All the Presidents' Follies

  

All the Presidents’ Follies

Peter Schultz

 

                  Peter Bergen has published an excellent book, All the Presidents’ Wars, which does a wonderful job of exposing the inanity of the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden presidencies as they waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as throughout the world. And it requires very little reading to understand how inane these presidents and their war-making was.

 

                  “If the key tenet of counterinsurgency was ‘protecting the population,’ bombing them was clearly not the right approach.” [p. 172] Bombing human beings, anywhere, will undermine any attempt to “win hearts and minds,” or even some basic acceptance and loyalty.

                 

And yet, when General Petraeus replaced General McChrystal, after the latter had dissed Obama and his administration, “Petraeus reversed McChrystal’s ‘courageous restraint’ directive to try to avoid civilian casualties; as a result, US airstrikes in Afghanistan increased. Petraeus was supported in this by CENTCOM commander General Jim Mattis, who thought the policy of restraint was hobbling American troops … and losing their confidence in the process.” [p. 175]

 

Populations that are being decimated by bombs are not being protected. And it would appear that what was required to keep American troops “confident,” viz., attacking without concern for civilian casualties, was precisely what would lead to US defeat in Afghanistan. The number of troops in Afghanistan is meaningless in this regard. So, the US was faced with a choice: to bomb or not to bomb. But it was a meaningless choice: If the US didn’t bomb, it would lose, but if the US bombed unrestrainedly, it would also lose.

 

As Bergen notes: “There was a certain irony here: Mattis and Petraeus had both overseen the counterinsurgency manual that advocated avoiding civilian casualties that might help fuel the insurgency, while McChrystal was the ‘direct action’ general who had vastly increased the number of raids by US special forces.” [p. 175]

 

Certainly, the irony was there, and elsewhere as well. But so too was inanity, an inanity that pervaded American political and military elites. Perhaps such inanity is inseparable from imperialism.

Watergate Reconsidered

  

Watergate Reconsidered

Peter Schultz

 

                  From Jim Hougan’s contemplation of the Watergate scandal, he concluded that “The case was to be treated as a moral fable: an open-and-shut case of political espionage carried out by the bad guys in the White House against the good guys in the Democratic party.” [206] Or, in a slightly different version, Watergate was considered a case of political espionage that threatened the democratic processes of the U.S., with the bad guys seeking to undermine democracy by undermining the integrity of the upcoming 1972 elections.

 

                  Now, in treating Watergate as a moral fable, other possibilities involving political espionage disappeared. These other possibilities, e.g., that “the break in had been sabotaged,” were treated as “almost subversive.” [205-206] Treating the possibility of sabotage as subversive meant questions as to the saboteurs and their agenda were not raised. Accepting that political espionage is dangerous because it is used to undermine the integrity of democratic processes like elections, it is dangerous not to consider it in all of its forms, not just in its partisan form. Suppose, e.g., that the military were to engage in political espionage, leading toward fears of a “Seven Days in May” scenario. Or suppose that the CIA were to engage in political espionage, not for partisan purposes but in order to control American politics and point it in the direction of “regime changes” in other nations or in the direction of other covert actions, e.g., assassinations.

 

                  So, by treating Watergate as a partisan moral fable, and one in which the allegedly good guys won, the moral fable obscured what was actually going on. And that what was going on was not good guys versus bad guys but a power struggle or power struggles among competing institutions such as the executive, the presidency, the legislative, the judiciary, the mainstream media, “intelligence” agencies, and the military. The partisan moral fable tells us nothing about these struggles or about their resolutions. And that means we are blind to the significance of the Watergate scandal and its resolution for our political order. That Nixon was forced to resign tells us nothing about the scandal’s effect on the presidency and on presidential politics in relation to other powerful governmental institutions like the CIA or the military.

 

                  And it seems fairly clear that the military emerged from the scandal fortified, while the presidency was weakened. General Alexander Haig assumed significant, perhaps even dominant power in the White House, so much so that a plausible case was made about Haig’s Coup. And although the CIA’s fingerprints and personnel were all over the burglaries, and although Dick Helms was tried and convicted of perjury, those fingerprints and the personnel involved pretty much disappeared from the conventional, commonly accepted accounts of Watergate. This despite the fact that James McCord, a CIA operative, perhaps retired, played a huge role in making it possible for Judge Sirica to expose the connections between the burglaries and the White House. Moreover, people with CIA connections were involved in installing and then revealing the taping system Nixon had installed in the White House. Even when, post-scandal, the CIA was investigated and “the family jewels” revealed, the CIA was not considered a subversive agency, while Nixon, et. al., were. The CIA was flawed but not subversive, whereas Nixon, et. al., were flawed and subversive.

 

                  Making the scandal “a morality play … [n]ecesarily … entailed a simple story with the President at its center. Close scrutiny of the burglars (and of the burglaries themselves) was … avoided because such scrutiny raised questions about their loyalty to President Nixon.” Also avoided was any concern with the power conflicts among different governmental institutions, such as the military, the “intelligence community,” the judiciary, and the mainstream media, promoting political agendas at odds with the President’s agendas. And, so, Watergate became a simple and simplistic moral fable and remains so today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Political and Political Philosophy

 The Political and Political Philosophy 

Peter Schultz

 

The question is how should we understand politics or the political.

When one views politics much failure is visible. American

presidential politics is characterized by failures. For example, lIke's

Crusade for Peace, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Vietnam War, the

Korean War, the Iranian hostage crisis, Iran-Contra, George Bush's

Iraq invasion, etc., etc., etc.

 

The question is: Should we view these failures melodramatically or

in a more banal way? Were they the result of conspiratorial politics

or of ignorance and incompetence?

 

One result of asking this question is illustrating that viewing politics

conspiratorially is a way of redeeming politics and politicians from

charges of being impotent, incompetent, or ignorant. Thus,

Machiavelli's conspiratorial view of the political is a way of affirming

the political and doing so in a way or to a degree that Plato and

Aristotle did not. Thus, it is not surprising that Machiavelli's political

philosophy culminates in a call to action, that is, in his call for the

unification of Italy and its redemption from the "barbarians.'

 

Whereas it might be said that Plato's and Aristotle's political

philosophy culminates in a call for contemplation; that is, in a call for

the contemplation of the political. And this call for contemplation

implicitly subverts calls for political actions, including and especially

calls for visionary political actions, such as creating "new modes and

orders," ala' Machiavelli.

 

The contemplation of the political leads to the clarification of the

limits of politics and of the political. Let me say: Machiavelli was

correct about the conspiratorial character of politics. But he was

wrong about the results of such conspiracies. By affirming the

political, Machiavelli pointed humanity toward a road ultimately

leading to ruin and failure, a destiny that "Machiavellians," but not

Machiavelli, ignore.

Contemplating the Political

  

Contemplating the Political

Peter Schultz

 

A couple of emails, one quoting Caitlin Johnstone and my response.

 

On Sep 5, 2026, at 7:34 AM, MB wrote:

 

"Under the individualism of our capitalist society, we are indoctrinated with the belief that the most important and interesting things about us are the personal characteristics which distinguish us from other people: our likes and dislikes, our lifestyle, our interpersonal relationships, our sense of fashion, how successful we are professionally, academically and romantically, etc.  

"But when you live under the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on the planet, your individual little quirks and facets are a lot less significant than the extent to which you oppose the abuses that your rulers are inflicting upon human beings around the world.  If you met a German in 1940, you would probably be a lot less curious about his taste in music and fondness for dapper suits than you would be about his level of support for Adolf Hitler.  
"That’s you right now.  You’re the German in 1940" (https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/for-a-westerner-opposing-the-empire

 

And here is my response:

 

Interesting stuff. “The most important and interesting things about us are [our] personal characteristics.” This is an “indoctrinated belief.” But doesn’t that imply that this belief is, actually, a political phenomenon, just as much - and maybe more so - than the “level of support” people give to, say, Hitler. And, maybe, seeing our basic beliefs as political is more important than how much or how little support you give to politicians. 

 

That is, giving support to “liberals” or “conservatives,” being liberal or conservative isn’t as significant as it is made to seem. April in Definitely Maybe: “Why do I have to be liberal or conservative?” Will calls her apathetic. But maybe she knows something that Will has yet to learn. [Jennifer Flowers’ press conference is playing on TV and April wisecracks that Will is right about one thing, “He (Clinton) certainly gets women!” April “got” Clinton long before Will did. She also “got” Will long before Will “got” her.] 

 

Ironically, the “political show” makes the political disappear. Being preoccupied with that show blinds us to “real reality.” Supporting or not supporting Hitler is not nearly as important as understanding, contemplating Hitler (or Trump) as a manifestation of the political. Carl Schmidt affirmed Hitler, i.e., the political, while Strauss contemplated Hitler and even the Holocaust. Contemplation should not be confused with apathy.  

 

p.s. N. G. is disappointing not simply because he supports Trump but, more importantly, because he fails to try to understand Trump and the political. The same criticism may be made against the Trump resisters, the Trump haters. Those engaged in the political show are not apathetic. But perhaps they are something worse: Blind. 

).