Canticle

One amazing feature of the blogosphere is that there is a certain tendency for articles on different sites about different subjects to reinforce each other, bringing about a kind of an epiphany.

So today with Porphyrogenitus and Winds of Change. Joe Katzman at Winds of Change is discussing problems with evaluation of intelligence, and when to learn lessons.

There's a reason bureaucrats are seen as ass-coverers whose foremost priority is to ensure that they're never accountable for anything. It's because many bureaucrats really are ass-coverers whose overriding priority is to ensure that they're never accountable for anything. As a corollary, if things go wrong, support for the idea that you predicted it may be helpful in building your bureaucracy's importance at the expense of its rivals.

Porphyrogenitus is discussing the ideology of the Boomer generation as it applies to foreign policy, and how Gen-X (or whatever we're supposed to be called these days) differs.

There are things that need to be done, but in many cases the institutions that were built over previous generations to make pursuing the well-being of our society do not seem to be working. Lavishly funded and huge though they are, with complex bureaucratic boxes for all possible tasks and much duplication, they often seem irrelevant where they are not a positive obstacle and hindrance. Reshuffling the boxes, as in the creation of the Homeland Security Department, seems to make little difference. The problem seems to be less one of out-and-out incompetence but rather institutional inertia and misguided or misdirected priorities on the part of the people who staff these bodies, who have taken survival - both the survival of their institutional rice-bowl and of the society whose interests those institutions are supposed to advance - for granted.

For a variety of reasons, our generation does not take that for granted. The airy, idealistic slogans about how things can be solved peacefully with goodwill and mutual understanding and the like that so beguiled the generation prior to ours - the Boomers - cut no mustard with most of us, because so many of us have seen how badly these bromides have worked in our personal lives when foisted on us by our elders. Where they tended to concentrate on idealistic-seeming but impractical causes ("world peace via unilateral American disarmament" and the like) to be solved holistically through the application of a unified field theory political ideology, we have tended to be more practical. Many older Americans are willing to tolerate policies implemented by institutions that don't work, as long as those policies are ideologically (or "politically") correct, and value process (as in "peace process") over results - effectiveness and effect on people's lives are not the priority for them.

Whether or not the war should have been carried to Iraq often seems less important to them than whether a procedure fitting an abstract and generally vaguely defined "multilateralism was followed regardless of results or whether or not doing so would achieve our goals. The debate in the aftermath among primarily "Boomer" politicians is the same - revolving around whether we have gotten "legitimization" from the UN or other international bodies of kleptocrats and thugogracies where Libya and Syria preside over legitimizing what is and isn't a Human Rights violation - and arguing we should involve them further because this would fit their ideological vision. Concern over how involving those who oppose our goals and seek to achieve ends at cross-purposes with ours would affect our ability to achieve what we need to, not only for ourselves but for the people of Iraq for example, is secondary - where it is something they consider at all. This is why the same people can complain about how things are going in Afghanistan, where their "international community" is in charge and the UN is overseeing everything, and demand that the same model be applied in Iraq. The disconnect that we notice is invisible to them.

The connection to earlier posts is evident in this regard: for some the ideal vision of having the "international community" voting on where and how we can fight the war that was thrust upon us, having them determine where we cannot (Iraq) and where we must (Liberia) send our young men is more important than whether this is an effective method, and the question of how those they want to involve in these processes might abuse the "say" they want to give them is unimportant and uninteresting. They will let others deal with the consequences and complications of implementing their vision, and they will accept none of the responsibility for the difficulties that result. For them, idealism (of a certain sort) is combined not with accountability, but with inaccountability. Theory, as usual for them, trumps practicality and empirical reality - if the world doesn't fit the theory, it is the world that is flawed, not the theory, and we must change to fit their vision, consequences be damned - or, rather, left for others to clean up.

The War on Terror is the first crisis the Boomers have faced. Their parents fought and won the Cold War, and suffered the consequences of Viet Nam and Watergate. The Boomers sat on the sidelines theorizing, and cheering on ideological ideals without any sense of personal responsibility. Bill Clinton in many ways was the avatar of personal irresponsibility - nihilism made manifest. Now that the crisis is upon the Boomers, the instinctive habit of many is to return to their youth, and shift responsibilities once more to the grownups. Sadly, the real grownups are not in the international community, but in the generation younger than the Boomers.

On the side of a hill in the deep forest green, Tracing of sparrow on snow-crested brown blankets and bedclothes The child of the mountain sleeps unaware of the clarion call.

On the side of a hill a sprinkling of leaves
Washes the grave with silvery tears.
A soldier cleans and polishes his gun,
Sleeps unaware of the clarion call.

War bellows blazing in scarlet battalions.
Generals order their soldiers to kill
And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten.

Perhaps the War on Terror will inspire the Boomers to remember the causes they once ostensibly championed, or perhaps it will show that they really are and were an empty and hollow generation. Either way, their test of leadership has come, and there is no way they can escape the crucible. The buck stops now, and it stops in the hands of the Boomers.

UPDATE: And just in time, courtesy of The Noble Pundit, are the lyrics to a song I'd forgotten, which pretty much sums up the Boomer tendency I was referring to.

Posted by Jeff at August 11, 2003 11:43 AM | Link Cosmos