Former four star General, the Chief of Space Command, and the Chief of Joint Chief of Staff, Richard B. Myers came to a talk on his new book Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace foundation.  As I understand, (for now) what has been going on from the time of September 11th attack to today, Gen. Myers headed the JSC at an extremely controversial time.  The political climate of the US split where the Republicans and Democrats appeared to engage in fierce political struggle to put blames upon various political figures and organizations as the country delved into two military endeavors in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.   In such a divisive ambiance, General Myers shrived until September 30, 2005.

At the lecture, he talked about his confusion over how to write a book and his struggle to get the job done with a help of Malcolm McConnell and some people, mentioned in his acknowledgement chapter.  While he was talking, he revealed the sad situation the military people where he was not trained to criticize.  He was trained to make decisions but not to criticize.  He rather decided to write his book to reveal his views toward various political figures as such as President George W. Bush Jr., Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 

In the lecture, General Myers emphasized the importance of strategic thinking where he explained how it is important to focus on the political, diplomatic, economic, societal and cultural ground adding to just the military power as for the global defense in order to fight against the Islamic extremism.  He did not point toward the whole entire Islamism, however, he emphasized how its not whole Islamic community but it is more on the extremist factions. 

He also elaborated more on how he had to face the difficulty of how to harness the power in the time of distress and fear in the post 9/11 attacks.  How do you convince men and women not to join the terrorist organizations? How do you make the people cope with the “fear” after the terror attacks?  How do you cope with the disaster like the scale of Katrina? How do you train people to cope with fear, anxiety, distress and disaster?  Problems flooded D.C. 

The most interesting part of the lecture was how Gen. Myers mentioned his impression on Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.  While participating in the meeting with the major figures of the Bush, Jr. Administration, Gen. Myers thought that Rumsfeld gave President Bush, Jr. thorough 360° brief providing various options existing compared to Vice President Cheney. 

General Myers also answered the audience’s question over the Anthrax scare and the fear factor issue and how to separate the immediate crisis and the notion of fear.  General told how easy it is to instigate fears among the population.  He then brought up the incident over Koran flashing down the toilet.  A story came out on a prison guard flashing Koran down the toilet where it instigated massive protest in the Middle Eastern region.  The government investigated on the incident while attempting to trace how information travels over time.  While the incident news dominated for few days, the news went away with the other news dominating the media.  He mentioned how people can be trained to cope with troubles though there are limitation to those where it is still an interesting puzzle to think about.

For more information on General Richard Myers: 

Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security.  Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Horizon-Serving-National-Security/dp/1416560122 

Gen. Richard B. Myers Media Stakeout at River Entrance Pentagon.  Department of Defense.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3252 

Meet the Former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff!  Richard Myers Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation
http://www.nixonlibraryfoundation.org/   

Northrop Grumman-Richard Myers

http://www.northropgrumman.com/leadership/bios/richard_myers.html 

Profile: Richard B. Myers.  History Commons.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=richard_b._myers 

Richard Myers-the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Myers 

Richard B. Myers News-New York Times.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/m/richard_b_myers/index.html 

Yes, Kennedy definitely made a great use of TV by appearing as an extremely competent candidate talking against Richard Nixon.  Before him, it was more of Radio, Newsreels at movie theaters. They were effective on campaigning for "TV" was still a laxury even for the middle class households.  Then before these technologies, it was newspapers, flyers and books with printing press technology that aided the presidential candidates.  But many earlier presidential candidates also traveled around to make speeches. 

As always, thanks for keeping interest in ClaremontConversation above and beyond your call of duty.

If more CGU political scientists begin using the site, it would provide an interesting forum for debate and knowledge sharing.

Nevertheless, didn't all this advertising of the self begin with kennedy (that's jfk)?

          As a battle-hardened veteran of the harsh political-landscape, Mr. Murphy describes the nature of American election as “dogfight” where the politicians must struggle to achieve voters’ allegiances.  He brought in the analysis of “dodge pick-up trucks” advertisement where it sells as being tough and sturdy and how election campaign is a similar situation except you are selling the candidates gathering popularity instead of selling the dodge pick-up trucks.   

          Strategy, according to Mr. Murphy is a list of things that you can never achieve completely.   Of course it is difficult to fulfill everything on the list especially for time is limited.  He suggested the strategy needs some focuses in the sense that the candidates must use the available resources wisely.   

          Humorously, calling politicians and campaign managers some kind of political “freaks” or  “dictators,” Mr. Murphy suggests how the campaign advisors must create a façade and fake speeches (in other words probably ‘imagery’) in order to make the candidates rather presentable.  The reason behind this is that the voters tend to get bored with minuscule details on soybean trading planning and so on that the candidates must be trained to withstand the repetitive campaigning for fundraising.  Catchy phrases, shiny presentations with balloons and colorful ads, campaign managers create the whole spectacles that the voters would like to experience including the speeches.  The campaign drive must also be coordinated like that of caterpillar’s legs where everything must be right on to capture the voters’ and investors’ hearts and minds.    Mr. Murphy warns on how the campaign managers are dealing with un-objective more emotional voters who think like “everyone thinks like that” by listening to the candidates.  On the Bush campaign, he boasted, how people wanted typical Texan with cowboy boots and buckles so Bush was presented in such a fashion instead of urban intellectual types.  In terms of focus, Mr. Murphy suggested it is important to focus on which state you are investing upon.  The candidates must invest upon the state where they will likely be getting the votes and pushes drawing examples like the states of New Hampshire and Iowa.   He also advises that the candidates should be brave enough to be a contrarian to get supports of the people.   Hillary Clinton now is working on Anti-Bush image though Mr Murphy reminds us of some possibilities of Obama coming out more powerful later on for Hillary may be unable to adjust though he still adds how “being famous counts.”  His commentary also provides the information on behind the scenes struggle to gloom political elites to achieve the goal of winning the elections.   

          Interestingly, Mr. Murphy called Mitt Romney, “Money bag Romney” and giving an objective view on Rudy Guiliani about how Guiliani is more of a democrat from the conservative republican point of view for looking rather secular.  He would casually mention how he is sorry on people like him would get to be very cynical like that for achieving the goals is always a rough and lonely fight for the candidates drawing upon examples from the Napoleonic Wars.   

          Grippingly, Mr. Murphy also revealed the stories of how Carter and Reagan did not change at all to get elected while Schwarzenegger had to be directed.  He explains how some candidates becoming insecure needing drill sergeants to have some directions.  Schwarzenegger, more famous as an actor rather than a politician at the time before the election simply said “Tell me what you want.” Mr. Murphy gave him a complement on how “some guys gets it” while others do not.   

             Even though he looks successful from the outside, he mentions how it was hard in the beginning for he also has experienced failures.  However, he mentions how such experiences are also helpful to learn what went wrong emphasizing anti-technicalism of his approach.  Anti-technicalism meaning that he learns from “experience” rather than from the experts’ crafted views. 

          Cynical, humorous, dynamic, yet down to earth, Mr. Murphy gave us a remarkably interesting perspective on the power of advertisement for the American political campaign.  Careful preparation and staging for creation of imagery is at work with an analyst and advisor like him.  He can be a good personal coach in case anyone wants to learn more on “leadership.”  For more information on him: [http://www.mikemurphycommentary.com/page/about.html].

That sounds like an interesting and very controversial class. Losers in American history. There must be millions. Just wait until the present becomes history and we'll see an even greater influx of losers... 

          In our American Losers class, we explored such people like Senator John Randolph of Roanoke, George Fitzhugh, the southern propagandist during antebellum period, John Woolman a Quaker minister, writers Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, John Jay Chapman, Albert Jay Nock and so on.  The major image of the American History pushes the ideas of Democracy, freedom (or liberty), and capitalism.  On the other hand, Prof. Dawidoff’s class introduced us into the other ideas and cultures existing in the US.   

          When I first joined the very intelligent crowd of his class, I knew almost nothing on these intellectuals Prof. Dawidoff was talking about except Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau while I’ve heard some of the names of these people in somewhere.  Thus, it was a very challenging class for me.  The level of English was also high in terms of these intellectuals for I had to check the meanings of words such as “superfluous” or “pantagruelism.”  However, Prof. Dawidoff turned out to be a very humorous lecturer.  While asking difficult questions to answer such as, “Were these people really losers?” or “what do you think of these people’s disinterested attitudes?,” he was introducing funny or strange episodes of these intellectuals to make it more interesting for the students.   

          All these historical intellectuals experienced some “loser momentous” as Randolph having a sickness ending up broken marriage, Fitzhugh’s writings became forgotten after the end of the system of slavery, or Thoreau and Melville only became famous after their deaths and so on.  Woolman also became kind of a social outcast in the sense that he traveled everywhere to talk about the evilness of treatment of the slaves still during the colonial era.  Chapman’s defense of Germany or anti-Catholicism also ending up alienating some people which his writings have been totally forgotten in these days.  Chapman and Nock both went against the Progressives that they became outcasts in the major American political spectrum.   

          Because my focus is 20^th century US-international relation, I rather had filtered version of American history in the earlier period while I explored more in depth of the policy makers’ writings of the 1900s.  Thus, it was quite upsetting and saddening when I saw many using “n” words which Prof. Dawidoff explained it to us kindly that it was the zeitgeist of the time.   Prof. Dawidoff’s class was rather interesting and important in the sense that I did not know in depth whose thoughts all these politicians were fighting against in the Congress meetings or where all the other thoughts were from.  At the same time, I’ve learned new English words.  Many of these people resisted the progressive developments of the United States such as Randolph and Fitzhugh wanting to preserve the way of the Southern Planters and Jeffersonian farmers while using “states rights” or Thoreau wanting to preserve the nature from the wrath of the industrialization.  With Prof. Dawidoff’s class I learned more on the intricacy of the American intellectual thoughts as well as the Congressional debates and the structure of the American Constitution. 

 Some may remember Prof. Tom Hayden of Pitzer College as a part of Chicago Eight, a Civil Rights-Anti-Vietnam War activist as well as a prominent journalist and former senator.  I am taking a class from him this semester.  Prof. Hayden is also a powerful leading figure for the anti-war activists against this Second US military involvement in Iraq and protesting against the sweatshop.  (More biographical information available at http://www.tomhayden.com/).   

It may surprise people when Prof. Hayden tries to be objective in the classroom.  However, rather than trying to push his own view, Prof. Hayden’s class tries to clarify what is happening in Iraq and how the Machiavellian leaders in the Bush Administration have been coping with the issue.  After the US declared victory in Iraq toppling Saddam Husain, insurgency emerged to cause usual sectarian fighting amongst each other while this time, including the US troops.  I mean it is usual since Iraq along with the other parts of the Middle East has been unstable for centuries.    

In today’s class, Prof. Hayden showed us a part of a cluster bomb, a cup like metal shaped object with engraving of H 123 inside.  Prof. Hayden explained to us how the contents of cluster bombs complicate the treatments of injured due to its jugged shape.  Once these clusters hit the victims, these parts will tear the flesh during removal further complicating the treatment of the victims.  Prof. Hayden has mentioned how someone gave it to him when he was protesting against the war during the Vietnam Era. Then, he reminded us of how the bomb is still in use even today.    

Prof. Hayden also discussed about the outline of the US history and sociological perspective introducing C. Wright Mills a famous American sociologist who furthered the Marxist theories on hierarchical class conflict.  Monarchy is gone in the US, but Machiavellians such as ruling elites, corporate leaders and institutions remained to control the mass.  In 1961, President Dwight David Eisenhower’s farewell speech warned about the military industrial complex (available at http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html).  Surprisingly, Ike has been a military guy and a well-respected general as well as a Cold Warrior president.  After the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson at the time a vice president was elevated to become the president.  With the instigation of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the US involvement into the Indochina area increased.   

From 1968 with Tet Offensive in the Vietnamese new year celebration the US victory goes down hill with Walter Cronkite’s reporting of what is happening in Vietnam.  The marines in the border area were isolated and the North launched major offensive against major centers in South Vietnam.  LBJ learning that the US would not prevail, attempts to negotiate and bring the North and South to a temporary cease fire toward the end of his administration. 

In 1969, Richard Nixon wins the presidential campaign promising that he will withdraw from Vietnam.  However, it was not that easy since the US has never being defeated until then.  Previous Cold Warrior presidents maintained their involvement to prevent Vietnam from falling into the hands of communism like the dominos.  Thus, Nixon wanted to win in Vietnam.  In his first administration, he increased the bombing and expanded the war further into Cambodia and Laos in order to close the supply lines of the North Vietnamese while withdrawing the ground troops.  At the same time, Nixon implemented a plan called Vietnamization, a plan to train the Vietnamese to fight.  This was secretly implemented even during the 50s with the US sending special forces to train some Montagnards (or mountain people) but training of these people to fight failed just like training of the South Vietnamese Army turned out to be unsuccessful.  Kissinger implemented his shuttle diplomacy flying to everywhere including China.  Plan to persuade China to talk to North Vietnam had failed and Nixon’s presidency went down with the Watergate scandal.  In 1973, the US embassy evacuated and Saigon fell in 1975 in the hands of North Vietnamese.    

Today, the US troops are fighting in confusing situations just like US troops in the Indochina war decades ago with insurgency and sectarian quarrels.  During the Vietnam War, Viet Congs pretended that they were loyal to the south during the day.  During the night, they turned into Viet Congs and operated to give the US troops some trouble or to encourage the South Vietnamese villagers to join their effort.  Vietnam when it fell into a civil war against the French conquerors was not entirely unified as one nation.  There were different kinds of people and clans living in Vietnam areas who did not like the nationalists.  In Iraq, today, insurgency, suicide car bombing, raiding of the US troops occur almost every day and no one is clear on who is the enemy sometimes.  January 25, 2005’s New York Time article “In a New Joint U.S.-Iraqi Patrol, the Americans Go First” by Damien Cave and James Glanz offer a glance at how the training of Iragis are going not so well (available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/world/middleeast/25haifa.html?ex=1170478800&en=a6f73be7929e0eff&ei=5070).     

I am merely a student of history and not a psychic.  Thus, I cannot really say how the war will turn out.  However, some historians are offering some gloomy predictions in an AP article, “Bleak,' `civil war,' `breakup': Historians offer dismal forecast for Iraq,” (by CHARLES J. HANLEY, http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/bleak-civil-war-breakup-historians-offer/n20070121200309990011).   

          I thought of the class otherwise.  Since I focus on the 20^th century US to the present mainly in terms of history, CGU-CSUN history professors especially emphasized the ability to use the computer-technology such as online book, archival, and article searches and use of different kind of programs such as word 2000, endnote, powerpoint and so on.  When I researched on the First Persian Gulf War, I had to use the online sources to supplement the “history in making.”  I use the power point program whenever I present my papers or when I do lectures.   In the class, we used the internet extensively from e-mails to research, and collaborative works. 

          In the class, I learned professors from many different disciplines such as Prof. Allan Wicker who researches on everyday lives of people, Prof. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who looks at the cognitive process of people, Prof. Marianne De Laet who focus on the scientists with ethnographical methodology.  I also thought that Prof. Dean McHenry from Political Science and Prof. Dale Berger who is a psychologist and statistician were both fascinating scholars though I am majoring history. 

          The class also gave me a chance to talk to different kinds of people from different disciplines as well as to work with the group of people.  I liked the fact that Prof. Horan was also encouraging people to interact with each other.  It is true that my social intelligence goes down since I am always cooped up in the room reading, writing, and fixing my own writings every single day.  Having the group of people to work with was also beneficial in the sense that some weeks, I was too busy to do anything while some weeks, I could contribute. 

          I also found out how hard it was to maintain a blog every week.  Sometimes, I was pasting my writings late at night.   Nonetheless, it also trained be to write faster and express my opinions freely. The only thing that it was hard was that I had another class right before the class and it was hard for me to drive from another campus to there to be in the class. It was also true that I was always hungry.  But that’s more like I should have considered to have some time in between these classes.  On the other hand, I cannot compromise which classes I want to take. 

1. What does the Claremont Conversation mean to you?,  How would you describe your ‘scholarly’ interaction within CGU and the other colleges?,
2. Please describe the Scholary “life of the mind” at CGU,
3. What are specific examples of the nature of your work?  To what extent is it emblematic or not of the scholarly life at CGU?

          Professor David Drew from Sociology Department who study scientists and mathematician also pointed out the alienation depending on what kind of institutions you are in as such as being a faculty of graduate school or undergraduate school.   Professor Shaw who facilitates Provost Tea gatherings or brown bag weekly luncheons at CGU also brought out the logistical difficulties of where people are coming from or walking down on campus.  She was suggesting that we almost have to structure it by creating situations such as the Transdisciplinary courses.  It is true that the Transdisciplinary course with Prof. Horan has been a great place to interact and get to know each other with the people from the other departments.  It has especially been hard for someone like myself who commute from place an hour away from CGU.

          Division depending on the discipline also creates certain separations between the CGU professors.  Prof. McHenry had pointed out the disagreements over qualitative v. quantitative methodology.  Prof. Wendy Martin was emphasizing the importance of understanding both quantitative and qualitative methods since both must go together and both disciplines need to understand the importance of both techniques.  Prof. Drew also followed agreeing with the two pointing out how the department emphasizes statistical numbers while most of the students write combining both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.  He also mentioned how some of the articles of processes of learning mathematics have been written in qualitative methods.