Democrats for Bush?
A friend whom I respect, because he's moved mountains for a cause I believe
in, wrote to point to a Boston Globe article about Ed Koch supporting George
Bush for re-election, Why
Koch is on Bush’s bandwagon. My friend writes:
This is what I was talking about re: your prediction that Bush wouldn't
get more absolute votes than last time and I said I knew a number of
folks that voted for Gore but were going to vote for Bush this time.
The author of the article, Jeff Jacoby, says that Ed Koch is a one-issue guy
this year:
"I've never before supported a Republican for president," Koch
told me last week. "But I'm doing so this time because of the one issue
that trumps everything else: international terrorism. In my judgment, the
Democratic Party just doesn't have the stomach to stand up to the terrorists.
But Bush is a fighter."
The article concludes: [Koch] is a loyal Democrat. But as JFK once said,
sometimes party loyalty asks too much.
Party Loyalty Always Asks Too Much.
Our government is run by people who depend on zealots for their power, since
only zealots are willing to do what has always been required: the hard work
of beating the streets for their designated egotist. To energize this "indispensable"
base, the strategists adopt the extreme positions that you would expect zealots
to require. Both my readers know that I believe the Internet creates ways for
reasonable people to exert political power, perhaps for the first time in history.
A Lever Long Enough to Suppress the World
Archimedes famously said that if you gave him a long enough lever, he could
lift the world. Using the long lever arm of mass media, a tiny core of politically
powerful people controls the rest of the population's choices, economics and
future.
Systems design is the study of how to balance inputs into and outputs from
a dynamic process so it optimally serves the needs of the highest possible number
of users of the process. From a systems design standpoint, American politics
is a disaster:
|
286,196,812
184,744,527
100,000,000
2,000,000
50,000
2,862
|
Americans*
non-voters*
inconsequential voters
voters who matter
political activists
political power elite |
 |
About a third of Americans vote, but
most vote so consistently that their votes, needs and opinions are inconsequential.
Just a few "swing" voters are the target of politicians' attention
and advertising, the only voters who matter. In the 2000
election, Gore received 50.5% of the popular vote, while losing
3 states–41 electoral votes–by a total of 6,611
votes. |
Only a sliver of the population is zealous enough to be active in politics.
Compared to the general population, it even takes a kind of zealotry to get
out and vote. I don't have the figures, but do any states have more than 1,000
full time activists? I'm not talking about the political hobbyists who will
canvass when asked or show up at a state convention and perform as directed,
but by activists I mean those who live for or off of politics and do their party's
bidding whenever asked. My working hypothesis is that there are no more than
50,000 active political foot soldiers at any one time, less than.02% of Americans.
Even if you think there are double or triple the number, the fraction is still
vanishingly small.
In turn, those few activists are manipulated by a tiny political elite which
is probably no more than .001% of the population (Joe Trippi says there are
a thousand of them, but my math works better if I almost triple his number,
to the 2,862 politicians, lobbyists, journalists and business leaders who actually
drive the country).
This tiny group of power brokers drives the agenda for a nation which the rest
of the world depends upon for its opportunities and constraints. This is a system
that no conscientious systems architect would sign off on, but which most Americans
meekly accept as how things have to be.
Conservative Koch Capitulates to Crush the Canaanites
The secret of NYC politics is the Jewish vote. Our Jewish friends are otherwise
rational people who want us to act contrary to our geopolitical interests to
support the Israeli right-wing politicians who are often unloved even in their
own country. It's understandable: if you had relatives in Israel, so would you.
But our goal is not beating the Arabs into submission, which is impossible,
our target is their hearts and minds.
Secularization is the antidote for most of the world's woes, both at home and
abroad. Intelligence is not just the title of a government activity, it's also
a requirement of any person or group threatened with deadly force. Only our
mind can overcome paralyzing anxiety, especially when politicians peddle fear
since it's the easiest way to win. And our mind must rise above the ignorant
groupthink that religious fervor forces on otherwise rational people.
New Yorkers understand the code words behind Ed Koch's position. We embrace
our Jewish friends, but most of the people who were actually harmed by the terrorists
three years ago oppose the war on Iraq, because they know it leaves unfinished
the real business of cutting off terrorists' air supply. They know this because,
unlike most Americans, they've been forced to study the real issues and to look
past the illusion of cosmetic security.
A Unique Resumé, Understanding Terrorism
John Robb,
the only other C-130 pilot I run into at tech conferences, has tackled the global
guerilla issue with unique skills and background:
Air Force Academy grad, Yale Masters, combat pilot supporting dark ops in Bosnia,
Senior Analyst at Forrester, President
of Gomez. Now he consults on counter terrorist
strategies. It's obvious that John Robb is not some knee-jerk leftie, incapable
of the tough-mindedness required to confront an enemy or build a world-class
organization. Since he's not running for office, he doesn't need to mouth the
platitudes that get ineffective people elected.
Like
George H. W. Bush, John understands that our corporate war on terror
Iraq is the wrong action at the wrong time. The enemies we need to overcome
are the global guerillas, the entrepreneurial thugs who are disrupting our fragile,
big-company-designed infrastructure precisely because it's so fragile. They
are engaged in Fourth
Generation Warfare (4GW):
4GW (fourth generation warfare) is the term used by military thinkers
to describe conflict at the start of the 21st century. In general, 4GW is
an extremely effective method of warfare that the US and its allies will find
very difficult to defeat (a slow burn, rather than complete eradication, may
be the best possible outcome).
John describes the three components that terrorists use to win a 4GW conflict:
Victory in 4GW warfare is won in the moral sphere. The aim of 4GW is
to destroy the moral bonds that allows the organic whole to exist. This is
done by reinforcing the following (according to Boyd):
- Menace. Attacks that undermine or threaten basic human survival instincts.
- Mistrust. Increases divisions between groups (ie. conservatives and
liberals in the US).
- Uncertainty. Undermine economic activity by decreasing confidence
in the future.
These are the methods our forefathers used to defeat the greatest, most arrogant
empire ever seen, back in 1779 and 1812, and they are the methods now being
used against the greatest, most arrogant empire ever seen.
Who's Boyd, and What Does He know That We Don't?
The Boyd whom John quotes in his three components of the terrorists' playbook
is Col.
John Boyd. Often called America's greatest fighter pilot, Boyd transformed
the way military aircraft – in particular the F-15 and F-16 – were
designed with his revolutionary "Energy-Maneuverability Theory," fighting
the Air Force's entrenched ideas every step of the way. He then dedicated lonely
years to a radical theory of conflict that at the time was mostly ignored, but
now is acclaimed as the most influential thinking about conflict since Sun Tzu
(from Amazon's description
of Robert Coram's Boyd biography).
John Robb embraces
Boyd's systematic thinking:
Col. John Boyd (he died in 1997) is considered one of America's best
military thinkers. His thinking dramatically influenced the plan of attack
in the first gulf war. Boyd's thinking also serves as a good basis for a deeper
understanding of 4GW (fourth generation warfare).
Grand strategy, according to Boyd, is a quest to isolate your enemy's
(a nation-state or a global terrorist network) thinking processes from connections
to the external/reference environment. This process of isolation is essentially
the imposition of insanity on a group. To wit: any organism that operates
without reference to external stimuli (the real world), falls into a destructive
cycle of false internal dialogues. These corrupt internal dialogues eventually
cause dissolution and defeat.
The dynamic of Boyd's grand strategy is to isolate your enemy across
three essential vectors (physical, mental, and moral), while at the same time
improving your connectivity across those same vectors. Here's more detail
- Physical isolation is accomplished by severing communications
both to the outside world (ie. allies) and internal audiences (ie. between
branches of command and between the command organization and its supporters).
- Mental isolation is done through the introduction
of ambiguous information, novel situations, and by operating at a tempo
an enemy cannot keep up with. A lack of solid information impedes decision
making.
- Moral isolation is achieved when an enemy improves
its well being at the expense of others (allies) or violates rules of behavior
they profess to uphold (standards of conduct). Moral rules are a very important
reference point in times of uncertainty. When these are violated, it is
very hard to recover.
Robb doesn't think we're doing very well in combating the forces that isolate
us from each other, from our former allies (far more experienced than we in
fighting terrorists), from our mental discipline and from our moral compass.
His scorecard of our so-called war on terror follows
the above list.
The Great Disconnect
Every one of us is forced to be disciplined in our profession. We understand
that the devil is in the details, that what matters are the non-obvious disciplines
that our customers and our investors really don't understand. In short, we look
beyond the surface in order to succeed.
But politics embraces PR, not operations. Politicians love cosmetic
security. By declaring war on the enemies we can defeat impressively (the false
internal dialogues Boyd cautions us against), they ignore the tough-minded,
politically more difficult operations we must undertake to be secure.
Global Guerillas
is a crash course in the details that matter, and a bibliography of the books
that treat terrorism seriously rather than politically. If you're willing to
have the discipline of an insider, start there. But if you want to follow the
herd over the cliff, just keep watching TV. Here's John Robb's prescription:
A vision statement for this conflict
From this analysis it is clear that the US is, as the result of this
war, more isolated than our enemy. However, Boyd suggests that the best corrective
action is for the US to articulate a grand unifying vision for this war. A
"with us or against us" approach and unilateral military action
is not productive (it drives isolation). A better vision statement:
The United States will commit all of the resources at its disposal
to help nations everywhere preserve those values that we all hold as vital
to our future success."
I don't fault our political elite for being strong on terror, I fault them
for being ineffective patsies: they've taken the coward's way out by choosing
to attack their political enemies rather than the enemies of the noble American
experiment in freedom of individual thought and action.
Robb's Roost
For those willing to master the real issues facing us, here's a list of John
Robb's compelling analytics:
10:20:52 AM 
|
