The Useless Tree

A Poem by Wang Wei

A friend (thanks Tracy!) recently gave me David Hinton's translation of poems by Wang Wei, the great Tang poet. I like Hinton's translations of Chinese philosophy, precisely because he translates so much poetry, which, I think, gives him a certain appreciation of the lyric qualities of Chuang Tzu and Mencius and others. 

I came upon a poem that captured the moment I find myself in now.  It is entitled "Mourning Yin Yao."

How long can a life last? And once
it’s gone it’s formless all over again.

I think of how you waited for death:
ten thousand ways a heart wounds.

Your gentle mother’s still not buried,
your daughter’s hardly turned ten,

but outside the city, cold-silence wind-
scoured expanses, I listen to lament

on and on. Clouds drift boundless skies,
birds wing through without a sound,

and travelers travel deserted silence
through a midday sun’s frozen clarity.

I remember you back then, still alive,
asking to study unborn life with me,

but my guidance came too late. Sad
how you never found understanding.

And those old friends here with gifts—
they never reached you either. So many

ways we failed you. All bitter lament, I
return to my brush-and-bramble gate.

Let me focus on the first two couplets.   The opening two lines reveal Wang's immersion in Chan Buddhism, which itself is an amalgamation of the Buddhist ideas and practices that gradually moved from India to China, and the Taoist ideas and practices indigenous to China.  Thus, it is not surprising that Wang's contemplation of death brings him to an appreciation of the formlessness of life, a notion that I associate with Chuang Tzu and the Tao Te Ching, though especially the former. 

The second two lines brought my aunt to mind.  She was not comfortable in her last days.  The slow decline of her body and mind frustrated her.  There were good moments, but as the end drew near these became fewer and fewer.  Just before she passed away she slipped into a peaceful unconsciousness.  I thought she was sleeping but obviously it was something deeper. I was relieved at that time, not knowing what was coming, because she seemed to have escaped "the ten thousand ways a heart wounds."   And now she has for good.

She did not have the same sorrows to which Wang Wei refers - her parents are long dead and she was unmarried and childless.  Would her heart have been even more wounded if she had the burden of worrying about a surviving mother and daughter? 

I do not share Wang Wei's sense of failure.  Of course, there may have been more I could have done for her.  But she would have done what she would do, regardless of my counsel.  She lived out her time in Way.  And so, without the bitterness, I return to my own brush-and-bramble gate.

Do not go gentle into that good Dao

Dylan Thomas was not a Daoist. 

This thought comes to mind today as I mourn my aunt's passing.  She was 77 and in chronically bad health for some time.  She had to go to the emergency room at about one this morning and I sat with her there for a couple of hours.  I thought she had stabilized and would be admitted and would be there when I awoke at daybreak.  But no, the call came while the dark still hung in the air, the call that no one ever wants to answer, the call from my sister to say that Aunt Pat had died.

As I sat with her in those last hours she did not relax, she did not sigh and give over to mortality.  She fidgeted and tried to talk, even though only about half of the words were audible.  Her rage came through.  She wanted to be in a more comfortable bed, she wanted to be rid of the IVs, she wanted to be home.  It brought Dylan Thomas to mind:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This runs in my family.  My father (my aunt Pat was my mother's sister, unrelated to him) loved Thomas as did my mother.  She had me read that poem at my father's graveside eighteen years ago - fitting, since the poem itself is a son speaking to a father.  So even though my aunt was from the other side of the family, she was true to this form: she would not simply accept death, she would press back against it as long as she could, she would not go gentle into that good night.

And this marks my divergence from the family pattern.  Although I have yet to confront my own demise, in recent years as I have faced the loss of my mother and my son I have found solace in Chuang Tzu and his acceptance all that comes.  He counsels us not to rage, rage against the dying of the light, but to embrace each transformation, even the physical transformation of death, as a marvel.   When one of his characters is facing  his end and is asked if he resented it, he replies:

This life we're given comes in its own season, and then follows its vanishing away.  If you're at ease in your season, if you can dwell in its vanishing, joy and sorrow never touch you.  This is what the ancients called getting free.  If you can't get free, you're tangled in things. And things have never overcome heaven.  So what is there to resent. (92)

My aunt did not have it wrong.  She expressed her inner Integrity, her De.  Raging against death was a part of who she was, just as it was for my father and mother and Dylan Thomas.  Indeed, there was much that was good in her life, much that she did not want to relinquish: she was a gifted teacher who helped countless children learn how to read; she was a generous neighbor; a lover of animals; and she shared with me her love for her family and her hometown, Washington DC.  I may have a different orientation to death (at least I think I do) but she followed Way where it led her.

Catherine Patricia Lane, July 24, 1931 - January 30, 2009

Rest in Peace

Confucius at Williams College

I teach at Williams College.  One of the things I teach is ancient Chinese philosophy, including Confucianism (The Analects, Mencius, Xun Zi).   Yesterday, in a conversation with a colleague, it came to my attention that an interest in Confucianism is something that has existed here, in this little corner of Massachusetts, for a hundred years at least.  Here's the story.

Harry Garfield was president of Williams from 1908-1934.  Before he came back (he was an alumnus from the class of 1885; and, yes, a son of US president James Garfield) he had encountered Confucius, at least The Analects, somewhere in his intellectual development.  He quoted what sounds like passage 2.15 in his presidential induction speech at Williams in 1908:

"There is love of knowing without the love of learning, the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind."

The Ames translation of the whole passage reads:

The Master said: "Learning without due reflection leads to perplexity; reflection without learning leads to perilous circumstances."

I don't know if he encountered The Analects here.  I'll have to dig around in our archives to see if any of my predecessors was teaching that text then.

Garfield's interest in Confucius continued while he was at Williams.  My colleague James McAllister has given me a letter, dated 1928, in which Garfield invites Chen Huan-Chang to come to Williamstown (I am adding a link to the letter at the end of this post).  Chen's magnum opus, The Economic Principles of Confucius and his School, was published in 1911, and Garfield writes that he read the book "immediately upon its publication" and that it "...told me more of Confucius and his day than I had known and made a deep impression upon me."   He also says that he met a descendant of Confucius himself in Williamstown(!) and had "Dr. Kung" sign the first volume of Chen's book.

Needless to say, I ran to our library to find Chen's book to see if the signature was there. Alas, even though an original edition of Chen's text (acquired by the Williams College library in 1912) is now sitting here on my desk, it does not have "Dr Kung's" signature.  That must have been in Garfield's personal copy.

It turns out that Chen's book had a fair amount of influence.  Henry Wallace, who came to Williamstown to participate in Garfield's Institute of Politics, and who later became Secretary of Agriculture and, eventually, Vice President, read and admired The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School (search for "Chen" in the document and scroll down) and used ideas he gleaned from that book, especially the "ever normal granary," in his policy making.  I can imagine conversations here in Williamstown between Garfield and Wallace, working through passages from Mencius brought to them through Chen's book.  I don't know if Chen himself ever made it here.

Chen took his Confucianism seriously.  While writing his dissertation, which ultimately became The Economic Principles, at Columbia, he was active in the New York Chinese community, even writing a song about Confucius for a New Year's celebration in 1910 (scroll down to third item).  In 1913 the New York Times reported that he was in China working at the highest political levels with Yuan Shih-kai to make Confucianism the "state religion" of China.  That didn't work out so well.  I imagine that by 1928, when he was in the US and received Garfield's invitation to travel to Williamstown, he must have been despairing of the civil war that was then developing in his homeland.  

So I feel like I am carrying on a well established Williamstown endeavor: bringing ancient Chinese thought into modern American life.  I have not yet risen to Garfield's accomplishment of bringing a descendant of Confucius here, but I now know what I should strive for....

Here's Garfield's letter:

Download Garfieldchenletter

Spring

Today is Spring Festival, Qun Jie.  We tend to say "Chinese New Year" but, while it is true that it may be the most important family holiday for many Chinese people, it also signals something  universal: the beginning of Spring. 

I am often impressed by the wisdom of the old calendar, rooted as it is in agricultural life, and the practices that lay behind Spring  Festival: the observations that produced the understanding that the second full moon after the winter solstice marks a significant seasonal change.  Today I noticed that the sun was brighter in my front window.  Even though it was below freezing (about 25 degrees F), the snow was slowly receding from the front of my house, evaporating under the glare of solar energy.  The days are noticeably longer than a month ago.  Even though we clearly remain in the grip of winter, hints of spring are in the air.  The birds sense it, too.  A few small sparrows hopped on the pavement under my car in the driveway, searching for the imminent warmth.

The old farmers knew that this is a moment of change.  Subtle change, but change nonetheless.  Not as dramatic a transformation as the vernal equinox, but the beginning of the processes that will bring that more obvious moment to life.  

So let's say Happy Spring!  It is a new year, certainly, but is is also an old pattern: the darkness gives way to the light, the cold to the warm, the stillness of winter to the bustle of spring. 

Happy Spring.  And Fu, too.

Confucian and Taoist Perspectives on the US Economic Crisis

When stock markets made back some of their losses at the end of 2008, I was hopeful that the economic decline in the US might be easing.  But no.  The past few weeks have brought markets down once again.  Credit has thawed (see, for example, the TED spread) but equities are down again and unemployment is up.  Things will be bad for some time.

So, what would Confucius do?  Or Chuang Tzu? I have written a bit about how Confucians and Taoists might respond to certain aspects of the economic decline but I want to try to pull the ideas together in a more focused manner.   Here goes.

Even though modern globalized markets are not at all a part of the direct experience of the ancient writers, we can derive certain basic ideas from the old books that are applicable to our complex and difficult times.  To get right to it, I think a Confucian-Mencian outlook would stress caring for one another, and a Taoist view would focus on acceptance.  Let me draw both of these ideas out further.

Confucius himself is not afraid of material deprivation.  A person should always, from a Confucian view, place the fulfillment his or her duties to family and close social relations first, before work that might allow for a more comfortable lifestyle.   Remember Analects 7.16 :

The Master said: "Poor food and water for dinner, a bent arm for a pillow - that is where joy resides.  For me, wealth and renown without honor are nothing but drifting clouds.

Now this might suggest a certain basic standard of living that a person must provide for his or her own family.  If a head of household loses a job, and there is no money for food and rent, then what?  Not a matter of conspicuous consumption, but a need for the basic elements of life?  It is then that, I believe, a Confucian would urge us to care for one another.  The first line of defense should come from family and neighbors and friends. 

Concretely, a Confucian would stress every individual's affirmative obligation to relieve the distress of those closest to them.  If a relative is in dire straits, family members should offer help.  If a neighbor is having trouble, those nearby should offer assistance.  Those who have more than they need to provide the basics for their own family, should give to organizations like local food banks, which respond to the needs of the immediate community.  Other kinds of charitable giving would be good, but a Confucian would want to emphasize closer personal connection.  Actually going down to a place like the Berkshire Food Project, helping to cook the food and distribute it, those sorts of conscious and active involvements would come closer to the Confucian ideal of performing one's duty.  Physically going through the well intentioned enactments (which is what Ritual is all about) is better than writing a check.  The actual doing of the act makes us better people.

What of government policy?  Confucians would focus less on "stimulus" and more on "assistance."  What do people need to get through difficult economic times?  A Confucian president (and I do not think that Obama is a Confucian president, he merely has certain Mencian aspects) would want to make sure places like the Berkshire Food Project could keep up its good work.  I think this passage from Mencius (which I know I quote a lot) says as much:

"If you want to put my words into practice, why not return to fundamentals?  When every five-acre farm has mulberry trees around the farmhouse, people wear silk at fifty.  And when the proper seasons of chickens and pigs and dogs are not neglected, people eat meat at seventy.  When hundred-acre farms never violate their proper seasons, even large families don't go hungry.  Pay close attention to the teaching in village schools, and extend it to the child's family responsibilities - then, when their silver hair glistens, people won't be out on roads and paths hauling heavy loads.  Our black-haired people free of hunger and cold, wearing silk and eating meat in old age - there have never been such times without a true emperor." (1.7)

This is not to say that the government should directly provide food (chickens and pigs) and clothing (silk) to people, but it does suggest that the government should concern itself with facilitating the acquisition of these sorts of essentials.  Thus, a regulatory regime that did not obstruct people from getting what they need ("proper seasons") would be a Confucian goal.  Also, something like occasional direct payments to people (a la the "stimulus checks that were issued last year) would be supported, for the purpose of sustenance and only secondarily for "stimulus."

And notice, too, that maintaining education in hard times would also be a Confucian priority.

All in all, there is an old fashioned liberal quality to the Confucian response, a focus on serving the people, providing for their needs, before any concerns about bailing out banks or finding new investment opportunities.

Taoists would, predictably, be less interventionist.  "Acceptance" is, to my mind, a central theme of Chuang Tzu, and that sensibility would have implications for the current crisis.  I think a Chuang Tzu Taoist would counsel acceptance at both the individual and government levels.  Those beset by economic hardship should not read into their situation any sort of moral lesson. They are not bad for having run into difficulty.  They are simply caught up in the turbulent transformation of that part of Way termed "economy."  How else can we understand this passage (which is another of my oft-quoted):

Birth and death, living and dead, failure and success, poverty and wealth, honor and dishonor, slander and praise, hunger and thirst, hot and cold - such are the transformations of this world, the movements of its inevitable nature.  They keep vanishing into one another before our very eyes, day in and day out, but we'll never calibrate what drives them.  So how can they steal our serenity, how can they plunder the spirit's treasure-house?  If you let them move together, at ease and serene, you'll never lose your joy.  And if you do this without pause, day in and day out, you'll invest all things with spring.  (75)

Just let economic circumstances wash over you.  Find what is possible, let go of what is untenable.  Certainly don't live in the past.  Eventually, things will turn around and you will ride Way up just as you had rode Way down.

A critique here might be: but that doesn't help me pay the rent.  And that is true. Taoism is the least instrumental of all of the schools of pre-Qin Chinese thought.  So, if you really need to pay the rent, you should probably look elsewhere for workable ideas.  What Taoism can do, however, is to show you how to not let the rent get to you...

At the level of government, Taoism would not offer a fifteen point plan for active reform of the economy.  There is something of a laissez-faire attitude in Taoism generally, which would suggest something closer to libertarian non-intervention (though not, perhaps, of the Cato Institute variety).  I do not interpret wu-wei ("nothing doing") as literally no action at all.  Rather, I would read it as not too much action, and only that which accords with the unfolding of events.  To extrapolate this to the current moment, any Taoist policy (and the very terms seems an oxymoron) would aim not at "stimulus" or investment, but, rather, at mild redistribution.  Take passage 53 of the Tao Te Ching:

Understanding sparse and sparser still
I travel the great Way,
nothing to fear unless I stray.

The great Way is open and smooth,
but people adore twisty paths:
government in ruins,
fields overgrown
and graineries bare,

they indulge in elegant robes
and sharp swords,
lavish food and drink,
all those trappings of luxury.

It's vainglorious thievery -
not the Way, not the Way at all.

There's an anger there.  A disgust at those who profit off of others: it's "not the Way at all."  It would seem then, if undue economic inequality is unnatural "vainglorious thievery," that taking from those with much and giving to those with little might be countenanced by a Taoist Secretary of Treasury.  Not too much, but some redistribution. 

So maybe, pace the Western Confucian, Grover Cleveland is not the paradigmatic Taoist President. But neither would be FDR or LBJ or other establishment liberal icons: they are simply too interventionist.  It would be someone who does not fit neatly into our categories of liberal or conservative, someone who would be generally non-interventionist but open to some redistribution...

What would unite Confucians and Taoists, however, might be the thng that is hardest for Americans to take: accepting a more modest standard of living, simpler food, plainer clothes, basic housing, a "bent arm for a pillow."  But that is what we seem destined for....

Sun Tzu on the American Exit from Iraq

One of the benefits of teaching is the new ideas that are generated in conversation with students.  That happened the other day.  My class was discussing Sun Tzu and the impending US withdrawal from Iraq, focusing on a recent report from the Center for American Progress. In the course of the exchange one student came up with a novel point, one that I think goes to one of the key assertions of the report.

The CAP report argues that the US military presence in Iraq creates a disincentive for domestic policy-makers to make the hard choices that genuine political reconciliation requires:

The U.S. military presence in Iraq is not politically neutral. It creates a distinct set of incentives for political actors that directly work against the reconciliation that U.S. diplomats try to promote. U.S. military dominance and support absolves the major political actors from having to make the tough decisions necessary to achieve a power-sharing equilibrium.

Thus, they argue, an American withdrawal is more likely to facilitate an ultimate political settlements, something that the "surge" has failed to achieve.

One student in my class argued that Sun Tzu would likely agree with this.  The obvious Art of War idea to support that sort of claim would be the various statements that tell commanders to avoid protracted warfare, which raises economic costs and saps political support for a campaign, outcomes that are manifest in Iraq.  But the student brought in another idea, referring to passage 11.5 (Griffith translation):

Set the troops to their tasks without imparting your designs; use them to gain advantage without revealing the dangers involved.   Throw them into a perilous situation and they survive; put them in death ground and they will live.  For when the army is placed in such a situation it can snatch victory from defeat.

Sun Tzu is here talking about the psychological dynamics of commanding one's own troops.  He is saying that a commander should consciously place his men in difficult circumstances, even "death ground" (i.e. places where there is no way out except to fight like hell), because their natural instinct to live will spur them on to greater effort and achievement.   This passage can also be applied to the political situation in Iraq: when the US leaves, Iraqi political leaders will be on their own, in a more "perilous situation," perhaps even "death ground," and thus will be forced to work toward some sort of political settlement.  As long as the US remains, those Iraqi leaders do not have to face the difficulties and can put off the day of political reckoning.

Of course what matters is which sort of political settlement is pursued.  It is possible, maybe likely, that some Iraqi leaders, especially those now in power, will use violent means against their political rivals.  Indeed, there would seem to be a high probability of an increase in violence when the US leaves.  But that is the nature of the situation.  The civil war(s) have been suspended for a time while various factions wait for what they know is the inevitable US withdrawal.  They avoid political agreements that might create institutions or practices that could limit their power, in favor of a fight in the not so distant future that could yield them a better political position. There is a chance that a stable political settlement could emerge without high levels of fighting.  Yet if some groups, Sunnis for example, feel that they are being shut out, that they are on "death ground," the violence could be quite bad.

Given the overall situation, however, I think the student is right.  The high costs of the war and the strategic disadvantage it has created for the US (producing a regional context in which Iranian power is very much magnified) would lead Sun Tzu to agree with disengagement.  And if the hope is for stabilization of Iraqi politics,  Sun Tzu would also likely agree that a US exit, by placing Iraqi leaders in a more "perilous situation," would serve that end.

Obama's Mencian Themes

I was as happy as all of those cold people out on the Mall in Washington DC yesterday, even though I watched the proceedings in the warmth of the local movie theater, transformed into a public square for Obama's inauguration.  And as I listened to the speech, I heard some resonances with Mencius.

First this:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

I want to focus here on the phrase "the force of our example" and think about it in a broader context than foreign policy, in terms of leadership in general. (I should note, however, that the state-controlled media in the PRC cut away from the line about communism in their live feed.  Still scared of Mencius, I guess...).

Leading by example, not by coercion or force, is central to Mencius, and Confucianism generally.  Take this:

Mencius said: "The noble-minded teach in five ways. They transform like rain coming in its season.  They realize Integrity.  They perfect talents.  They answer questions.  They cultivate themselves and so stand apart as examples.  These five ways are how the noble-minded teach. (13.40)

Let's hope Obama moves in this direction.  It may be impossible, in modern politics anywhere, to rely sole or even predominantly on leading by example.  But being able to do so is founded upon a certain kind of acceptance and legitimacy.  If Obama can lead by example, it will be a sign that he is doing things well.  And I like that line about transforming "like rain coming in its season." It captures something of the feeling that many Americans have today.  It was time for a change, and Obama is the embodiment of change.  He is the rain in season.  Now he has to get on to the other forms of Mencian teaching.

And I must say that I was heartened to read that the first phone calls to foreign leaders went to major players in the Middle East, including Palestinian President Abbas.  Helping to rebuild after the horrible Gaza attack and working to prevent further violence there, on all sides, is critically important.

There was another, more prominent, Mencius moment in the speech, here:

...What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

If Mencius had been on the speech writing team he would have included reference to our duty to family and neighbors and friends (which I suspect Obama would have accepted), but he would have accepted the gradually expanding universe of duties running to nation and world.  Remember the bear paw and the fish:

Mencius said: "I want fish, and I also want bear paws.  If I can't have both, I'll give up fish and take bear paws.  I want life, and I also want Duty.  If I can't have both, I'll give up life and take Duty.  I want life - but there's something I want more than life, so I won't do something wrong just to stay alive.  I loathe death - but there's something I loathe more than death, so there are disasters I won't avoid. (11.10)

He puts things rather more starkly than does Obama but the emphasis on Duty is clear.  

The thing about Duty and Mencius, however, is that you have to actually do it.  You can't just talk about it, you have to enact and fulfill Duty.  So, Obama's speech was good, but now is the time to do it.

The Natural Order of Things

This morning I followed a link posted by Andrew Sullivan that led me to an article by Matt Ridley in The Spectator entitled, "The Natural Order of Things."  Of course you know what I was thinking.  And while I found some Taoist suggestions, alas nowhere was there a direct consideration of the idea of Way.

Ridley is thinking about Darwin, and he writes: 

Living beings are eddies in the stream of entropy. That is to say, while the universe gradually becomes more homogeneous and disordered, little parts of it can reverse the trend and become briefly more ordered and complex by capturing packets of energy. It happens each time a baby is conceived. Built by 20,000 genes that turn each other on and off in a symphony of great precision, and equipped with a brain of ten trillion synapses, each refined and remodelled by early and continuing experience, you are a thing of exquisite neatness, powered by glucose. Says Darwin, this came about by bottom-up emergence, not top-down dirigisme. Faithful reproduction, occasional random variation and selective survival can be a surprisingly progressive and cumulative force: it can gradually build things of immense complexity. Indeed, it can make something far more complex than a conscious, deliberate designer ever could: with apologies to William Paley and Richard Dawkins, it can make a watchmaker.

Order in complexity, isn't that what Way is?  Of course, a Taoist understanding would be more humble about our capacity to discern the order of Way.  We can certainly perceive patterns of experience and behavior and natural occurrence, but there will always be variations that defy our expectations and predictions.  

Ridley is doing something interesting here: arguing that Darwin, so often championed by the political left, was very much influenced by Adam Smith, the hero of the right.  Both put forth ideas of "undesigned systems," large-scale processed driven by myriad individual acts or decisions that bring forth broader patterns, even structures, of species or markets or whatever.  Ultimately, this is an argument against a singular creator-God. 

And that is a Taoist idea as well.  Way is self-generating and has no identifiable beginning (and no end!).  Being and non-being ebb and flow into each other.   Actually, it is more than a Taoist idea, it likely circulated more widely in the intellectual world of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period.   Here's Frederick Mote:

The basic point which outsiders have found so hard to detect is that the Chinese, among all peoples ancient and recent, primitive and modern, are apparently unique in having no creation myth, that is, they have regarded the world and humans as uncreated, as constituting the central features of a spontaneously self-generating cosmos having no creator, god, ultimate cause or will external to itself. (13)

Spontaneously self-generating cosmos having no creator, etc.  Darwin would agree with that, no?

One Last Time with Gusto: Bush Lost the War!

With the impending inauguration of Obama, a lot of revisionism about the Bush years is streaming forth from various sources.  But as far as Iraq is concerned, I'm sticking with my old friend the Aardvark, who is now blogging under his real name: Marc Lynch.  He writes:

I have a hard time imagining anything as tedious as rehashing those tired debates from the campaign about the "surge" -- perhaps we could have another round of arguments as to whether the surge brigades arriving in the spring of 2007 caused the Sunni turn against al-Qaeda in the fall of 2006?

The change in approach (was it strategy or tactics?) that has come to be known as the "surge" has contributed to a reduction in violence, and that's a good thing.  Fewer people are being killed.  But this does not constitute military "victory."  Marc, in another piece, gets right to the point:

...beneath the superficial veneer of improved security upon which most Americans have focused, Iraq continues to be torn apart by deep divides over ethnicity and religion and by escalating battles between political insiders and popular forces. Despite some promising developments, little political reconciliation has taken place since the "surge" began.

I am a bit concerned about the politics here.  When Obama comes in on Tuesday, Bush-backers will say that the war has been won; thus, as the conflict continues, reignited by any of several flash points (provincial elections, the Basra situation, the Kirkuk impasse, etc.) they will then turn on Obama and complain that he has lost the war.  But his is not true.  Bush lost the war and he has never overcome that defeat by re-constructing a politically viable Iraq. As long as Iraq remains a broken state, the central government unable to control its own territory and riven by deep internal divides, it will continue to be a strategic problem for the US.  Bush created that problem by breaking the Iraqi state, and he has not solved it.

We can think about this in terms of Sun Tzu (because that is what I am reading now with students).  In Chapter Three of The Art of War, he writes:

Generally, in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this. To capture the enemy's entire army is better than to destroy it; to take intact a regiment, a company, or a squad is better than to destroy them.

In Iraq, the US initially took that state intact.  American forces, following the Sun Tzu idea that speed in execution is of the utmost importance, very quickly fought their way north from Kuwait, taking Baghdad faster than anyone really thought possible.  It was what happened next that lost the war. The US did not impose internal order (remember all the looting?); the US did not create an effective government; and, perhaps worst of all, the US disbanded the Iraqi army, shattering the coercive power of the central state apparatus.  Essentially, the country has never fully recovered from that destruction.  The US had won the war, in a sense, only to lose it shortly thereafter.  That, in any event, might be what Sun Tzu would say.

So, let's remember, when the Bush dead-enders come out of the woodwork to blame Obama for the continuing Iraq mess:

Bush Lost the War!

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan is on to the same issue....

Women and Children First: Confucius Would Agree

The hair-raising crash landing and rescue of flight 1549 has been all over the news the past couple of days.  It is mind-boggling that no one was seriously injured.

As I processed the news I noticed something: the invocation of the "women and children first" rule, the notion that in dire circumstance, such as a boat sinking, women and children should be allowed to escape first.  This idea goes back, in Anglo-American practice (there might be similar ideas in other cultures with distinct histories), to at least 1852 (ht Jezebel).  As I heard it mentioned by people who had suffered through the crash, and by various commentators, it struck me as a Confucian idea.

That may sound odd to some, who associate Confucianism with a fairly rigid patriarchy that historically in China valued men over women and children.   But Confucianism has always been more than crude patriarchy (even if it has been historically connected to patriarchy).      

The core of Confucian thinking is Duty, living up to our obligations to family and society.  The particular meaning of Duty emerges from specific social contexts: that which is considered an obligation will vary by time and by place. The idea of "women and children first" is generally understood and circulated in American society, even if it is unevenly practiced.  Thus, to some degree, it was not surprising that it should emerge as an organizing principle for getting people off of the downed plane.   But it is notable that in such dangerous and difficult circumstances it was followed.  This suggests that it continues to be a generally held ethical principle defining the way we should carry out our duties in not only our closets loving relationships but in our interactions with strangers as well.  And that sounds Confucian to me.

It is certainly not a Taoist idea.  Nothing in Taoism, to my mind, would lead us to articulate a general rule that would favor one type of person over any other type.  Taoism is too radically relativist and individualistic to give rise to such an imperative.

It should also be said that the resiliance of the "women and children first" rule in the Flight 1549 case is an example of the persistence of tradition.  I write a lot on this blog about how the broad processes of modernization tend to undermine traditional ideas and practices - "all that is solid melts into air" and all that.  But here we have an instance of a traditional idea continuing the shape contemporary social practice.  Even if it was an invented tradition, not reaching back further than 1852, it has some historical depth to it.  And its survival, the endurance of tradition, would also, I suspect, please Confucius.