More Political Drivel
Jim Vassilakos (jimv@uia.net)
The U.S. Election & Iraq
It seems that my powers of prediction are at
an all-time low, as the morning of the
election, I was dead-on certain that Kerry
would win. The way I figured it, an
unprecedented number of voters would
appear at the polls (I was right). Many of
them voting for the first time ever, they
would cast their ballots along ideological
lines (right again, or so I assume). And then
Kerry would sweep ahead of Bush by a wide
margin, the country increasingly fearful of
an escalating conflict in the Middle-East,
and people, by and large, voting along class-
lines. And, apparently, in this final
prognostication, I was totally mistaken.
Bush won. My jaw dropped. It hit the floor
with an audible thud. My mother glowered
angrily at me as I visited to watch the
election coverage. My dear mother is the
most anti-Bush person I have ever met. She
got my entire family to vote for Kerry, but
not I…oh no…I wouldn’t listen. Oh
well…so you see where this is leading.
I realize that many of you are Bush-haters,
and that you have good reasons for your
feelings, but since I saw fit to raise the
specter of political discourse in the previous
issue, I thought I should start this one with a
confession. I voted for Bush.
Now don’t hate me for it. Pity me, if you
must. Think me an ignorant fool who is in
severe need of a psychological evaluation
(you would probably be correct). But don’t
hate me. I insist my motives were pure.
So the question remains, why did I vote for
that crazy, smirking, swaggering guy who
led us into war based on bad intelligence,
and who seemingly can’t find any feasible
way to end it? Well, my short answer, as
stupid as it sounds, is that I don’t think the
United States will remain the world’s sole
superpower for much longer, but while we
still have the title, I’d like to see us do some
good. In my opinion, bringing freedom and
democracy to people, even if you have to
drag them kicking and screaming (and
bleeding and dying) is a good thing. It’s
necessary. I think it’s something our nation
should have done a long time ago, but we
were too preoccupied with the cold war, so
we’re doing it now, nearly six decades too
late. And we’re being ridiculed for it. We’re
hated for it. But I still say it’s the right thing
to do.
There are, of course, those who believe
that all war is morally wrong, and they have
a good point. Thou shall not kill and all that
good stuff. Of course, that assumes that the
other guy isn’t trying to kill you, or that
something else, terribly egregious, isn’t
occurring. Likewise, my sister made the
argument, rather forcefully, that in no
situation is pre-emptive war justifiable.
“Saddam did not attack us. The Iraqis did
not attack us. We had no right to go into
their country and attack them.”
And, in general, I agree, however, that still
begs the question, why have we, the world’s
strongest nation (although that strength is
quickly diminishing) not been forcefully
advocating such issues as democratization,
freedom of the press, and human rights? My
sister would argue: “We don’t have the right
to impose our values on another society.”
And my response is that, sure, as long as that
society is a democracy, with freedom of
speech, and human rights, then I agree, but
when that society has no democracy, has no
freedom of speech, and when people are
killed and tortured for speaking their mind,
then this argument no longer applies. It is a
moral fallacy, and it is equivalent, in my
mind, to turning one’s back on a starving
child (not that we don’t do this all the time).
People like my sister and my mother are
really good people: moral, intelligent, well-
spoken, and of strong conviction; but, at
least to my mind, they lack in one important
detail. They are so forcefully anti-war that
they fail to see it as a choice with all the
attendant consequences of alternate choices.
In other words, there look merely at the
means, rather than at the intended ends. War,
of course, is among the greatest evils ever
invented by mankind, but I think that there
are such things as “good wars”, and I think
that this is one of them. Regardless of how
things turn out, you can do an awful lot
worse than to fight for a people’s freedom.
Of course, how things turn out is also of
critical importance. One thing you can be
sure of when it comes to war is that nothing
is easy or predictable. Stepping into war
means stepping into the unknown. Once the
violence begins, only overwhelming
violence will bring it to an end. I think that if
we somehow manage to end the violence
and miraculously bring a lasting liberal
democracy to Iraq, it will end up justifying
this Bush-doctrine of pre-emption, however,
if we allow Iraq to collapse into civil war,
become co-opted by Islamic extremists, or
force it to become an American pawn only
to be stripped of its resources by American
corporations, then we’ll be looked upon as
either idiots or hypocrites. Hence, our end-
state conditions for a moral victory are
narrow and, perhaps, impossible to achieve.
But, it seems to me, that since we’ve come
this far, we have to continue to try to achieve
this objective. Perhaps we should consider it
our penance for all the wrong we have done
in years past.
I have no way of knowing or reliably
predicting what the outcome will be. It
seems to me that among the insurgents in
Iraq, there are really three separate types:
Baathist remnants who are fighting in the
hope to re-establishing Sunni domination,
Jihadists who are being shipped in, mainly
by the Baath party in Syria and Saddam
loyalists who escaped the country in the
opening days of the war1, and disaffected
youth, street punks, in effect, who are
joining the resistance out of pent-up
economic frustration, eagerness to carry a
gun as a symbol of power, and the basic
human desire to be a part of something
larger than themselves. I, of course, could be
wrong about all this, but that’s my general
feeling.
Assuming I’m right, the question then
becomes, how do we quell these three
groups? Well, the first group will probably
very hard to deal with. The only way to
make it work would be to guarantee to them
some sort of political voice in whatever
government comes to power in January after
the proposed Iraqi elections. The second
group, the Jihadists, probably won’t be
satisfied until American troops leave the
country. Given the reconstruction efforts that
will be necessary as well as the security
situation as it currently stands, that may not
happen for some time. And as for the so
called “street punks”, they may be the
hardest group to satisfy, as they probably
won’t go away until they all have jobs,
something that isn’t likely to happen
anytime in the short term.
So, given all of these difficulties, my
general sense is that this war is unwinable.
However, now having said that, I’m most
certainly going to be proved wrong. After
all, all my prognostications seem to be
wrong these days. So, I think given the fact
that I believe there is no hope for victory,
that certainly must mean we will win.
What will it take? Well, in short, it’ll take
democracy. Once Iraq has elections and the
1
See http://www.2la.org/syria for a comparison
of Iraq's and Syria's Baath parties. It is also
worth remembering that a lot of Iraqi officials
and a good deal of money escaped across the
border into Syria during the opening days of the
war. I seem to remember a story about a big-rig
that stopped at the Central bank of Iraq and took
off with a billion dollars in hard American and
European currency.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/0
6/sprj.irq.main/
I also wish to point to a recent issue of
Newsweek that arrived on the morning election
day. It contained a brief interview with a
Jordanian jihadist who was being paid around
$800 per week (roughly four times the salary of
an Iraqi police officer) by some unknown
people from Syria to go to Iraq and kill
Americans. I don't have the issue in front of me
at the moment, but I swear, I'm not making this
up.
government begins taking over more and
more of its own security responsibilities, the
insurgency will lose its moral stature. The
insurgents will no longer be fighting against
an occupying power, they will be fighting
against their own countrymen, and that, I
think, will be a difficult position from which
to maintain a solid recruitment effort.
Having their legs cut out from under them in
this way could potentially spell a sharp
decrease in their numbers, and that, for all
the mistakes that have been made, could
enable Iraq to serve as a model for regime
change in other parts of the world if it
succeeds. Hence, I think that dictators
everywhere are keeping a close eye on Iraq,
as the American experience there will most
certainly spell out our policies well into the
future.
The U.S. Election & Iran
Last issue I talked at some length about what
I regard as western subjugation of Iran up
until their 1979 revolution. Unfortunately,
the Iranians are still subjugated, only now it
is without western interventionism. They
seem perfectly at home subjugating
themselves. Of course, one cannot blame the
common Muhammed in Tehran for this turn
of events. Their fall into a religious
autocracy has, perhaps, more to do with their
anger at the United States (at least in 1979)
and rejection of western values than it has to
do with their acceptance of Islam as a
permanent social and political framework.
I was reading some interesting articles in
The Atlantic (December 2004). In one of
them, Mark Bowden (author of Black Hawk
Down) tells of a string of interviews he
conducted with various hostage-takers,
students who’d seized the U.S. embassy in
Tehran in 1979. Surprisingly enough,
several of them now regret the action which,
they believe, led to the downfall of the
moderate and purportedly democracy-
leaning provisional government of Prime
Minister Mehdi Bazargan and an irrational
and seemingly irreversible move toward
direct, religious rule. Some of these
individuals are now members of Iran’s
reform movement, a movement in support of
democratization and upon which the
ayatollahs and mullahs are currently
cracking down.
And as I absorbed some of these
individual’s stories, and those of some of
their counterparts who are firmly entrenched
with and hence devoted to the mullahs, I
coundn’t help but feel sad, because I fully
anticipate that we will sell them out yet
again. They are like a whipping boy, a
bullied, abused little child.
To live in such a society, where you can be
tortured and killed merely for speaking your
mind, that is something that most of you
reading this probably cannot imagine. You
are certainly, as is any intelligent person,
able to understand the idea of such a society,
but to see it in practice, to see it up close and
personal, these are two different things. And
then to have the militarily strongest nation in
the world (the United States) pushing you
down even further, subverting your society,
preying upon it for its resources, this same
great society of the world which spouts all
that freedom-loving nonsense in a act of
bogus depravity, playing fat, dumb, and
insidiously happy, mind-boggingly immoral,
one great morass of self-indulgence and
moral degeneration, it is only then that you
will understand what we have done.
Whoa! Now there’s a slight change in
tone. Astute readers might recognize it as
Bob’s tone from last month’s essay. The hurt
anger and crushed spirit are unmistakable,
yet still he calls out his unheeded warnings.
Why don’t we listen? Because we’re self-
absorbed. For America, the story of Iran
doesn’t begin in some dark age, nor does it
even start in 1979.
For my culture, the story of Iran begins
right now. With our Brittany-doped minds
and “Three’s Company” perspective, where
any conflict that lasts for longer than an hour
or two is suspected as boring, we can’t be
bothered to think about the past. Our lives
are large, and such national sins apparently
too bothersome to dwell upon. So, for us, the
story of Iran began perhaps just a few weeks
ago, which is ancient history in terms of the
American psyche.
Just before the U.S. election, I was reading
some news online (New York Times, 01-
Nov-2004), and out popped this little story
about Iran pursuing its nuclear ambitions.
Now, of course, we knew this was coming.
That they were getting close to developing
nukes was no great surprise, and they’re
certainly not alone in the world on that
count.
In any case, this article talked about how
the Iranian Parliament unanimously
approved a bill supporting the resumption of
uranium enrichment, a crucial step toward
their development of nuclear weapons. What
struck me as interesting was that some of
these Iranian parliament members were
apparently chanting “Death to America”
during the actual voting. So, and correct me
if I’m wrong, I think it’s fairly safe to
conclude that they still pretty much hate our
guts, right?
Now, Britain, Germany and France have
been trying to get Iran to stop (with what is
currently perhaps mixed success). They had
originally offered to send Iran reactor fuel in
return for a promise from the mullahs that
Iran not develop weapons-grade uranium,
but, at the time of the U.S. election (02-Nov-
2004), the Iranian leadership remained
undeterred.
Their Foreign Ministry spokesman,
Hamid Reza Assefi, tried to put a nice face
on things. He said, “Offering Iran a supply
of fuel is a positive step, which we welcome,
but this must not deprive Iran of its right to
nuclear technology for... cough... Death to
America... cough... peaceful reasons.”
Now, I’m not going to try to argue that
they are wrong to hate us. I think I’ve argued
fairly passionately that we are most
deserving of their hatred. In fact, I’d say
we’ve earned it. We have done a great many
wrong things to Iran. That they call us the
great Satan and teach their children to hate
us should come as no surprise.2
Nor will I attempt to submit that we should
simply cave in out of a sense of
compensation or justice or some attempt at a
show of goodwill. No, this would be the
worst thing we could do to them. Because to
allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons at
this stage in its socio-political development
would be lunacy, not merely for us, but also
for the Iranian people themselves. Future
generations might well regard it as the
greatest strategic mistake in the history of
our nation, a mistake which I believe we are
ultimately destined to make, yet a mistake
that will immediately change the lives of the
Iranian people from bad to worse.
As a small example, I offer up the sad case
of Sina Motallibi, an Iranian journalist,
writer and notable blogger who was arrested
on the eve of his 30th birthday and tortured
for long enough to get the point across that
the mullahs don’t take very well to
criticism.3 He finally fled the country in
desperation and is currently hiding abroad,
though the Iranian authorities have
threatened to jail his father (who, obviously,
is still in Iran), if he won’t shut-up about his
treatment in prison.
Or take the case of Abbas Abdi, another
journalist who’s currently doing a four year
term in the notorious Evin prison for
publishing poll-results that show that 74% of
Iranians favor renewing ties with the United
States.4
These sorts of arrests across Iranian society
are far from unique. Reporters without
Borders recently called Iran “the biggest jail
for journalists in the Middle East.” And once
the mullahs and ayatollahs have nuclear
weapons and need no longer fear
intervention from foreign societies such as
ours, just think then what they’ll be able to
get away with.
Of course, this is similar to that argument
Bush used in order to justify invading Iraq,
toppling Saddam. The whole thought-
process just smacks of western
interventionism. I know that. There’s a
certain undeniable arrogance, thinking that
as a great nation you can just do whatever
2
Actually, I don’t think they hate us as much as
I'm arguing they do or they should. There are a
great many people in Iranian society, old as well
as young, and honestly, from what I’ve heard of
many of them, I can’t help but think they’re above
us.
3
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1073610866.php
4
They’re reaching out to us, their Great Satan,
and you have no idea how much that disturbs the
mullahs.
you like. But this isn’t something I like. Our
prospects with respect to Iran are so
desperately few and uniformly unpleasant.
Of fundamental importance to this
discussion is that we couldn’t successfully
invade and hold Iran even if we wanted to.
For starters, Iran is a hell of a lot bigger than
Iraq. They have several times the population.
Likewise, although there is a substantial
reform movement, there is also still,
understandably, a huge amount of anti-
western sentiment. Furthermore, our military
and economy are already stretched beyond
their capacities. And finally, there’s the
problem of domestic public opinion. Going
into Iraq was bad enough for the President.
Going into Iran would very likely push
public opinion well over the edge, more than
ensuring a Democratic Party victory in the
next election. So, I think, for many reasons,
it simply can’t be done.
Likewise, there are external political forces
that work against such a scheme. For
example, the United States is already
disliked (perhaps even hated) in much of the
world over its current action in Iraq. Getting
United Nations support for an expansion of
the war would be flat-out impossible. And,
in any case, if we sought a resolution from
the Security Council, China would be nearly
certain to veto it.
Aside from thumbing their nose at the
United States, China has clear economic
reasons to do so. They just signed a massive
oil deal with Iran, the largest in Iran’s history
if what I hear is true. It’s something on the
order of $70 billion dollars with a potential
to go up to $200 billion, and from what I
understand, they are giving China one heck
of a sweet deal, no doubt with the
understanding that if the U.S. seeks a
resolution against Iran, China will block.
In short, the Iranian government is already
arraying its defenses. After all, with this
business going on in Iraq and Afghanistan,
we effectively have them surrounded. I’m
sure they’re not too happy about that, and
while they were watching American tanks
roll into Baghdad, they probably got a little
bit edgy. But now that we’re bogged down
in all this resistance, now they’re quite
gleeful. Hence the crack down. Hence the
drive toward nuclear prowess. It’s time for
them to claim their rightful place under
Allah’s gaze.
You can bet that they were also watching
the American election. Bush, they obviously
saw as a potential threat. He’d already said
publicly that under no circumstances would
he allow them to get nuclear weapons. Kerry
wasn’t quite a clear-cut, indicating that he
had a plan, but it involved cooperation with
our allies and the United Nations and so
forth, in short, that it involved the clever
application of diplomacy. And, I don’t know
how people trusted that he actually had a
better way.
My father did, however. He told me so. He
told me that John Kerry wasn’t as fixated as
Bush, that Bush would blunder into another
mess, but that Kerry would find a better
solution, that he would exhaustively
consider all the options no matter how many
of them there might be, and that in the end
he would make the best decision, leaving
war as a truly last resort.
And that made sense to me, but at the same
time, as I saw Kerry blundering through his
presidential campaign, unsure whether or not
to respond to the swift-boat ads (which were
blatantly false, in my opinion), unsure how
to answer questions on his initial vote in
support of the President’s authority to take
the country to war, and so forth, I couldn’t
help but wonder. Was this guy really of
Presidential character? Was he truly a
leader?
Jon Meacham, the Managing Editor of
Newsweek, said on the Stephanopoulos
show, on the Saturday following the
election, “It was an election about faith and
fear. President Bush won both. It was a
wartime election, and I think people decided
they trusted President Bush, perhaps, to
shoot first and ask a lot of questions later as
opposed to somebody getting tangled up
with a lot of questions before they pull the
trigger.”
And that’s a funny comment, when you
think about it, because normally we want
somebody who thinks first and doesn’t just
blunder on ahead, betting the farm on some
wild scheme. But not this time, and, at least
for me, I think it partly came down to
frustration with previous administrations.
There’s a story I heard a long time ago,
and I’m not sure if it’s true, and I apologize
in advance if I’ve mentioned it before, but
it’s a brief story about Bill and Hillary (you
know who I’m talking about). Now, this was
just after the whole Monica-thing broke in
the news, and Hillary went on all the talk
shows and claimed that the whole thing was
completely bogus and that it was all some
hair-brained republican conspiracy. She
didn’t quite use those exact words, but that
was the general drift, and she staked her
reputation on this before the entire nation. I
mean, she when out there and defended him.
Then, of course, spooge-on-the-dress,
somebody forgot to take it to the cleaners,
and the next thing you know, “I did not have
sexual relations with that woman” suddenly
became “Oh, Monica? Yeah, I shagged the
crap out of her. Sorry. Thought you meant
Hillary.” A direct quote. Would I lie?
So, Hillary, of course, was a tad angry. In
fact, she wouldn't so much as speak to the
guy. She was pissed as only a first lady,
publicly humiliated and forced to wrongly
defend her husband in front of the entire
nation knows how to be pissed. And because
she couldn’t even stand being in the same
house as Bill (even if that house happens to
be the White House, a house I'm sure she'll
be eager to return to in another four years),
she decided to take off to Africa on a little
safari, taking along their daughter for
company and what was no doubt a good deal
of female bonding and commiseration.
Meanwhile, females elsewhere on the
globe were having a pretty bad time. The
Serbians were making short work of the
Croatians5, and National Public Radio was
reporting rape-camps. Young Croatian
women were being systematically converted
into prostitutes by the Serbian army, which
was, unsurprisingly, full of young, horny
guys. I actually remember this being
reported. I remember sitting there listening
to this, and it was really blood curdling, the
sort of stories that were coming out of that
area at the time.
Now, Hillary was in Africa, and she heard
these stories as well. There was a press team
covering her safari, and, as we all know,
reporters are absolutely plugged into the
news, so she was hearing all these lurid
reports about what was going on, and keep
in mind that she still hasn’t talked to Bill for
a couple of months.
He didn’t really know if their marriage
was on or off. He'd apologized to the nation,
of course, but we didn't much like his first
attempt, so he had to come on television and
do it all over again. Pure comedy if you like
messy, humiliating break-ups. So, in his
mind, that marriage could honestly have
gone either way.
So it's at this precise moment that Hillary
suddenly picks up a phone in Africa and
calls him. I reiterate, she hasn’t talked to him
in months. And the first thing she says is,
“Bill, they're raping the women. Do
something!”
And that’s how we got into the whole
Bosnian conflict. We didn’t lose a single
American solider, by the way. Yeah, there
are some good wars, at least in my opinion,
and that was one of them.
But the reason I bring up this story is that it
was tremendously frustrating to be sitting
there listening to these news reports about all
the atrocities, and realizing that our nation
was doing nothing. It was in Europe’s
backyard, and even they couldn’t figure out
what to do. The United Nations wasn’t even
bothering to ring its hands. To them it was
just one of these minor civil wars that gets a
little out of hand, like a mean bar fight or
something.
So when we have a President who wants to
bring democracy to fifty some-odd million
people, that means something to me. Bush's
wife didn’t even have to bully him into it.
Y’know, I like Clinton. I think he’s
incredibly smart and phenomenally well-
spoken. Stephanopoulos called him the
thoroughbred 6, a term I used to describe
5
A great, short book to read on this topic is The
Tenth Circle of Hell: A Memoir of Life in the
Death Camps of Bosnia by Rezak Hukanovic.
6
See his book All Too Human, which is a great
read if you enjoy politics and history told from
the perspective of someone who was there on
the receiving end of most of the President's
him last month, referring to his ability to
always come through in a speech or a
debate.
When you’re casting your fortunes with a
candidate, you want to bet on a winning
horse. Clinton was that horse. As one friend
of mine said, he has the ability to “wow you
with words.” But, although people like to be
wowed, I think Americans also want a
President who is willing to stand up for what
America is supposedly all about, somebody
who doesn’t have to be prodded but who
will exercise his (or her) authority to lead.
Bush, of course, does exercise his
authority. I think that one of the main
complaints from the people who voted
against him is that he exercises it too much,
and I don’t think this facet of his character
was lost of the mullahs of Iran. Up until the
election, they had been gun-ho to acquire
nuclear weapons. “Death to America” was
the resounding cry, if I remember things
correctly. However, by the 16th of
November, they had just slightly changed
their tune.
The New York Times carried the headline:
“Europeans Say Iran Agrees to Freeze
Uranium Enrichment.” Now that’s
interesting. Iran had apparently sent a letter
to diplomats from France, Germany and
Britain, pledging to “suspend uranium
enrichment activities temporarily in
exchange for economic and political
incentives” apparently yet to be negotiated.
That’s a full-scale reversal. It's really too
good to be true, at least in my opinion, but
okay… I’ll take yes for answer.
The problem, of course, is that Iran has
lied before. Some years ago a group called
the National Council for Resistance in Iran
(the political arm of the People’s
Mujahedeen, which was an active terrorist
group during the 1970s and is still classified
as such) had reached the conclusion that the
Iranian mullah’s should not be allowed to
develop nukes. Despite their status as exiles,
two years ago, they learned of two secret
Iranian nuclear facilities, and they promptly
passed along their information to various
international news agencies. Iran was caught
and had no choice but to fess-up. This was
how we got a heads-up that they were
developing nuclear weapons in earnest.
Well, only a day or two following Iran’s
promise to “freeze” uranium enrichment,
this group came out calling the mullahs a
bunch of big fat liars (that, of course, being a
special term used in diplomatic circles to
indicate that an individual is both
overweight as well as untrustworthy).
According to the article, the group claimed
that “Iran is secretly trying to produce
tirades, sometimes deservedly so. His
description of the "wrong disk" incident at
Clinton's State of the Union speech will stay
with me forever. It's pure comedy and yet with
so much appreciation for Clinton's awesome,
seemingly incomprehensible abilities. In short, I
recommend it highly.
nuclear weapons even while promising to
freeze a critical part of its declared nuclear
program.” They added that United Nations
inspectors “should not be fooled or deceived
by the Iranian regime” and pointed to some
area in Tehran, which is purportedly being
secretly used for this activity.
Granted, these allegations come at a
somewhat suspicious (or perhaps fortuitous)
moment. In any case, this group was right
before, and Iran had lied before. It all fits
their pattern, so I really can’t say I doubt it.
At the same time, however, of course Iran
has secret weapons facilities. If they didn’t
have secret facilities, we’d know exactly
where to drop our bombs, so none of this
should come as a surprise.
In any case, that’s where things currently
stand, and even with Bush in office, I’m not
hopeful about the future. It seems to me that
Iran and the United States are presently set
on a collision course. Given each of our
nations’ commitments to following their
respective objectives, our way to war is
thereby paved. Hence, I think that in
America, during the next four years, this
may well become the next great question,
not how to gingerly withdraw from Iraq, but
what exactly to do with respect to Iran.
The character and personality of the
President is terribly important right now. It
determines the course of history. Bush, of
course, had made his intentions clear. Iran
would not be permitted to attain nuclear
prowess. American military might would be
used if necessary, unilaterally if necessary.
Kerry, however, didn’t like unilateralism. He
would have tried going to the U.N. Security
Council to see if he could get them on our
side. But, even if it came down to a vote,
China would have blocked. The U.N. would
have effectively turned its back, and Kerry,
backed into a corner, might possibly have
flinched.
Which brings me to the subject of Israel.
Would the Israelis stand by, watching
patiently, doing nothing? Or would they pre-
emptively strike against Iran just as they had
once struck against Iraq? Would they attack
the uranium-enrichment plant of the funders
of Hezbolah, or would they quietly await
their fate, willingly consigning themselves to
whatever might come?
Call me crazy, but judging from their
history, I somehow think they’d strike.
At this point, the world pressure for the
United States to abandon its support of Israel
would reach a crescendo. Kerry, who was
swept left by pressure from Dean, would
have had to stand firm with Israel in order to
hold true to his words that “a nuclear armed
Iran poses an unacceptable risk to the U.S.,
Israel and the rest of the free world.”
But would he have done this? Does he
have that determination and strength of
character? Or would he have wilted under
the gaze of an outraged world? Would he
have abandoned Israel, chastised them,
attempted to punish them in some way in
order to curry favor with the Muslim world?
We’ll never know.
Kerry’s strengths were his intelligence, his
ability to analyze and to think clearly, his
introspection, which includes his sense of
self-doubt, his personal courage, and above
all, I think, his basic goodness as a human
being.
Bush’s strengths are his decisiveness, his
unwavering determination once a decision is
made, his willingness to lead, which
includes his willingness to take big political
risks, his facility with people (so long as
they aren’t reporters), and, I do believe, his
basic goodness as a human being (at least so
long as your not the person running against
him for public office).
And that was the choice. Which set of
qualities does the nation need in the Oval
during the next four years? Values be
damned! This election wasn’t about values.
It was about character. The people who
claim it was about values are religious nuts
and overly-imaginative exit-pollsters.
Or maybe I’m the one who's nuts. I can’t
believe gay marriage failed in Oregon, or
that marijuana legalization failed in Alaska. I
mean, they’re snowed in for what… eight
months out of the year? Hmm… come to
think of it, maybe those two measures
should have ran vice versa.
I’ve given up trying to predict elections. I
can’t predict anything anymore. If I say
something, for instance… that Kerry will
win… you can pretty much bet your life
savings that I’ll end up being wrong. And all
that drivel about Israel bombing Iran…
that’s all probably wrong too. You just can’t
predict these things. There are too many
variables.
How things end up working out really is
the province of fate. About all you can really
control are your own actions. You can ask
yourself, “Are my actions moral within my
own cognitive framework.” And if the
answer is honestly yes, then be happy. Note,
the question isn’t “Can I rationalize my
actions?” It isn’t “Can I make a good
excuse?” It’s “Is my behavior honestly, truly
moral?” and that’s a much harder question to
answer than it might at first appear, because
we could all do more. As a nation we could
do much more that we’re doing, but we’re
not thinking in terms of morality. We’re
thinking in terms of outcomes. “What can I
get for me right now?”
And, to hazard yet another silly prediction,
my general thoughts are that this is probably
the very reason that we’ll end up letting this
whole situation get away from us and go
south. Granted, the nation chose Bush.
When it came to a choice between the guy
with the ability and intelligence to carefully
consider and analyze all the available
alternatives versus the guy who would send
our troops into another war without delay if
his gut told him it was the best course for the
nation, we collectively chose the latter. Did
we want a leader who could restart

discussions with our allies with a clean
slate? No. We wanted one who saw what
was on the slate and had no intention of
wiping it.
I think we voted by how we perceived our
situation over the next four years. Is there an
opportunity for negotiation, a possibility for
peace, or is this olive branch from Iran, as it
was with Chamberlain, a figment of our
imagination?
The tragedy is that war only leads to more
war until either one side wins entirely or
both sides are willing to put a stop to it. The
Muslim states all have greater longevity than
we have here in the West. We think in terms
of months or, at most, years. They think in
terms of decades or even centuries. Iran
doesn’t even have a nuclear weapon yet, and
still their leaders chant “Death to America”
because they already sense their moment. If
we were in their shoes, we would be
hopeless and subdued. They are jubilant and
expectant, unafraid of death and unafraid of
war. On the contrary, they welcome it (or so
they did until Bush got re-elected).
And yet even with their pretense toward
negotiation, this thing is far from over.
Obviously, I could be wrong. By stating
these claims, I am almost certain to be
wrong. I sincerely hope I’m wrong. But I
just can’t bring myself to believe it.
What we’ve learned about fighting
Muslims is that they don’t give up. They
don’t know when they’re beat, and this is
exactly the attribute an insurgency needs in
order to be successful. If we, God forbid,
end up fighting in Iran, we going to have to
fight to the end. There will be no peace
settlement. There may be a lull in the
conflict, but just as with the ongoing Israeli-
Palestinian crisis, there will be no negotiated
resolution. Such a war will be like our
experience in Vietnam. It will be without
end until either we become so frustrated that
we do what is unthinkable to us, or we
completely withdraw. There is no middle
ground.
The truth of the matter, at least in my
opinion, is that even though we re-elected
Bush, we do not, as a nation, have the
stomach for this sort of war. Even if we must
fight it, we will fail to summon the courage
and determination to see it through. We have
grown like the late Romans: fat, lazy, and
infested with a rot of the soul. We have
forgotten what it is to be Americans. In our
pursuit of the almighty dollar as in our
abandonment of God, we have sown the
seeds for our own eventual defeat.
Fatalistic? Certainly. Pessimistic? Sure, I’ll
plead guilty to that charge, your Honor. But
I’ll also maintain my point of view which is
that the next fifty years will be nothing at all
like the last fifty. We may have narrowly
avoided nuclear war once, but as with any
game of chance, our luck will not hold out
forever.
The world is more interdependent now
that it has ever been in all of history, yet it is
also more divided. Communism caused a
division, of course, but that is nothing
compared to the divisions caused by race
and religion.
We, here in the United States, bask in
comparative luxury, while half the people in
the world today are living on less then two
dollars per day, where many millions of
children die each year from easily
preventable diseases, and where instead of
working together to try and solve the world’s
problems, we, the people of Earth, seem
more interested in pursuing our own petty
interests, making war on one another as
though we were not all descended from a
single father and a single mother.
Yes, “Death to America.” Great slogan.
They say it so often, with such pride and
conviction that one thinks they ought to
paint it on their flag. They could have it
waiving out there in front of the U.N.
building and every Iranian embassy
throughout the world. “Death to America.”
Call me pessimistic if you will, but I view
this world as a train wreck in slow motion. It
is a paradox of squandered opportunities and
people who are, with few exceptions, even
now turning their backs upon one another.
The best thing that Bush did after 9/11 was
to go to a mosque and declare before the
world that our enemy, the enemy of
America, was not Islam. But how long will
this stand up? How long will we continue on
this mode of tolerance, which I think is
already beginning to crumble. It is because
of what we have done that we can’t take
back, and it is because they thrill in their
hatred as much as we are deserving of it.
I really wanted Kerry to win just so that we
could say we tried to give peace a chance.
Had we chosen the more “reasonable”
leader, the one who is the more
introspective, more given to doubt and re-
analysis, more measured in his responses,
the one who is better acquainted with the
actual horrors of war, at least then we could
have said we honestly tried. After suffering
the consequences, when our children would
have asked us where we erred, we could
have said, in all honestly, that we erred on
the side of optimism, on the side of hope.
We might have also added that in the end,
it wouldn’t have made much difference,
because although our freedoms were paid for
with the bloodshed of patriots, we were
unwilling to pay that debt ourselves. That
was why we trusted in a leader who told us
that he could find another, more peaceful
way, that liberty could be sustained through
reason and logic rather than through
determination and sacrifice, but that, sadly,
we were wrong. That, certainly, would be
better than telling them that we got ourselves
into a fight that we couldn’t finish which
was the story told to my generation about
Vietnam.
It makes sense that we were so focused on
Vietnam during this election. For some, I’m
sure, it must have been like reliving a
nightmare, but it was also necessary. In my
opinion, a nation that doesn’t revisit its past
failures and try to learn from them isn’t
worthy of a future.
This, I think, is much of the reason why I
really wanted to vote for Kerry. I’m still
sorry he lost. He represented a form of hope,
perhaps not a very realistic hope, but hope
nonetheless. I think my Dad expressed it the
best.
He said that in looking at some of Bush’s
domestic policy decisions, such as the stem-
cell decision, decisions on the environment,
decisions on allowing further media
consolidation which, in my opinion, is
dangerous to democracy, and so forth, that in
all these little, minor decisions, he
demonstrates a sort of character of one who
confines himself to a peculiar rationale
regardless of the consequences. With the
stem-cell debate, people are probably going
to end up suffering and dying needlessly
over what, at least to my mind, is essentially
a matter of theology. With respect to the
environment, I don’t even want to discuss it.
With respect to media consolidation, Bush’s
policies are decidedly pro-business, but they
are anti-democracy. That seems to be the
recurring trend: he seems to put religion and
business interests before people.
In every domestic issue you look at, this
seems to be his philosophy. Take, for
example, the exporting of American jobs.
It’s good for corporations, but it’s bad for
the American people. Who does he side
with? The corporations, of course. Take the
escalating national and foreign debts.
Granted, he’s trying to grow our economy
out of a recession, but what is the long-term
cost to our society? He doesn’t seem to
worry about that. Even Cheney said that
Reagan redefined the economic calculus for
conservatives, proving that at least
politically-speaking, deficits don’t matter.
That’s a short-term, cynical point of view,
yet, judging from the election results, it’s
apparently true.
Likewise, Bush had other, less-definable
issues, issues of honesty and consistency or
rather a lack thereof. There are too many
cases where the administration employed the
arts of deception: not just with respect to the
elusive WMDs but also with respect to some
edited government webpages7, not just in
regard to the supposed Al-Qaeda connection
but also in regard to the so-called Clear
Skies initiative8, not just pertaining to the
Patriot Act and the misuse of the powers of
state resulting in the apprehension and
detention of innocent civilians, but also
pertaining to the way that the
administration’s minions used their explicit
and unquestioned authority, such as at Abu
Ghraib, where the issue wasn’t why they
were detaining civilians, but rather why
these employees, in effect, of this
homophobic administration, forced these
inmates to make gay porn! I'm terribly sorry,
but I just don’t understand. I find myself not
so much outraged as disgustingly amused,
and with a mild case of the heebie-jeebies to
boot.
And when I looked at Kerry, not only did
he not have this unpleasant baggage, but I
also saw somebody who knew more about
the issues than Bush, was better able to
analyze them in a sort of Clintonesque, nuts
& bolts manner, and who seemed to
genuinely care about people. He put people
ahead of ideology, I think, and he adjusted
7
See "Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment"
in the 21-Apr-2004 issue of the Washington
Post.
8 have become something we were never
http://www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/clear_skies.
asp/
his ideology, often splitting hairs, for which
he was roundly criticized, in order to try to
do the “right” thing, whatever he thought
that happened to be.
Bush doesn’t split hairs. His world is black
and white. People are either with him or
against him. That, I think, is a great attribute
for a leader to have in a time of war, or
rather, to be more specific, certainty is
something we desire in our leaders when
times are tough. It is an attractive quality,
and one which may even be necessary in a
time of unlimited warfare where one society
must conquer and totally defeat another.
That’s what makes him a good war-
president. But can he be a good peace-
president?
Perhaps, despite the Iranian chants of
“Death to America” there is a possibility for
some peaceful resolution. I think that if we
wanted to truly believe in that possibility, we
should have cast our lots with the leader who
espouses it, who thinks in terms of
compromise rather than conflict, shades of
gray rather than black and white.
We somehow escaped having a major war
with the USSR even when it seemed
inevitable. We out-waited them, out-
produced them, out-lasted and out-cultured
them. We dominated them through Pepsi
and blue jeans, and before they knew what
was happening, our consumer products were
a more stable investment than their own
currency. A black market developed there
that held the dollar to be the currency of
trust. In the end, they had no choice but to
fold. Everyone could see that the communist
system just wasn’t working.
So, I had some vague hope that we could
win over the Arab world in the same way,
by a slow and steady erosion of their culture
and values and a replacement with ours
(poor them), and by economic integration,
by education, by efforts toward reform and
slow democratization. We could perhaps
reach a day, perhaps decades in the future,
when because of internal political forces,
they are forced by their own people to allow
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and,
essentially, of all the pluralistic values which
we honor and cherish.
This would be great if it could happen.
But, with the chants of “Death to America”
ringing in my ears, my sense of hope was
just too weak. We could have done this over
the entire world if we had consistently
supported democratic movements after the
end of WWII. But now it's too late. We no
longer have the time required to make this
sort of strategy work.
Kerry, in my mind, would have been the
right President for a different America, an
America that had made the right choices in
her past. But with the chant of "Death to
America" resounding so firmly, with such
rightness and moral conviction, I don't see
how that America is any longer possible. We
meant to be, and now the way before us will
be a hard one.
I could go on for several more pages. My
thoughts on the election and Iran and the
whole geopolitical situation and also on
various domestic issues are seemingly
endless, but I’ll close with just two more
thoughts.
The first one is that if Iran does obtain
nuclear weapons, it could finally open the
floodgates for a lot of other nations to do
likewise. And if that happens, what does it
mean for the world?
Henry Sokolski, the Executive Director of
the Non-Proliferation Policy Education
Center, was a panelist at a recent discussion
about Iran. He said, “I do think that the
biggest fear we should have is a nuclear
1914 where nuclear use either by a terrorist,
or more likely a state, begets more nuclear
use, and we more or less see major cities
snuffed out…. If you ever go to Great
Britain, I strongly recommend you visit a
place called Bath. They had Roman baths
there. When you look at the diorama of these
baths, about the only thing missing are
automobiles. I mean, this was an incredibly
advanced civilization. It went away. That is
possible.”
That, right there, was probably my final
reason for voting for Bush. I just don’t think
that allowing further nuclear proliferation for
the sake of avoiding war is a bargain, a bet,
in effect, which humanity can afford. I don’t
want war. I don’t think the Iranian people
want it either. But to allow their government
to acquire nukes…it’s just too big a risk.
And my final thought, for what little it’s
worth, is just a quote from Andy Rooney of
60 Minutes fame. He said (on the broadcast
of 7-Nov-2004, their first broadcast
following the election):
“I hope we get over this viciously divisive
election campaign we had. It is our country.
It’s the only one we’ve got. We have to love
it. No one else does, that’s for sure. I hope
all of you who voted for Kerry can find it in
your heads, if not in your hearts, to swallow
this and support President George W. Bush.
That’s what I’m going to do.”
And even though I was one of those
undecided voters which he called stupid, I
tend to agree. Even if you hate Bush, he’s
the President. The American people, in what
small wisdom we possess, chose him to steer
the ship for another four years. Granted, the
electoral process is imperfect, to say the
least, but he’s still the man with the votes.
He’ll screw things up, perhaps much worse
than he’s screwed things up already, but
that’s the way the people voted, albeit
narrowly. So we’ve got four more years of
this.
So, cheer up. It’s not like it’s the end of the
world. -
IgTheme Thoughts #1: I really think that most popular science- responsibility, to think in terms of the long
NPC-Only Races fiction does a disservice to aliens. Aliens term reality, to pull ourselves outside the box
ought to be less like us and more like we and look at the larger picture, and instead,
might have been if things had turned out we just decided to nuke them. Nuke them ‘til
Many years ago, the notion popped into my
differently, which isn’t to say that they they glow.
head that it would be interesting to run a
should be impossible for us to understand, But imagine, if you will, what would have
fantasy campaign where the PCs had to be
but rather than understanding them should at happened had Nazi Germany or Soviet
human and where all the non-human races
least be as difficult as understanding a Russia or even Imperial Japan been the first
would be vastly different, both biologically
foreign culture much removed from our to develop nuclear weapons. I think it’s safe
as well as socially, from what one would
own. A big problem in making this happen, to assume that the world would certainly be
normally expect.
however, is that we don’t think in terms of a much different place today. My bet is that
Dwarves, I posited, would be kin to earth
culture, and even when we try to, for if any of them had been the first nation to
elementals. They would have strange powers
instance, by identifying and isolating various develop such weapons, they would also have
over the earth and would be loathe to leave
cultural variables, we don’t often ask the been the last nation to do so. They would not
its belly, viewing the world of sunlight as a
question: where did these mores and have let go of this monopoly. And that, of
bizarre place hostile to their form of life. I
traditional values come from? course, would change the way we think
even thought that perhaps they should be
In a way, this is analogous to the way in about these weapons.
crafted from rare metals and gemstones
which we judge people. "Oh, so-and-so is a It is likely that if we ever meet aliens,
rather than born in the way that humans are
jerk." We rarely consider what happened to some of them will come from highly
born. And I thought that all this should be a
“so-and-so” that shaped them into the jerk structured societies where freedom is a word
secret of the campaign, something
they are today. I think it is roughly the same associated with moral decay and social
whispered among sages, something the
way with societies. Without knowing a disintegration. The problem is in getting into
players would eventually learn from raw
person’s or a society’s history, it becomes their minds, getting into the soul of their
experience while discovering the campaign
really hard to understand their mindset. You society by defining the great events of their
world.
might be able to analyze behavior patterns history and showing how it shapes all of
Likewise, I thought that perhaps elves
and isolate various traits, but until you know their perceptions.
should be more akin the faerie in the sense
the whole story, all you’ll have is a The players would, at first, be perplexed,
that they thrive off magical energy which is
haphazard collection of seemingly bizarre but gradually, as they get to know these
sapped by human populations and the
data. aliens and then begin to learn something of
despoiling of forests. I thought that perhaps
In thinking about possible variations their history, slowly all the pieces of their
elves should have dryad-like traits, each
among alien societies, it has recently culture would come together like some
having a special tree with which their life-
occurred to me that a race’s early bizarre jigsaw puzzle, and it is then and only
essence is linked and in which their spirit
experiences with weapons of mass then that the players will suddenly be able to
would eventually dwell while it slumbered
destruction would very likely be a important look at themselves, seeing their own culture
between lives. They would view the
force in shaping their cultural behavior though alien eyes. It is then that they would
expanding human settlements in much the
toward other races. In our experience, the realize that their entire social and even
same way as they would view orc
United States was the first nation to develop mental framework is merely a construct of
settlements: both hazards, both destructive,
nuclear weapons, and it happened during a the variable forces of days and years and
both the enemy.
period of planetary warfare. Needless to say, centuries long gone yet forever enshrined in
I never carried these ideas very far, but I
we nuked our enemies. But what if we their daily thoughts, feelings, rituals and
think there would be value in exploring them
hadn’t? perceptions.
further. But in order to do so, I think I’d
This is a question that I think many That, in short, is what I’d be aiming to
have to revert to that idea of holding the
historians have thought about over the past convey, however, perhaps it is far too
players in a human-only shell, telling them
several decades. After all, we could have grandiose a goal. Perhaps I should satisfy
at the beginning of the campaign only the
nuked the ocean nearby Japan, then said, myself with a nice space opera or a frenzied
bare essentials that all humans would know.
“Give up now, or else...” shoot-em-up. I think that sometimes, as
“Dwarves never leave the bowels of the
The Japanese may well have continued game designers, we may end up shooting for
earth, or if they do, it is only for the greatest
fighting, but if they had, then a second the stars but find ourselves landing on our
of emergencies. As for elves, they stick to the
demonstration just outside Hiroshima might face. Perhaps such lofty ideals are better
forests and have been known to kill humans
have convinced them to call it quits. Once conveyed at the local level, by gamemasters
on sight.”
we had the bomb, we had the lever to end and players who inadvertently stumble
In this way, the common fantasy races
the war on our terms, so we could have across some hidden truth while in the middle
would suddenly become rather mysterious,
slowly increased the level of stress on their of a slice of pepperoni pizza.
and as the players eventually would
leadership, perhaps not only saving the lives
encounter them and begin to learn more
of untold thousands of civilians, but also IgTheme Thoughts #2:
about them, they would become even more
demonstrating mature responsibility in the NPC-Only Powers
mysterious. They would be seen as truly
face of what was, up to that point,
magical beings, lending a pervasive,
incomprehensible, dare I say godlike,
mystical aura to the entire setting. That, at I think the greatest power in a roleplaying
destructive power.
least, was my general idea, though, like I game is one of those situational powers, as
And in so doing, we would have changed
said, I never developed it in any detail. Paul Mason termed them in A&E #350, and
the culture of war. The way we think about
Nonetheless, I think that some of these to specific, it is the political power conveyed
nuclear weapons would be different today as
ideas rubbed off on the Ragamuffin setting by rank. This was of particular issue in the
a result of our having made this decision.
which I’ve been shelving now for the past Star Trek PBeM9 I ran some years ago. One
Rather than being merely a weapon of last
few years. Again, I started with the idea that of the players later said that it was a mistake
resort, it would be rather a weapon of last,
players would be confined to human PCs to let anybody be Captain, as once you did,
last, last, last, last, last, last, last resort. And
and that the aliens would each, while not the enjoyment of the game for the rest of the
despite what you may think, there’s a very
being magical, certainly be very different
large difference between those two concepts.
from your run-of-the-mill wookie or big-
We had the power to exercise 9
breasted vulcan. http://elektrasystems.net/~jimv/trek.htm
group was essentially at that person’s mercy.
Of course, while power has been known to
corrupt, not everyone lets it run to their
heads. Nonetheless, it seems to be the nature
of roleplaying that intra-party conflicts will
sometimes arise. Unless the “power-that-be”
makes a point of being utterly non-decisive
and ultra-democratic, attributes not
traditionally commonplace among ship
captains, somebody in the group is going to
eventually end up feeling squashed.
This became the case for me a few years
ago in an online Traveller campaign (what
can I say, I like my PBeMs). We were taking
the role of a diplomatic team at a trade
conference, and the lead Ambassador
decided to have everyone come into his
office individually, where he proceeded to
lecture each individual on the virtues of
unconditional loyalty to one’s leader. As it
happened, I was playing an intelligence
operative sent to represent my government’s
military interests and to conduct some
additional activities on their behalf. My
intention going into the meeting was that I
would simply lay down my cards, tell him
everything I knew, and try to work with the
guy rather than behind his back as the
situation seemed to dictate. However, all that
drivel about unconditional loyalty to him
personally sort of rubbed me the wrong way.
After all, my character was a military
officer. His chain of command went through
the Admiralty, not the diplomatic corp.
Hence, my loyalty had to be toward the
interests I was sent to represent. Granted, I
would work with him, but pledge my
unconditional loyalty? Please!
So I simply stated this fact, and as
consequence, this player who was playing
the lead Ambassador got in a huff and tried
to essentially throw me off the delegation. I
was essentially being booted out of the game
by another player. Needless to say, the
GM had to swoop in to save the day, but it
was a telling example of how rank and all
the associated political structures can
work to disrupt a campaign,
generating needless
animosities between
players and otherwise
ruining the experience
for everyone
involved.
That GM later told me that he would never
again allow one player command authority
over another player in any of his campaigns,
and I think that’s too bad, as, at least in my
opinion, this is an area of roleplaying worthy
of being explored. I think that running a
successful supervisorial relationship comes
down to trust and maturity on both sides of
the equation, but I think the commanding
player is ultimately the one most responsible
for making it work. He or she must be
willing to give decision-authority to the
other players.
I think the most appropriate command-
style for a roleplaying game should be
almost laissez-faire: “Report to me. Tell me
what you are doing. I’ll set the mood, but
don’t ask me to make any decisions for your
department. When it comes to your sphere
of influence, you are the master. And when
it comes to larger-scale decisions, we'll all
get together and decide things as a team, by
voting if necessary.”
Hence, the ship’s doctor shouldn’t ask how
to prioritize his responsibilities. Nor should
the chief engineer. And as for the other
characters, the plot should focus more on
their individual lives and less on what the
ship itself is doing.
To go a step further, I think the Captain
should probably be the least involved of all
the players. The spotlight should mainly be
on the other players with the Captain only
rarely making a screen appearance. Of
course, with a rapidly evolving plot, this
probably isn’t feasible, which leads me back
to the original question: should the role of
captain be an NPC-only position?
Honestly, I’m somewhat torn over the
whole question. So far, given the campaigns
that I’ve witnessed, I think things probably
work better when this is the case, however, it
seems sad to me, somewhat embarrassing,
that as gamers who are just trying to have
fun, we can’t seem to get our act together to
pull off these sorts of structured relationships
in a consistently successful manner.
Comments on issue #351:
Myles Corcoran: Regarding your
comments on the igtheme which was
itself about cities, you paint a pretty
picture of Pavis. Sadly, I only played
RuneQuest once or twice (Steve Perrin
was GMing), and we never got
anywhere close to Pavis. I never got to
explore the Big Rubble. I feel as though I
never really had a chance to understand
RuneQuest. Nonetheless, I agree that fantasy
cities can be a fun place to explore, but I
tend to view them more in terms of their
internal politics than in terms of streets and
taverns.
I live in San Bernardino, and like most
medium-sized cities in the United States, I
would guess that most people don’t know
the name of the mayor or anyone on the city
council. Most don’t care, because while the
mayor and council certainly exert some
influence on everyone’s lives, they don’t
control those lives in the same way as the
monarchs of old.
Hence, I would expect that in a medieval
fantasy campaign, everyone would know the
name of the local ruler as well as his or her
family, and they would probably also know
the name of the magistrate and the captain of
the guard. These would be celebrity
positions, positions of power and influence,
positions where bribery and kickbacks might
be part of the benefits package. Yet in very
few campaigns do I ever see these people
detailed.
Michael Cule: Regarding your observation
about the difficulties of running high-tech,
far-future games, namely the problems of
technology and scale, I can’t offer very
much advice except to say that I’ve run into
these as well. Most problematic for me has
been the amorphous nature of high
technology.
I recall once running a game where one of
the players was a computer systems
administrator in real life, and he proceeded
to explain how, once in control of the ship’s
computer, he could effectively control the
entire ship, spacing the rest of the crew if
they didn’t like his leadership. I think I had
to say something like, “Computers of the far
future don’t run on Unix,” in order to
subdue his takeover attempt. Nonetheless, it
vividly illustrated the point that in order for
the game to work, the technology has to be
explained in detail, and the game system
should include examples of what can and
cannot be done with it.
Regarding the second problem, the one of
scale, I agree that it gets a bit hairy. I think
the trick is to somehow create the illusion of
depth while at the same time keeping the
breadth as wide open as possible. Using
computer programs to automatically
generate detailed star systems is one
possibility. Another tactic is to make sure the
players always have something to do so that
they aren’t just exploring your universe like
they might crawl though a fantasy dungeon.
If they’re on a mission, they’ll be less apt to
wander into uncharted territory.
Robert Dushay: About playing in student-
run games as a teacher, I once had a history
teacher who joined my AD&D campaign
back when I was in high school. She was
actually a pretty decent player from what
little I recall. Looking at it in retrospect, I
think I should have prompted her to GM,
though this might have opened up the same
concerns that you’ve expressed.
In any case, if you do it, I would definitely
keep it on school property, and I would shy
away from taking more than the role of a
player. One key thing to realize is that young
people take a cue from adults on how to
behave in social situations, so what you do
and say will certainly be analyzed whether
subconsciously or otherwise. Hence, if you
do it, I think you have the obligation to play
a strictly moral character as well as one who
tries to get along with all the other
characters. Likewise, if you do it, I would
also recommend playing in a sort of
detached way, allowing for side-
conversations to develop around real-world
issues, though restraining yourself from
expressing your own views (especially
political) too overtly. In short, Linda is right.
Depending on how you handle the
challenge, this is potentially dangerous
ground, but also potentially rewarding if you
should handle it correctly.
Lee Gold: Not really a comment, but I've
got an idea for the prospective IgTheme. I'd
be curious to learn what sort of resource
materials gamemasters find the most useful
in terms of preparing for their campaigns or
perhaps even find the most interesting in
terms of getting their creative juices flowing.
I'm not really talking about published
adventures so much as other sorts of generic
gaming books or even non-gaming resources
which provide ideas or advice for setting up
a campaign setting, generating NPCs, and
generally putting together the overall
campaign framework.
Spike Jones: Regarding your comments on
recent GAMA politics and Dancey’s bout of
hacklomania, I find it all rather amusing if
also a bit depressing. In any case, how did he
get caught?
Joshua Kronengold: Excellent comment to
Lee regarding the pay of top executives in
the USA. Given their importance within
society, I wonder if perhaps the prosecution
for white-collar crime shouldn’t be handled
with as much seriousness as treason (at least
insofar as treason used to be a crime). After
all, it could be argued that these crimes result
in the breakdown of the very structure of our
society. Shouldn’t they then be punished
accordingly, as though their crime was an
attack on the society itself?
RYCT Paul Mason, you make many good
points. I particularly liked your analysis of
the characters from Star Wars, categorizing
them into various character niches, and I
also agree with your summation, that what’s
really important in terms of balancing isn’t
so much balancing power but rather
balancing screen presence, and, I would add,
balancing their efficacy in manipulating the
overall plot. That is really the trick, and it is,
I believe, the primary reason why power is
used as a proxy. It is relatively convenient,
and it makes a certain amount of sense.
Nonetheless, we are left with a situation
where the “party” from Star Wars would
never end up together in an RPG, and that’s
a shame, as it shows, in a nutshell, the
limitations inherent to most of the rulesets
we utilize.
Perhaps one way to fill this void would be
to allow players a certain number of
character points, but they don’t have to
spend them all at the beginning of the game.
They can spend half of them up front, then
spend the other half after they figure out
how the game works and which direction
they want their character to grow (this, of
course, being an example of Luke). Or they
can overspend (an example of Ben), leading
to the GM being able to throw on them
various acute disadvantages (“You’re old,
dirt poor, and you’re fated to die before the
end of the movie”). In this way, they can
choose to play the character they want, but
the GM can mediate this accordingly.
Paul Mason: Great layout, as always. I
covet your expertise in this regard.
Regarding JG’s City State of the Invincible
Overlord, I’ve also used this a few times,
including during an early segment of the
Jinx campaign. One of the great things about
CSIO which you neglected to mention are
the rumors scattered throughout. Many of
them serve as adventure seeds, which the
GM can expand upon as the players
investigate their credibility. This actually
happened in the Jinx campaign, shaping the
plot in various ways.
Regarding your observations on Laws’
claim “that ‘one-upmanship and reversal’ is
the essential dynamic of the narrative,” it
seems to me that this is particularly true of
combat. The most classic example is in
Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Harrison
Ford shoots an unnamed swordsman in the
face, once again proving that “Hokey
religions and ancient weapons are no
match for a good blaster at your side,
kid.”
One way to analyze
this hypothesis might be
to watch a lot of action movies,
explain in words what happened during the
fight sequences, and then try to
construct a combat system based
on those verbal descriptions. If
you were watching the
Matrix, you’d have to
include rules for
dodging bullets
and whatnot. If you were watching
Collateral Damage, that recent Tom Cruise
movie, hiding among a crowd and then
striking fast would play a more important
part. For myself, I prefer quick, lethal
combat. I find it more satisfyingly realistic.
Although, I doubt that many players would
hold this point of view.
One thing I’ve noticed about movie-
violence is that if the protagonist is fighting
three or four guys, these “bad guys” tend to
fight about as well as one might expect an
old lady on crutches, but if he’s facing off
against just one, then the fight will be much
more difficult. Will somebody please
explain this?
Regarding Dalton’s portrayal of James
Bond, yes... although he only got one movie
in which to prove himself, I thought he was,
hands down, the best Bond. For the first time
in a Bond movie, we actually thought that
Bond could get hurt or even killed. It’s a far
cry from the boring, nonchalant, superheroic
Bond that we generally see.
Regarding the gore-fests of video games, if
might be somewhat amusing if instead of
vanishing, the bodies of slain foes should
remain where they fall, and that perhaps
police inspectors and television camera
crews should show up along with grief
stricken relatives, ambulance-chasing
lawyers, and outraged politicians.
Brian Misiaszek: Regarding the plush green
Cthulhu doll, I can only wonder at what
Lovecraft would have thought.
Regarding Ball of Confusion, nice battle
scene. Particularly nice description of the
beholder: “A fat red tongue caressed greasy
lips as the globular monstrosity seemed to
chuckle in delight.” In general, I dislike
descriptions of combat, as they often
devolve into tedious blow-by-blow accounts,
but you somehow kept it interesting. Nice
work!
RYCT Paul Mason regarding “a vague
life-path character generation system”, I’ve
been fiddling with this idea as well. (See my
comment to Myles Corcoran in A&E 351.)
This reminds me somewhat of character
generation in games like Traveller and
MechWarrior where life path plays a central
role, though, of course, character generation
took longer in these games. The Central
Casting series, of course, did an excellent
job as well, although without a specific
background setting, it was a mish-mash of
possibilities, a great resource from which
to mine various ideas for a more
focused system. Do you know
about other useful resources that
can be brought to bear?
RYCT Brian Rogers regarding
medical diagnosis in RPGs, it occurs
to me that a disproportionate
percentage of PC injuries will be
gun shot wounds, stabbings, and so
forth, not your typical fever,
neurological disorder, or chronic heart
disease. Hence, it seems what we really need
isn’t an RPG handbook on general medicine,
but rather something like GURPS:GSW or
the like (just to make up a title), along with
accompanying rules for treatment at various
tech levels. Has anything like this ever been
written?
Mark Nemeth: Regarding serving hard
cider to children... “Hee hee hee.”
RYCT Paul Mason on immersion, I’ve not
really seen terribly immersive play in my
own campaigns (aside from play-by-email,
which I think, despite the lag time, lends
itself better to characterization than does
face-to-face gaming), but I’ve heard of it
happening.
In issue #2 of The Guildsman I put
together a little article called "Bits &
Pieces"10 which were essentially just a series
10
http://elektrasystems.net/~jimv/eg1.htm has
these and other articles in a downloadable
of unconnected quotes, and in one of them
Robert Plamondon11 and someone calling
himself the Welsh Hobbit talked about
highly immersive roleplaying without
actually using those words.
It's interesting to read their descriptions,
although it's certainly not something I've
experienced first hand.
Jonathan Nicholas: RYCT Robert Dushay
on Bush’s MBA, I’ve got an MBA, and I
agree with your assessment of the general
worthlessness of the degree. Granted, it’s not
completely worthless. I guess it depends on
how you use it.
In my case, my major focus was on
marketing. The other specializations were
finance, accounting, and production
operations management (all of which I had
to study to varying extents). There were also
some vaguely philosophical classes on
business ethics and the role of business in
society as well as a pair of classes on
entrepreneurial management and
organizational development, and, of course,
students had to take various classes in
economics, sociology, business law and so
forth.
What did I get out of it? I’m not really
sure. It’s been over ten years, and I’ve hardly
used the damn thing. I know how to do a
marketing study (it’s not quite as simple as
you might think), and I learned basic
accounting. However, they didn’t even teach
us how to use Quicken, which I think was a
huge oversight, and they taught us nothing
about doing payroll or dealing with business
taxes. Accounting is a large part of my
current job, and I’m astonished at the
amount of stuff I didn’t learn that I feel they
should have taught rather than wasting my
time with useless trivia.
So was it worth it? My feeling is that the
people who go into teaching at the college
level do it either because they love teaching
or because they hate the thought of working
in the “real world”. Many of these professors
went straight from the classroom into the
classroom (meaning that they had no real-
world experience). And I don’t think the
Business Department was alone in this
respect.
I had many friends in the Computer
Science Department, and two of them got
hired to build computer labs. The truth is
that the only people who really knew how to
fix the computers on campus were select
students and staff. The Computer Science
faculty had no clue, however, when it came
to theory, they couldn’t be beat.
So what’s that tell you? It tells me that our
educational system in this country is broken,
and given the priority we put on education
format.
11
I'm not sure if it's the same Robert
Plamondon who wrote Through Dungeons
Deep or just someone who happens to share
his name.
(or rather lack thereof), this should come as
no surprise.
Lisa Padol: The idea of bringing in family
members and other important NPCs after the
game has started is certainly an interesting
one. After all, even in fiction we generally
don’t learn all the details of the protagonist's
life in the very first chapter. Nonetheless,
there is certainly something to be said for
knowing about these supporting characters
ahead of time. In my experience, it provides
me as a GM the opportunity to introduce
them at an inconvenient moment.
I’m reminded of a particular episode in the
Star Trek PBeM I ran many years ago. In the
second adventure, one of the main characters
is a spy who has assumed the identity of an
NPC who had earlier been killed in an
accident (or so goes the story). In any case,
in Turn #15 this dead character’s sister
shows up, and the spy is forced to avoid her
for fear that she’ll figure out that her so-
called brother is a fake.
Situations like this are easier for a GM to
create when the family relationships are
already on paper. To generate something
like this purely out of the blue would reek of
bias and plot device, but with the NPCs pre-
established, all the GM has to do is provide a
plausible explanation for why the NPC
should suddenly appear, thereby maintaining
that thin veneer of GM-impartiality.
Simon Reeve: I certainly hope that your
prayer is not answered, though I must admit
that I find the phrasing both profound and
rather eloquent. Regarding shitty bosses,
I’ve had them too. Good luck in dealing with
it. One tactic you might try is to actively
make friends with the boss,
though in your situation
this might be impossible.
The reverse tactic would
be to just stop working
unpaid overtime, not one I
would necessarily suggest,
but it is an option.
This brings to mind a short essay I read
some years ago in my college newspaper.
The author had gotten a summer job
where his boss ticked him off, so he
then spent the next twelve weeks
playfully figuring out what he had to
do in order to get fired, always
pushing against the
boundaries of expected
behavior without ever
quite leaping
clear over the
line. It was quite hilarious,
although, again, I wouldn’t suggest this
specific line of attack for your situation.
Patrick Riley: RYCT Joshua Kronegold
regarding the speed of D&D-style character
advancement, you make a good point. The
way I always tried to explain why the older
NPCs weren’t all 20+ level was that
eventually they’d retire. The ones who didn’t
take a break would generally get killed off
and become the stuff of legend. I even
created a program, at one point, to figure out
how many characters of each level might
exist in a given community. Of course, it all
depends on the lethality of combat. If you
give NPCs a 30% chance of dying between
each successive level, then it seems unfair
not to construct the adventures so that they
are similarly lethal for PCs.
RYCT Lisa Padol that GMs who use traps
in order to induce player paranoia may more
properly be called “killer GMs”, I tend to
agree, however, there’s a time and a place
for everything. If the PCs know they are
walking through the dungeon of an infamous
trap designer, a dungeon that has claimed the
lives of countless delvers, then they have
been properly warned.12 Similarly, if they
know from stories that certain areas of the
campaign world are wildly dangerous, and
still they choose to go there, then I think the
GM has a right and perhaps even a duty to
not go easy on them.
This, of course, is a far cry from Lee’s
experience with David Hargrave, but the
point remains: if the only way to rationalize
the assumptions of the campaign setting is to
impose danger at every turn (something
which I think Hargrave was aiming toward),
then that’s the GM’s prerogative. Likewise,
if the players don’t enjoy that sort of
campaign, then it’s their prerogative to vote
with their feet. However, note that Mark
Nemeth’s comment to Robert Dushay in the
same issue seems to advocate a return to
greater PC mortality, a point-of-view which,
although seemingly out-of-vogue, I don’t
imagine is unique.
12
I wonder if any party ever tried herding a
hundred or so sheep through Gygax’s
infamous Tomb of Horrors simply in order
to disarm all the traps. “Baahh…” Ka-splat!
“Dude, I think we’re gonna need more
sheep.”