The End of The Aughties

There are 72 days left in the Aughties, y'know the current decade: 2000 - 2009. I was looking back at the decade, and what are its most important events. Here's my little list:

9/11 -- This is obvious. September 11, 2001 is clearly one of the most pivotal days in the history of the United States. In the previous century, there are probably only a couple of comparable events: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, V-E day, the moon landing, the JFK assassination. For several generations of Americans, 9/11 will be the most historical day of their life.

The Election of Barack Obama -- President Obama's election was historical in so many ways. Obviously it was historic that an African American was elected President. It also marked a transition to a new generation -- Obama is 15 years younger than Bush or Clinton (and let's not even mention McCain.) Obama is not only a Democrat, but is not from the more conservative, Southern Democrats of Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Social Media -- Here's where maybe my perspective is skewed by living in Silicon Valley. Social media is not a single event, in fact it is a progression of events. To me, it really started with blogging and YouTube, and then exploded with MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. It is a fundamental change in the Internet. Every user is a creator of content, as well as a consumer. It is the great democratizing effect of the Internet, and it is only getting started. Even now we are starting to see how businesses, celebrities, etc. realize that not only can they use social media as a channel to customers and fans, but that it is a two-way channel.

Hurricane Katrina -- What made Hurricane Katrina so pivotal is that opened the eyes of Americans. It made people realize that many of their fellow Americans live in awful conditions. The divide between socioeconomic classes in America were never so obvious as during Katrina. When Kanye West went on TV and said that George Bush didn't care about black people, he wasn't just being a jackass, he was stating a sentiment shared by a lot of people.

The iPhone -- What did I say earlier about having a Silicon Valley perspective? Anyways... The iPhone has completely changed so many things for so many people. In the 90's, The Internet changed people's lives by bringing them information. Now the iPhone lets them carry it around in their pocket. Other phones were certainly moving in that direction, but the iPhone broke through by combining a large display with highly usable touch based interface. This revolution continued with the release of the App Store. Now don't get me wrong. A lot of other phones are following suit -- but that's exactly why the iPhone was so historical.

That's my short list. I know it's obviously biased from me being American and living in Silicon Valley. What did I miss? What doesn't belong?

War and Decision

Recently I started reading Doug Feith's War and Decision.

I say "started reading" because I have not finished it yet. The book is about how the Bush Administration and in particular the Defense Department reacted to 9/11 and managed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I have read most of the material on 9/11 and Afghanistan, but have not gone into the deeper material on Iraq.

I would highly recommend the book. Feith takes a very analytical approach that is full of insight and is though provoking. However, the book certainly has its faults. If you take the book as an extended position paper, then I would view these faults as fatal. If you take the book as a memoir, then these faults are perhaps the most valuable aspects of the narrative.

First off, Feith devotes a lot of the book to calling out statements by journalists and political opponents, and completely disproving these statements. From a literary perspective, this is easily the greatest weakness of the book. It is really beneath Feith to so painstakingly thumb his nose at detractors. How much joy can we really take in disproving pundits? This just in, journalists exaggerate and twist the truth in the quest for sensationalism...

I guess you can forgive Feith for all of this, as it must be frustrating to have to hear so many false claims in the press on a daily basis. Fine. However, the other mistake that Feith makes is not as annoying, but is in many was much worse. The funny part is that it is a mistake that, if we buy into Feith's characterizations, that his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, would have immediately pointed out. Feith claims to build up logical arguments for the decisions made by the Bush Administration, but he fails to point out the assumptions behind these decisions and their severe consequences. According to Feith, Rumsfeld was notorious for demanding to know the assumptions made by his analysts and advisors, hence the irony of Feith's prose.

The most basic and essential example of this is the reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Feith & co. immediately started thinking about how to broaden the response beyond just the perpetrators. This assumption, that the response needed to be broad, is hardly questioned. The only hand-waving given for it is that such a response would be more like a police action (punish the criminals) and thus ineffective. Justifications are only developed after the initial idea is pursued. For example, one justification is that a broad military action is the most likely way to prevent further attacks without negatively affecting the American way of life. Maybe this is true, the book is certainly thought provoking, but this justification is only developed ex post facto.

So more examples... Feith states that Iraq having WMDs was a given that everyone just accepted. He says that in late 2001 nobody would have argued that Iraq did not have WMDs. Feith also states that another given was that another 9/11-ish attack was imminent. It is not hard to see that if you start out assuming that the U.S. needed to make a broad military reaction, that Iraq had WMDs, and that devastating attacks were imminent, then you have to conclude the U.S. had to invade Iraq.

Anyways, I will reiterate that the book is good read, especially if you are an opponent of the war, as I am. Feith does admit early on that the Administration did not do a good job of communicating to the public. He underplays this (at least in the first third of the book or so, perhaps this changes.) Poor communication and an act of war have no place together in a democracy, at least in my opinion.

Election Results

There's a lot of happy Democrats these days. Tuesday's elections could not have gone much better for them. Crazybob pointed out that a big win on Tuesday was not necessarily a good thing in terms of winning in 2008. I'm generally pleased. Many libertarians like to point out that gridlock is a good thing in Washington. I'll more or less agree with that.

Of course part of me wonders why it took two years for people to realize what a terrible mistake Iraq was. That's the real difference between now and 2004, right? There are a lot more people willing to say something negative about us being in Iraq now, but in 2004 such people would be quickly labeled unpatriotic. So what's changed? It may sound glib, but I don't think most people are that bothered by the American casualties and they certainly don't give a damn about the Iraqi casualties. So I guess the main reasons are just the general lack of progress and probably more importantly, the fading of the blood lust inspired by 9/11.