It may be that the string of temperatures of over 90 degrees has gotten to the old essayist. For an old geezer from St. Louis where the summer temperatures are reminiscent of the home that Satan enjoys, it must be said that the heat is more than impressive.
All of this leads to a series of unrelated thoughts that may have some wisdom in spite of the heat. Take for example, Tom Eadone’s Rule.
Verse 1: Eadone’s Rule
For many years, Tom Eadone together with his sisters, ran a limo service based in Chatham, New Jersey. Tom was a man in his 50’s who had grown up in the environs of Newark. Political chicanery was a factor that Tom looked for in every politician. In this state, Tom was absolutely right to doubt any word of any of our politicians.
Over a period of time, Tom developed an immutable rule about New Jersey politics. Any candidate who spent more on his campaign than the job he sought would pay him, was clearly a suspect.
If Tom found a candidate spending $20,000 for a job that paid $8,000 or $12,000, he would be convicted by Eadone’s Rule. In New Jersey politics, any candidate spending more than the job would pay would be aiming for kickbacks and bribes. Think about that proposition. Does anyone spend a fortune for the purpose of pleasure as he watches his money squirt away? Of course not. The candidate is making an investment.
On the other hand, we now have two zillionaires running for Governor where the pay is about $125,000 to $150,000 per year. They are prepared to spend as much as $75 million to get a job that, in other circumstances, would be considered as below their station in life. The Democratic zillionaire hopes the governorship may lead to the presidency provided he doesn’t trip over a girl friend or two. The Republican zillionaire seems at this point to be satisfied if he becomes governor where he can introduce right wing foolishness.
Tom Eadone retired a few years ago and we are left alone without his wise counsel. But if Tom could be reached for comment, it is clear that he would regard both candidates for governor with consummate suspicion.
As a scholar who has studied at Professor Eadone’s feet, his suspicions are shared by me. What would a man who uses a trunk for a wallet do with a job that pays only $150,000 per year? We shall see soon enough.
My memory is that Tom picked me up or delivered me to airports on perhaps more than two hundred occasions. He and his other drivers were never late, and Tom’s philosophy was free. That is my finest tribute.
Verse 2: An Arab Army is a Bona Fide Oxymoron
The United States is on a fool’s errand in Iraq. Our alleged exit strategy from this debacle of a war is to train an Iraqi Army that will see to it that the unpleasantness of war stays “over there and not over here.” We are depending on an Arab army, yet to be formed, to carry our burden in fighting other Arabs. This is treasonable foolishness.
An oxymoron is a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as a peaceful war. There is no such thing as a prosperous depression. Similarly, there is absolutely no such thing as an effective Arab army.
A few years back, Iraq and Iran started a war that seemed to be fought at long range. My observation is that hand-to-hand fighting did not take place. Obviously, the Iranians are Persians and not Arabs. The Arab army of Iraq fought their long range war and ended up territorially, right where they started.
Arab armies exist to protect their Arab Kings and dictators. After the Iraq-Iran war, Saddam overran Kuwait which he had always considered merely a province of Iraq. Kuwait had a police force but no Army of any consequence. When the Allied forces showed up, the Iraqi army, including the vaunted Republican Guards, flew headlong back toward Baghdad. There was no such thing as the Iraqi Army when push came to shove.
In 1948 when the State of Israel came into being, there were many people who expected it to be destroyed by Arab armies. Israel defeated all the Arab armies including Egypt, and did so again in the 1960’s. During my service in North Africa, it occurred to me and to several other GI’s that Arab armies were hollow. Again, it is my long held contention that Arab armies exist to protect the king or dictator from the native population. So any consternation about them is nothing more than a continuing oxymoron. When they march in formation, they swing their hands up to shoulder height. Nice to see, but it doesn’t make them anything like an effective army.
And so when we are finished training an Iraqi army, we allegedly can “stand down.” Much more likely is the thought that all our training will be put to use in fighting a sectarian civil war in Iraq. Don’t let the paid commentators who have political fish to fry tell you that life, when all the Iraqi soldiers are trained, will be all milk and honey. It ain’t so.
Al Goebel, a fellow AT&T employee and a B-20 bomber pilot in World
War II, used to say that when you put on a uniform, it was not just for marching in parades or impressing the girls. Sometimes the man wearing the uniform might be asked to shoot at an enemy or to be shot at by an enemy. Unfortunately, my conclusion is that Goebel’s Rule is not understood by the Iraqi recruits being trained by U.S. forces. If and when we leave Iraq, that training and equipment may well be invested in a sectarian civil war. Remember, an Arab army is generally an oxymoron.
Another thought about the situation in Iraq is expressed in Verse 3.
Verse 3: Scowcroft’s Rule
When the Gulf War was concluded by Coalition forces chasing the Iraqi Army back to Iraq, there were many commentators who faulted
George H.W. Bush and his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft for not occupying Baghdad and Iraq.
Scowcroft and the elder Bush thought such a move would have disastrous consequences. They wrote a book in 1998 called “A World Transformed” in which they said occupying Iraq “involved incalculable human and political costs.”
They went on to say:

“We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well…Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different – and perhaps barren – outcome.”
(emphasis mine)

When George W. Bush was asked about his own father’s advice, he said that “I listened to a higher father.” Presumably, Bush receives messages from God. Most people who talk to God are candidates for psychotherapy.
So you see, it was God herself or himself who got us into the quagmire of Iraq. No one can blame Bush as he was a mere messenger.
—–
We started this Chapter with a rule from Tom Eadone and ended with a rule by Al Goebel. The Scowcroft-Bush quote is probably more than a mere rule, but it took the intervention of God herself to overrule it as we are now trying to occupy a “bitterly hostile land.”
When the President talks to God, there are many of us who say the United States is in trouble. Earlier this summer when the Prime Minister of Palestine, Mr. Abbas, came to Washington, he was told by the U.S. President that God had told him to “smite” Al Qaeda. Then he told Abbas that God suggested that he destroy Saddam. So Bush again was simply following God’s orders. To use the elder Bush’s evaluation which comes from a cloistered New England upbringing, “We are in deep doo doo.” Do you believe that it was God who got us there?
E. E. CARR
August 13, 2005
~~~
China is perhaps the greatest violator of Eadone’s Rule of which I am aware. For communist party insiders, governmental positions are basically bought and sold on the market – but the price of each job has nothing to do with the salary it pays, and everything to do with the companies and industries that it has jurisdiction over. Bribes and relationship building (guanxi) are an expected part of any large business venture or contract in the country, so being a gatekeeper can be phenomenally lucrative. Positions that pay a few thousand dollars (USD) a year are routinely purchased for millions.
China winds up with a lot of local gatekeepers, in this fashion. It is one of several reasons that I’m not on the “China is about to eat the U.S.’s lunch” train that seems to be gathering steam lately.
Anyway, the funny part is that this system represents one of the very few ways that China could have downgraded the caliber of those who hold public office, which for centuries (until 1911) were determined largely by a series of incredibly intense examinations where performance was mainly tied to one’s ability to memorize incredibly extensive sections of the ancient Chinese classic texts. You would sit for like a week, quoting these texts extensively, verbatim, in essays that touched far less on good governance than they did on philosophical questions and Confucian principles. The result is that these Chinese government was staffed for years and years and years by those who were, first and foremost, good at memorizing things.
But ultimately, unlike the open-market solution currently in place, the essay system was a vague meritocracy which guaranteed that all officials were dedicated, educated, literate, and capable of applying previous learnings towards new problems; the Tang dynasty would have never been saddled with Betsy DeVos.