Is it an Iraq Study Group or an America Study Group?

Last week the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker, announced its findings, most of which would have been fairly obvious to anyone following events in Iraq. The situation is "grave." Check. The administration should employ diplomacy. Okay. There are no easy answers. Good to know. Along with engaging Syria and Iran, the heart of the recommendations appear to be speeding up the training of Iraqi police and military, and withdrawing American combat troops by early 2008. The hope is that by then Iraq will somehow have a national army that can maintain control over the various militias and insurgent groups.

There are many things that are troubling about the commission and its findings. First of the all, the very idea that important political decisions must wait until after elections and should be directed by unelected and isolated bodies of wise men is at root undemocratic. As we've commented before, the willingness to revert to commissions to solve tricky political questions further undermines the ability of ordinary citizens to control policy. Baker and company should not be the ones making life and death decisions about foreign affairs. No one elected them, and they represent no political constituency.

Yet, perhaps the most disturbing element of the ISG report is that its basic focus is not Iraq at all. One should wonder why the report stipulates early 2008 as a withdrawal date. No one, as Timothy Phelps as Newsday points out, actually believes that the Iraqi police and military will be remotely ready by then. The only feasible answer is that the date marks the beginning of the next U.S. presidential campaign. Baker and company do not want the war hanging over another election and new American presidency. Once again, American policies toward Iraq are being driven by events not on the ground but at home -- events tied in no conceivable way to the welfare and security of actual Iraqis.

Perhaps, the clearest example of the ISG's America focus is that the only realistic option that can change the dynamic of violence on the ground, immediate withdrawal of all US forces, was not included as a serious possibility. The report essentially defends the current "Iraqification" approach, and combines it with a large draw-down (although not full withdrawal) of forces over the next fifteen months. The goal is clearly to get out without it seeming like a precipitous defeat. To that end, the emphasis on diplomacy is meant to create a regional partnership that can control Iraq for the foreseeable future. None of this, however, is likely to alter the day-to-day experience of civil war and low-grade guerrilla insurgency.

Immediate American withdrawal could potentially suck the energy out of at least some of the violence. The reason often given against such a policy is that chaos would break out. But that is not why withdrawal isn't being recommended. Iraq is already experiencing one of the deadliest civil wars since World War II, with the numbers of Iraqi dead and wounded dwarfing those from Lebanon's nearly two-decade conflict (1974-1991). At present, 160,000 American troops aren't maintaining the peace, and raising the numbers in Baghdad by 20,000-30,000 over the next year won't either. Withdrawal isn't an option because the commission is again less focused on the future of Iraq and more focused on what remains of American military credibility. The only problem is that you can't help solve a problem in Iraq by thinking in terms of politics in Washington.

In the end, it took the commission nine months to tell us what we already knew and to offer advice more attuned to the interests of domestic politicians than actual Iraqis. But, then again, that's what we get for having commissions run our politics.

Rhetoric Machine: Political Art

Political art is very difficult to pull off. It often wavers between heavy-handed propaganda and pallid criticism. At the end of long-standing debates about the relationship between aesthetics and politics, one is often tempted to throw one's hands in the air and simply demand that the two remain independent of each other - it's better for both. But a recent exhibit reminds us not only that political art is not a contradiction in terms, it is a challenge more than worth the effort. Noah Fischer's Rhetoric Machine, on exhibit at the Oliver Kamm gallery in New York City, is an astonishing, multimedia display that tackles big themes - American militarism and the presidency. The title refers to the central topic: the means by which the government, especially presidents, use sound, image and words - in a word, rhetoric - to produce acceptance of their war-making aspirations.

Fischer's installation is laid out in a room divided by a white partition. In the first space is a small cut out of a presidential figure standing behind a podium. Projecting outward from him, on telescoping pedestals that grow gradually larger, are various mechanized sculptures. Each has a carefully scripted role to play in a multimedia cinematic experience that begins, quietly, with a montage of wartime speeches, beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and rapidly moving through to Lyndon Baines Johnson. As the speeches play over loudspeakers, different Top 40 music snippets play in the background, and the figures move, as if responding to the presidential oration. The sound swells and builds, becoming more intense, almost overwhelming, as the sounds of war, bombs, sirens, and roaring jets, overpower speech and music.

But before the experience becomes intolerable, it suddenly quiets for a comically ironic solo performance by the eagle, flapping its metal wings to the sound of Whitney Houston. As the initial segment draws to a close the other half of the room begins to light up, and you move over to discover the 'brain' of the installation. It turns out the movement, flashing lights, and different sounds are all precisely coordinated by an incredible, spinning barrel with pieces of variable length magnetic tape on it. When the tape comes in contact with different switches, it closes the circuit, and tells the eagle to flap its wings, or the siren to spin and let out its piercing sound, and so on.

By calling attention to the means by which his installation produces its piece of theatre, Fischer seems to want to remind us of how rhetoric is produced generally. In doing this, he cleverly avoids the typical, didactic quality of political art. His medium is the message, not in a superficial way, but by emphasizing and even demanding that we reflect not just on the message, but on the production of messages - including his own. He obviously has a specific set of ideas he wants to convey - that war is senseless, that we have generally been misled into war, and that this is an ongoing problem. Even in the pure sense of message, Fischer's is far better than most artistic and propagandistic images these days, which tend to focus almost exclusively on Bush. In fact, thankfully, George W Bush is nowhere to be found in this installation. The last president to be heard is Clinton. Here again, even as he almost overwhelms the various senses, Fischer forces us to reflect and think - to step back from our immediate experience of politics, and to think about its history and its underlying structures. But again, it is not just this specific argument that Fischer wishes to represent in an artistic form; rather, it is the artistry of politics that Fischer wants to draw our attention to and to think about. The medium is the message, in other words, because the installation forces us to reflect upon the immediate world of appearances by creating images that make reference to their origins and essence. The 'brain' of the installation is itself integrated into the art, and is physically as well as temporally separated - the twenty minute piece presents you with about fifteen minutes of sound and image before drawing attention to what is producing the rhetoric.

One thing that makes good political art especially difficult is that most art in some way tries to be beautiful. Political criticism, on the other hand, is rarely beautiful. But Fischer resolves the challenge by creating an extraordinarily rich and complicated sensory experience. The installation is not quite beautiful, but it is nonetheless extremely creative and imaginative, and in that sense a work of art. The sheer logistical complexity of coordinating the various pieces is remarkably inventive. Even more, Fischer uses a wide range of different media to create his images - paper mache, woodworking, lighting, electronics, wire sculpture, photography, plastics, paper cut-outs, painting - to name a few. He is clearly in love with the creative process, and as committed to the craft as he is to the message itself - which is why the installation comes off as good political art.

Rhetoric Machine reminds us that rhetoric is not just speech, but sound and image too. If the thrust of the installation is to suggest that rhetoric is generally used to manipulate publics into supporting destructive, illegitimate wars, it is not an attack on rhetoric itself, and in that avoids the cynical tendency to equate all rhetoric with manipulation. The Greeks believed that the true citizen must master the art of rhetoric, because politics is about persuasion, and must engage more than just the rational mind. They of course believed it could be used badly, for manipulation and self-serving ends, which is why it must be yoked to rationally informed, public ends. By using his own 'rhetoric' against the rhetoric machine, Fischer reminds us of the art of politics, and the possibility of using it for better ends.

Noah Fischer's Rhetoric Machine runs through January 6, 2007 at the Oliver Kamm Gallery, located at 621 West 27th St., New York City.

Life-Blood of the War on Terror

Time Magazine's cover story this week is an investigation of the psychology of risk. Entitled, "Why We Worry About the Wrong Things," the article recognizes that both individual behavior and social policy are shaped by our perceptions of and attitude toward risk. Indeed, it doesn't take much mental effort to see how central the notion of risk is to the development and prosecution of the war on terror.

But the Time article is far more enlightening as a study in what it leaves undiscussed. Most obviously, as a "psychological" assessment of risk, it considers the question at the level of the individual. The reason we do a bad job of addressing risk is largely a problem of a "prehistoric brain." According to Time, "Sensible calcuation of real-world risks is a multidimensional math problem that sometimes seems entirely beyond us." The authors never consider that the notion of risk itself is influenced by social priorities and values. Instead, from the article's discussion one would think that human interaction with risk has hardly advanced beyond the level of instinct, largely governed by our "fight or flight" responses. Such biological assessments of social phenomena are pretty common. The Time article provides a good example of why this desire to biologize is so problematic.

If nothing else, the biological assessment of all manner of social problems leaves us with much less leverage to surmount them. The article's authors provide various suggestions of how we might tweak our risk assessment, but at base they believe, "it's something we'll never do exceptionally well." Since many of the problems lie in evolutionary, physiological structures, the theory goes, we have a limited capacity to change these. The authors exhibit no recognition that we could perhaps radically alter our attitude and approach to risk.

In this vein, the article is most telling. The problem it identifies is that we focus on some threats to our lives when there are other threats that are much greater. The article opens by saying, "It would be a lot easier to enjoy your life if there weren't so many things trying to kill you everyday." Among these things "trying to kill you" are early-morning heart attacks, fatal plunges down stairs, sausage getting lodged in your throat, and so on. The "optimistic" conclusion is that "officials who provide hard, honest numbers and a citizenry that takes the time to understand them would not only mean a smarter nation, but a safer one." There is a basic assumption here that we find problematic--that the fact one can die in a number of different ways, and indeed, will eventually die of something makes our lives impossibly risky. Therefore, rationally, we should spend our lives minimizing our exposure to these multiple life-risks.

But, why should we even think about risk in these terms? It is not inherent that we orient our social goals toward minimizing the chances of death, which of course is not to argue that society should be oriented around aimless risk-taking and thrill-seeking, or around a nihilistic lack of interest in preserving one's life. But society should perhaps not concern itself with risk. We could instead make decisions and shape policy around a vision of what we think life should be, and try our best to enable this good-life for all members of society. Today we are orienting society increasingly arount the avoidance of death. And this is exactly how Time's cover story understands and evaluates the question of risk. But avoidance-of-death policy does not provide for consideration of the next step, of how we should or would like to spend the time alive, nor how to maximize each individual's opportunities in life. Such a view is centered upon mere survivalism, never looking beyond preservation to ask what type of life we should live, and to craft social policy to enable that life.

This is, as we have said before, the ideology of the war on terror, it's life-blood. The bare-life vision enables the war on terror's bare-life policies. Central to overcoming the policies and consequences of the war on terror is resistance to this survivalist vision. It is indeed worth asking the question, "Why do we worry about the wrong things?" The answer, however, requires more than a biological assessment of individual brain function and demands that we re-think the notion of risk itself.

Remembering Hamdan

When Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was decided in late June of this year, it was heralded as a landmark case. Not only did it appear to validate the role of international law in constitutional decisions, it also seemed to vindicate those who sought to impose limits on a runaway president. But as one comment on Hamdan, which we recently came across, observes, the most notable thing about the decision is how unmemorable it is. The author, Jay Dratler of University of Akron School of Law, points out that "there is a time for technical analysis and a time for the wisdom of the ages. Of the latter I saw very little in Hamdan." This in spite of the fact that the concurring and dissenting opinions in Hamdan are a total of eight times longer than the entire Constitution.

Dratler has a conservative bent, thus he is worried about the decline of an august institution, its traditions, and the bulwark the Court provided against the depredations of democracy. Nonetheless, his concerns are apposite. He is not merely worried that courts write long opinions instead of short, crisp ones. The point is that, in Hamdan, the Court seems to have substituted verbiage and detail for the opportunity to make a historic statement. In so doing, the Court undermined itself, because it failed to perform that special function of reflecting on our highest principles - a function that grants it a peculiar kind of legitimacy. In fact, the opinions in Hamdan do the opposite of reflecting in clear, intelligent prose about the Constitution for the sake of public education. In Dratler's words, "As a whole, the Hamdan Court's output is hard sailing even for those, like myself, who have been trained for decades in the law. It is virtually impenetrable for people who have not incurred the expense of legal training." Awash in legalities and technicalities, the decision is written "as if the Justices were high priests of some obscure religion," not educated servants of the public.

Dratler is mistaken to have believed that the judges ever performed a particularly democratic function. Many of their most eloquent and clear opinions have justified transparently conservative decisions whose main function was to educate the public in just how undemocratic its government was; and to a degree, it has always functioned as a body of high priests in robes sitting in judgment on society. Dratler is nonetheless right that the Court seems actively to have avoided making any historic statements. The reasons for this are somewhat hard to discern. The main one is likely that the Court was recitent to act as an opposition in the absence of any other branch or party performing a checking function. Where Dratler takes this as a sign of decline, and an abdication of responsibility, we take it as a different kind of lesson on the limits of the Court. The Supreme Court is often vested with great expectations, especially in periods when political alternatives seem depleted or weakened. But it is precisely in such situations when the Court is least likely to stick its neck out. In fact, it is always something of a conservative institution. While there is some sense in demanding that the Court live up to its own standard, as Dratler does, there is more sense in freeing ourselves from the idea that the Court should play the role of interpreting our basic commitments to us in the first place.