Fred Reed
Fred on Everything

Date: The following is a somewhat amplified letter to a friend. I know I've said some of this before.

Jim,

Permit me respectfully to disagree about the potency of American intelligence agencies. It seems to me that they are clowns, incompetent at their assigned work but adept at causing grave problems for the United States. Their almost comic ineptitude lies hidden behind a veil of romantic secrecy a la James Bond. But look at their known record.

Your belief that a few jets and Marines would have changed the outcome in the Bay of Pigs rests on the characteristic inability of US intel to grasp how other people look at things. Cubans hated Batista, did not yet hate Castro to whatever extent they ever would, and the exiles used to invade the island were agents of the people Cubans hated most—that is, the rich property owners who fled Castro. The Americans, remember, had always supported Batista, as they had supported every ugly dictator in Latin America. America itself is detested throughout South America. No warm welcome was in the cards.

Americans still have no understanding of how other people work, and therefore of what they are likely to do. I remember that in Afghanistan the Pentagon was going to conquer Marjah and give it a “government in a box.” That is, the Afghans were going to fall in love with brutal invaders who destroyed most of their city. Fat fucking chance. Iraq would be a cakewalk? A friend of min--Jack McGeorge--on Blix’s team briefed Langley on WMD before the invasions of Iraq. I asked him whether the CIA really believed the cakewalk theory or were lying for political reasons. They really believed it, he said.

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Fred Reed
Fred on Everything

Sen. Lindsey Graham is the one in a horizontal position...

Oh good. I see that Senator Lindsey Graham wants to attack Iran. The US, he says, should "sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard."

Senator Graham has the brains of a tapeworm, making him eminently qualified for the senate. Tapeworms, I note, do not have brains. It is characteristic of warlike innocents, to include the Pentagon, to believe that if you destroy navies and air forces, you win wars. This worked well in Vietnam, you will recall, and as soon as we destroy the Taliban’s navy, Afghanistan will be a cakewalk.

Now, I understand that practicality and realism are alien concepts in American politics, to be approached with trepidation, but maybe, just once, we should think before sticking our private parts into a wood-chipper. Just once. I do not propose consistent rationality, forethought, or intelligent behavior. I profoundly respect my country’s traditions.

However, folk wisdom from West Virginia: Before you say, “I can whip any man in the bar!” it is well to scout the bar.

Note that the United States cannot defeat Iran militarily, short of using nuclear weapons. It is easy to start a war. Finishing one is harder. I could punch out Mike Tyson. Things thereafter might not go as well as hoped.

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Fred Reed

All God's Chillun Gottun Gotta Have Structure. Most'em, Leastways

People seem to need an overarching explanation of things—of origins, meaning, purpose, and destiny. Christianity provided these things for a long time but, at the close of the Enlightenment, was losing its luster among the educated. Too much in Christianity just didn’t make sense in light of continuing discoveries. The sciences were more compelling, and a better fit for the changing mood of the times.

When the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, it offered a plausible and rational alternative to God Did It. Evidence in its favor existed. Selective breeding of animals greatly changed them. That this might have occurred by natural selection made sense.

But natural selection did not explain where life came from in the first place. The notion of abiogenesis—that life began by accident in remote primal seas—was tacked on to Darwin. Scientists passed sparks through flasks of chemicals hoped to represent the primal seas, and molecules of compounds usually found in living things were discovered afterward. This was exceedingly thin evidence, but it pointed in the desired direction, and was accepted.

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