a large “population” of employees receiving unemployment or welfare payments that they were not eligible to receive and for the leader of the Opposition to state that there is “no wholesale fraud” in the welfare system, one can only say that apparently Kim Beazley is no “populist” and therefore cannot be blamed for not having a “populous” definition of wholesale fraud.

The paramount question is why, with such overwhelming evidence of fraud the former Labor government abdicated its responsibility and did not do anything about this widespread fraud of which obviously was aware and instead adopted the ‘don’t rock the boat’ attitude? Was it apprehensive that if it had set up an investigation in regards to it, it would trigger the animadversion of the welfare and ethnic lobbies? And beyond the political embarrassment that it would bear, if such investigation verified the existence of the fraud, was it also the “rattles” of political correctness that such a probe would cause which cowered the former government from exercising its responsibility? But beyond any doubt, in all these three events it was the perverse influence of political correctness that led to the eclipse of political probity and responsibility.
From whence comes political correctness? The collapse and burial of the revolutionary utopia in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union have left a withered crop of revolutionary and radical ideologues spiritually and ideologically homeless. The levity of the utopia however, too proud to admit defeat, has levitated these homeless ideologues into the haven of political correctness, breathing, hence, into its revolutionary progeny a new lease on life. The show trials of the future will be staged therefore by a radical elite of political correctness ensconced in academia, and by a motley of followers, i.e., feminists, gayists, indigenists, multiculturalists, and a miscellany of lobbyists, who, under the august values of justice, tolerance, equal opportunity, and diversity, will be setting up new “Gulag archipelagos”, where freedom of speech and expression will be incarcerated and muzzled. Political correctness is the continuation of "revolution” by other means. But the “pushers” of this revolution are like an "ageing actor's face full of often acted artificial passions", to quote the wunderkind Orson Welles, and feigned roles. And like all the artificial and extreme experiments of the social, political, and economic engineers of the past, who by a set of panaceas and fanciful ideas tried to change the course of history and failed, the attempt of the adherents of political correctness to cripple the march of reason and put it on crutches, will also fail.


The above paper was written in June 1996

Dear Reader,

I would immensely appreciate your critical comments on the articles below, as only through critique can we improve and deepen our knowledge about the issues that are important to the betterment of mankind. It would be foolish and arrogant for anyone to claim that he/she possesses the truth. It's the search for truth, to paraphrase the German playwright Gotthold Lessing, that is the great challenge to open minds.

Con George-Kotzabasis

HAIL DIPLOMATIC CONSENSUS AND FALL

INTO TERRORIST HELL

Con George-Kotzabasis

I
Madeleine Albright, in her article " Bridges, Bombs, or Bluster," published in Foreign Affairs, criticizes the Bush administration in its war against Iraq, for using the "shock of force" to trump "the hard work of diplomacy". Both, the substance and the tenor of her argument, reveal her irrepressible desire and concern to defend her metier, as the former primary diplomat in the Clinton administration, as well as justify the latter's timorous and inutile stand against terror. Precisely, to quote her, “Clinton saw terror as a team enterprise, not a solo act”, because of this misperception, Clinton's administration failed to do anything effective against terror during his two terms in office. Moreover, by refusing to take a strong stand against terrorism, a stand that would necessarily shed American blood, in the likes of a top Madison Avenue advertiser, he advertised, with incomparable historical foolishness, the Mogadishu complex to the world at large and to the Muslim fundamentalists and their death squads, with devastating consequences, that America was too scared to spill its blood in defending itself, even against the most ominous and heinous acts of terror.

The former Secretary, with one word of hers, nolens volens, exposes this diplomatic failure of Clinton and her own during their term in office, and with the same "stabbing" word, she stabs her argument for diplomacy to death. She states, that Clinton “tried” to halt WMD proliferation and the need of nations to unite to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries and their funding. The complete failure of the former President to achieve these objectives however, precisely was, a result of his dependence solely on the overtures of diplomacy. And instead of addressing and redressing this floundering of diplomacy, the former President chose to "runaway" from the "draft" of leadership. President Bush, in contrast, persuaded by his Secretary of State, went to the UN and made intense efforts to convince his allies of the strategic necessity to invade Iraq as a quintessential part of the war against terror. And only when these efforts failed to become fecund, indeed, only when the even "amorous passes" of Colin Powell failed to break the pretentious "chastity belt" of France, Germany, and Russia, President Bush, with the characteristic strength of his Administration, decided to go to war "solo", with the Coalition of the willing, and refused to runaway from the draft of leadership.

Diplomacy is a voracious consumer of time, and the latter is a key element to its success. In war however, timing is the sine qua non for its success. A nation, as the US does, that faces a great apocalyptic imminent threat and waits for diplomatic consensus, before it takes forceful and preemptive action against such a threat, chooses to fall, in this case, into the terrorist's hell.

Secretary Albright, seeks “redemption” not through contrition, for the "abortions" of diplomacy, under her term in office, but through diplomatic alienation. For to persist obstinately, especially in critical circumstances, in the wiles of diplomacy, when it's obvious that all its efforts are failing, is to alienate the art of diplomacy.

Historians, when they will make their comparisons, will aver that Madeleine Albright's "orbiting" around the State Department, was far off the planetary force of a Dean Acheson or of a Henry Kissinger. Secretary Albright's censure of the Bush administration is Nonebright.

The above is an extract from my book, Unveiling the War Against Terror, written on August 30, 2003

MOUNT GLOBALIZATION OR BE ITS PREY


Con George-Kotzabasis

A tiger is stalking the world the tiger of globalization. Nations and peoples who, gazelle-like, are frightened and take flight before the huge ferocious “life-threatening” leaps and bounds of this tiger, are to be mauled and be eaten, as no swift flight can make them escape from the lightning speed with which globalization pursues its quarry.

For this will be the fate of nations and peoples who chose to be the prey instead of being the “hunter” of globalization. To be the hunter however, does not imply that one has to slay the “beast” of globalization. Instead, it implies that like a consummate broncobuster, one has to mount the tiger and adapt to its fast and sinewy movements while at the same time “taming” it.

This is the only way that countries can save themselves from the threatening onslaught of globalization. More importantly still, to be among its winners. But it’s fundamentally important to be prudent winners, that is, the winner does not take all. No clever country or wise person would desire to be an absolute winner. Only gamblers would crave to be so. But the wins of a casino are ephemeral wins, and soon and inevitably are followed by loses. Hence. If the winners of globalization wish and aspire to keep and to augment their gains, it’s necessary that they look after and take care of the losers of globalization, as the latter can only be politically sustained and continue to succeed and be beneficial to mankind if it’s a “caring globalization”, if its heart is the “make –up” of its robust mien. If not, it will face the freezing winds of a backlash of a ‘winter of discontent’, of all the countries and peoples who are fearful of its storming of the globe. Its losers therefore will be diffident and distrustful of the touted benefits that could accrue to them, and hence reluctant to admit the Lexus into the groves of their olive trees, to paraphrase Thomas Friedman, of the New York Times

The currently unstoppable revolution in technology, finance, and information, has made all nations vulnerable to the waves of global competition. Only those nations that swim on the crests of these waves will survive and be the winners in this relentless struggle. This implies moreover, that no nation can economically survive in isolation even if it possesses unique and an abundance of natural resources. Nor can it appeal to the bungled remedies of the past, such as the provision of subsidies to defunct industries. Nor can it depend on the invention of new populist nostrums, such as “fair trade” proposed by the dinosaur delegates in a Labor Party Conference in Hobart. On the contrary, only through the process of creative reconstruction in the economic, industrial, commercial, and social structures of a country, is the ”waydrome” to success. In this context, to talk about fair trade is to live in dodo fairyland. Indeed, it’s like asking Olympian super athletes, like Cathy Freeman, to be fair to their lesser competitors.


HOW TO DEAL WITH THE CHALLENGE OF GLOBALIZATION


Thomas Friedman in his book, ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’, argues, that ‘the revolution in technology, finance, and information did three things. It lowered the barriers of entry into almost any business, and it rapidly increased competition and the speed by which a product moves from being an innovation to being a commodity.’ Technology expands production to global dimensions, ‘knitting the world together.’ Finance with the collapse of regulated exchange rates, penetrates all the profitable niches of the world in its avaricious dynamic drive for profit. No raising of granite protective walls or the setting up of any barriers can prevent the ‘ “Electronic Herd’s” ‘ power to move its capital on world markets. Furthermore, information technology ‘brings home to everyone how ahead or behind they are in contrast to other countries.’ This provides a cue and spurs people to invest in countries where lucrative profits can be made by ‘investing through the internet on a global scale.’ Hence, the world is no longer carried on the back of the slow moving Atlas, but on the back of the swift electron-moving Microchip. In such a world all kind of barriers have the strength of a plastic balloon. But even if it were possible to erect impenetrable barriers, the countries that did so would bring upon themselves “the day after”, the consequences of “nuclear” economic and social devastation. That is, the result for these countries would be to throw themselves into the abyss of poverty and squalor, and hence unwittingly deprive their people the opportunity to become wealthier by being on the trajectory of globalization.

It’s by accepting the challenges of globalization with imagination and boldness that countries and their peoples will not only be strengthening their intellectual and moral fiber that will position them on the launching pad of globalization, but will also be transporting them to the land of cornucopia, to material and spiritual abundance. It’s imperative therefore, that political leaders deliberately and consciously decide to prepare their people to enter into this benign circle of feedback. That is, the intellectual and moral strength and knowledge of their people will maximize the benefits accruing from globalization and minimize its disadvantages. And the successes of actively being engaged with the cutting-edge of the globe will in turn further enhance this intellectual and moral vigor and knowledge of their people. In such a brave new world, one has to tell people to ‘remove their belongings’, to use a phrase of Vladimir Nabokov, of moaning. There is no room for resentment and gripe against countries and peoples who succeed. Success itself will be redistributed and will not remain in the same hands. Everyone will have the opportunity, endowed with grit, chutzpah, and entrepreneurial flair, to succeed.

For the first time in human history, globalization has the potential to bring in its wake the “democratization of success”. No scion of elites will be able to capture its benefits and lock them up ever safely and ever after in their vaults. The microchip is sovereign. Hence the corridors of wealth will be accessible to all who have the knowledge and ambition to use it. And if Shakespearian sovereigns could trade their kingdoms for a horse, business scions, like James Packer, will have to trade their wealth and power for a microchip.

Globalization also has the potential to usher in the empowerment of all classes and creeds. Ironically, capitalist globalization might realize Marx’s dream- the fulfillment of the individual who performs his practical affairs during the day, fishes in the evening, and writes and “practices” poetry during the night. And to cap it all, the Communist Manifesto’s slogan, “workers of the world unite”, could be accomplished by globalization. The only difference being that the unity of workers will not arise out of enmity against capitalist entrepreneurs, but out of the benign desire to emulate the achievements of the latter, as every worker with the required training and knowledge will have the ability of doing so.


HOW TO RAISE ALL BOATS AND CANOES IN THIS INUNDATION OF GLOBALIZATION


We need however to be critically aware of the downside of globalization and treat its blemishes effectively. It’s a truism that not all people will benefit from globalization. There will be losers! In all civilizations there have been winners and losers. The human race cannot jump over the shadow of this accursed fact. Either as a result of individual propensities or lack of resilience and ability to adapt to the new, and strenuous circumstances of globalization, many people will fall behind and will be disadvantaged. But because of globalization’s vast production of wealth, it has the capacity to compensate the losers, and indeed, to pull them out of their disadvantaged position. In this task governments will play a decisive role.

First, they will have to deal with the backlash that arises from people who are struck with the dire effects of globalization. While globalization shortens the distances of the world and makes it accessible to many people and improves economically their well-being, at the same time it lengthens the rusty chain of un- economic and defunct industries in many developed and developing countries. Many workers, therefore, who for years worked in these industries, are thrown out of them and find themselves unemployed and unemployable. The direct beneficiaries of globalization therefore, not only have a moral responsibility, but also a vested interest, to take care of the disenfranchised from the advantages of globalization, if the latter are to be prevented from being converted into modern Luddites, and start smashing the machine of globalization, by means of war, terrorism, and computer hacking.

Secondly, to head off and pacify this backlash, governments will have to prise open new thinking horizons, and to transform this resentment into support for globalization. Since inequality among human beings, as well as of other primates, is nature’s regime, governments must contrive clever policies to redress and reverse this order of inequality and bring some sort of balance in this inequity of nature. In the “clever” country, prosperity does not have to be equated with “equality”. People do not have to be equal in certain natural endowments with those who generate wealth and prosperity, to share the fruits of this prosperity. The process of globalization begets such huge wealth that it would not be difficult for governments to impose the burden upon, and indeed persuade, its producers, that it’s to their own interest to share part of this wealth with the disadvantaged of globalization. Especially, when this divestment of wealth will not diminish the capital investment funds of the former, as we will show below.

Thirdly, governments will redistribute this part of wealth by the following international multilateral policy mechanism, by imposing a levy or surtax on the profits of all “globetrotting” corporations, financial institutions, and foreign currency speculators. Once, these funds of the levy are collected by governments, they will be transmitted to an international body set up by these governments. Let us name this body the International Globalization Fund (IGF). The central task of this entity will be (a) to identify those nations and peoples whose livelihood has been affected negatively by globalization, and (b) to subsidize the buying of shares in multinational corporations and world financial institutions, by these nations and peoples. In the case of some people who might not have any financial savings of their own, the IGF will provide them with special securities or bonds, thus enabling them, despite their lack of savings, to be shareholders in this international economy. Moreover, such a policy will not engender any disincentives to private enterprise. As the funds accruing from the levy will not be spend by governments in fuzzy, boondoggle industrial plans or in subsidizing defunct industries, at the expense of the private sector. The build up of a “hydraulic pipe” between the international economy and the disadvantaged of this economy, will allow the funds that are transmitted to the latter in the form of subsidies and securities by the IGF, to be sluiced back through this pipe to the multinational corporations in the form of equity capital. Hence, the investment funds of these entrepreneurial entities will not be diminished.

Thus, the eyes of all, not only of those who gain directly from their engagement with globalization, will be focused on the screens of the computers. Even people who lack knowledge and adeptness to use the modern technology will enter and be denizens of this brave new world of the internet, as equity holders. Sharing the wealth that is spawned by the Midas microchip touch of globalization. The magic flying carpet of globalization will have everyone aboard.

It depends on the creative thinking, imagination and Thatcherite will and determination of governments whether globalization will be politically and economically sustainable. And whether by riding it, the fruits of its wealth will also be distributed to all those nations and peoples whose livelihoods are going to be lost in this process of ‘creative destruction’. Whether the opening of the floodgates of globalization will raise all boats and canoes in this global inundation of its waters.




The article was written on September 17, 2001, and was first published in the English supplement of Neos Kosmos