Month: January 2020

The Clock

It’s twelve hours since Iran launched missile attacks against US bases in Iraq.  According to the Pentagon there were no US casualties.  According to Iran up to eighty Americans were killed.  Everyone is entitled to their own facts, I guess.

The United States and Iran are at a breathless “pause”.  Each has climbed the ladder of escalation. After months of tit-for-tat actions in the Persian Gulf, the Iranian backed militia Hezbollah bombed an Iraqi base and an American contractor was killed.  The US responded by bombing three of the militia’s bases.  Hezbollah responded by attacking the US Embassy in Baghdad.  The US responded with a drone strike that killed Iran’s number two leader on the road to the Baghdad airport.   And then Iran responded with last night’s missile strike. 

The world is waiting for President Trump’s response.  He supposedly will speak to us all this morning, and what he says will determine how far our current crisis will go.  If the President is “all talk” but no further action, then there is time.  If he launches further strikes, we will be back on the ladder, climbing to war.

Enter the Peacemakers

After these actions, the United States and Iran are unlikely to “sit down” with each other.  The assassination of General Soleimani placed the two sides far beyond the ability to talk face to face.  So who can mediate, what world leader can step in and say to both sides that they have risked too much, and taken world fears too close to reality?

The Swiss legation in Tehran right now represents American interests.  But the Swiss have never been peacemakers; they are instead honest brokers in a world where honesty is rare.  They aren’t the ones to bring peace.  And the United States often uses the government of Pakistan to communicate to Iran, but we really don’t trust them.  Pakistan has so much at stake in the outcome that their own interests outweigh their ability to broker a deal.

French President Macron could serve as the go-between.  France has economic interests in Iran that makes them committed to peace, and Macron’s on and off relationship with Trump might be effective.  But while France could negotiate, they aren’t in a position to force a deal between two parties that have gone so far.

So who’s left?  There’s one world leader who has enough respect from Trump, and can pressure the Iranian mullahs to accept the personal insult of Soleimani’s death.  He’s waiting for his chance to be the world leader, to take charge on the global stage.  And he’s already moving into position, speaking to the European and Turkish leaders.

It’s Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia!!!! (I feel like there should be a Hamilton moment, a fanfare like – Hercules Mulligan!!)

Putin’s Eye on the Prize

Keep in mind Putin’s ultimate goal:  to bring Russia back to the stature of the Soviet Empire of the early 1980’s.  So he’s been in Europe in the last week, and was in Ankara, the capital of Turkey just days ago.  Putin has been allied with Iran in the Middle East for the past several years, including helping Iran keep Syrian President Bashar Assad in power.  And even in the past few days, as relations between Iraq and the United States have deteriorated Putin has made offers of military assistance to the Iraqi government.

Putin’s Russia is a major player in the Middle East.  Russian troops have taken over the American outposts in Northern Syria.  Russia has already made arms sales to Turkey, ostensibly a NATO ally of the United States. By becoming a force in the Middle East, Russia becomes an economic factor when it comes to controlling the Strait of Hormuz, and European oil supplies.  

America’s allies have questions.  Why did the US abandon the Kurds in Syria, but move troops to protect Syrian oil fields?  Why did the US go from a tit-for-tat response to Iranian provocations, to assassinating the second most powerful government figure in the country?  In short, can America be trusted as a stable partner.

So if not the US, then Putin.  He can become the “new” peacemaker, and by doing so, gain more influence over the Middle East, Europe, and the world.  The era of “Pax Americana” may be over.  “Pax Rodina” may be coming.   

The Colonel

Colonel Larry Wilkerson has “street cred”.  He flew combat helicopters in the Vietnam War, graduated from both the Ranger and Airborne Schools of the US Army, and earned degrees in international relations, national security, and English literature.  He was on General Colin Powell’s staff in the military, and then followed Powell into civilian life as his Chief of Staff at the State Department.

Wilkerson is outspoken about how Powell was “used” by the Bush Administration to justify the invasion of Iraq.  Powell’s speech to the United Nations about Iraqi nuclear weapons development was critical in the lead-up to the invasion.  That speech was based on information “cherry picked” from intelligence by the Bush Administration, led by Vice President Cheney, information turned out to be false. 

Wilkerson understands force, understands the military, and understands intelligence.  Last night on MSNBC, he called the intelligence leading to the assassination of Iranian General Soleimani  “…a bunch of bull.”  He added, “We have surrendered the strategic initiative to Iran”.  

In the interview, Wilkerson added an anecdote from the Obama administration. He said that Obama told him in a White House meeting in the Roosevelt Room, that,  “…there’s a bias in this town toward war”.

Biggest on the Block

It’s easy to see how Washington would have that bias.  The US has the largest military in world history.  We spend huge amounts of money to maintain it, last year budgeting almost $700 billion.  We have more of everything, from ships to planes to tanks.  And while there are larger armies in the world by number of soldiers, the US has more of everything else.

And of course, we have nuclear weapons.

So military solutions are often “the easy” ones.  When there’s a world crisis that lends itself to blowing something up, we have the best means to do it.  We are like the biggest and strongest kid on the block.  When other kids annoy us, or even threaten us, it’s easy to simply swat them away.  

No one can resist the ultimate force of America, “…the American people in their righteous might” as Franklin Roosevelt noted after Pearl Harbor.  But there is a key modifier in that sentence, and in America’s role in the world.  America has the ultimate force, but America must also be “righteous”.  America cannot be seen as a world “bully” and maintain that “rightness”.  When the US has acted (and we have) as the “bully”, we find that the national unity that flows to that power, stops.

Americans Together

Roosevelt’s call to arms after Pearl Harbor led to the development of the US military as the greatest world force, a force maintained today.  Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor, and Bush after 9-11, could call on the full force of the American people.  Few opposed their efforts, and there were long lines outside of enlistment offices.  America knew it was time to defend itself.

But in other times and other wars, Americans have had questions.  It didn’t take long to figure out that Vietnam was not a war defending the “homeland”.  When we committed thousands of combat troops in 1964, millions of citizens began to question our motives.  By 1968 it was the major issue in American politics, on American campuses, and in the streets of American towns. 

Draft Army

Vietnam reached into the lives of most Americans because of the draft.  The US Armed Forces then were based on conscription.  At eighteen, American boys were selected to serve, and sent into combat in Vietnam.  By the end of the war the draft system was based on a simple lottery, if you were born on the wrong day, then eighteen years later you were on the way to Vietnam.  Have a “good number” and you got to stay home.

After the end of Vietnam, the United States military moved to an “all volunteer” force.  And while those soldiers are incredibly effective and loyal, when we stopped the draft it somehow became “easier” to send troops into danger.  After all, they volunteered, they chose this.  It was less of a national burden to send troops to Kosovo and Bosnia and Iraq.  And even the “righteous” war in Afghanistan against the forces that attacked us in 9-11 has dragged on.  Al Qaeda is defeated and bin Laden dead, but we continue to battle, for so long that the soldiers fighting today might not even have been born when planes struck the World Trade Center.

An Easy Solution

So it’s easier to send our forces to fight in far away fields.  It’s even easier when those forces can be piloted remotely, from a base in Virginia, as the bombs fall in Baghdad.  No one mourns the loss of a drone, even if it costs millions.  We proved that when the Iranians shot down one of ours a few months ago, and our response was a cyber attack.  The choice to use military force becomes less “righteous” when it’s done with an upscale video game controller.

As the use of military force becomes easier to do, it is incumbent upon the decision makers to chose more deliberately and carefully.  And that’s where we stand today.  Do we believe that the President and his small coterie of militant advisors made a “righteous” choice in trying to provoke war with Iran?  There is no question that Soleimani was a “bad actor”, a purveyor of terrorist acts throughout the Middle East.  But there is “no new news here,” he’s been that same “bad actor” for the past twenty years and more.  

It seems that the neo-cons, some of the same folks that led us into Iraq eighteen years ago, are happy to lead us into Iran.  They decry the “righteousness” of their cause, trying to paper over the divisions of America with a patriotic war.  Pompeo, Esper, and good old John Bolton have got what they want from Donald Trump.

But they gave up control when we killed Soleimani.  As Colonel Wilkerson said, it’s not our call, “…we have surrendered the initiative”.  Now it’s up to Iran.  Their response will determine what we will do, whether it will be war or peace or that tenuous balance point we’ve maintained in between.  

It’s hard to be righteous, when it’s not your call.

Wrapped in the Flag

If you glance through Facebook, you see it.  There are memes and statements, demanding absolute loyalty to America’s new policy in the Middle East.  “This is war, you must stand by the flag,” and  “protect our soldiers in the line of fire,” appear in one form or another, over and over again.

The assassination of Iranian General Soleimani by US drones is an American political sledgehammer.  Question the action, and you must be “soft” at best, or a traitor at worst.  Stand with the President or stand against your country.

Of course all of that isn’t true.  It’s perfectly OK to question President Trump’s actions in the Middle East.  We don’t know his “plan” other than the threats and bluster we read on Twitter.  His wild threats, and Mike Pompeo’s pompous assertions demanding trust in their unknowable plan, do nothing to relieve national skepticism.  Leaders lead through confidence, education, and reason.  The Trump Administration has revealed none of those traits.

So the question we have to ask:  is this a Trump strategy for the Middle East, or is this a Trump strategy for 2020.  Or, perhaps even scarier, is this a random act decided between the fourteenth tee and green at Mara Lago with no strategy involved at all.

Middle East Strategy

If it’s a Middle East strategy, it’s a risky one.  At the best, the United States has determined that it’s all or nothing with Iran.  In the past decades, the primary goal was to make sure that Iran couldn’t become a nuclear power, able to use the ultimate weapon to pursue their acknowledged goal of Middle East domination.

That was the tradeoff the Obama Administration made.  They would accept the “asymmetric warfare” Iran waged, led by General Soleimani, as long as Iran abandoned the strategic objective of getting a “bomb”.  Previous Presidents, Obama, Bush and Clinton; were well aware of Soleimani’s role in encouraging the terrorists militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine.  They also were aware that until we invaded Iraq in 2002, Iran served as the counter-balance to Iraq’s military aggression led by Saddam Hussein.  We changed that dynamic, taking the “cork out of the bottle” in Iraq and leaving a huge vacuum in leadership.  Iran wanted to fill that vacuum.

Iranian Power

It’s so much more than just “power” though. Iran is the center of Shia Islam, and sees with some justification, the repression of Shias throughout the rest of the Sunni Islamic Middle East.  Iran also has a different ethnic group, Persian, rather than the majority Arab of the rest of the Middle East.  So Iran’s not just using their influence to gain power for themselves, but also for minority groups throughout the region.  

So Clinton, Bush and Obama accepted that Iran would support groups that the US often opposed.  And, sometimes, the US and Iran would find mutual enemies and work together.  The most recent battles against ISIS, a Sunni extremist cult, found Iranian supported militias and US forces working shoulder to shoulder.

But in the Trump Administration all relationships are transactional:  support today if it benefits us, enemy tomorrow if there’s profit in that.  Ask the Kurds, or our NATO allies.  

Protests in Iran

It’s odd that this attack occurred right now.  The Iranian government was rocked by protests in their own country; marches and demands by young Iranians to change policy.  The US economic sanctions were working; many Iranians wanted change. The Iranian people have never been a “monolithic” Shia block.  They are a modern people, highly educated, and want better conditions, and more say in their government.

But there are no protests against that government today.   The Facebook campaign in the United States may or may not be working, but in Iran, the actual remains of General Soleimani have served as a unifying force.  It may be just what the Iranian theocracy needed:  now it’s all “death to Americans”.  Their nation is focused, and ready to sacrifice.

New Middle East Strategy

Secretary of State Pompeo states we have a “vast alliance” to stand against the aggressor Iran.  Let’s hope that’s true.  We know that the traditional Iranian enemy, Sunni Saudi Arabia will be happy with the new US stance.  Saudi is in a “proxy war” with Iran in Yemen, and the Iranians were escalating beyond “proxies” with attacks on Saudi oil producing facilities.  Now the US has stepped into the breach to force Iranian attention in our direction.  The MBS-Kushner axis may be at work (MBS – Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince and leader of Saudi Arabia and Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law).

Iraq is faced with a no-win situation.  The Iraqi government exists because of US support.  Should the US withdraw, Iraq will become an Iranian vassal state.  In the end, Sunnis have controlled Iraq, but the nation is two-thirds Shia.  The pressure of Iran is intense.  It’s why Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980’s.

Unless the US is willing to become fully involved in war with Iran, it’s hard to see a “reasonable” outcome in this situation.  Iran isn’t likely to abandon their allies in the Middle East, and if that’s the price the US wants, it will be the US military that will have to extract it.

Ground war in Iran would be ugly, much worse than Iraq or Afghanistan.  There are fewer “friendlies” in Iran than there were in Iraq, and the opposition will be better organized and dedicated than Afghanistan.  It’s not a matter of who has “the most” power, but whether that power is enough to dominate a stubborn and determined opponent.  That hasn’t worked historically:  Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq all come to mind. 

Wag the Dog

There was a movie released in the 1990’s just before the Bill Clinton scandal was fully revealed.  It was about a President who started a war to distract from a sex scandal.  Wag the Dog became a watchword of the Clinton impeachment:  what would the President do to change the subject from impeachment and Monica?

Is this escalation against Iran a Trump ploy to mobilize his base in the United States, in the face of Senate trial for impeachment, and the drip-drip-drip of negative revelations?  You can hear echoes of “campaign” in the President’s tweets:  the false equivalence of Baghdad and Benghazi, and the fifty-two targets in Iran for the fifty-two hostages in 1979-80 that a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, couldn’t get out.  

Last week, Office of Management and Budget emails were revealed showing the President directly ordered Ukrainian aid to be held.  This week the Senate will determine whether witnesses will be heard in the impeachment trial.  If the Senate hears Bolton, Mulvaney, Blair and Duffy, it seems clear that their story will further damage the President.  If the Senate refuses, then Democrats will run with the “Senate Republican cover-up” story.  

This weekend we found out that a sanctioned Russian bank might have backed millions of dollars of Deutsche Bank loans to Donald Trump (Forensic).  And the pressure is growing as the US Supreme Court determines whether Mr. Trump’s taxes will be revealed to Congress or the Courts.  It might be a good week to change the subject.

No Backing Out

Whatever the reason, the United States has changed the dynamic in the Middle East.  We are on an “adventure” in foreign policy, a journey into the unknown.  Whether this is a strategy to succeed in the Middle East, or the 2020 election, it’s put Americans and the Middle East at greater risk of violence and war.  And there’s no backing out.

The Guns of August

It was a summer day in the Balkan city of Sarajevo in 1914.  The town was then in the Bosnian Province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The Crown Prince of the Empire, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophia were in town after inspecting the Austrian troops. They came for the feast of St. Vitus and to show Austrian loyalty to the region.  A parade we held in their honor, and they waved their way through the town in the back of an open car. Suddenly an assassin jumped in and shot them both.

The assassin, nineteen-year old Gavrilo Princip, was an impassioned member of the “Black Hand”. This was a Serbian society that wanted to unite the Southern Slav states into a nation separate from the Empire.  Serbia was already independent, and wanted Bosnia to join as part of what would ultimately become Yugoslavia.

But the assassination of the Archduke had consequences far beyond his death.  Austria-Hungary rightfully blamed Serbia, and mobilized troops at the Serbian border.  Serbia responded with troop mobilization as well, and asked for help from their ally, Russia.  Russia began to bring their troops up, and Austria-Hungary turned for help to their ally, Germany.

Germany was already planning for European conquest. They attacked Russia’s ally France.  And thus World War I began, with the killing of one man.

Soleimani

Thursday, the United States used a drone attack to assassinate a leading Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, as he travelled to the Baghdad Airport in Iraq.  Soleimani was the mastermind behind twenty years of Iranian involvement in “irregular” forces, defined by the United States as terrorists, throughout the Middle East.  These include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, the Popular Mobilization Force in Iraq, and the Houthis who are fighting against the Saudi Arabian backed government forces in Yemen.

Soleimani was one of the most powerful men in Iran, second behind leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.   There is no question that he was the author of many terrorist actions throughout the Middle East.  He was not a “good actor” in the region. The United States government believed that Soleimani was planning additional attacks in Iraq targeting US assets and personnel, so he was targeted and killed.

But unlike Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; Soleimani was a “state actor”.  The difference is that bin Laden and al-Baghdadi were leaders of non-state, irregular terrorist forces.  Both their organizations, al Qaeda and ISIS, were failing and widely dispersed. Those groups were  unable to respond to the US actions.  Soleimani was a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, an official position in the Iranian government.  With Soleimani gone, another general fills his position, and Iranian assets remain unchanged.

Act of War

Targeting another nation’s leadership is a technical act of war.  The United States, like it or not, has attacked Iran in a legal sense.  It should be no surprise to anyone that Iran will respond to the attack.

This doesn’t mean that Iran will launch conventional military attacks against US Forces.  They aren’t stupid; in a conventional war the United States has the overwhelming advantage.  Iran will respond in a way that gives them an advantage. They might use their irregular allies throughout the Middle East.  Or they could use their developed expertise in cyber-warfare, and somehow disrupt US networks or infrastructures.  It is called “asymmetrical warfare,” where attacks of one kind, like the US drone strike in Iraq, are responded to by random bombings, suicide attacks or electronic assaults in a totally different place.

Young Gavrilo Princip did not kill Archduke Francis Ferdinand and Sophia to start World War I.  There was no way that he could know the fuse he ignited, creating an explosion involving all of Europe, and ultimately the United States.  That was far beyond that young man’s nationalistic vision.

Neither he, nor the leaders of Europe, foresaw what would happen. Their actions resulted in the unintended consequence of a world at war, enormous loss, and irrevocable change. 

Unintended Consequences 

The assassination of Qasem Soleimani feels much the same.  

Iran will have to respond.  Where they will strike, and how the United States is prepared to respond, is difficult to know.  But, unlike World War I, we know that America’s current allies in NATO are not happy with US actions.  Most of the them were still abiding by the Iranian Nuclear Protocol, negotiated by the Obama Administration to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.  President Trump repudiated that deal, and now has directly attacked the Iranian government.  

What will those allies do?  How will they respond if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz, strangling world and particularly European oil supplies?  Or decides to disrupt the international banking network?  And where will Russia and China, both frequent allies of Iran, stand?  

And perhaps the biggest question is, has the Trump Administration actually thought through the consequences of the assassination?  Are we following a carefully thought through plan for the Middle East, and the world? Or are we living in an era of knee-jerk reactions and unintended consequences. It’s easy to fear that the latter is the case.

(and other misleading things)

Biden Did It

I was discussing the impeachment and removal of President Donald Trump the other day.  One of the participants argued that Biden did the exact thing Trump did:  use American funds to try to leverage a Ukrainian government decision.  We went down “into the weeds” of what Biden did back in 2016, as opposed to what the President did last summer.  Ultimately, the argument faded out:  neither side would accept the other sides “facts”.

To be clear, Vice President Biden was representing US, NATO and EU policy when he told the Ukrainian government that we would withhold aid unless Prosecutor Viktor Shokin was removed.  Shokin was uninterested in prosecuting corruption, particularly by the Russian backed Ukrainian oligarchs.  

We will soon hear from Trump’s “personal lawyer” Rudy Giuliani with accusations of Biden corruption.  Those charges begin with a Shokin deposition.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that a Russian backed former Ukrainian Prosecutor would be opposed to the Democrat.

President Trump, on the other hand, was actually (as opposed to threatening) holding congressionally mandated funds for Ukrainian defense.  And he and his “team” made it clear to the current Ukrainian government that they would have to announce investigations of Biden and Crowd Strike to get the money.   The announcement alone would provide more “Trump cannon fodder” for the 2020 campaign.  There was no US government policy or interest being furthered, just the personal ambitions of the President.

So, while the two actions seem to be similar, in reality, they are completely different.  And that’s the definition of a “false equivalency”.  We’ve heard a lot about those lately.

Baghdad

This week an angry riot began outside of the US Embassy in Baghdad.  The rioters were protesting a US attack on an Iraqi militant group.  The group had earlier killed an American citizen.  The rioters tried to “take” the embassy, and penetrated through the first layer of the multiple Embassy defenses.  President Trump ordered additional US Marine reinforcements in, and within hours those Marines from Kuwait were landing in the Embassy courtyard.  

More Marines or not, the Iraqi government finally helped to remove the protestors.  They made an agreement with the militant group to reevaluate US military presence in Iraq.

President Trump made the right decisions in this crisis.  The Embassy staff hunkered down in the heavily defended core, and the multiple lines of defense in the most strongly defended US Embassy in the world held.  As the crisis seemed to escalate, the President called in resources to reinforce the existing Marine guards.

Just Like Benghazi

Trump supporters have taken this success, and tried to draw a parallel with the Benghazi crisis of the Obama Administration.  “Trump acted,” they demand, “while Obama (and Hillary Clinton) let those people die in Benghazi”.  They are creating a false equivalence between the two crises.

Why is this false?  What happened in Baghdad was at the most heavily defended US Embassy in the world, one that has always been considered a high-risk station.  Benghazi was a lightly defended US Consulate, a condition that the Ambassador Stephens was well aware of when he went there.

In the recent case, US Marines and other troops from Central Command were on standby in Kuwait, 400 miles from Baghdad, about a two-hour helicopter flight.  At Benghazi, the closest US troops were in Italy, over 700 miles away, and not a prepared assault force.  One of the issues the Obama Administration faced was that the military was not prepared to rescue anyone in Benghazi, and by the time that could be arranged, the riots and killing was over.

Everyone Does It

Biden and Trump in Ukraine, Trump’s actions in Baghdad and Obama’s in Benghazi:  they are similar situations.  But both have huge practical differences that make comparing them uncertain at best, and a false equivalency at worst.

But the final “false equivalency” in today’s politics is in overarching theme:  “Trump is just doing what all politicians do, he’s just more blatant about it”, followed by the inevitable “Democrats did it too”.

That is not a false equivalency, it is just bull.  

Just Bull

Just a short list of Trump personnel in or going to jail:  Manafort, Gates, Flynn, Papadopoulos, Cohen, and Stone.  Another list of Trump Cabinet level officers who have resigned under fire:  Shanahan, Price, Zinke, Sessions, and Acosta.  There hasn’t been a President since Andrew Johnson that had so many senior staff under accusation.  Even Nixon only lost a couple cabinet members to Watergate.

The President of the United States constantly violates accepted norms of behavior.  He insults his opponents, belittles those who disagree with his policies, makes fun of the handicapped, and calls for the killing of those who speak against him.  Not sure about the last one?  Ask “the Whistleblower,” the one the President accused of “treason”.  “You know what we did with traitors in the old days,” are Trump’s words. 

The scope of Trump’s actions are wide. No Democrat has behaved this way.

There’s going to be a lot more false equivalencies made as the 2020 campaign season continues.  Don’t buy into them, and don’t let others get away with using falsehoods to buttress their arguments.  Whether folks accept or not, there is a single truth, a set of irrefutable facts, that should lead us to answers.  Stand by the truth.

Last night – the United States used an aerial drone to kill a senior Iranian General outside of the Baghdad airport. While Soleimani lead Iran’s influence on groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, he was also one of the top leaders of the Iranian government. There will be consequences.

The Jetsons theme song

Color TV

I was born in 1956.  Eisenhower was President, Elvis was about to be drafted, and televisions were small and in black and white.  So my “cartoon watching” days were in the early 1960’s.  Dad was working at a TV station (WLW-D in Dayton, he commuted from our Cincinnati home every day).   We got our “color” TV in 1963, the first in the neighborhood.

I watched the old favorites:  Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Popeye and Mickey Mouse.  But a new form of cartoons came about, the serial comedy shows.  Rather than just a five or ten minute adventure “hunting wabbits,” these cartoons were like the evening family shows, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, and of course Leave it to Beaver.  In 1960 a show about a family in the Stone Age, the Flinstones began, and in 1962, The Jetsons.

The Jetsons

The Jetsons was the story of a normal family in the year 2062.  Father George worked in a “white collar” job at the Spacely Space Sprocketts.  Jane, his wife, lived a middle class life, shopping and taking care of the home (with the help of various robots).  Daughter Judy was in high school, and son Elroy was in elementary school.

The show set the tone for what the future would look like.  The Jetsons lived in an apartment on stilts high in the clouds, and drove air cars from place to place.  All the sidewalks were moving, and most of the time, in fact almost all of the time was spent “in the air”.  The ground was still there, it was where homeless folks (called hobos back then) wandered, the stilt-like apartments had foundations, and birds stayed because the sky was too full.

We didn’t really know why the “middle class” moved up into the sky.  But we did get a cartoon version of what the future should look like.  Now, more than half way there, we are still waiting for our flying cars.

But there’s a lot of other cartoon “predictions” that are now matter of fact.  While we don’t yet have “Rosie” the robot maid, we are well on the way with robot vacuum cleaners and digitally controlled homes.  And maybe the Jetsons foreshadowed climate change, as they abandon the flooded or droughted earth to the homeless and move into the clouds.  

Wrist Radios

But the most predictive show was Dick Tracy.  This cartoon started as a comic strip about a detective who from 1946 on had a “wrist radio,” a watch that he could use to communicate to others on his team.  In 1964 the cartoon series debuted a “wrist TV”.  Well we got those.  Apple Watch has all of those traits, and even folks older than me are wearing them.  I’ve resisted that temptation; it’s just one more thing that I need reading glasses for.

But we are all carrying greater computing power in our pockets (and on our wrists) than any of us could access as late as twenty years ago.  It’s hard to imagine that the Apollo moon rockets, or the Space Shuttles, had less computing power than we all carry with us everyday. 

It Comes Around

What else has the “future wrought?”  Well, what’s a “long distance” call, in our age where we expect absolute connection with each other at all times?  And while today we have Uber Eats and Grub-Hub, back while I was watching the Jetsons we had milk and bread, ice cream and chips (Charlie Chips) delivered to the house several times a week.

Wires are gone.  My TV’s aren’t even hooked to cable anymore; I’ve “cut” away to use a streaming service.  It’s a bit of irony; I remember my television industry father talking about how the hundreds of cable channels would crowd out broadcast television.  He worried that the “stations” would get chased out of business.  Today those channels still exist, but cable service is getting relegated to a “pipeline” role.  Programming has passed onto the “streamers,” Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the like.  

Connections

And what have we lost?  When my father passed away a few years ago, I cleaned out his home office (I’m writing this essay on his executive desk, shoe-horned into my home office now).  I found files of professional letters between the executives in his industry, congratulating each other on achievements, promotions, or anniversaries.  Typed by their secretaries, dictated either live or on “Dictaphones,” these courteous notes on onion skin paper were markers of a more “proper” time. 

Today, maybe it’s an email, or more likely a text.  We’ve lost the “class” by saving the time and effort.   And maybe we’ve lost those connections to each other as well.

So here we are in the “future”, 2020.  We are more connected, and somehow more isolated.  We are webbed into the world, but less present to each other.  And we are certainly more vulnerable as our pipeline for information gets narrowed to what can fit into ten seconds, in our pocket, or on our wrists.